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Government

Wikileaks Booted From Amazon 528

Posted by samzenpus from the you're-outta-here dept.
dakameleon writes "Wikileaks has been booted from its Amazon hosting, and has now shifted to being hosted in Europe. Senator Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement, 'This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the WikiLeaks website,' which raises the question whether this was requested by the government. Senator Lieberman said Amazon's decision to cut off WikiLeaks 'is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.'"
Earth

Lidar Finds Overgrown Maya Pyramids 169

Posted by kdawson from the run-but-you-can't-hide dept.
AlejoHausner writes "A team of archaeologists scanned the jungle of Belize with lidar. Although most of the reflections came from the jungle canopy, some light reflected off the ground surface. Using this, suddenly hidden pyramids, agricultural terraces, and ancient roads are revealed, at 6-inch resolution. The data allowed the archaeologists to bolster their theory that the ancient city of Caracol covered more than 70 square miles of urban sprawl and supported a population of over 115,000."

Comment In schools, at least mine, meetings suck much less (Score 1) 205

by TromboonDotPy (#31846404) Attached to: How Chat and Youth Are Killing the Meeting
I'm a teacher in a public high school with (we think) better than average utilization of our information tech, at least on the teacher's desk. We take a LOT less meetings than 5 years ago, and the meetings we have are MUCH more abstract, more based on principles, overviews of our goals, and a bit of cheerleading, and SHORTER than back in the day. I totally commend my bosses for their tech-awareness, and their use of meeting times only for things that can't easily be said in email, or a video.

The exceptions are sort of interesting. The state mandated test regime requires a lengthy, plodding, punitive-feeling training session. Technology training. also a state mandate, is required to be administered by means of face-time. Basically, the theater of authority seems to require face-time: "I can make you show up and listen to me."

Perhaps this is what is really going on in meetings in the private sector, as well?
Government

The Woes of Munich's Linux Migration 314

Posted by kdawson from the eyes-of-the-world-are-upon-you dept.
mikrorechner writes "The H Online has a writeup of the problems encountered by LiMux (Wikipedia entry), one of the most prominent Linux migration projects in the world, trying to introduce free software into the highly heterogenous IT infrastructure of the City of Munich. Quoting: 'Florian Schiessl, deputy head of Munich's LiMux project for migrating the city's public administration to Linux, has, for the first time, explained why migrating the city's computing landscape to open source software has taken longer than originally planned.'" Here is Shiessl's blog, in which he details some of the transition problems.
Cellphones

Submission + - Malware Infected Memory Cards of 3,000 Phones (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The original report came on March 8 after an employee of Panda Security plugged a newly ordered HTC Magic phone from Vodafone into a Windows computer, where it triggered an alert from the antivirus software. Further inspection of the phone found the device's 8GB microSD memory card was infected with a client for the now-defunct Mariposa botnet, the Conficker worm and a password stealer for the Lineage game. At that point it was at thought to be an issue with a specific refurbished phone. On Wednesday another phone surfaced with traces of the Mariposa botnet. And now Vodafone is saying that as many as 3,000 HTC Magic phones, may be affected.
Education

Court Says Parents Can Block PA "Sexting" Prosecutions 383

Posted by timothy from the and-maybe-they-can dept.
mikesd81 writes "In the first federal appeals court opinion dealing with 'sexting,' a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Wednesday that parents could block the prosecution of their children on child pornography charges for appearing in photographs found on some classmates' cellphones. Miller vs. Mitchell (PDF) began in 2008 when school officials in Tunkhannock, Pa., discovered seminude and nude photographs of some female students on other student's phones. George Skumanick Jr., the DA at the time, said the students and their parents could be prosecuted if they did not participate in an after-school 'education program.' The unanimous ruling of the judges, Thomas L. Ambro, Michael A. Chagares and Walter K. Stapleton, criticized the district attorney's reliance on the girls' presence in the photographs as a basis for the potential charges. 'Appearing in a photograph provides no evidence as to whether that person possessed or transmitted the photo,' said the opinion, by Judge Ambro."
Education

How Students Use Wikipedia 170

Posted by kdawson from the must-be-true dept.
crazybilly writes "First Monday recently released a study about how college students actually use Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, they found, 'Overall, college students use Wikipedia. But, they do so knowing its limitation. They use Wikipedia just as most of us do — because it is a quick way to get started and it has some, but not deep, credibility.' The study offers some initial data to help settle the often heated controversy over Wikipedia's usefulness as a research tool and how it affects students' research."
Government

Texas Approves Conservative Curriculum 999

Posted by Soulskill from the great-school-board-or-greatest-school-board dept.
Macharius writes "Today, the Texas Board of Education approved 11-4 a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the role of Christianity in American history and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. The article goes on to mention that Texas's textbook approvals carry less influence than they used to due to digital localization technology, but is that even measurable given how many millions of these textbooks will still be used across the country?"
Image

Department of Education Purchasing 27 Shotguns 25

Posted by samzenpus from the we've-phased-out-detentions dept.
hargrand writes "The US Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven shotguns with very specific criteria. According to the article they want: '(27) Remington brand model 870 police 12/14P mod GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 gauge: 12 barrel: 14" - Parkerized choke: modified sights: ghost ring rear Wilson combat; front - XS Contour bead sight stock: Knoxx reduce recoil adjustable stock fore-end: speedfeed sport-solid - 14" LOP'. Place of delivery: US Department of Education Office of Inspector General, Chicago, IL.'" I'm surprised they didn't ask for them to be sent to Knoxx first to be fitted with Sidewinder Tactical 10-round drums.
Botnet

Zeus Botnet Dealt a Blow As ISPs Troyak, Group 3 Knocked Out 156

Posted by timothy from the brief-respite-while-sauron-regroups dept.
itwbennett writes "Ninety of the 249 Zeus command-and-control servers were knocked offline overnight when two ISPs, named Troyak and Group 3, were taken offline. Whoever was behind the takedown 'just decided to knock out a large area of cyber-crime, and this was probably one of the easiest ways to do it,' said Kevin Stevens, a researcher with SecureWorks. As with the McColo takedown of just over a year ago, Troyak's upstream providers seem to have knocked it off the Internet, Cisco said in a statement. 'The ISP was "De-peered,"' Cisco said. 'Troyak's upstream network providers effectively pulled the plug on Troyak's router, refusing to transmit its traffic.'"

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