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Privacy

California Family Fights For Privacy, Relief From Cyber-Harassment 544

Posted by Soulskill from the little-to-no-recourse dept.
theodp writes "Just days after his daughter Nikki's death in a devastating car crash, real-estate agent Christos Catsouras clicked open an e-mail that appeared to be a property listing. Onto his screen popped his daughter's bloodied face, captioned with the words 'Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive.' Now he and his wife are attempting to stop strangers from displaying the grisly images of their daughter — an effort that has transformed Nikki's death into a case about privacy, cyber-harassment and image control. The images of Nikki, including one of her nearly-decapitated head drooping out the shattered car window, were taken as a routine part of a fatal accident response and went viral after being leaked by two CHP dispatchers. 'Putting these photos on the Internet,' says the family's attorney, 'was akin to placing them in every mailbox in the world.'"

Comment Re:Copper vs New Materials (Score 3, Interesting) 524

by Nuriko Yanagi (#27669525) Attached to: Should Network Cables Be Replaced?
Yeah I'm not terribly worried about a shut down of anything - unless people are unwilling to begin transitions. In the LCD situation, I expect we'll simply transition to oLED technology. Copper wiring to fiber optics or wireless transmissions.

Thankfully aluminum is still pretty far away on the "exhaustability" spectrum, and aluminum is also pretty easy to reclaim from wastes. Copper is something we put deep in the earth and wind into tiny knots on circuit boards. Reclaiming it is a slightly more complex task.

In terms of the relevance to this article, I'd suggest that if anyone is upgrading their infrastructure to be current with technology, upgrade to fiber. It shows you're willing to make the transition to a new technology and you'll be prepared when the resources become scarce. And honestly, if someone's upgrading from Cat5 to Cat5e or Cat6... well, it's very rare anyone actually needs that. You might as well make a real upgrade, instead of changing equipment over to better shielded, better constructed, higher tested... same material lines.

There aren't many places in the world that actually utilize Cat6 (or fully utilize Cat5e) in their places of business, and in most of those places, you're better off using fiber anyway.

Be technology conscious.
Be environmentally conscious.

Comment Copper vs New Materials (Score 4, Interesting) 524

by Nuriko Yanagi (#27666817) Attached to: Should Network Cables Be Replaced?

I kind of took this article more to be suggesting that we should be looking at newer data transmission technologies and materials - not so much continuing in a line, all involving copper.

There are some recent reports released stating that *really* common elements used in technology are about to become exhausted resources - most in the next 10 years, but some as soon as 4 years from now.

For instance, at our current rate of consumption, Indium will be exhausted in four years. Indium is used for current generation LCD displays, among other things.
Gold and copper are in the same boat. The US already has closed down most of its gold mines, and all of its copper mines because they're not economically viable to mine for anymore. Predictions put gold and copper at exhausted in around 10 years.
And none of these projections take into account population growth or new technology demands. It's only at "current consumption rates".

In other words:

Should we be looking to upgrade cabling to fiber optics or other mediums for transmission of data, so that we can begin reclaiming copper to be used in more essential capacities?
The Internet

BT Blocks Access To Pirate Bay 360

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-feel-better-already dept.
Barence writes "BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay as part of a 'self-regulation' scheme with the Internet Watch Foundation. BT Mobile Broadband users who attempt to access the notorious BitTorrent tracker site are met with a 'content blocked' message. The warning page states the page has been blocked in 'compliance with a new UK voluntary code.' 'This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have "over 18" status,' the warning states. It goes on to list a series of categories that are blocked, including adult/sexually explicit content, 'criminal skills,' and hacking. It's not stated which category The Pirate Bay breaches, although the site does host links to porn movies."
United States

Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President 601

Posted by kdawson from the donkey-faithful-one-hundred-percent dept.
At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."
Transportation

