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Comment Other methods can be successful (Score 1) 319

by robbityca (#45540721) Attached to: NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving
The police here in Ottawa, Canada have tried a number of different tactics to watch for drivers texting. One tactic involved officers dressed up as "can I wash your windshield?" bums. It's an instinct to avoid eye contact with such. They can get right up to cars stopped at a red light without alerting drivers. (note that it's illegal here for a driver to text while at a stop sign/light).
Data Storage

Submission + - Boeing 787s to create half a terabyte of data per flight (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Virgin Atlantic is preparing for a significant increase in data as it embraces the Internet of Things, with a new fleet of highly connected planes each expected to create over half a terabyte of data per flight.

IT director David Bulman said: "The latest planes we are getting, the Boeing 787s, are incredibly connected. Literally every piece of that plane has an internet connection, from the engines, to the flaps, to the landing gear.

"If there is a problem with one of the engines we will know before it lands to make sure that we have the parts there. It is getting to the point where each different part of the plane is telling us what it is doing as the flight is going on.

"We can get upwards of half a terabyte of data from a single flight from all of the different devices which are internet connected."
Windows

Submission + - The Future of Auto Theft (autosec.org)

Submitted by NicknamesAreStupid
NicknamesAreStupid writes: Over the past twenty years, car theft has declined as new models incorporated electronic security methods that thwarted simple hot-wiring. The tide may now be turning, as cars become the next Windows PC. The Center for Automobile Embedded Systems Security has posted an interesting paper from UCSD and UW that describes how modern cars can be cracked. Unlike the old days of window jimmies, these exploits range from attacks through the CD or iPod port to cellular attacks that take inventory of thousands of cars and offer roaming thieves Yelp-like choices ("our favorite is mint green with leather") with unlocked doors and running engines.
The Internet

Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown 294

Posted by kdawson from the domino-effect dept.
secmartin writes "Researchers at Delft University warn that large parts of the BitTorrent network might collapse if The Pirate Bay is forced to shut down. A large part of the available torrents use The Pirate Bay as tracker, and other available trackers will probably be overloaded if all traffic is shifted there. TPB is currently using eight servers for their trackers. According to the researchers, even trackerless torrents using the DHT protocol will face problems: 'One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only "stumble upon success", meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.'"
Biotech

'Safe Ebola' Created for Research 198

Posted by Zonk from the makes-me-so-happy-to-be-living-in-the-same-city dept.
Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"

Feed Science Daily: Insect Attack May Have Finished Off Dinosaurs (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct, but a new argument is that the mightiest creatures the world has ever known may have been brought down by a tiny, much less dramatic force -- biting, disease-carrying insects.

Feed Science Daily: 100 Billion Dollar Global Warming 'Fix' Discredited By New Research (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture. Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested, because they ignore important natural processes.
Space

Submission + - Earth's Evil Twin (esa.int)

Submitted by
Riding with Robots
Riding with Robots writes: "For the past two years, Europe's Venus Express orbiter has been studying Earth's planetary neighbor up close. Today, mission scientists have released a new collection of findings and amazing images. They include evidence of lightning and other results that flesh out a portrait of a planet that is in many ways like ours, and in many ways hellishly different, such as surface temperatures over 400C and air pressure a hundred times that on Earth."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA ordered to divulge expenses-per-download

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The Court has ordered UMG Recordings, Warner Bros. Records, Interscope Records, Motown, and SONY BMG to disclose their expenses-per-download to the defendant's lawyers, in UMG v. Lindor, a case pending in Brooklyn. The Court held that the expense figures are relevant to the issue of whether the RIAA's attempt to recover damages of $750 or more per 99-cent song file, is an unconstitutional violation of due process.
Google

Submission + - Riding Shotgun with the Google Street View Beetle (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by
longacre
longacre writes: "Popular Mechanics takes a ride in an Immersive Media VW Beetle, one of the six cars that drives around America shooting images for Google Maps Street View. Mounted on the roof is the $45,000 Dodeca 2360 video camera, whose 11 lenses record a 360 degree field of view at 30 frames per second, sucking up as many as 200 miles of city scenes per day. The setup takes up the whole back seat and part of the front passenger seat, and is all controlled with an off-the-shelf Logitech game controller. Includes a cool interactive raw video of a drive through Manhattan."

Feed Schneier: Interesting Twist on Identity Theft (schneier.com)

From feed by bsfeed
Okay, this is clever. Basically, someone arrested as a homicide suspect walked out of jail after identifying himself as someone else. The biometric system worked, but human error overrode it: But Sauceda's fingerprints, taken by a jail employee to verify...
Google

Journal Journal: A Computer That Works With Google, Not Microsoft

Journal by oblonski
A short write-up over at the New York Times informs us of a new $200 pc available from Wal Mart (!), that runs a customized version of linux and is tweaked to optimally run most Google applications online, cutting out the need for desktop software or OS, for that matter.

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The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. -- Paul Erlich

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