Homeland Security Changes Laptop Search Policy

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/08/28/1216200/Homeland-Security-Changes-Laptop-Search-Policy?art_pos=58

"The US Government has updated its policy on the search and seizure of laptops at border crossing. 'The long-criticized practice of searching travelers' electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers' machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.'"

Technically True

http://www.xkcd.com/630/

Science Reporting

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623#comic

Remember this whenever you hear science news.

Thomas Jefferson On The Federal Government vs States

"It has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression (although I do not choose to put it into a newspaper, nor like a Priam in armor to offer myself as its champion), that the germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in the constitution of the Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed; because, when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. It will be, as in Europe, where every man must be either pike or gudgeon, hammer or anvil. Our functionaries and theirs are wares from the same workshop; made of the same materials and by the same hand. If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of their government into the gulf which is to swallow all, we have only to weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron, and the blasphemers of man, as incapable of self-government, become his true historians." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

ACLU Sues For Records On Border Laptop Searches

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/08/26/2256252/ACLU-Sues-For-Records-On-Border-Laptop-Searches

"The ACLU has sued the US Customs and Border Protection agency under the Freedom of Information Act, aiming to obtain records on the agency's policy of searching laptops at the border. Under the policy, the CBP can search through financial records, photos, and Web site histories, and retain that information for unspecified periods of time. The ACLU is arguing that the information is necessary to understand whether the CBP may be violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable and unwarranted searches. The agency has so far not responded to requests for comment."

WPA Encryption Cracked In 60 Seconds

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/08/27/180249/WPA-Encryption-Cracked-In-60-Seconds?from=rss

"Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the attack to a new level. The earlier attack worked on a smaller range of WPA devices and took between 12 and 15 minutes to work. Both attacks work only on WPA systems that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm. They do not work on newer WPA 2 devices or on WPA systems that use the stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm."

To review WEP has been cracked for years now. WPA recently was cracked, which was then further optimized. WPA 2 or WPA with AES are still secure.

Banning Beer Glasses in Pubs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8217775.stm

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/banning_beer_gl.html

The UK is trying to ban glasses from pubs, because people use them in fights. The UK is known for trying to protect everyone from any sort of possible harm, and ignoring any rights that get in the way.

The 5 Most Embarrassing Failures in the History of Terrorism

http://www.cracked.com/article/79_the-5-most-embarrassing-failures-in-history-terrorism/

"Ahmed finally gets the timer working, somehow not igniting the thing with his Zippo, and settles back with pride. He's got 5:00 minutes to get out of there.

Wait, now it's... h:00 minutes? H isn't a measure of time, is it? Now it's E:00 minutes. Did he... did he somehow set the timer to the alphabet? How is that even possible? Suddenly, it starts to dawn on him. Ahmed, whose last name is presumably "E. Coyote," has set the timer... upside down."

Non-Randomness in Coin Flipping

http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/the-coin-flip-a-fundamentally-unfair-proposition

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf

1. If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there's a 51% chance it will end as heads).
2. If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit "huge bias" (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).
3. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.
4. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play.
5. An American nickel will land on its edge around 1 in 6000 throws, creating a flipistic singularity.
6. The same initial coin-flipping conditions produce the same coin flip result. That is, there's a certain amount of determinism to the coin flip.
7. A more robust coin toss (more revolutions) decreases the bias.

Wikipedia To Require Editing Approval

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/24/224259/Wikipedia-To-Require-Editing-Approval?from=rss

The NY Times reports on an epochal move by Wikipedia — within weeks, the formerly freewheeling encyclopedia will begin requiring editor approval for all edits to articles about living people. "The new feature, called 'flagged revisions,' will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved — or in Wikispeak, flagged — it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia's servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version. ... The new editing procedures... have been applied to the entire German-language version of Wikipedia during the last year... Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries."