redletterdave writes "Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates pledged $750 million to the troubled global AIDS fund on Thursday and urged governments to continue their support to save lives. Since the fund was launched 10 years ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $1.4 billion to the charity, having already contributed $650 million prior to the latest donation. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria accounts for around a quarter of international financing to fight HIV and AIDS, as well as the majority of funds to fight TB and malaria."


FBI Building App To Scrape Social Media - Fri Jan 27 20:19:38 2012

Trailrunner7 writes "The FBI is in the early stages of developing an application that would monitor sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as various news feeds, in order to find information on emerging threats and new events happening at the moment. The tool would give specialists the ability to pull the data into a dashboard that also would include classified information coming in at the same time. One of the key capabilities of the new application, for which the FBI has sent out a solicitation, would be to 'provide an automated search and scrape capability for social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI/SIOC.'"


Russian Rocket Fleet Grounded Again - Fri Jan 27 19:37:10 2012

Velcroman1 writes "Failed pressure chamber tests have forced Russia to postpone two manned launches to the International Space Station — echoing a 2011 situation that left the country's space transport vehicles grounded and led to speculation that scientists may be forced to abandon the orbiting space base. Six astronauts are currently aboard the ISS including two Americans: Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer Don Pettit. 'There is plenty of margin for the current space station crew to stay onboard longer, if necessary, and plenty of margin in our manifest for upcoming launches,' a NASA spokeswoman said. But Soyuz issues are scary nonetheless. 'This re-entry capsule now cannot be used for manned spaceflight,' an unnamed source told Interfax."


Mars Rover Opportunity Turns 8 - Fri Jan 27 19:01:57 2012

New submitter el borak writes "Never mind all the talk about the revival of the American auto industry. What may be the greatest car the U.S. has ever built is currently a tidy 78 million miles (125m km) away from this world — resting on the edge of Endeavour crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. It was on January 25, 2004 that the rover Opportunity bounced down on Mars for a mission designed to last a minimum of three months and a maximum of just a year or two."


ReDigi Defends Used Digital Music Market - Fri Jan 27 18:51:01 2012

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "ReDigi has fired back, opposing Capitol Records's motion for a preliminary injunction. In his opposition declaration, ReDigi's CTO Larry Rudolph explains in detail (PDF) how the technology employed by ReDigi's used digital music marketplace effects transfer of a music file without copying, but by modifying the record locator in an 'atomic transaction,' and how it verifies that only a single instance of a unique file can enter the ReDigi cloud system. ReDigi's opposition papers also point out plaintiff's own admissions that mp3 files are not 'material objects' or 'phonorecords' under the Copyright Act, and therefore not subject to the Copyright Act's distribution right, and defend ReDigi's used digital music marketplace and cloud storage system (PDF) on a number of grounds, including the First Sale exception to the distribution right applicable to a 'particular' copy, the Essential Step exception to the distribution right applicable to a copy essential to the running of a computer program, and Fair Use space shifting."


Man Who Downloaded Bomb Recipes Jailed For 2 Years - Fri Jan 27 18:05:49 2012

chrb writes "Asim Kauser, a 25-year-old British man, has been jailed for two years and three months for downloading recipes on how to make bombs and the toxin ricin. Police discovered the materials on a USB stick Asim's father gave to them following a burglary at the Kauser family home. Asim pled guilty and claimed that he only downloaded the materials because he was curious. A North West Counter-Terrorism Unit spokesman said, 'I also want to stress that this case is not about policing people's freedom to browse the Internet. The materials that were downloaded were not stumbled upon by chance — these had to be searched for and contained very dangerous information that could have led to an explosive device being built.'"


AT&T Threatening To Raise Rates After Merger Failure - Fri Jan 27 17:31:59 2012

An anonymous reader writes "In the quarterly earnings call following the defeat of his attempted acquisition of T-Mobile, AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson was quick to lash out at the FCC, claiming that because his company was unable to acquire more spectrum to handle the explosion of mobile data users, AT&T would be forced to raise prices and take additional action against the highest data users. PCMag looked into the other side of the story, finding that 'The FCC spokesman ... pointed out that the FCC has approved more than 150 commercial mobile transaction applications in the past year and more than 300 in the past two years, "facts [that] were completely ignored in the [AT&T] conference call," he said.'"


America's Future Is In Software, Not Hardware - Fri Jan 27 16:45:10 2012

New submitter tcjr2006 writes "Obama's State of the Union focused on the return of manufacturing jobs to America. This New Yorker story makes the case that the manufacturing jobs aren't going to come back, and he should be focusing on software. Quoting: 'Yes, there are industries where manufacturing jobs can be brought back to America through proper tax incentives and training programs. But maybe he should have talked more about the things that he could do to keep software jobs here. He spoke of federal funding for university and scientific research. But a real pro-software agenda would also include reforming patent law to stop trolling (and perhaps eliminating software patents altogether); increasing H-1B visas for highly skilled coders; stopping Congress from defunding DARPA, whose research helped create Siri, the iPhone’s talking assistant; and opening up the unused, federally owned wireless spectrum. That agenda wouldn’t bring Apple’s manufacturing jobs back, but it would help to keep the company’s coding jobs here. And it would certainly help develop "an economy that’s built to last."'"


