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Comment Re:Wi-Fi Sense (Score 1) 165

by Eric Walk (#52465347) Attached to: Password Sharing Is a Federal Crime, Appeals Court Rules

No, users have to explicitly authorize sharing of a particular WiFi password. If a user shares a password for a device or system that they own, that is not a violation of the CFAA. If a user shares a password for a device or system which they do not own it is a violation of the CFAA, unless the owner gives permission to share the password.

Think of it this way:
I own a house. The house has locks that can be opened with a key. As the owner of the house, I can share the key with whomever I choose, but this does not give them the right to enter, just the capability. If I share the key and authorize them to use it, a person may access the house without being guilty of breaking and entering. Further sharing of a key is not required for authorization of use. I can unlock the door, allow a person in and give them authority to enter without sharing the key. Finally, allowing someone into my house does not give them the right to confer such authorization on others unless I've specifically allowed it. Those who were given keys do not have the right to copy them without permission, let alone give them to someone else.

The various ways this kind of arrangement can be violated in varying degrees of severity. The CFAA attempts to allow courts to use the same common sense for illegal access to computers that we've successfully used for property.

Submission + - Kindle Unlimited Scammers Gaming the System at the Expense of Real Authors (annchristy.com)

Submitted by saccade.com
saccade.com writes: Kindle Unlimited is Amazon's book service that lets customers "check out" any book from a large selection without paying for individual titles. Like most things on the Internet, it's fallen prey to scammers. The system is designed to pay authors out of a single pool of money based on how many pages of their books are actually read. However, scammers have figured out how to rig the system by posting large, fake books, then hiring click farms to "read" them. This doesn't affect people using the service to read books (other than the nuisance of occasionally stumbling over bogus titles). But legitimate authors are getting squeezed as more of the KU payment pool goes to thieves and their bogus books.

Submission + - Hacker's Account Of How He Took Down Hacking Team's Servers (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: FinFisher, the hacker that broke into Italian firm Hacking Team, has published a step-by-step account of how he carried out the attacks, what tools he used, and what he learned from scouting HackingTeam's network. Published on PasteBin, the attack's timeline reveals he entered their network through a zero-day exploit in an (unnamed) embedded device, accessed a MongoDB database that had no password, discovered backups in the database, found a BES admin password in the backups, and eventually got admin access to the Windows Domain Server. From here, it was easy to reach into their email server and steal all the company's emails, and later access Git repos and steal the source code of their surveillance software.

Submission + - Pew Survey: Tech Increases Productivity, But Also Time Spent Working (pewinternet.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A survey of American workers conducted by the Pew Research Center found that email was their most indispensable tool, topping even broad access to the internet. 46% of workers say their productivity has increased thanks to email, the internet, and cell phones, while only 7% say those technologies have caused it to decrease. While many workers say technology has created a more flexible work schedule, they also say it has increased the total amount of hours they spend working. Almost half of the surveyed employees say their employer either forbids or explicitly blocks access to certain websites at the office. How have they affected your work environment?

Submission + - Germany's glut of electricity causing prices to plummet

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Germany is headed for its biggest electricity glut since 2011 as new coal-fired plants start and generation of wind and solar energy increases, weighing on power prices that have already dropped for three years. From December capacity will be at 117% of peak demand. The benchmark German electricity contract has slumped 36% since the end of 2010.

“The new plants will run at current prices, but they won’t cover their costs” said Ricardo Klimaschka, a power trader at Energieunion GmbH. Lower prices “leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet” according to Bernhard Guenther, CFO at RWE, Germany’s biggest power producer. Wind and solar’s share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42% by next year from 30% in 2010. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28% from 32%.

Submission + - If immigration reform is dead, so is raising the H-1B cap (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: In a speech Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) declared immigration reform dead. He chastised and baited Republicans in Congress for blocking reform, and declared that winning the White House without the support of a growing Hispanic population will become mathematically impossible. "The Republican Presidential nominee, whoever he or she may be, will enter the race with an electoral college deficit they cannot make up," said Gutierrez. If he's right, and comprehensive immigration reform is indeed dead, then so too is the tech industry's effort to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Immigration reform advocates have successfully blocked any effort to take up the immigration issue in piecemeal fashion, lest business support for comprehensive reform peel away. Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech. If the Republicans take control of the Senate, the tech industry will face this obstacle: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee could become its next chairman. He has been a consistent critic of the H-1B program through the years. "The H-1B program is so popular that it's now replacing the U.S. labor force," said Grassley, at one point.

Submission + - Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they're private corporations, immune to oversight (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by thermowax
thermowax writes: Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations, immune from open records laws. Kind of amusing this is in arch-Liberal Mass, but enough editorializing: I don't even know where to start here. No FOIA demands, no investigations, or reviews... the police state gets more real on a daily basis.

Submission + - Starbuck's Wireless Charging Stations Won't Won't Work On Nearly All Devices (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Starbucks today announced that after beta-testing wireless charging in several locations, it will roll it out to all of its cafes in the U.S. Unfortunately, the Powermat wireless chargers they chose to use doesn't support the overwhelming number of mobile devices that are enabled for wireless charging using the Qi standard. Of the 20 million consumer devices estimated to have shipped in 2013 with wireless charging capabilities, nearly all were built with the Qi specification, according to IHS. The majority of the Qi technology was built into devices such as the Google Nexus 4 and 5 smartphones, Google's Nexus 7 second-generation tablet and a number of models in Nokia's Lumia smart phone range. The battle between the three wireless charging consortiums is expected to continue to adversely impact adoption of the technology.

