rblancarte - Slashdot User

Comment Re:But does it work? (Score 1) 707

by rblancarte on Thursday May 14, 2009 @05:03PM (#27956985) Attached to: Court Orders Breathalyzer Code Opened, Reveals Mess

Short answer yes.

For whatever reason Schneier did a review on a case from 2 years ago. If you read that page you realize that this was analysis done in 2007. Since then the NJ Supreme Court ruled that this particular breathalyzer is accurate and can be trusted.

http://www.njdwidefense.com/alcotest.htm

Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales' 565

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:19AM from the true-capitalism-in-action dept.

Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"

Microsoft Will Not Sue Over Linux Patents 291

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @09:01AM from the what's-with-the-saber-rattling-then dept.

San Muel writes "In an official statement, Microsoft has said it has no immediate plans to sue after alleging patent infringements by open-source vendors for the time being. The company goes on to say that, essentially, it could have done that any time in the last three years if it wanted to. So what's the purpose of these bold announcements? '[John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org marketing project lead] added that while Microsoft may not have plans to sue, it could be using the threat of litigation to try to encourage corporate customers to move to those open-source product vendors with whom it had signed licensing agreements, such as Novell. "Microsoft has spent time and money accumulating patents. Maybe it has started using that armory to move corporate customers to open-source software that Microsoft approves of."'"

Submission + - Global Warming Exposes New Islands in the Arctic

Submitted by

circletimessquare

on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @12:56AM

circletimessquare writes: "The New York Times has a sobering article about the rapidly accelerating pace of glacial melting across the arctic, focusing on the discovery of new islands and the fact that this is occuring far faster than climate scientist's models predict. What were called Nunataks or "lonely mountains" in Inuit, trapped in the ice, only a few years ago, are now in the open ocean by kilometers. Off of Greenland, what was known previously as penninsulas have been revealed to be islands as the ice retreats. Dennis Schmitt, a modern day explorer and discoverer of one of these new islands and fluent in Inuit, has named it Uunartoq Qeqertoq: the warming island."

Submission + - The Twilight Years of Cap'n Crunch

Submitted by

Carl Bialik from WSJ

on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @12:29AM

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes: "Tech pioneer John Draper, a legendary, eccentric figure in Silicon Valley better known as Cap'n Crunch, has slipped to the margins while his peers became rich, the Wall Street Journal writes in a profile. Draper was a 'phone phreak' and helped develop the technology for word processing and voice-activated telephone menus; meanwhile, he eluded the mainstream by tampering with the phone system, frequenting the rave scene and shouting at anyone smoking anywhere near him. 'Once tolerated, even embraced, for his eccentricities, Mr. Draper now lives on the margins of this affluent world, still striving to carve out a role in the business mainstream,' says the WSJ. More from the article: 'Contemporaries who've gone on to riches and fame say they've tried to help Mr. Draper over the years. Mr. Wozniak, who now invests in high-tech companies and is involved in computer education in schools, recently gave Mr. Draper a new Apple Powerbook computer. He has also helped out with Mr. Draper's legal bills. Mr. Wozniak says Mr. Draper's problem is that his skills lie in technology rather in making business deals or starting a company. "He didn't come from a business orientation," says Mr. Wozniak.'"

Submission + - C-SPAN: Liberating & Restricting Floor Footage

Submitted by

bigmammoth

on Tuesday December 26, 2006 @06:30PM

bigmammoth writes: "C-SPAN bid to "liberate" the House and Senate floor footage has re-emerged and been shot down. In an aim to build support a recent New York Times editorial called for reality TV for congress. But what is missing from this editorial is the issue of privatization and the subsequent restriction of meaningful access to these media assets. Currently the US government produces this floor footage and it is public domain. This enables projects such as metavid to publicly archive these media assets in high quality ogg theora using all open source software guaranteeing freely reusable access to both the archive and all the media assets. In contrast C-SPAN's view only online offerings disappear into their pay for access archive after two weeks and are then subject to many restrictions.
If C-SPAN succeeds reusable access to floor footage will be lost and sites such as metavid will be forced to stop archiving. Because of C-SPAN's zealous IP enforcement metavid has already been forced to take down all of already "liberated" committee hearings which are C-SPAN produced. Fortunately, the house leadership sees private cameras as a loss of "dignity and decorum" and will be denying C-SPANS request"

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