Iwata Confirms Nintendo Network, New Wii U Controller Functions - Fri Jan 27 16:00:43 2012

New submitter DeanCubed writes "In a Nintendo investor meeting, CEO Satoru Iwata confirmed a new Nintendo Network for the company's 3DS and upcoming Wii U game systems. This includes multiple user accounts per console (not tied to hardware, a first for Nintendo) and digitally distributed retail software releases for their online store. Iwata also noted that the Wii U's tablet controller will feature NFC (Near Field Communication) functionality, allowing the ability to use figurines and cards to input visual data to the console. They are hoping to use this to make micro-transactions for paid DLC easier."


Close Approach By Asteroid 2012 BX34 - Fri Jan 27 15:48:14 2012

An anonymous reader writes with news that asteroid 2012 BX34, 11 meters wide, is in the process of passing within 60,000km of Earth — about a fifth of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. At that size, the asteroid would pose no danger even if it hit the Earth's atmosphere.


Graphene Membranes Superpermeable to Water - Fri Jan 27 15:15:39 2012

Dr Max writes "Not only is graphene the strongest, thinnest and best conducting material known to man, it is now shown to have superpermeability with respect to water as well. This allows a membrane made with graphene to pass water right through it (PDF), while another atom or molecule (even helium) gets blocked. 'The properties are so unusual that it is hard to imagine that they cannot find some use in the design of filtration, separation or barrier membranes and for selective removal of water,' said one of the researchers."


Judge Denies Dismissal of No-Poach Conspiracy Case - Fri Jan 27 15:04:48 2012

theodp writes "Testifying before Congress in 2007, Google's HR chief stated: 'We make great efforts to uncover the most talented employees we can find.' But according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Google actually went to some lengths to avoid uncovering some of tech's most talented employees, striking up agreements with Apple, Intel, and other corporations to avoid recruiting each other's employees. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Disney, Pixar, Intuit and Lucasfilm must face a lawsuit claiming they violated antitrust laws by entering into no-poaching agreements with each other. 'I don't want to see any obstruction on discovery,' Koh told lawyers during a hearing. According to the head attorney representing the plaintiffs, the total damages could exceed $150 million if just 10,000 entry-level engineers were affected."


Scientists Organize Elsevier Boycott - Fri Jan 27 14:02:26 2012

An anonymous reader writes "The academic publisher Elsevier has attracted controversy for its high prices, the practice of bundling journals for sale to libraries and its support for legislation such as SOPA and the Research Works Act. Fields medal-winning mathematician Tim Gowers decided to go public with a blog post describing how he'll no longer have anything to do with Elsevier journals, and suggesting that a public website where mathematicians and scientists could register their support for an Elsevier boycott would further the cause. Such a website now exists, with hundreds of academics signing-up so far. John Baez has a nice write-up of the problem and possible solutions."


Pentagon Drafts Kids To Build Drones and Robots - Fri Jan 27 13:16:25 2012

MrSeb writes "In a world where warfare is fast becoming fielded by remote controlled and autonomous robots, innovation is the key to victory. The most technologically advanced superpower can see more, plan better, and attack from further away than its inferior adversaries. What better way to revolutionize the drone and robotics industry than use the brilliant minds of our children? That's what DARPA and the Defense Department's research and development arm thinks, anyway. The Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach Initiative, part of the Adaptive Vehicle Make project, is slated to reach a thousand schools in and out of the country, roping in the brightest minds to develop robotics and advance technology in new and interesting ways. Funded by the Department of Defense, the program comes with a steep cost: The DoD wants unlimited rights to everything the students build. It sounds almost like something Orson Scott Card would dream up."


Ask Slashdot: Techie Wedding Invitation Ideas? - Fri Jan 27 10:25:50 2012

Qa32 writes "I am getting married in a few months and being a hardcore techie I wanted to come up with some novel way of making my wedding invite that will truly have even my mom say, 'wow, that was cool.' Has anyone out there done anything similar, or have you thought of something similar you'd like to share? I already have a few: have QR codes, have some basic embedded circuit/plate with wire leads that maybe plays a song when you connect a battery, have a way to turn up a display LCD, etc."


Team Creates Footwear Recognition System - Fri Jan 27 09:02:47 2012

Zothecula writes "Facial recognition might be all the rage in giving computer systems the ability to ascertain the identity of individuals — what with most people having different facial features and all. But a team from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, has taken a different approach to identify users of touch-based tabletop computers like Microsoft's Surface. Instead of focusing on the face, the team has looked in the opposite direction to develop a system known as Bootstrapper, which distinguishes between users based on their footwear ."


EU ACTA Chief Resigns - Fri Jan 27 08:00:02 2012

bs0d3 writes "The EU ACTA chief has resigned, saying, 'This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.' 22 EU members signed the controversial ACTA treaty Thursday in Tokyo."


