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Comment Re:How do they prove it? (Score 1) 933

by drdewm (#26258437) Attached to: The Slippery Legal Slope of Cartoon Porn
According to this judge and a large number of the population you can do anything and everything BUT this. Want to depict murder? No problem. Rape (over whatever the age of consent is?) No problem. Terrorism? Blockbuster. Genocide? Movie of the week. This is just contemporary witch huntery.

Comment Re:*sigh* (Score 1) 674

by drdewm (#26200897) Attached to: Australia To Block BitTorrent
What is this "techie" label that you're throwing around? Do you have annoying labels for the lawyers, philosphers and judges too mentioned in your post? I have some news for you the lawyers, philosphers and judges are some of the "techies" that you're talking about.

Comment Calm down (Score 1) 276

by drdewm (#26079691) Attached to: Japanese Scientists Claim To Reconstruct Images From Brain Data
This gets people all worked up but will never happen the way we imagine it. We are afraid that "they" can see into our minds and know all those dirty little secrets that we keep hidden away. If dreams are viewable then thoughts will be and if people saw what we are really thinking then our secrets would be out.
Role Playing (Games)

World of Warcraft Expansion Details Leaked 63

Posted by timothy from the now-with-even-more-imaginary-stuff dept.
JavaLord writes "The new expansion to World of Warcraft titled "Wrath of the Lich King" recently went into friends and family alpha testing. Some of the first screenshots, along with notes on new spells have been leaked on the world of warcraft forums and other websites only to be pulled down. As usual, the internet routes around censorship, and the low down on Wrath of the Lich King can be found here."
Security

New 'Phlashing' Attack Sabotages Hardware 242

Posted by timothy from the not-so-nice dept.
yahoi writes "A new type of denial-of-service attack, called permanent denial-of-service (PDOS), damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. A researcher has discovered how to abuse firmware update mechanisms with what he calls 'phlashing' — a type of remote PDOS attack."
Space

ET Will Phone Home Using Neutrinos, Not Photons 299

Posted by timothy from the speak-and-spell-is-cross-particle-compatible dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Neutrinos are better than photons for communicating across the galaxy. That's the conclusion of a group of US astronomers who say that the galaxy is filled with photons that make communications channels noisy whereas neutrino comms would be relatively noise free. Photons are also easily scattered and the centre of the galaxy blocks them entirely. That means any civilisation advanced enough to have started to colonise the galaxy would have to rely on neutrino communications. And the astronomers reckon that the next generation of neutrino detectors should be sensitive enough to pick up ET's chatter."
It's funny. Laugh.

FBI Wiretapping Audit Secrets Uncovered Via Ctrl+C 231

Posted by kdawson from the c'mon-guys-it's-not-even-obscure dept.
mytrip notes a story in Wired's Threat Level blog on the latest boneheaded government moves with redaction. (We've been discussing redaction follies here for years.) This time it's an FBI report (PDF) on implementing CALEA — you can select text from redacted areas, copy it, and paste into a text editor, as University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze discovered. From Wired: "Once again, supposedly sensitive information blacked out from a government report turns out to be visible by computer experts armed with the Ctrl+C keys — and that information turns out to be not very sensitive after all... [Among] the tidbits considered too sensitive to be aired publicly: The FBI paid Verizon $2,500 apiece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches. Oddly the report didn't redact the total amount paid to the telecom — slightly more than $2.9 million dollars — but somehow the bad guys will win if they knew the number of switches and the cost paid."

TB-Sized Solid State Drives Announced 130

Posted by Zonk from the soon-to-be-implantable dept.
prostoalex writes "Several companies have announced solid state hard drives in excess of one terrabyte in size. ComputerWorld describes one from BitMicro that's just 3.5". Their flash drive will support up to 4 Gbps data transfer rate. From the article: 'SSDs access data in microseconds, instead of the millliseconds that traditional hard drives use to retrieve data. The BitMicro E-Disk Altima 4Gb FC delivers more than 55,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and has a sustained data transfer rate over 230MB/sec. By comparison, a fast hard drive for example will run at around 300 IOPS.'" Ah, the speed of tech. Seems like only last month we were talking about 500GB drives.

Feed Science Daily: 'Remarkable' Drop In Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures. NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth's northern polar region.

Feed Science Daily: How The Zebrafish Gets His Stripe (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Scientists have discovered how the zebrafish (Danio rerio) develops one of its four stripes. Their findings add to the growing list of tasks carried out by an important molecule that is involved in the arrangement of everything from nerve cells to reproductive cells in the developing embryo.
The Internet

Chinese Worm Creator Gets High-Paying Job Offer In Prison 148

Posted by Zonk from the now-i-see-what-it-takes dept.
martinsslaves writes "The recently imprisoned creator of China's worst computer virus ever (worm.whboy) has now been offered a job paying millions of yuan from his prison cell. He's actually been offered several, and one of the companies that has offered him the position of Technology Director was actually affected by his virus. The General Manager there now believes the virus writer may have just been 'led astray'. The media is reporting that author Li Jun originally wrote the virus due to frustrations over being jobless. 'So far, about 10 network companies across the country have offered jobs to Li, whom they regarded was a "precious genius," the report said citing Li's lawyer Wang Wanxiong. Li's cyber bug, which earned him about 145,000 yuan after selling it to other hackers from December 2006 to February this year, can prevent infected computers from operating anti-virus software and all programs using the "exe" suffix.'"

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