A new company called NuCaptcha provides animated video captchas it says are much harder for OCR-based programs to crack than static captchas, but lots easier for humans to figure out. While at the 2012 RSA conference, Timothy Lord pointed his camcorder at NuCaptcha CTO Christopher Bailey, and had him explain how video captchas work and how the company makes money. The video includes demos of the video captchas so you can see what they look like (and the company's website has lots more video captcha examples).

Gunkerty Jeb writes "In a keynote speech at the United Security Summit, Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, drew parallels between the increasingly popular (and successful) practice of software vendors offering bug bounties and a new industry springing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the population has recently found itself beset with a growing rat problem. In order to help mitigate their rodent problem, officials in Johannesburg began offering a small monetary rewards for each dead rat turned in. It was wildly successful, and it didn't take long for fresh batch of entrepreneurs to pop up and exploit the situation. Of course, I'm talking about rat farming. Evidently, business minded individuals have taken to breeding rats, only to kill them and turn them in for rewards. Obviously, rat farming is somewhat unscrupulous, but security researchers are doing the same thing: breeding bugs in the lab, then leading them to the slaughter for a nice payday. And it's a good thing."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Edible Apple: "Apple didn't release the first tablet computer or even come up with the idea for tablet computing itself. If anything, Microsoft, and Bill Gates in particular, were championing tablet computers years before the iPad was released. In this video clip from the first All Things D conference in 2003, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains to Walt Mossberg why Apple, at the time, wasn't keen on tablets and more specifically, why Jobs felt that stylus computing and handwriting recognition were inherent failures."

abhatt writes "Rebelling Syrians are using all possible alternate methods to pass information to the world amidst a total blackout on the internet by the Government. Believe it or not, Donkeys are a part of the revolution now. From the article: 'To get the news out, activists have been smuggling videos to Jordan through the desert and across a nearly 80-kilometer border Jordan shares with Syria. Some risk approaching the border with Jordanian cellphones to report to the outside world and send clips. It's a dangerous task because the Syrian and Jordanian armies traditionally have the area under heavy surveillance to prevent the smuggling of drugs and weapons into the kingdom or further to the Gulf states.'"

zaxios writes "Merck — the pharmaceutical giant previously featured on Slashdot for drawing up a 'hit list' of doctors that criticized its drug Vioxx, and creating a fake medical journal to endorse its products — is embroiled in a new scandal. USA Today is reporting on two new studies that show Propecia, Merck's $250 million prescription medication for baldness, can make men irreversibly impotent. Lawsuits have been filed in the United States and Canada from men claiming to have permanently lost their sexual function after taking the drug. All this is reminiscent of Merck's difficulties with Vioxx, a once $2.5-billion-a-year drug, which was withdrawn from the market in 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in users."

innocent_white_lamb writes "Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., EMI Music Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have agreed to pay songwriters and music publishers $47.5 million in damages for copyright infringement and overdue royalties to settle a class action lawsuit. 'The 2008 class action alleges that the record companies "exploited" music owners by reproducing and selling in excess of 300,000 song titles without securing licenses from the copyright owners and/or without paying the associated royalty payments. The record companies knowingly did so and kept a so-called "pending list" of unlicensed reproductions, setting aside $50 million for the issue, if it ever arose, court filings suggest.'"

An anonymous reader writes "So, he or she has cheated on you for the umpteenth time and their only excuse is: 'I just can't help it.' According to researchers at Binghamton University, they may be right. The propensity for infidelity could very well be in their DNA. In a first of its kind study, a team of investigators led by Justin Garcia, a SUNY Doctoral Diversity Fellow in the laboratory of evolutionary anthropology and health at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has taken a broad look at sexual behavior, matching choices with genes and has come up with a new theory on what makes humans 'tick' when it comes to sexual activity. The biggest culprit seems to be the dopamine receptor D4 polymorphism, or DRD4 gene. Already linked to sensation-seeking behavior such as alcohol use and gambling, DRD4 is known to influence the brain's chemistry and subsequently, an individual's behavior."

garymortimer writes "The SA National Defence Force is considering using an unmanned drone helicopter to target rhino poachers, Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said yesterday. She told a press conference in Pretoria she wanted state weapons company Denel to further develop an unmanned aerial vehicle it was working on so it could be used to help SA National Parks catch rhino poachers."