1st 'Super Wi-Fi' Net Goes Live In North Carolina - Fri Jan 27 05:51:20 2012

alphadogg writes "Lucky residents of Wilmington, N.C., will be the first in the nation to have access to a 'Super Wi-Fi' network. Officials from New Hanover County, N.C., announced Thursday that they had become the first in the United States to deploy a mobile data network on so-called 'white spaces' spectrum that the FCC first authorized for unlicensed use in 2008."


Twitter Can Now Block Tweets In Specific Countries - Fri Jan 27 04:03:49 2012

itwbennett writes "In a blog post on Thursday, Twitter announced that it can now block individual Tweets in specific countries, while leaving them visible in other countries. 'We try to keep content up whenever and wherever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't,' the blog said. Twitter will publish requests it receives to block content through its partnership with Chilling Effects."


Scientists Create World's First Atomic X-Ray Laser - Fri Jan 27 01:09:23 2012

First time accepted submitter newmission33 writes "Government researchers have created the fastest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, and have fulfilled a 1967 prediction that an atomic scale x-ray laser could be made in the same manner as visible-light lasers., according to a statement released Wednesday. Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used the Linac Coherent Light Source to aim a powerful x-ray source beam, a billion times brighter than any previous source, at a capsule of neon gas and triggered an 'avalanche' of X-ray emissions to become the world's first 'atomic X-ray laser.'"


US Plummets On World Press Freedom Ranking - Fri Jan 27 00:36:59 2012

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Reporters Without Borders released its 2011 — 2012 global Press Freedom Index. The indicators for press freedom in the U.S. are dramatic, with a downward movement from 27th to 47th in the global ranking, from the previous year. Much of this is correlated directly to the arrest and incarceration of American journalists covering the "Occupy" protest movements in New York and across the country. "This is especially troubling as we head into an election year which is sure to spark new conflicts between police and press covering rallies, protests and political events." Only Chile, who dropped from 33 to 80, joined the U.S. in falling over 100% of their previous ranking. Similarly, Chile was downgraded for "freedom of information violations committed by the security forces during student protests.""


Pac-Man Is NP-Hard - Thu Jan 26 23:42:06 2012

MrSeb writes "An Italian researcher with a penchant for retro games — or perhaps just looking for an excuse to play games in the name of science! — has used computational complexity theory to decide, once and for all, just how hard video games are. In a truly epic undertaking, Giovanni Viglietta of the University of Pisa has worked out the theoretical difficulty of 13 old games, including Pac-Man, Doom, Lemmings, Prince of Persia, and Boulder Dash. Pac-Man, with its traversal of space, is NP-hard. Doom, on the other hand, is PSPACE-hard."


11 New Multi-Planet Star Systems Discovered - Thu Jan 26 23:09:03 2012

astroengine writes "The number of known multi-planetary star systems has just tripled. What's more, the Kepler space telescope science team has just announced that they have doubled the number of confirmed exoplanetary sightings made by the observatory. Some of the newly discovered worlds are only 1.5 times the size of Earth, while others are bigger than Jupiter. Fifteen exoplanets are between Earth and Neptune in size, but further observations will be needed to determine if any have a rocky surface like Earth, or a gaseous consistency like Neptune."


Railroad Association Says TSA's Hacking Memo Was Wrong - Thu Jan 26 22:24:42 2012

McGruber writes "Wired reports that the American Association of Railroads is refuting the U.S. Transportation Security Administration memorandum that said hackers had disrupted railroad signals. In fact, 'There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,' said AAR spokesman Holly Arthur. 'The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.' The TSA memo was subject of an earlier Slashdot story in which Slashdot user currently_awake accurately commented on the true nature of the incident."


Jailbreaking Could Soon Become Illegal Again - Thu Jan 26 21:57:52 2012

Diggester writes "Back in July 2010, the United Stated government approved few exemptions in a federal law which made jailbreaking/rooting of electronic devices(iPhones and Android devices) legal. The court ruling stated that every three years, the exemptions have to be renewed considering they don't infringe any copyrighted material. The three year period is due to expire and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking to get the exemptions renewed. In order to do so, they have filed a petition which aims at government to declare jailbreaking legal once again. In addition to that, EFF is also asking for a change in the original ruling to include tablet devices." Here's the EFF's own page on the issue.


Jailbreaking Could Soon Become Illegal Again - Thu Jan 26 21:42:09 2012

Diggester writes "Back in July 2010, the United Stated government approved few exemptions in a federal law which made jailbreaking/rooting of electronic devices(iPhones and Android devices) legal. The court ruling stated that every three years, the exemptions have to be renewed considering they don't infringe any copyrighted material. The three year period is due to expire and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking to get the exemptions renewed. In order to do so, they have filed a petition which aims at government to declare jailbreaking legal once again. In addition to that, EFF is also asking for a change in the original ruling to include tablet devices."


