Comment Great! Now all I need is ... (Score 1) 108
Now all I need is an app to find where I left my phone!
Comment The Total Money Makeover (Score 1) 796
by Dave Ramsey...or a similar book about how to create a budget, how to stick to it, and some common sense answers about debt, credit, loans, and investing (I don't really care if you pick Ramsey's book, or a different one on the same subject, but his is very straight-forward, and easy to understand the key points). I'm sure it's not a popular subject with most of the Slashdot crowd, but the OP did say books "everyone should read". Everyone really doesn't need to read the Hobbit, but everyone should know how to manage their money: it's an essential life skill in 1st world countries.
Comment Try a Job that Gets You in the Field (Score 1) 220
I used to work for a company that made technology for railroads. Some of the engineers, that didn't mind the travel, spent a lot of time flying out to customer field sites to do all sorts of various work that didn't involve standing at a desk. Collecting field data, climbing into locomotives to install new software or hardware, giving demos, or just going out into the field to test new ideas. Yes, there was certainly a fair share of sitting down involved, but that was sometimes balanced out by spending an hour or two walking around a rail yard or similar activity.
Computer Opens Unmanned Store For Holiday 333
tomhudson writes "The Walkato Times in New Zealand is reporting that someone forgot to tell the computer not to unlock the supermarket on the Friday holiday. 'About half of the 24 people who came into the supermarket paid for their groceries using the self-scan service. The service stopped working after alcohol was scanned, requiring a staff member to check a customer's age before the system is unlocked.' The owner, Mr Miller, was quoted as saying 'I can certainly see the funny side of it... but I'd rather not have the publicity to be honest. It makes me look a bit of a dickhead.' Rather than take legal action, Mr Miller is hoping that the people who didn't pay will do the right thing."
Comment Threaten them (Score 4, Interesting) 765
You have an IP, you have a vague location, and you have an e-mail address that the perp is likely reading. If you can't get law enforcement to do anything about it, and all else fails, they don't have to know that. Send an e-mail telling them that the laptop they are using is stolen property, you have the IP address, which can be used to track their exact location, then give them the location info that you have been able to track. Tell them that you are giving them one chance to respond personally and arrange for return of the stolen property before you contact the authorities to have them arrested. Remind them of the severe criminal penalties for such a theft, and you can even throw in some digital crime mumbo-jumbo (which may or may not actually be prosecutable), to trump up the charges to felony.
The ability to communicate with the possible thief (or eventual owner) is a powerful thing, so if you can't find any other route, don't waste that chance. If it's already been resold, then the new owner may be more than willing to negotiate a return. I had my laptop stolen early last year, and after endlessly calling pawn shops, scouring Craigslist and Ebay for months, we finally gave up. I was perfectly willing to take matters in to my own hands if I saw it turn up on ebay or craigslist, knowing full well that the local Police as much as admitted there was little they could do about it.
Feed Techdirt: The Fourth Amendment Two-Step (techdirt.com)
Tom Lee has already weighed in with an excellent post on the news that law enforcement officials are often able to turn cell phones into real-time tracking devices without having to make the traditional showing of probable cause required for a search warrant. But it may be worth lingering a bit over the tortuous legal history that is being used to justify a form of snooping that is, intuitively, almost as intrusive as a conventional physical search.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
The problem is a series of precedents that, as legal scholar Richard Posner has observed, enable the government to do a two-step end run around the Fourth Amendment. In the 1974 case California Bankers Association v. Schulz , the Supreme Court ruled that the Bank Secrecy Act, which required financial institutions to collect certain kinds of information from customers, did not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections. (Similarly, Enhanced 911 rules implemented in 1998 required telecom providers to make their networks capable of pinpointing the locations of cell users for the convenience of 911 operators.) The Court reasoned that "the mere maintenance by the bank of records without any requirement that they be disclosed to the Government" did not constitute an "illegal search and seizure." But two years later, in U.S. v. Miller , the Court determined that individuals lost their "expectation of privacy" in such information once it had been turned over to a third party, such as a bank. And businesses such as banks, unlike individuals, could not claim Fourth Amendment privacy interests in their records.