Submission + - Apple says many users "bought an Android phone by mistake"

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Apple CEO Tim Cook during his keynote said that around 130 million customers have purchased their first Apple device in the last twelve months states, "Many of these customers were switchers from Android," he said. "They had bought an Android phone by mistake, and then had sought a better experience and a better life." He added that almost half of those who have purchased an iPhone in China since December have switched from Android. However, it is worth noting that iPhones were not actually available in China until December, when pre-orders began, so it is unclear how much of the device's popularity there is simply down to the novelty factor, rather than a burning desire to flee from Android.

Submission + - Tech Worker Groups Boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Three U.S. tech worker groups have launched a labor boycott of IBM, Infosys and Manpower, saying the companies have engaged in a pattern that discourages U.S. workers from applying for U.S. IT jobs by tailoring employment ads toward overseas workers. For its part, Infosys disputed the charges, saying that 'it is incorrect to allude that we exclude or discourage U.S. workers. Today, we are recruiting for over 440 active openings across 20 states in the U.S.' Representatives from IBM and Manpower didn't respond to requests for comment on the boycott.

Submission + - Justice Dept. Names ZeuS Trojan Author, Seizes Control Over P2P 'Gameover Botnet (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: The U.S. Justice Department announced today an international law enforcement operation to seize control over the Gameover ZeuS botnet, a sprawling network of hacked Microsoft Windows computers that currently infects an estimated 500,000 to 1 million compromised systems globally. Experts say PCs infected with Gameover are being harvested for sensitive financial and personal data, and that the botnet is responsible for more than $100 million in losses from online banking account takeovers. The government alleges that Gameover also was rented out to an elite cadre of hackers for use in online extortion attacks, spam and other illicit moneymaking schemes. In a complaint unsealed today, the DOJ further alleges that ZeuS and Gameover are the brainchild of a Russian man named Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, a.k.a. "Slavik."

Submission + - OpenDNS Guide redirection ends Friday

Submitted by Jim Efaw
Jim Efaw writes: Tired of the OpenDNS Guide surprise from website-unavailable.com when you go to an old link or a typo from some ISPs? Relief is at hand: On June 6, 2014, OpenDNS will stop redirecting dead hostnames to Guide and its ads; the OpenDNS Guide itself will shut down sometime afterwards. OpenDNS nameservers will start returning normal NXDOMAIN and SERVFAIL messages instead. Phishing protection and optional parental controls will still stay in place.

Submission + - Customers, support thy selves...

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Has anyone else noticed the trend towards "community forums" where customers are basically being recruited to solve the issues of other customers while the companies selling the products causing the issues sit back and take a passive role in the process? Granted, sometimes the companies' employees play an active part in the forums and provide some value-add by contributing crucial, and often undocumented, knowledge that solves the problem in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case and this leaves customers with no visibility into whether or not their problems are being addressed, and, if they are, when they might expect to receive assistance. This is bad enough when dealing with consumer electronics that cost up to a couple of hundred of dollars, but it's completely unacceptable when dealing with proprietary design tool vendors that are charging several thousand dollars for software licenses for tools that are the only option if a customer doesn't want to drop an order of magnitude more money to go with 3rd party tools (e.g., Synopsys).

This leads me to the following questions for all of you Slashdotters: who do you think are the worst offenders of this downloading of support onto the backs of the customers themselves, and what can be done to let them know that this new reality is ridiculous?

Submission + - Fiat Chrysler CEO: Please don't buy Fiat 500e electric car (dailycaller.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The CEO of Fiat Chrysler said he hopes that people don’t buy his company’s electric car, the Fiat 500e, which he is forced to sell at a loss because of state and federal mandates.

“I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000,” Sergio Marchionne told the audience at the Brookings Institute during a discussion of the auto bailout.

“I’m honest enough to tell you that I will make the car, I’ll make it available which is my requirement but I will sell the limit of what I need to sell and not one more,” said Marchionne.

Fiat Chrysler produces two Fiat 500s. The gas-powered Fiat 500 has a base price of $17,300. The electric Fiat 500e runs $32,650. In his candid remarks, Marchionne blamed regulations set in place in California and by President Obama.

Submission + - Gigabyte Brix Projector Combines Mini PC With DLP Projector In A 4.5-Inch Cube (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The PC market is changing rapidly as tablets supplant some laptops, new players such as the Chromebook disrupt the old WIntel model, and innovations in processors and graphics allow for ever-smaller PCs such as Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) PC. Gigabyte recently introduced a rather unique product that combines the tiny 4.5-inch square form factor of Intel's NUC PC platform together with a mini DLP projector. The Gigabyte Brix Projector measures 4.24 x 4.5 x 1.93 inches (WxLxD) but manages to fit in an Intel Core i3-4010U (1.7GHz) processor with built-in Intel HD 4400 graphics and support for up to 16GB of 1600MHz RAM. Finally, an mSATA slot inside the chassis also supports up to a 256GB SSD. The system's DLP (LED backlight) projector itself offers a resolution of 864x480 with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a purported image size of 7 to 85 inches. It promises 75 ANSI lumen brightness, a contrast ratio of around 900:1, and 3LED (RGB) technology. It's not an HD setup but the potential use cases are interesting. A follow-on version capable of 1080p output would be even more useful for gaming and HD video.

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