For Sinclair Fans, The ZX81 Lives On - Thu Jan 26 20:52:45 2012

An anonymous reader writes "The ZX81 Museum was set-up to preserve and showcase a private collection of original Sinclair branded ZX81 hardware, software and literature. The museum has since expanded to include ZX81 software from other publishers of the time and a variety of other ZX81 peripherals and reference books. The collection dates from 1981 to 1983 and features the complete Sinclair-branded software series. The activities of the museum are regularly reported via Twitter, along with updates from the ever growing ZX81 fanbase. There is even a YouTube channel for the diehard 8-bit fans out there, of which there seems to be many!" This was one of the first computers I ever used; I suspect it's still buried in some deep stratum in my dad's basement. As is often the case, the old advertisements are great.


Yahoo's Project To Disrupt Mobile Publishing - Thu Jan 26 20:07:26 2012

waderoush writes "Right now, content publishers who want to reach readers through dedicated mobile apps have to hire a separate engineering team to build each app — one for iOS (based on Objective-C), another for Android (Java), a third for Windows Phone (C#), etc. Yahoo's Platform Technology Group is working on an alternative: a set of JavaScript and HTML-based tools that would handle core UI and data-management tasks inside mobile apps for any operating system, moving developers closer to the nirvana of 'write once, run everywhere.' The tools are gradually being open-sourced — starting with Mojito, a framework for running hybrid server/browser module-widgets ('mojits') — and Yahoo is showing off what they can do in the form of Livestand, the news reader app it released for the iPad in November. In his first extensive public interview about Mojito and the larger 'Cocktails' project, Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz, chief architect at Yahoo's Platform Technology Group, explains how the tools work and why the company is sharing them."


Object Lesson in Non-Transparency At Energy.gov - Thu Jan 26 19:22:55 2012

Harperdog writes "Dawn Stover recounts her attempts to access information at energy.gov, the U.S. Energy Department's 'cutting-edge, interactive information platform,' which apparently isn't any of those things. Especially frustrating were her attempts to locate important documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. An interesting read for anyone interested in true government transparency."


Xbox 720 Might Reject Used Games - Thu Jan 26 18:49:47 2012

silentbrad writes "Online passes are a recent staple in staving off used sales. Limiting what used buyers can access is a protective measure for publishers, much to the chagrin of parts of the gaming community. Chris Kohler of Wired argues that the death of used games is inevitable, and passes are the first step toward something exactly like a native anti-used game something integrated into consoles. He notes, of course, that digital is the future of buying games, but in the meantime we may be looking at 'an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but ... becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine.' Also at Kotaku, the source for the Wired article (which is the source for the IGN article)."


ACTA Signed By 22 EU Countries - Thu Jan 26 18:03:02 2012

First time accepted submitter azrael29a writes "22 EU members signed the controversial ACTA treaty today in Tokyo. However, the signatures of the EU member states and the EU itself will count for nothing unless the European Parliament gives its approval to ACTA in June."


Top Google Executives Approved Illegal Drug Ads - Thu Jan 26 17:24:55 2012

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that the U.S. government used convicted con artist David Whitaker, owner of an online business selling steroids and human growth hormone to U.S. consumers, to help federal agents in a sting operation against Google when he began advertising with Google with advertisements that included the statement 'no prescription needed,' clearly violating U.S. laws. Google's settlement with the U.S. government for $500 million blamed AdWords sales by Canadian pharmacies, who allegedly were selling drugs to U.S. consumers. 'We banned the advertising of prescription drugs in the U.S. by Canadian pharmacies some time ago,' Google said then. 'However, it's obvious with hindsight that we shouldn't have allowed these ads on Google in the first place.' Peter Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting, claims that chief executive Larry Page had personal knowledge of the operation, as did Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive who now is the chief operating officer for Facebook. In 2009 Google started requiring online pharmacy advertisers to be certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Sites program and hired an outside company to detect pharmacy advertisers exploiting flaws in the Google's screening systems."


WikiLeaks Cable: NASDAQ Folded To Chinese Pressure - Thu Jan 26 16:36:28 2012

jjp9999 writes "A WikiLeaks cable reveals that the NASDAQ folded to pressure from the Chinese regime and kicked out a U.S.-based Chinese TV network, NTD TV. The Chinese Communist Party has been trying to block this station for years now, since it's one of the few major Chinese media that refuses to censor its content. Although they're blocked in Mainland China, they broadcast in with satellites. The timing of the incident aligns well with other actions launched by the CCP against the TV station. They used to broadcast into China through French satellite company Eutelsat, but their connection was cut. Reporters Without Borders investigated and found the Chinese regime was behind it. They now use a Taiwanese satellite."


O2 Fixes 'Accidental' Leak of Phone Numbers - Thu Jan 26 16:23:59 2012

judgecorp writes "British mobile operator O2 says it has stopped sharing users phone numbers with all websites, and says the breach was an accident. Yesterday, users found that the operator was automatically passing their mobile numbers to any site they visited, while using O2's mobile network,"


NASA Releases New High-Definition Image of Earth - Thu Jan 26 16:02:17 2012

New submitter klchoward writes "Working for NOAA, I have been really pleased to see the weather data from the new Suomi NPP satellite coming into our computer models already but have been blown away by its capability to take stunning high-definition images of our planet. See the article at Huffington Post or go straight to the image at NASA's website." Reader derekmead has some images from further afield, too: these beautiful images of Mars come from NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.