Human-Powered Vehicle Speed Competition 102

Posted by kdawson from the faster-than-common-sense dept.
nsasch writes "Over at Battle Mountain, NV on SR-305, for the 2008 Battle Mountain World Human Powered Speed Challenge (mirror), some of the best cyclists will be competing in human-powered vehicles to break speed records. The current world record was set in 2002 at the same location with a speed of 129.6 km/h (81 mph) by Sam Whittingham in a custom-made recumbent bike. A lot of advanced aerospace engineering goes into these machines to reach highway speeds on less than one horsepower. Take a look around their site for pictures of the event and this year's records. It ends 20 September, so more pictures and results will be coming."
Businesses

United Tech Bids $2.6B for Diebold 129

Posted by CmdrTaco from the how-much-does-an-election-cost dept.
zhang1983 writes "United Technologies, parent company of jet engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, Otis elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft, said it made the unsolicited offer to Diebold for $2.63 billion on Friday after trying to negotiate a deal for two years. United Technologies said the company announced the offer Sunday night because executives believe their offer is "so compelling we thought shareholders should know about it.""
Linux Business

Linux At the Point of Sale 264

Posted by kdawson from the pos-that-refreshes dept.
NegativeK writes "I work at a local comic and games shop, and I've been kicking around what it would take to implement a barcode scanner and more detailed inventory control. Currently, the setup is a low-tech register that tracks general areas of sales: new comics, ccgs, Games Workshop, rpgs, etc. Requirements include FOSS on Linux, the ability to use a cheap scanner, datamining, and output in a useful format (perhaps OpenOffice spreadsheet). The idea hasn't been pitched to the shop owner yet, so ease of use is probably more important than anything — but breaking out the programming books to work on parts isn't out of the question for me. Assuming the actual register stays, what resources are out there for a barcode/inventory implementation?"
The Courts

Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy 738

Posted by kdawson from the thinks-too-much dept.
lseltzer alerts us to a story in the Washington Post on the defense strategy in the Hans Reiser murder trial. "In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, [the evidence] might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear. 'Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,' defense counsel William Du Bois said. 'All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field.'"
Education

Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement 147

Posted by CmdrTaco from the step-in-the-up-direction dept.
Vooch writes "Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online." I may not be smart enough to go to college, but at least I can pretend to have a Harvard eduction. I don't think that will be enough to get a gig as a Simpsons writer.
The Internet

"Anonymous" Takes Scientology Protest to the Streets 740

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the watch-out-for-the-hit-squads dept.
This past Sunday members of the group "Anonymous" that has been running an attack on the church of Scientology took their battle from the tubes of the internet to the pavement of real life, staging a protest outside the central Phoenix Church of Scientology. "The protesters said they gathered Sunday in lieu of the birthday of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist once cared for by church staffers. Her 1995 death sparked media attention and a civil wrongful death suit against a branch of the Church of Scientology. A wrongful death suit by her family was a public-relations nightmare for the church for years until it was settled in 2004. The Church of Scientology declined to comment on the Phoenix protests. It did provide a news release calling members of Anonymous cyber-terrorists."
Robotics

Robot Composed of "Catoms" Can Assume Any Form 168

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live dept.
philetus writes "An article in New Scientist describes a robotic system composed of swarms of electromagnetic modules capable of assuming almost any form that is being developed by the Claytronics Group at Carnegie Mellon. 'The grand goal is to create swarms of microscopic robots capable of morphing into virtually any form by clinging together. Seth Goldstein, who leads the research project at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in the US, admits this is still a distant prospect. However, his team is using simulations to develop control strategies for futuristic shape-shifting, or "claytronic", robots, which they are testing on small groups of more primitive, pocket-sized machines.'"
Microsoft

Microsoft Launches IT Superhero Comic 285

Posted by Zonk from the humor-doesn't-come-from-the-comic dept.
willdavid writes "Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft's new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. 'Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don't really have extraordinary powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who "stands between chaos and order" and says things like "begone vermin!"'" And because it's never easy, in order to read the archives of the comic you're going to need to install Microsoft's Silverlight.

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