Comment Typo folks (Score 5, Informative) 195
That's the Telecom Law of 1996, not 1966
Submission + - Power Pwn: This DARPA-Funded Power Strip Will Hack Your Network
An anonymous reader writes: The Power Pwn may look like a power strip, but it's actually a DARPA-funded hacking tool for launching remotely-activated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet attacks. If you see one around the office, make a point to ask if it's supposed to be there. Pwnie Express, which developed the $1,295 tool, says it's "a fully-integrated enterprise-class penetration testing platform." That's great, but the company also notes its "ingenious form-factor" (again, look at the above picture) and "highly-integrated/modular hardware design," which to me makes it look like the perfect gizmo for nefarious purposes.
Submission + - HTML5 Splits Into Two Standards (i-programmer.info) 2
mikejuk writes: Until now the two standards bodies WHATWG and W3C working on HTML5 have cooperated. An announcement by WHATWG makes it clear that this is no longer true. WHATWG is going to work on a living standard for HTML which will continue to evolve as more technologies are added. WC3 is going the traditional and much more time consuming route of creating a traditional standard which WHATWG refers to as a "snapshot" of their living standard. Of course now being free of WC3's slower methods WHATWG can accelerate the pace of introducing new technologies to HTML5.
What ever happens the future has just become more complicated — now you have to ask yourself which HTML5?
What ever happens the future has just become more complicated — now you have to ask yourself which HTML5?
Submission + - Google releases Android 4.1 Jelly Bean updates for the Nexus S (wordpress.com)
dell623 writes: Google has begun updating the Google Nexus S, which was released in December 2010 to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The update comes with all the new features of JB, including Google Now. The update makes the almost two year old phone smooth and in many ways superior to newer, more expensive Android devices that are unlikely to even be updated to Android 4.0. The update is impressive, but also exposes the problems of Android fragmentation and the failure of other Android device manufacturers to develop better software than Google, or issue timely updates.
Submission + - Apple Mac In-app Purchases Hacked; Everything Free Like On iOS
An anonymous reader writes: Last week Russian developer Alexey Borodin hacked Apple's In-App Purchase program for all devices running iOS 3.0 or later, allowing iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to circumvent the payment process and essentially steal in-app content. Apple today announced a temporary fix and that it would patch the holes with the release of iOS 6. While Cupertino was distracted, Borodin came in and pulled off the same scheme on the Mac.
Submission + - Google Says Some Apple Inventions Are So Great They Ought to Be Shared (allthingsd.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: In attempting to fend off Apple’s suit against Motorola Mobility and advancing its own patent litigation against Apple, Google, which is facing a lot of regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad over what some allege is abuse of standard essential patents, has been arguing that proprietary non-standardized technologies that become ubiquitous due to their popularity with consumers should be considered de facto standards.
Comment Bureaucrats Not Officers (Score 3, Insightful) 1059
Unless they are carrying a weapon and a REAL badge, you can probably tell them to fly a kite (especially if it's not a standard gateway procedure such as those as airports)... not sure how that'd stand up under scrutiny... but, they aren't "officers of the law" unless they ARE "officers"... very few of them if any are actually LE...
Good luck!
Comment Re:FP (Score 2, Funny) 90
So by logic then, I think the release of the new Battleship film should lend itself to an interesting scenario....
Chinese (but Nigerian 409 flagged) cargo vessel carrying pirated copies of the Battleship movie, filmed in VHS-C and upscaled on an iMac knockoff with a pirated copy of iMovie in the nearest combination opium-den multiplex, gets sunk by a U.S. Cruiser outside of the Port of Los Angeles... damn, you sunk my Battleships?!
Just sayin'
Comment Re:FP (Score 3, Interesting) 90
Sorry was my first...
Anyhow, as commentary, I doubt this will go much of anywhere... much like you can find pirated DVDs sold by crackheads in the NYC subway... trying to dissuade or even outright prevent IP theft, etc. from occurring in a place like China is absurd.
As I've found out in government, rules, laws and otherwise are there to make certain people feel better but rarely do they help or actually enforced universally and without bias. Sorry... just feeling a little malaise at this point.
Comment FP (Score -1, Offtopic) 90
FP
The Presidential Portrait Goes Digital 295
alphadogg writes "Barack Obama's election to US president has already brought a string of firsts, and on Wednesday there came another. The official presidential portrait was shot on a digital camera for the first time. The picture was taken by the White House's new official photographer, Pete Souza, and issued by The Office of the President Elect through its Web site. It was taken on Tuesday evening at 5:38 p.m. using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, according to the metadata embedded in the image file."
Bordeaux 1.6 For FreeBSD and PC-BSD Released 53
Tom Wickline writes "Steven Edwards of the Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.6 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD today. Bordeaux 1.6 comes with added support for Google's Chrome Web Browser, Google Earth, and Google Picasa. In addition, Cellar support has improved; you can now delete and install into an existing Cellar. There have also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the backend to improve the speed and reliability of all the supported applications."
Wikipedia's New Definition of Truth 428
Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No Original Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"
Doing the Math On the New MacBook 783
Technologizer writes "Apple's new MacBook is a significantly different machine than its predecessor — a slicker laptop at a higher price point. But does it carry a large price premium over similar Windows PCs? I did a painstaking spec-by-spec comparison versus three roughly comparably-configured Windows machines, and came to the conclusion that the value it offers for price paid is not out of whack with the Windows world." The article uses the phrase "Mac tax," which one commenter points out is a recent Microsoft marketing canard.
Simulation of the Mars Science Laboratory Sky Crane 195
An anonymous reader points us to Gizmodo for a fascinating video of NASA's Sky Crane. "When I read that the UFO-looking Mars Science Laboratory's aeroshell would use a floating crane — called Sky Crane by NASA — to softly land the rover on Mars, I couldn't believe it. Now, watching this hyper-realistic NASA simulation, I still can't believe how the whole thing works. I don't know about you, but the whole operation mesmerizes me to no end."
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