Hawaiian Bill Would Force ISPs to Track Users' Web Histories For 2 Years - Thu Jan 26 15:16:26 2012

New submitter mazinger writes "In Hawaii, a bill has been proposed to retain data on Internet users and the sites they visit. Apparently, there is also no requirement for a warrant to obtain the information from service providers. The bill affects not only ISPs but also coffee shops and anyone providing Internet access."


Stanford Online Courses Delayed; More Time To Sign Up - Thu Jan 26 14:54:49 2012

mikejuk writes "Online Computer Science classes that have attracted tens of thousands of students have been put back for a couple of weeks. Is this on account of Sebastian Thrun's resignation from Stanford? Whatever the reason, providing certificates for online students seems to be a real point of contention. James Plummer, dean of Stanford's School of Engineering, said 'I think it will actually be a long time, maybe never, when actual Stanford degrees would be given for fully online work by anyone who wishes to register for the courses.' The good news is that the delay means that there is still time to sign up."


Symantec Tells Customers To Stop Using pcAnywhere - Thu Jan 26 14:32:20 2012

Orome1 writes "In a perhaps not wholly unexpected move, Symantec has advised the customers of its pcAnywhere remote control application to stop using it until patches for a slew of vulnerabilities are issued. If the attackers place a network sniffer on a customer's internal network and have access to the encryption details, the pcAnywhere traffic — including exchanged user login credentials — could be intercepted and decoded. If the attackers get their hands on the cryptographic key they can launch remote control sessions and, thus, access to systems and sensitive data. If the cryptographic key itself is using Active Directory credentials, they can also carry out other malicious activities on the network."


Candidate Gingrich Pushes a Moon Base, Other Space Initiatives - Thu Jan 26 14:21:42 2012

New thomas.kane writes "Newt Gingrich announced yesterday, while visiting Florida's Space Coast, a visionary plan for the future of space travel. He suggested a combination of the current private incentives and a government funded section, developing a moon base, commercial near earth orbit, and continuous propulsion systems to better reach Mars." "Visionary" seems an awfully positive spin on it; Gingrich is not the first presidential candidate to propose revisiting the moon — and the moon seems like small potatoes, by some measures.


Foreign Data Unsafe From US Patriot Act, Says American Law Firm - Thu Jan 26 13:13:40 2012

natecochrane writes "A prestigious law firm warns non-U.S. businesses their data is unsafe from costly and invasive raids by American law enforcement even if they host their data in their own countries. The wide interpretation of the USA Patriot Act ensures U.S. cops can legally demand data from almost anyone, anywhere for any reason and countries and their citizens are largely powerless to resist. The advice has resonance with the arrest this week of Kim 'Dotcom' on alleged copyright violations in the U.S."


Zynga Accused of Cloning Hit Indie iPhone Game Tiny Tower - Thu Jan 26 10:44:05 2012

FrankPoole writes "Indie iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing social games giant Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower. Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got word out about the similarities between Dream Heights and Tiny Tower with an image that's still making the Twitter rounds. The image is made up of screenshots showing how Dream Heights' interface and gameplay mechanics appear strikingly similar to Tiny Tower's."


OzLog: Unlimited Private Data Retention For Australia? - Thu Jan 26 08:16:52 2012

AHuxley writes "Australia would like to follow the EU down the 'European Directive on Data Retention' path. Law enforcement agencies may have the option to request a log of all a users of interest telco usage without any review or time limits. From the article: 'The proposal — known popularly as ‘OzLog’ — first came to light in June 2010, when AGD confirmed it had been examining the European Directive on Data Retention (PDF) to consider whether it would be beneficial for Australia to adopt a similar regime. The directive requires telcos to record data such as the source, destination and timing of all emails and telephone calls – even including internet telephony.'"


Non-Copied Photo Is Ruled Copyright Infringement - Thu Jan 26 05:35:05 2012

An anonymous reader writes "A UK judge ruled that a photograph inspired by another photograph, but clearly different from it, infringes the original photo's copyright. The two photographs were shot in the same location, have the same subject, and use the same distinctive post-processing treatment. However, the angle and composition are different. From the article: '[The judge] said a difficult decision hinged on a "qualitative assessment of the reproduced elements." He defined Fielder's image a "photographic work," as distinct from a simply a photograph, in that "its appearance is the product of deliberate choices and also deliberate manipulations by the author," and concluded that those aspects had been copied.'"


Chromium-Based Spinoffs Worth Trying - Thu Jan 26 03:07:09 2012

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp takes an in-depth look at six Chromium-based spinoffs that bring privacy, security, social networking, and other interesting twists to Google's Chrome browser. 'When is it worth ditching Chrome for a Chromium-based remix? Some of the spinoffs are little better than novelties. Some have good ideas implemented in an iffy way. But a few point toward some genuinely new directions for both Chrome and other browsers.'"


