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Education

How to Deal With an Aging Brain? 684

Posted by timothy from the swap-in-hans-delbrueck's dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm sure this is something all older Slashdotters are aware of: as I get older my once-sharp brain is, well, getting worse. In particular, I'm not able to remember things as well as I once did. As a geek my capacity in this area was always what defined me as a geek. Nowadays things seem to go in OK, but then leak out. A few weeks later I've mostly forgotten. So, I ask Slashdot: how do you cope with your mind getting older? What's your trick? Fish-oil? Brain Training on the DS? Exercise? Or just trying harder to remember things?"
Government

New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected 118

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the lazy-or-shady-it's-still-evil dept.
TechDirt is reporting that the New Jersey e-voting troubles are even worse than originally thought. Apparently the "minor bug" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected, suggesting that Sequoia still doesn't know what is going on. "Ed Felten has received a bunch of 'summary tapes' from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation."
Music

RIAA Writes Its Own News For Local TV 282

Posted by Zonk from the how-generous-of-them dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Did your local news recently do a two-minute clip on music copyright infringement? If so, you can thank the RIAA. They sent out a video press release to local news stations as part of their 'holiday anti-piracy campaign.' In it, they warn people that the best way to avoid counterfeit music is to avoid 'compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan' and to trust their ears, because illegally copied music usually sounds 'atrocious.' Instead, they encourage watchers to buy ringtones for Christmas."

Feed Schneier: Dual_EC_DRBG Added to Windows Vista (schneier.com)

From feed by bsfeed
Microsoft has added the random-number generator Dual_EC-DRBG to Windows Vista, as part of SP1. Yes, this is the same RNG that could have an NSA backdoor. It's not enabled by default, and my advice is to never enable it. Ever....
The Courts

Slot Machine with Bad Software Sends Players To Jail 647

Posted by Zonk from the can't-you-see-the-code dept.
dcollins writes "Previous discussions here have turned into debates over who is liable for faulty software: the programmers, the publisher, etc. Yahoo has a new option: perhaps the users are criminally liable for using the software. From the AP: 'Prosecutors are considering criminal charges against casino gamblers who won big on a slot machine that had been installed with faulty software ... A decision on whether to bring criminal charges could come in a couple of weeks, said John Colin, chief deputy prosecutor for Harrison County. He said 'criminal intent' may be involved when people play a machine they know is faulty.' Would your average user be able to distinguish 'faulty software' from 'lucky'?"
The Courts

Submission + - Texas makes green computing mandatory (state.tx.us)

Submitted by
athloi
athloi writes: "The Texas House and Senate have both passed an identical version of a bill that requires computer manufacturers to provide a "reasonably convenient" recycling plan that requires no additional payments from consumers. Dell and HP provided some model legislation that was used as the basis for the bill, which if signed, would join similar initiatives already passed in more liberal states like Minnesota and California.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070611-texa s-legislature-passes-dell-backed-computer-recyclin g-bill.html

Go Texas!"
Media (Apple)

Music Listeners Test 128kbps vs. 256kbps AAC 428

Posted by CowboyNeal from the perfect-pitches dept.
notthatwillsmith writes "Maximum PC did double-blind testing with ten listeners in order to determine whether or not normal people could discern the quality difference between the new 256kbps iTunes Plus files and the old, DRM-laden 128kbps tracks. But wait, there's more! To add an extra twist, they also tested Apple's default iPod earbuds vs. an expensive pair of Shure buds to see how much of an impact earbud quality had on the detection rate."
Censorship

Censoring a Number 1046

Posted by kdawson from the you-can't-copyright-that dept.
Rudd-O writes "Months after successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, an unprecedented campaign of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices by the MPAA, has hit the Net. For example Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15,500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorship go on, in the name of economic interest?" How long before the magic 16-hex-pairs number shows up in a comment here?
Graphics

Submission + - Microsoft move could be the end of the JPEG

Submitted by
jcatcw
jcatcw writes: "Microsoft Corp. will submit a new photo format to an international standards organization. The format, HD Photo (formerly known as Windows Media Photo), can accommodate lossless and lossy compression. Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats."
IBM

IBM Targets UFOs, Ghosts, and Goblins With Search Tool 192

Posted by samzenpus from the isn't-halloween-over dept.
coondoggie writes "IBM wants to help you find out if UFOs are real. Well, sort of. With UFO sightings seemingly on the rise, Big Blue is teaming with The Anomalies Network to offer UFO Crawler, a new search engine specifically tuned to search for information about the paranormal, unexplained or just plain bizarre. The search tool employs IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software and the UFO Crawler should help users precisely target and gather information from relevant sources, including thousands of documents and files collected in the vast Anomalies Network archive, as well as multiple global resources across the Web on topics such as such as ghosts, conspiracy theories and extraterrestrials."
Spam

Journal Journal: Alleged spammer tries to take Spamhaus.org, foiled

Journal by norml
Last year, electronic marketing firm e360insight sued the anti-spam blocklist Spamhaus in U.S. District Court over being included on the Spamhaus website as an alleged spammer. Since Spamhaus is a UK company, the jurisdiction of a U.S. Court may be questionable, but Spamhaus found (the hard way) that the court was still willing to enter a default judgment. e360insight then attempted to take Spamhaus.org by using the US Marshall service to try to seize it from its domain registrar, Tucows, but fa

An Inconvenient Truth 1033

Posted by jamie from the conveniently-packaged dept.

There's a movie teaser line that you may have seen recently, that goes like this: "What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?" The answer is "I'd try." The teaser's actually for another movie, but that's the story that's told in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth": it starts with a man who, after talking with scientists and senators, can't get anyone to listen to what he thinks is the most important thing in the world. It comes out on DVD today.

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