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 Department: there-aren't-enough-whips-in-the-world Date: 2012-01-28T05:01:00+00:00 Comments: 88 
bonch writes "A massive Android malware campaign may be responsible for duping as many as 5 million users into downloading the Android.Counterclan infection from the Google Android Market. The trojan collects the user's personal information, modifies the home page, and displays unwanted advertisements. It is packaged in 13 different applications, some of which have been on the store for at least a month. Several of the malicious apps are still available on the Android Market as of 3 P.M. ET. Symantec has posted the full list of infected applications."Read more of this storyat Slashdot. 
Department: small-drop-big-bucket Date: 2012-01-28T04:00:00+00:00 Comments: 30 
New submitter Required Snark writes "UC Davis researchers have found a mechanism where the sodium in sea water can cause uranium nano-particles to be released from nuclear reactor fuel rods. Normally the uranium oxide compounds composing the rods are very resistant to leaching into water. This could have serious consequences for the Fukushima disaster, since sea water was used for emergency cooling."Read more of this storyat Slashdot. 
Department: used-his-onion Date: 2012-01-28T02:11:00+00:00 Comments: 51 
New submitter MikeatWired writes "If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. So who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn't, writes Bob McMillan. Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT in the early '60s, came clean about the earliest documented case of password theft. In the spring of 1962, Scherr was looking for a way to bump up his usage time on CTSS. He had been allotted four hours per week, but it wasn't nearly enough time to run the detailed performance simulations he'd designed for the new computer system. So he simply printed out all of the passwords stored on the system. 'There was a way to request files to be printed offline by submitting a punched card,' he remembered in a pamphlet (PDF) written last year to commemorate the invention of the CTSS. 'Late one Friday night, I submitted a request to print the password files and very early Saturday morning went to the file cabinet where printouts were placed and took the listing.' To spread the guilt around, Scherr then handed the passwords over to other users. One of them— J.C.R. Licklieder— promptly started logging into the account of the computer lab's director Robert Fano, and leaving 'taunting messages' behind."Read more of this storyat Slashdot. 
Department: national-brotherhood-week Date: 2012-01-28T01:08:00+00:00 Comments: 35 
An anonymous reader writes "A bit early, but just a reminder that January 28 is international Data Privacy Day in the U.S., Canada, and many European countries. Various events are being held around the globe: the head of the FTC opened a weekend forum on the topic by calling out Facebook and Google, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner is holding a symposium on 'Surveillance by Design', and of course Google recently announced they'll be tracking you more thoroughly in the future."Read more of this storyat Slashdot. 
Department: for-safe-delivery-of-your-gluteus-maximus Date: 2012-01-28T00:19:00+00:00 Comments: 38 
sighted writes "This week's huge solar storm will benefit future astronauts, thanks to the rover Curiosity, now on its way to Mars. The rover is equipped with an instrument that measures the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut en route to the Red Planet. Scientists are just starting to pore over the data from the blast of particles. Don't worry about the poor robotic geologist, though: 'No harmful effects to the Mars Science Laboratory have been detected from this solar event,' says NASA."Read more of this storyat Slashdot. 
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Latest from Techdirt.com
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Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:39:00 PST
One of the more important points in understanding some of the fights over the ridiculousness of today's copyright and patent laws is to recognize how knowledge (information) is anatural resource. It is the input that makes other great things. Economist Paul Romer'sfamous researchreally showed how knowledge and information as a resource is what creates economic growth. Once you recognize that fact, you begin to run into problems when you think about locking up that natural resource. Think of other natural resources. Do we think the world is better off if there's a greater supply of each of those? An abundance? If we have an abundance of wheat, that's a good thing. If we have an abundance of energy, that's a good thing. There may beside effectsof such abundances, but the overall abundance is something worth cherishing.
The problem, however, comes when you have a new abundance where once there was scarcity. And that's because anywhere there's a scarcity, someone has built a business model based on that very scarcity. But that is a business model issue. Years ago, most economies rejected the idea of mercantilism, where governments would purposely build up monopolies and artificial scarcities, because of the realization that, in the long run, everyone was better off with a competitive market. The guy who had the sugar monopoly may have hated it -- but everyone else was much, much better off.
And, so, we go back toknowledgeandinformation. Unlike most other resources, knowledge is not just abundant... it isinfinite. As Thomas Jefferson once famously wrote:If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction ofman, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. And yet... we still default to thinking that this amazing resource should be locked up. Because it's ofteneasierto see how the guy who owns the sugar monopoly benefits, than to think through the more complicated market in which there are competing sugar providers, each trying to offer a better product, under which consumers benefit at a massive scale, markets grow and opportunity blossoms. It's easier to just focus on the fact that it makes life more difficult for the one monopolist.