Revolutionary Wants Technology To Transform Libya - Thu Jan 26 01:04:08 2012

pbahra writes in with the story of Khaled el Mufti, the network-security engineer who was in charge of providing telecommunications for the Libyan revolution. "It isn't often you get the chance to meet a real revolutionary. It is a term cheapened by misuse, but Khaled el Mufti is a revolutionary. It is no exaggeration to say that the role he played in the Libyan uprising last year was crucial; had he and his telecoms team failed, it isn't hard to think that Col. Muammar Gadhafi might still be in power. Today, Mr. Mufti is a telecoms adviser to the interim government and heads the e-Libya initiative, a bold plan to use the transformative powers of technology to modernize the Libyan state, overturning 40 years of corruption and misrule under Gadhafi. Mr. Mufti is an unlikely revolutionary, a softly spoken network-security engineer with a degree from Imperial College in London. Almost by chance he was in his native Libya when the revolution took place, working on a project with BT in the capital, Tripoli."


Autonomous Vehicles and the Law - Thu Jan 26 00:22:17 2012

Hugh Pickens writes "Google's autonomous cars have demonstrated that self-driving vehicles are now largely workable and could greatly limit human error, but questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation have yet to be addressed. Simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered and legal scholars and government officials warn that society has only begun wrestling with laws required for autonomous vehicles. The big question remains legal liability for the designers and manufacturers as some point out that liability exemptions have been mandated for vaccines, which are believed to offer great value for the general health of the population, despite some risks. 'Why would you even put money into developing it?' says Gary E. Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at the Arizona State University law school. 'I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it.' Congress could consider creating a comprehensive regulatory regime to govern the use of these technologies say researchers at the Rand Corporation adding that while federal preemption has important disadvantages, it might speed the development and utilization of these technologies (PDF) and should be considered, if accompanied by a comprehensive federal regulatory regime. 'This may minimize the number of inconsistent legal regimes that manufacturers face and simplify and speed the introduction of these technologies.'"


HP To Open Source WebOS - Wed Jan 25 23:37:48 2012

First time accepted submitter pscottdv writes "This year the artists formerly known as Palm had quite a rough few months with HP dumping the hardware side of their own webOS mobile computing platform – their most recent move, having been announced just last month, is live today: open sourced webOS for all. While the actual main product which will be known as Open webOS 1.0 will not be released until September, they've already got the Enyo piece of the pie available today."


High School Students Send Lego Man 24 Kilometers High - Wed Jan 25 23:16:57 2012

First time accepted submitter AbilityLiving writes "Two high schoolers have launched a Lego Man to 80,000 feet — three times the height of a jet — in a homebrew project that involved a few Ebay-purchased cameras, a giant helium balloon and a star-ship full of ingenuity."


Exploits Emerge For Linux Privilege Escalation Flaw - Wed Jan 25 23:01:43 2012

angry tapir writes "Linux vendors are rushing to patch a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel that can be exploited by local attackers to gain root access on the system. The vulnerability, which is identified as CVE-2012-0056, was discovered by Jüri Aedla and is caused by a failure of the Linux kernel to properly restrict access to the '/proc//mem' file."


The Web's Worst Privacy Policy - Wed Jan 25 22:13:08 2012

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "With much of the web upset over about Google's latest privacy policy changes, it's helpful to remember it could be much worse: A search engine called Skipity offers the world's worst privacy policy, (undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek) filled with lines like this: 'You may think of using any of our programs or services as the privacy equivalent of living in a webcam fitted glass house under the unblinking eye of Big Brother: you have no privacy with us. If we can use any of your details to legally make a profit, we probably will.' The policy gives the company the right to sell any of your data that it wants to any and all corporate customers, send you limitless spam, track your movements via GPS if possible, watch you through your webcam, and implant a chip in your body that is subject to reinstallation whenever the company chooses."


Book Review: The Tangled Web - Wed Jan 25 21:27:37 2012

brothke writes "In the classic poem Inferno, Dante passes through the gates of Hell, which has the inscription abandon all hope, ye who enter here above the entrance. After reading The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications, one gets the feeling the writing secure web code is akin to Dante's experience." Read below for Ben's review.


Turning the Hayden Planetarium Into a Giant Videogame - Wed Jan 25 20:45:46 2012

pigrabbitbear writes "Remember your first visit to the planetarium? Neil DeGrasse Tyson does — it was what inspired him to become an astrophysicist in the first place. That same planetarium, now under Tyson's direction, is currently undergoing a transformation the likes of which Neil's young self couldn't have possibly imagined: It's becoming a giant videogame."


Canadian SOPA Could Target YouTube - Wed Jan 25 20:01:34 2012

bs0d3 writes "The music industry is seeking over a dozen changes to Canadian anti-piracy bill C-11, including website blocking, Internet termination for alleged repeat infringers, and an expansion of the "enabler" provision that is supposedly designed to target pirate sites. Meanwhile, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada also wants an expansion of the enabler provision along with further tightening of the already-restrictive digital lock rules. It's concerning that some of these expansions will create a risky situation for legitimate websites, as SOPA did in the US. Michael Geist outlines the legal history and complications here."


