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Submission + - Priest checks fingerprints for mass attendance (reuters.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: A Polish priest has installed an electronic reader in his church for schoolchildren to leave their fingerprints in order to monitor their attendance at mass, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on Friday.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it.

"This is comfortable. We don't have to stand in a line to get the priest's signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks," said one pupil, who gave her name as Karolina.

Comment sprint mifi! (Score 1) 438

by mytrip (#29444891) Attached to: (Near) Constant Internet While RV'ing?
I have a Sprint MiFi and like it but you should know Sprint and Verizon do not have data everywhere they have voice. AT&T does but I dont think they have a MiFi right now. The mifi is from novatel and gives you a wireless hotspot that provides data for up to 5 devices. Way cool and no software to install. I just love mine.
Security

Submission + - Obama:IP Treaty a 'National Security' Secret (wired.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: President Barack Obama came into office in January promising a new era of openness.

But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated across the globe.

The White House this week declared the text of the proposed treaty a "properly classified" national security secret, in rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request by Knowledge Ecology International.

"Please be advised the documents you seek are being withheld in full," wrote Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House's Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Software

Submission + - LimeWire MakerBrings Open-Source to Urban Planning (wired.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Entrepreneur Mark Gorton wants to do for people what he already helped do for files: move them from here to there in the most efficient way possible using open-source tools.

Gorton, whose LimeWire file sharing software for the open-source gnutella network was at the forefront of the P2P revolution nearly a decade ago, is taking profits earned as a software mogul and spinning them into projects to make urban transportation safer, faster and more sustainable.

You might call it a "P2P-to-people" initiative — these efforts to make cities more people-friendly are partly funded by people sharing files.

Gorton's open-source model would have a positive impact on urban planning by opening up the process to a wider audience, says Thomas K. Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, an organization that deals with urban planning issues in the New York metropolitan area."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Red Hat set to surpass Sun in market capitalizatio (cnet.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: In what may come to be seen as a deeply symbolic moment in the history of operating systems, Red Hat is on the verge of surpassing Sun Microsystems' market capitalization for the first time.

Sun, perhaps unfairly, represents a fading Unix market. Red Hat, for its part, represents the rising Linux market.

Given enough time for its open-source strategy to play out, Sun's market capitalization will likely recover and outpace Red Hat's. But for now, a symbolic moment is about to occur. The inauguration of the Linux-based economy?
Privacy

Submission + - ISPs can profit from busting file sharers (cnet.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: Jerry Scroggin, the owner of a Louisiana Internet Service Provider, says he's skeptical of a service that proposes to pay ISPs to police their networks for pirated music and movies.

Scroggin argued that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) should help pay the costs incurred when they ask ISPs to chase down suspected music pirates. Days after the story was published, antipiracy firm Nexicon contacted Scroggin about a plan to share money collected from accused file sharers with ISPs.

He said previous antipiracy services have alienated ISPs and Nexicon wishes to avoid that.
Privacy

Submission + - U.S. visitors required to register online (cnet.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: Starting Monday, travelers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Australia, and a host of other countries will have to register online with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before they can travel into the United States.

As part of its efforts to use technology to improve border security, the DHS is mandating that travelers from any of the 35 countries in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program apply online for an Electronic System of Travel Authorization before boarding a plane to the U.S. Previously, visitors from those countries were only required to fill out the I-94W form on flights to the U.S. for trips shorter than 90 days.
Privacy

Submission + - Sex offenders must hand over online passwords (msn.com)

Submitted by mytrip
mytrip writes: ATLANTA — Privacy advocates are questioning an aggressive Georgia law set to take effect Thursday that would require sex offenders to hand over Internet passwords, screen names and e-mail addresses.

Georgia joins a small band of states complying with guidelines in a 2006 federal law requiring authorities to track Internet addresses of sex offenders, but it is among the first to take the extra step of forcing its 16,000 offenders to turn in their passwords as well.
Privacy

Submission + - TSA bans ID-less flight (cnet.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly. The policy change, announced on Thursday afternoon, will go into force on June 21, and will only affect passengers who refuse to produce ID. Passengers who claim to have lost or forgotten their proof of identity will still be able to fly.

As long as TSA has existed, passengers have been able to fly without showing ID to government agents. Doing so would result in a secondary search (a pat down and hand search of your carry-on bag), but passengers were still permitted to board their flights. In some cases, taking advantage of this right to refuse ID came with fringe benefits — being bumped to the front of the checkpoint queue."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Jack Thompson:Games Industry Colluding With DOD (wired.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "In a press release sent out yesterday, controversial attorney Jack Thompson claims he has found a correlation between the gaming industry and the US Department of Defense, who, he adds, are using videogames to teach "an entire generation of kids that war is glamorous, cool, desirable, and consequence-free."

The aim of the release is to notify the media of Thompson's new goal: proving the existence of collusion between the gaming industry and the Department of Defense in an effort to train more efficient killers."
Space

Submission + - Chinese Moon Photo Doctored, Craters Moved (msn.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A controversy over last week's photo of the lunar surface, allegedly from China's lunar spacecraft Chang'e, appears to be resolved. It's real but it isn't. An expert says the photo's resolution shows that it is of recent origin. However, for some inexplicable reason, someone on Earth edited the photo and moved a crater to a different location.

Some dogged sleuthing by a fellow space blogger has tracked down the truth behind the controversial first photo from China's moon orbiter.

In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.

The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north.

The mission's chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, told the Beijing News that a new crater had been spotted on the Chang'e imagery — a crater that didn't appear on the U.S. imagery. Lakdawalla determined that crater in question it wasn't exactly new — instead, it appeared to be a crater that had been moved from one spot on the picture to another spot slightly south."
The Media

Submission + - YouTube link to deadly school shootings (cnn.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "At least eight people were killed when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a school in Finland Wednesday, according to Finnish police. The shooting appeared to have been planned out in graphic videos posted on Internet file-sharing site YouTube.

YouTube appeared to have removed 89 videos linked to his account, many of them featuring Nazi imagery, shortly after the incident.

Finnish media reported someone posted a message two weeks ago on the Web site, warning of a bloodbath at the school."
Supercomputing

Submission + - PS3 Folding@home project gets Guinness record (news.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "t's a small thing, but Sony got some good news today related to its troubled PlayStation 3 video game console. In fact, the system helped set a new Guinness World Record.

The record was set by Stanford University's Folding@home project, a distributed computing system utilizing PS3s among other computers, to help scientists study the effects of a process called "protein folding" on a series of serious diseases.

Well, Guinness has apparently certified the project as the world's most powerful distributed computing system. According to a release from Sony, Folding@home topped 1 petaflop last month, meaning that it surpassed a thousand trillion floating point operations per second. By comparison, the well-known SETI@home project has topped out, according to Wikipedia, at around 265 teraflops, or 265 trillion floating point operations a second."

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