And often, it seems that we run into this same issue when it comes to intellectual property law. Brent Ahsley recently wrote an interesting post, in which he talks about how something he created way back in 2002, one of the first DHTML-based embeddable chat windows -- hasbecome a mainstream piece of technology, but one over which Ahsley has no control, nor profits from. But, unlike the typical analysis, Ahsley realizes that the world is much better off this way:I occasionally find myself talking with someone about facebook chat or google chat and I'll say "I sorta invented that" and point them to myFeb 2002 blog entrywhere I built and released to the wild what was one of the earliest embeddable DHTML chat windows, using my also free and open what-was-not-yet-called-AjaxlibraryI released in 2000, about 5 years before many people came along and pushed the state of the art much further down the road.
Invariably I am told that I should be rich and that all those sites and people "stole" my ideas.I disagreeand say that these were all perfectly obvious inventions to me and all the others who came after me and that it was my duty to the net to feed my work back into it such that folks could stand on my shoulders as I had stood on those of others.
That is how the net works– or at least it used to.It still does in open development circles but the content and patent industries are fighting hard to brainwash everyone that knowledge is inherently owned. And this, as Ahsley recognizes, is a problem. The world of monopolists is focused on protecting the monopoly. But if Ashley, for example, had patented aspects of his AJAX library, or his embeddable chat, would the world be a better place? It's likely that such chat features would not be as common. It's likely that such chat offerings (which are now everywhere) would not be as powerful or as useful. It's likely that the world would be a worse place. Ahsley, personally, might be a little wealthier -- perhaps someone would pay him to license the functionality, or perhaps he'd successfully sue someone. But the world would be more limited and there would be less to go on.
This, then, is the problem that many of us face in looking at and trying to understand the nature of economics, growth, innovation andprogresswhen looking at the world of monopoly protections. It's easy to see the sugar monopolist, and see how taking down those monopolies might make his job harder (even if it creates a big market with more opportunity to make more money). But to recognize that bigger picture, as Ashley does, is difficult.
Ashley tries to put it all in perspective:Anything that is knowable is a part of the universe of truth that has no owner and no bounds. The invention or discovery of anything results in the exposure of one or more hitherto undocumented universal truths to the collected human record.
The true and original purpose of copyright and patents is to create a temporary legal fiction which acts in many respects like ownership, conferring upon an individual person rights to control the use and dissemination of morsels of universal truth which they had the luck and/or tenacity to first identify, so they can be recompensed for their contribution to the universe’s growing stockpile of exposed truth for the benefit of all humanity.
The legal expansion to include corporate personhood and subsequent term extensions tending towards permanence of the legal assignment of ownership equivalence amounts to the expropriation and destruction of large parts of humanity’s natural knowledge resources.
It’s not too much different from bulldozing the rainforest. At some point, it needs to be recognized that the purpose of these laws has been twisted and twisted and twisted to the point that they are broken. They're not acting as a reward for those who discover key elements of knowledge in exchange for sharing them. They've become tolls in and of themselves for the sole purpose of enriching the monopolist. And that takes us right back to mercantilism.
If we were able to reject industrial mercantilism as the wrong economic approach 250 years or so ago, at some point we're going to reach the age where we can reject intellectual mercantilism as well.
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Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:31:00 PST
Back in 2010, we wrote about an attempt to sue the website TheDirty.com for libel... in which the lawyer for the site accidentallysued a different site, called TheDirt.com. This resulted in some hilarity with a bogus default judgment and plenty of confusion. We joked how, given the similarities in the names of those sites to Techdirt, perhaps we should be happy that we weren't sued as well. However, once all the mistakes were realized, the case did shift to actually suing TheDirty.com's owner. TheDirty is (1) not safe for work and (2) not a particularly nice site. It mostly involves user submissions of pictures of women, along with generally mean commentary from the user -- and then maybe a short comment from the site's owner. It is a mean site, and the site's owner and readers seem to embrace that, even if it's exceptionally petty.
The specific lawsuit involved a Bengals cheerleader/school teacher, who wasn't happy with the pictures of her posted to the website... along with the comments made about her (such as suggesting she had slept with the entire football team.) As we noted at the time, if this content is user generated -- it's a clear situation where the case should be dismissed over Section 230's safe harbors (which put the liability on the actual content creator, rather than the middlemen third parties). In this case, the claims that might reach the level of defamation clearly came from theuser, not the site owner. Previous rulings in other districts have even made it clear that sites that merely pass along content created by someone else -- even if it involves a moderator "choosing" what gets displayed -- does not change the basic protections. So this case should have been a slam dunk.