Android Kinect Projector Interface - Wed Jan 25 19:39:11 2012

An anonymous reader writes "A guy who goes by the online handle DDRBoxman decided it would be fun to blow up his Samsung Galaxy Nexus display onto the wall by connecting his phone to a projector. He then connected the whole thing to a PC and, thanks to Microsoft's open-source Kinect platform for Windows, he was able to create a custom ROM that mapped out the phone interface to the Kinect sensors. Pretty neat!"


Federal Judges Wary of Facebook, Twitter Impact On Juries - Wed Jan 25 19:28:13 2012

coondoggie writes "The impact of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and others on federal juries is a concern that judges are frequently taking steps to curb. According to a study 94% of the 508 federal judges who responded said they have specifically barred jurors from any case-connected use of social media."


MIT Media Lab Rolls Out Folding Car - Wed Jan 25 18:43:20 2012

kkleiner writes "You think European cars are small now, wait till the Hiriko takes to the roads in Spain's northern Basque country. The two-seater is about the size of a SmartCar, but when parked, the car can actually fold. After folding the car takes up about a third of a normal parking space. The Hiriko, Basque for 'urban car,' folds as the rear of the car slides underneath its chassis. Every square foot counts."


Firefox Javascript Engine Becomes Single Threaded - Wed Jan 25 18:20:20 2012

An anonymous reader writes with news about work on Mozilla's Javascript engine. Quoting Mozilla engineer Luke Wagner's blog: "With web workers in separate runtimes, there were no significant multi-threaded runtime uses remaining. Furthermore, to achieve single-threaded compartments, the platform features that allowed JS to easily ship a closure off to another thread had been removed since closures fundamentally carry with them a reference to their original enclosing scope. Even non-Mozilla SpiderMonkey embeddings had reportedly experienced problems that pushed them toward a similar shared-nothing design. Thus, there was little reason to maintain the non-trivial complexity caused by multi-threading support. There are a lot of things that 'would be nice' but what pushed us over the edge is that a single-threaded runtime allows us to hoist a lot data currently stored per-compartment into the runtime. This provides immediate memory savings."


States Using Cloud Based Voting System For Overseas Citizens - Wed Jan 25 18:09:08 2012

gManZboy writes "If a ballot was lost in the cloud, would anyone know? Several states are using an online balloting website based on Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing platform to allow U.S. voters living overseas to cast their votes via the Web in 2012 primary elections. In addition to a now complete Florida primary, Virginia and California will use the system for their primaries, and Washington state will use it for its caucus. To ensure the ballots are from legitimate voters, people use unique identifying information to access their ballots online, according to Microsoft. Once received, the signature on the ballot is matched with registration records to further verify identity."


KDE 4.8 Released - Wed Jan 25 17:53:33 2012

jrepin writes "The KDE community has released version 4.8 of their Free and open source software bundle. The new version provides many new features, improved stability, and increased performance. Highlights for Plasma Workspaces include window manager optimizations, the redesign of power management, and integration with Activities. The first Qt Quick-based Plasma widgets have entered the default installation of Plasma Desktop, with more to follow in future releases. KDE applications released today include Dolphin file manager with its new display engine, ..., and KDE Telepathy reaching its first beta milestone. New features for Marble virtual globe keep arriving, among these are: Elevation Profile, satellite tracking, and Krunner integration. The KDE Platform provides the foundation for KDE software. KDE software is more stable than ever before. In addition to stability improvements and bugfixes, Platform 4.8 provides better tools for building fluid and touch-friendly user interfaces, integrates with other systems' password saving mechanisms and lays the base for more powerful interaction with other people using the new KDE Telepathy framework."


2012 Japan Prize Honors Magnet Creator and Cancer Researchers - Wed Jan 25 17:17:02 2012

alphadogg writes with an excerpt from a Network World article: "The 2012 Japan Prize, one of the world's most prestigious science and technology honors, has been awarded to three American medical experts who are fighting cancer as well as to a Japanese inventor whose magnet technology has implications for energy conservation. In years past, the prize (which comes with a $650K purse) has honored computing accomplishments, including last year, when Unix inventors Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson were honored."


XBMC Running On Raspberry Pi - Wed Jan 25 17:03:10 2012

jones_supa writes "The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a news release about Raspberry Pi running XBMC smoothly, turning the board into a media center the size of deck of cards. Looking at Pi's low price, small size and hardware 1080p support, this could make an interesting HTPC project. Included is a video demonstration of the setup. For this to be possible, the XBMC team created a customized version that targets the beefier Raspberry Pi model."


Cinnamon Gnome-Shell Fork Releases Version 1.2 - Wed Jan 25 16:48:34 2012

New submitter Novin writes with exciting news from the Cinnamon project. Quoting the release announcements: "Cinnamon 1.2 is out! All APIs and the desktop itself are now fully stable! I hope you'll enjoy the many new features, the desktop effect, desktop layouts, the new configuration tool, the applets, changes, bug fixes, and improvements that went into this release. This is a huge step forward for Cinnamon." The release reintroduces desktop effects, fixes a slew of bugs, and introduces a new applet API (fixing a number of issues intrinsic to shell extensions).


