Month: March 2013

Bill would force cops to get a warrant before reading your e-mail

Last fall we wrote about how easy it probably was for the FBI to get the e-mails it needed to bring down CIA chief David Petraeus over allegations of infidelity. Under the ancient Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986, the police can often obtain the contents of private e-mails without getting a warrant from a judge. A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced a bill to the House of Representatives to change that. The bill would require the police to get warrants before reading users’ e-mails in most circumstances and would also repudiate the view, advanced by the Obama administration last year, that the police can obtain information about the historical location of your cell phone without a warrant. The new legislation , proposed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and supported by Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA), would extend privacy protections for both e-mail and location privacy. “Fourth Amendment protections don’t stop at the Internet,” Lofgren said in an e-mailed statement. “Establishing a warrant standard for government access to cloud and geolocation provides Americans with the privacy protections they expect, and would enable service providers to foster greater trust with their users and international trading partners.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bill would force cops to get a warrant before reading your e-mail

Paleobiologists unearth camel remains in Canadian Arctic

When Canadian Museum of Nature paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski dug up what turned out to be camel bones in a High Arctic ridge in Canada, she recalls thinking: “This is something kind of off the charts.” She was right. Those bones belonged to the first camel ever found in the High Arctic . “The humped creatures once roamed in forests that extended as far north as Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago during a global warm spell that the scientists say holds important lessons for the modern world.” [National Post]

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Paleobiologists unearth camel remains in Canadian Arctic

Microsoft comes to its senses, allows Office 2013 to move PCs

In a substantial regression from the terms offered for Office 2010, the original Office 2013 license died with your PC . You couldn’t install a retail copy of Office on a new PC, even if you removed it from the old one. But after much public outcry, Microsoft has relented . The Office 2013 terms and conditions are being updated so that transfers are allowed. You’ll be allowed one transfer every 90 days unless the transfers are due to hardware failures. (In that case they can be made immediately.) The change is effective immediately, but it will take some time before it trickles out to the activation servers. If you’re transferring Office 2013 to a different PC and activation fails, you’ll have to call customer support. Microsoft insists that the support people know the score and will be able to activate you manually. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Microsoft comes to its senses, allows Office 2013 to move PCs

US Forces Will Soon Be Shooting DAGRs

Hellfire II missiles are accurate and powerful, but expensive. Hydra 70 rockets are relatively cheap but unguided and far less accurate, which increases the chances of incurring collateral damage. But by combining a Hellfire’s guidance and launcher with a Hydra’s warhead and propellant, Lockheed has created a deadly new hybrid in the Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR). More »

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US Forces Will Soon Be Shooting DAGRs

Lamborghini Succeeds in Creating World’s Most-Difficult-to-Wax Car

They said it couldn’t be done, but Lamborghini has pulled a design coup and successfully created the world’s most-difficult-to-wax car. A cleverly arranged array of fins, vents, humps, angles, and even dangerously sharp edges have been designed to stymie even the most dedicated lackey, who simply will not be able to apply Meguiar’s and wipe it back off in a reasonable amount of time. Mr. Miyagi’s car, this isn’t. That isn’t the only benefit conferred by the contorted shape: Should a cinderblock fall onto the car from above and damage the sheet metal, onlookers will likely not be able to tell where the damage occurred, saving the driver money on bodywork. Early chatter indicated these drawings were fake, but Jalopnik’s now fairly certain that the Lamborghini Veneno will debut at this week’s Geneva Motor Show. Priced at a reasonable $4.6 million, the Veneno should prove irresistible to young families who need to get around town in a safe, roomy way. And the exterior styling belies a sensible 6.5-liter V12 powerplant, whose 750 horsepower and 220 m.p.h. top speed should be more than enough to get you over to the inlaws in a comfortable manner. The Veneno will reportedly not come with a glovebox, but instead, a handbasket. Then you can take that handbasket, place the car inside of it, and you can bring it straight with you to Hell. (more…)

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Lamborghini Succeeds in Creating World’s Most-Difficult-to-Wax Car

Version 2.0 Released For Open Skype Alternative Jitsi

New submitter emilcho writes with news for anyone looking for a Free alternative to Skype “Among the most prominent new features people will find quality multi-party video conferences for XMPP, audio device hot-plugging, support for Outlook presence and calls, an overhauled user interface and support for the Opus and VP8 audio/video codec. Jitsi has lately shaped into one of the more viable open Skype Alternatives with features such as end-to-end ZRTP encryption for audio and video calls. The 2.0 version has been in the works for almost a year now, so this is an important step for the project” There are prebuilt packages from Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Windows, and OS X. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Version 2.0 Released For Open Skype Alternative Jitsi

How two volunteers built the Raspberry Pi’s operating system

Aurich Lawson When you buy a Raspberry Pi, the $35 computer doesn’t come with an operating system. Loading your operating system of choice onto an SD card and then booting the Pi turns out to be pretty easy. But where do Pi-compatible operating systems come from? With the Raspberry Pi having just  turned one year old , we decided to find out how  Raspbian —the officially recommended Pi operating system—came into being. The project required 60-hour work weeks, a home-built cluster of ARM computers, and the rebuilding of 19,000 Linux software packages. And it was all accomplished by two volunteers. Like the Raspberry Pi itself, an unexpected success story Although there are numerous operating systems for the Pi, the Raspberry Pi Foundation recommends one for the general populace. When the Pi was born a year ago, the  recommended operating system was a version of Red Hat’s Fedora tailored to the computer’s ARM processor. But within a few months, Fedora fell out of favor on the Pi and was replaced by Raspbian. It’s a version of Debian painstakingly rebuilt for the Raspberry Pi by two volunteers named Mike Thompson and Peter Green. Read 53 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How two volunteers built the Raspberry Pi’s operating system

Imagine Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke together in conversation. It happened.

Back in 1988, Magnus Magnusson (best name ever) somehow managed to bring three of the 20th Century’s most fascinating personalities together to discuss God, the Universe, and Everything Else . In the hour-long program, the three talked about the Big Bang theory, the connection between science and scifi, the rise of computer science, extraterrestrial intelligence, and the puzzle that is human existence. More »

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Imagine Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke together in conversation. It happened.

FreedomPop’s pseudo-free home WiMAX goes live

FreedomPop tempted users with the prospect of free home internet access — free after buying the hardware, that is — back in December. If you’ve been champing at the bit ever since, you’ll be glad to know that the more stationary service is at last live. As promised, you’ll get 1GB of free data per month after picking up the $89 Hub Burst modem and router combo. That allotment won’t be useful for much more than emergency access on the desktop, but customers will have multiple avenues for raising the ceiling, whether it’s agreeing to join in promotions or simply paying for more. A starting $10 per month subscription nets a more reasonable 10GB cap, and additional plans boost the peak speed from a pokey 1.5Mbps to 8Mbps at $19 per month. We’d think carefully about leaping in when FreedomPop hopes to switch to LTE this year, but the price is low enough that the early adopter tax will be low. Filed under: Wireless , Networking Comments Source: FreedomPop

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FreedomPop’s pseudo-free home WiMAX goes live