That brings us to 1979's Smith v. Maryland , in which the Court determined that no "search" was conducted, for Fourth Amendment purposes, when police sought to obtain from telephone companies a list of the numbers dialed from a particular telephone. The Court's reasoning was two pronged: In part, the justices relied upon the "third party" rationale of Miller. But they also noted the ways that such information gathering was distinct from, and less intrusive than, eavesdropping on the calls themselves: "Neither the purport of any communication between the caller and the recipient of the call, their identities, nor whether the call was even completed is disclosed by pen registers."
Different jurisdictions have differed on how this logic applies in the case of cell tracking, where there's the added hurdle of language in the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act that would appear to forbid using a mobile phone as a GPS device without a full-fledged search warrant. It seems likely that, at least in the near term, judges will rely on such statutory constraints to check such tracking. But it also looks like a good reason for the courts to revisit this whole line of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and reconsider whether, when so much data about us is stored in a variety of "third party" databases, it makes sense to presume citizens have no reasonable expectation of privacy in such information, even when the "third party" has pledged not to share it.
Julian Sanchez is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Julian Sanchez and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
Journal Journal: Windows Proxy Flaw Threatens All Windows Encryption.
CRN lays out the consequences of the WAPD bug present in all versions of Windows:
Using RFID and Wi-Fi to Track Students 183
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on a proposal to use RFID and wi-fi to track students wherever they go on campus: 'Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location.' At The Wireless Event in London, 'Marcus Birkl, head of wireless at Siemens, said location tracking of assets or people was one of the biggest incentives for companies, hospitals and education institutions to roll out wi-fi networks.' The article points out that integration of RFID and wi-fi raises the possibility that RFID can be used for remote surveillance."
Bookmark Linux Drivers for Soundgraph iMON USB IR/VFDÂDevices (venky.ws)
BitTorrent Video Download Store Falls Flat 195
seriously writes "We've all heard about BitTorrent going legit this week with legal movie and TV show downloads. Ars Technica took a look at the service to see how usable it was and ran into a few snags, including not being able to download or even open the video files on some computers. However, the ones that they did manage to open varied a lot in quality. Overall, they blame DRM: 'Without knowing whether browser compatibility and dysfunctional video files are a rare occurrence or not, it's hard to say whether BitTorrent's service is a good one overall. Our initial experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, and guess what the culprit is once again? DRM. Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.'"
Comment Embedded Systems Field Support (Score 1) 72
If you work yourself into an embedded systems type career, you can try your hand at field support. As an example, in my line of work (Railroad/Transportation industry), the field is wide open for developers to work on embedded software for locomotives, rail yard switching software, etc. We typically require about 25% of your time as travel time doing field support. You could, I'm sure, find similar embedded field support roles in the medical industry, media (TV/radio), and many other areas. There are a lot of applications for software to run what's "inside the box". For someone who doesn't mind travel, this can be the best-of-both-worlds, as you get to get your "hands on" in the field troubleshooting, and you get to spend time in the lab or at the desk part of the time as well.
EMI — Ditching DRM is Going To Cost You 220
33rpm writes "EMI has told online music stores that selling its catalog without DRM is going to cost them a lot of money. 'EMI is the only major record label to seriously consider abandoning the disaster that is DRM, but earlier reports that focused on the company's reformist attitude apparently missed the mark: EMI is willing to lose the DRM, but they demand a considerable advance payment to make it happen. EMI has backed out of talks for now because no one will pay what they're asking.'"
Merck To Halt Lobbying For Vaccine 544
theodp writes "Reacting to a furor from some parents, advocacy groups, and public health experts, Merck said yesterday that it would stop lobbying state legislatures to require the use of its new cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, which acts against strains of the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus. The $400, 3-shot regimen was approved by the FDA in June. Later that month, a federal advisory panel recommended that females 11-26 years old be vaccinated. The governor of Texas has already signed an executive order making its use mandatory for schoolgirls."
Mr. Ballmer, Show Us the Code 462
DigDuality writes "A new campaign, Showusthecode.com, requests every leader in the Linux world, and companies invested in Linux, to stand up and demand that Steve Ballmer show the world where Linux violates Microsoft's intellectual property. He has been making these claims since the Novell-Microsoft deal. If Microsoft answers this challenge — by May 1st — then Linux developers will be able to modify the code so that it remains 'free' software. If such infringing code doesn't exist, we will have called Microsoft's bluff. And if the campaign garners enough attention and if Steve Ballmer maintains silence, then the community and companies behind Linux can take the silence for the admission that it is."
Bookmark Tcl cmdline package (wiki.tcl.tk)
Slashdot Top Deals
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle.