New EU Legal Privacy Framework: We're Not Kidding - Wed Jan 25 15:57:19 2012

An anonymous reader writes "Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission announced today a new regulation for data privacy in Europe (PDF) in replacement of a 1995 Directive. Recently, privacy laws have been under a lot of criticism for their practical inability to ensure a high level of protection to EU citizens. The new data privacy framework will bring a lot of changes: 24 hours security breach notifications, mandatory security assessments, end of notifications to local data privacy agencies, mandatory data protection officers and huge administrative fines: up to 2% of the annual worldwide turnover (that would have meant $1.2 Billion for Microsoft in 2008). Indeed that's 'the necessary "teeth" so the rules can be enforced.'"


Corporate Boardrooms Open To Eavesdropping - Wed Jan 25 15:32:51 2012

cweditor writes "One afternoon this month, a hacker toured a dozen corporate conference rooms via equipment that most every company has in those rooms: videoconferencing. Rapid7 says they could 'easily read a six-digit password from a sticky note over 20 feet away from the camera' and 'clearly hear conversations down the hallway from the video conferencing system.' With some systems, they could even capture keystrokes being typed in the room. Teleconferencing vendors defended their security, saying the auto-answer feature that left those system vulnerable was an effort to strike the right balance between security and usability."


Google Consolidates Privacy Policies Across Services - Wed Jan 25 14:43:07 2012

parallel_prankster writes "The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Google will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube, and other services; a radical shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices. The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes. The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users. 'If you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services,' Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product, and engineering, wrote in a blog post." The angle of the Washington Post article is a bit negative; Google sees this as consolidating an absurd number of privacy policies for its various services into a single, unified document. Reader McGruber adds: "Donald E. Graham, the Washington Post's chairman and CEO, joined Facebook's Board of Directors in January 2009. Curiously, the Washington Post article neglects to disclose that."


The Chevy Segway Keeps On Rolling (Video) - Wed Jan 25 13:53:08 2012

Back in 2009 G.M. and Segway talked about the P.U.M.A., or Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility vehicle. Now it's the EN-V, which stands for Electric Network Vehicle. G.M. (along with partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) debuted the thing in Shanghai in 2010, then displayed it at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in 2011, and now they're showing it off at auto shows, no doubt hoping to get a lot of buzz going for this two-wheeled wonder, which is supposed to be so loaded with navigation and collision avoidance electronics that you can sleep in it on your way to work. (Please wake us up when we get there, okay?)


The High-Radiation Lives and Risks of Nuclear-Nomad Subcontractors - Wed Jan 25 13:10:49 2012

Harperdog writes "Gabrielle Hecht has an interesting piece on the subcontracted workers of the nuclear energy industry, in Japan and elsewhere. These workers face far more exposure to radiation than salaried workers; in Japan, 90% of the nuclear workforce is contracted. This is an eye-opening look at a practice that 'carries exceptional risks and implications. And until these are recognized and documented, complex social and physiological realities will continue to be hidden.' A good read, but I would like to know how the Fukushima 50 are doing."


Australia Likely To Get 18+ Game Rating - Wed Jan 25 10:43:53 2012

hypnosec writes "Australia is set to update the age rating system for video games, adding a new 18+ category which should allow for the more violent games to be sold in the country. The current maximum age rating for a console or PC game is 15+. If a title didn't meet the specifications for this age it was denied a rating and was therefore not allowed to go on sale. This didn't necessarily mean the game never hit the shelves, but it could only do if tweaks were made to remove some of the most violent or questionable content. The first parliamentary session in the new year is set for the 7th February — giving the poor fellas a nice long break — where the bill to introduce the new age rating will be voted on by the lower house. If it passes there, it will go on to the senate, which has the ability to pass it into law."


Piratbyran Co-Founder Says Stop DDoSing Polish Sites - Wed Jan 25 07:42:32 2012

bs0d3 writes "Since the news was released that Poland will sign ACTA later this month, activists have taken to the streets in protest. Also, Anonymous has aimed their DDoS cannons at Polish websites. A government minister admitted the government had failed to fully consult the public on the issue. Piratbyran Co-Founder Marcin de Kaminski has been following the issue on ACTA in Poland, and agrees with activists that Anonymous' DDoS is hurting the situation. Now the Polish government is trying to speed up the signatory process, making a statement of not giving in to 'cyber terrorists.'"


Google's SPDY Could Be Incorporated Into Next-Gen HTTP - Wed Jan 25 04:53:07 2012

MojoKid writes "Google's efforts to improve Internet efficiency through the development of the SPDY (pronounced 'speedy') protocol got a major boost today when the chairman of the HTTP Working Group (HTTPbis), Mark Nottingham, called for it to be included in the HTTP 2.0 standard. SPDY is a protocol that's already used to a certain degree online; formal incorporation into the next-generation standard would improve its chances of being generally adopted. SPDY's goal is to reduce web page load times through the use of header compression, packet prioritization, and multiplexing (combining multiple requests into a single connection). By default, a web browser opens an individual connection for each and every page request, which can lead to tremendous inefficiencies."