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Government

Submission + - Swiss DMCA quietly adopted (boingboing.net)

Submitted by roady
roady writes: We have seen a lot of talk about the Canadian DMCA. But few know about the Swiss version recently adopted by law makers, not even the Swiss people. The government and media have been very quiet, probably to avoid a referendum. Indeed, Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50'000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote against the new copyright law. In this version of the DMCA, sharing a file on P2P networks will land you one year in jail, even though the law mandates a levy on blank media. The history of the law can be read here.
The Courts

Submission + - Court orders Bush admin to disclose telecom ties (salon.com)

Submitted by rgiskard01
rgiskard01 writes: From Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has won another significant legal battle, as a federal judge in California yesterday ordered the Bush administration (.pdf) to comply with EFF's FOIA demand and disclose documents revealing its "communications with telecommunications carriers and members of Congress" regarding efforts to amend FISA and provide amnesty to telecoms."
Story: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/29/telecom_lobbying/
Court Order: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/foia_C0705278/eff_v_odni_order.pdf
Google

Submission + - Google plans service to store users' data (wsj.com)

Submitted by
achillean
achillean writes: "Google Inc. wants to offer consumers a new way to store their files on its hard drives, in a strategy that could accelerate a shift to Web-based computing and intensify the Internet company's competition with Microsoft Corp. Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now, one of the people said. Google's solution will compete with a wide variety of other products, best summed up in the following chart."
Transportation

Submission + - America Takes Another Look at Maglev Trains (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by
longacre
longacre writes: "With highways and airports steadily grinding to a crawl and fuel prices skyrocketing, city planners are taking a new look at high-speed rail solutions such as maglev to alleviate the nation's transportation bottlenecks. At costs of up to $100 million per track mile, the 300 mph, virtually silent, frictionless trains are a hard sell. In places like Los Angeles, however, where the next 30 years will add 6 million people to the population of an area whose transportation infrastructure is already overwhelmed, new capacity is desperately needed. Includes video of a General Atomics maglev prototype in action."
Censorship

Submission + - Wikileaks releases sensitive Guantanamo manual (wired.com)

Submitted by James Hardine
James Hardine writes: Wired is reporting that a never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, via the whistleblowing site Wikileaks.org, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002. The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. The disclosure highlights the internet's usefulness to whistle-blowers in anonymously propagating documents the government and others would rather conceal. The Pentagon has been resisting — since October 2003 — a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union seeking the very same document. Anonymous open-government activists created Wikileaks in January, hoping to turn it into a clearinghouse for such disclosures. The site uses a Wikipedia-like system to enlist the public in authenticating and analyzing the documents it publishes. The Camp Delta document includes schematics of the camp, detailed checklists of what "comfort items" such as extra toilet paper can be given to detainees as rewards, six pages of instructions on how to process new detainees, instructions on how to psychologically manipulate prisoners, and rules for dealing with hunger strikes.
Power

Submission + - A boost for fuel cells

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Researchers at the University of Houston (UH) have developed a new platinum-based catalyst for fuel cells that is at least four times more efficient and cheaper than existing catalysts. This discovery in fuel cell research may ease reliance on gasoline. According to the researchers, the active phase of the catalyst consists of nanoparticles with a platinum-rich shell and a core made of an alloy of copper, cobalt, and platinum. But it's not enough for this new catalyst to be more efficient and cheaper than a pure platinum one. It also needs to work for a long time — say, the life of a car. So far, the preliminary results look promising, but longer-term testing is needed before this kind of fuel cells can be used to power your car. But read more for additional references and a picture of a catalyst material being tested for use in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells."
Security

Submission + - Picture Passwords More Secure than Text 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "People possess a remarkable ability for recalling pictures and researchers at Newcastle University are exploiting this characteristic to create graphical passwords that they say are a thousand times more secure than ordinary textual passwords. With Draw a Secret (DAS) technology, users draw an image over a background, which is then encoded as an ordered sequence of cells. The software recalls the strokes, along with the number of times the pen is lifted. If a person chooses a flower background and then draws a butterfly as their secret password image onto it, they have to remember where they began on the grid and the order of their pen strokes. The "passpicture" is recognised as identical if the encoding is the same, not the drawing itself, which allows for some margin of error as the drawing does not have to be re-created exactly. The software has been initially designed for handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberry and Smartphone, but could soon be expanded to other areas. "The most exciting feature is that a simple enhancement simultaneously provides significantly enhanced usability and security," says computer scientist Jeff Yan."
Networking

Submission + - Aussie Claims Copper Broadband now 200x Faster (beskerming.com)

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "Winner of Melbourne University's Chancellor's Prize for Excellence, Dr John Papandriopoulos could soon find himself the focus of a number of networking companies and government agencies interested in wringing more performance from existing network infrastructure.

Dr John developed a set of algorithms (US and Aussie patents pending) that reduce the impact of cross talk on data streams sharing the same physical copper line, taking less than a year to achieve the breakthrough. It is claimed that the algorithms can produce up to 200x improvement over existing copper broadband performance (quoted as being between one and 25 mbit/sec), with up to 200 mbit/sec apparently being deliverable. If the mathematical theories are within even an order of magnitude of the actual gains achieved, Dr John's work is likely to have widespread implications for future bandwidth availability across the globe."
Censorship

Submission + - Attorney sues website over his online rating (nwsource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that a local attorney is suing legal startup Avvo.com over a rating that was algorithmically assigned. The story touches over the controversy of computers grading humans. Such practices are not new: the New York Times earlier this year reported on Google using algorithms to determine applicant suitability. But what happens when you don't like the result? Can a computer program be considered defamatory?

Feed 'Evil Twin' WiFi Scare Stories Make A Comeback (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
A few years ago, when stories hyping up the security risks of WiFi were commonplace, articles about "evil twin" access points were a favorite. "Evil twins" were access points given SSIDs that made them appear legitimate, only they were controlled by a malicious actor rather than a real hotspot provider. The FUD was then that these malicious actors could steal anything that went across the access point -- even though most sensitive information is transmitted with encryption, a point the articles never bothered to mention. It looks like the evil twin -- or at least hype about it -- is making a comeback, as the head of a trade group of IT security professionals says such attacks are on the rise. He says it's due to the growth in the use of WiFi, but doesn't offer up any real evidence that the attacks are a problem, just saying that they present a risk for people's passwords that are sent as clear text, skipping over the fact that any service provider worth their salt doesn't send passwords in the clear if they're protecting any sort of sensitive information. Instead of harping on about a largely mythical "problem" with WiFi, wouldn't this guy's energy be better spent drawing service providers' attention to the need to encrypt passwords, thereby cutting out the supposed problem?

Feed Steve Ballmer comments on potential Zune phone (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

When questioned at a USA Today event yesterday, Steve Ballmer sort of (emphasis on sort of) put the rumor
about the Zune phone to bed -- apparently it's "not a concept you'll ever get from us," but this of course doesn't rule out a phone with Zune functionality. He went on to mention how Microsoft's focus is on Windows Mobile but added that Zune could be put into Windows Mobile as could Xbox (this kind of talk thrills us over here) but that he wouldn't define their phone experience by music alone. While all this could mean something or nothing at all, we're optimistic 'round here and are hoping that the lack of a definitive "no" means there may yet be something in the wings. Xbox-Zune-Windows-Mobile device, anyone?

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