Zothecula writes "Festo, the automation company that designed the bionic penguin and its robotic stablemates – AirRay, AquaRay, AirJelly and AquaJelly – has found another natural model in its latest application of biomimicry – the elephant's trunk. Festo's Bionic Learning Network research program focuses on mechatronic and bionic concepts using nature as a model. 'The AquaJelly is possibly the most interesting of all the bionic creatures as it has been designed to autonomously emulate swarming behavior of wild jellyfish. Like the others, it consists of an electric drive unit and intelligent adaptive mechanism, but with a control board housed by a translucent dome, a water-tight body and eight tentacles. The control board has pressure, light and radio sensors that work with eight blue and eight white LEDs allowing communication between the AquaJellies.'"

An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK is reporting that it crashed a £90,000 Jaguar XJ Super Sport — one of the most technologically advanced cars on the planet today. It's not the sort of crash you'd imagine, however — An unforseen glitch somewhere within the car's dozens of separate onboard computers, hundreds of millions of lines of code, or its internal vehicular network, led to the dramatic BSOD, which had to be resolved with the use of a web-connected laptop."

Newly released secret files show that Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of an alleged encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public panic. From the article: "Mr Churchill is reported to have made a declaration to the effect of the following: 'This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church.'"

krou writes "Working on a finger-bone that was discovered in the Denisova Cave of Siberia's Altai mountains in 2008, Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues managed to extract mitochondrial DNA. They compared it to the genetic code of modern humans and other known Neanderthals and discovered a new type of hominin that lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago. Professor Chris Stringer, human origins researcher at London's Natural History Museum, said, 'This new DNA work provides an entirely new way of looking at the still poorly-understood evolution of humans in central and eastern Asia.' The last common ancestor of the hominid (dubbed 'X-Woman'), humans and Neanderthals seems to have been about one million years ago."

Slashdot frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes "The EFF is seeking over $400,000 in attorney's fees from Universal Music Group after Universal sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, demanding the removal of a video posted by user Stephanie Lenz. Lenz had posted a video of her toddler dancing to a 30-second clip of the Prince song "Let's Go Crazy"; after Universal sent the takedown notice, the EFF sent YouTube a counter-notice on behalf of Lenz arguing that the video was fair use, and YouTube restored it. Now the EFF is asking the judge to award them attorney's fees for their work." Use your magical clicking device below to read many more words.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "If one attempted to distill a single prevailing emotion or attitude about government on Slashdot, I think it is fairly arguable that the winner would be cynicism or skepticism. Well here's a story that could make us skeptical and/or cynical about our skepticism and/or cynicism. Chalk one up for those who like to point out that, occasionally, the system does work. You may recall that the US Supreme Court has been mulling over whether to grant the film industry's petition for certiorari seeking to overturn the important Cartoon Networks v. CSC Holdings decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. This was the case which held that Cablevision's allowing its customers to make copies of shows and store them on Cablevision's servers for later viewing did not constitute a direct copyright infringement by Cablevision, there being no 'copy' made since the files were in RAM and buffered for only a 'transitory' duration. The Supreme Court asked the Obama DoJ to submit an amicus curiae brief, giving its opinion on whether or not the film companies' petition for review should be granted. The government did indeed file such a brief, but the content of the brief (PDF) is probably not what the film companies were expecting. They probably thought they had this one in the bag, since some of the very lawyers who have been representing them have been appointed to the highest echelons of the Obama DoJ. Instead, however, the brief eloquently argued against the film companies' position, dismembering with surgical accuracy each and every argument the film companies had advanced."