Instead... it appears that the judge has gone in the other direction, creating really convoluted argumentsto claim that Section 230does notapply. As Eric Goldman explains, there are serious problems with this ruling:The court's discussion is short, yet it's surprisingly scattered. Pages 8-10 run through a gamut of gripes about thedirty's practices and statements, but the judge doesn't articulate the relevance of these facts (other than providing evidence of the judge's animus towards thedirty). Because the judge does a poor job connecting the facts to his adopted legal standard, we aren't sure exactly what thedirty did to foreclose the 230 immunity The ruling, which is attached below really is that bizarre. The judge twists and turns himself into contortions to try to come up with a reason to say that TheDirty.com is liable for comments made on the site. The simplest explanation, as Eric noted, is that the judge just didn't like the kind of site that TheDirty.com is (and from a quick glance, remains). The key to the judge's ruling is trying to apply the infamousRoomates.com case. The problem, however, is that the case doesn't fit well. Roommates.com lost not because the site encouraged some actions against the law, but because its menu choices were a part of the content creation, and those menu choices, themselves, directly violated the Fair Housing Act.
It's a huge stretch to go from there to claiming that a site where mean things are celebrated is no longer protected via Section 230's safe harbors. But that's what the judge did.
And, in part, it gets really scary for me, personally, because the judge declares -- multiple times -- that the use of the word "dirt" in a domain name means that you are encouraging defamation:First, the name of the site in and of itself encourages the posting only of“dirt,” that is material which is potentially defamatory or an invasion of thesubject’s privacy. Of course, there's absolutely nothing in Section 230 that suggests that if a judge doesn't like your name -- or falsely assumes that any website with the word "dirt" in the name is up to no good -- he can ignore Section 230's important protections. Like Eric suggested, it would be good if there's an appeal here, because it seems to go against pretty much any other Section 230 rulings. Not liking a site is simply not a reason to ignore those important safe harbors...
And, just to summarize, here are the basics. The site, TheDirty.com posted a user submission, with a one-sentence comment on it. That submission included a cheerleader/teacher, who didn't like her photos being widely available. Somewhere along the way the legal shenanigans began. Remember, the contents of the post itself may be defamatory -- but that, alone, should not make the site liable. It could very well make the original submitter liable, but the cheerleader doesn't seem to want to go that route of actually suing those who did the bad thing. So, instead, the site now faces a lot of liability... because a judge thinks that having "dirt" in your domain name must mean that you're seeking out something bad.
For reasons beyond just the standard defenses of Section 230, this is pretty bizarre and slightly terrifying. I certainly don't encourage the submission of defamatory information. But because I have "dirt" in my domain name, does that mean I should be worried too?
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Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:30:18PST
We've had plenty of stories about the ridiculousness of security theater at airports, but it's been spreading elsewhere as well. Last week, I was in Washington DC from Monday through Thursday, for a few things (mostly related to the SOPA/PIPA debate). On Thursday morning, I took part in apress briefingabout the SOPA/PIPA fight (this was before it had been shelved, but after the web blackouts) at the US Capitol. I was actually heading to the airport soon after, so I had checked out of my hotel, and had put the metal water canteen that I use in my bag. It was empty, knowing that I'd have to go through airport security a little later.
However, at security to get into the Capitol, I was told I could not bring the canteen in, even though it was empty. I asked if there was any reason for this. I was told I just couldn't bring it in. I asked if there was any place I could "leave" it, and I was told to go outside and there were dumpsters to the right. I even asked if someone could hold it for me, since it would just be an hour or so. No luck. Dumpsters, outside to the right. The canteen isn't anythingspecial, but I do like it. According to the price tag still on the bottom, it cost $11 when my wife bought it for me. I can buy another canteen, but really, there's a bit of a principle thing to all of this. If the canteen itself is dangerous, then, putting it in a dumpster outside isn't going to change that.
I went outside and there were some police there, so I asked them if there was anything I could do. They also pointed me to the dumpsters. I asked if I might be able to get it back, and they said, "if you don't mind climbing in... and if the garbage isn't picked up by then." And so, an hour and a half later, after the press briefing was done, I (wearing a suit), climbed into the dumpster at the Capitol to pick up my water canteen, so I could take it with me back home. Again, it certainly wouldn't have been the end of the world if I'd lost it. But I'm at a loss as to what this little bit of security theater accomplished. Either the canteen is dangerous, or it's not. If it's dangerous, I shouldn't be able to leave it right next to the Capitol... and I shouldn't then be able to go retrieve it. If it'snotdangerous (and, um, it'snot), then the whole thing is a complete joke. Oh, and I shouldn't forget the other punchline: I saw at least two people in the press briefing with their own (brought from home) water canteens.
Somehow, none of this makes me feel any safer.
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Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:00:00 PST
There are a lot of food options out there, and fast food is certainly one of the more popular choices for people on the go. Not surprisingly, though, fast food establishments usually don't have the best reputation for healthy dining, but some of them are trying to change their image. Here are just a few stories on fast food news.By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some goodTechdirtarticles, too.
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