Computer-Assisted Witness Identification

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327275.500-virtual-cop-to-run-identity-parades.html

A major cause of miscarriages of justice could be avoided if computers, rather than detectives, guided witnesses through the identification of suspects. That's according to Brent Daugherty at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and colleagues, who say that too often officers influence witnesses' choices.

The problem was highlighted in 2003 when the Innocence Project in New York analysed the case histories of 130 wrongly imprisoned people later freed by DNA evidence. Mistaken eyewitness identification was a factor in 77 per cent of the cases examined.

The Futility of Defending the Targets

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/the_futility_of.html

Defending individual targets only makes sense if the number of potential targets is few. If there are seven terrorist targets and you defend five of them, you seriously reduce the terrorists' ability to do damage. But if there are a million terrorist targets and you defend five of them, the terrorists won't even notice. I tend to dislike security measures that merely cause the bad guys to make a minor change in their plans.

And the expense would be enormous. Add up these secondary terrorist targets -- stadiums, theaters, churches, schools, malls, office buildings, anyplace where a lot of people are packed together -- and the number is probably around 200,000, including Beaver Stadium. Full-time police protection requires people, so that's 1,000,000 policemen. At an encumbered cost of $100,000 per policeman per year, probably a low estimate, that's a total annual cost of $100B. (That's about what we're spending each year in Iraq.) On the other hand, hiring one out of every 300 Americans to guard our nation's infrastructure would solve our unemployment problem. And since policemen get health care, our health care problem as well. Just make sure you don't accidentally hire a terrorist to guard against terrorists -- that would be embarrassing.

Photoshop Disaster Draws DMCA Notice For Boing Boing

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/08/1749256/Photoshop-Disaster-Draws-DMCA-Notice-For-Boing-Boing

"Cory Doctorow writes that Ralph Lauren issued a DMCA takedown notice after Boing Boing republished the Photoshop disaster contained in a Ralph Lauren advertisement in which a model's proportions appear to have been altered to give her an impossibly skinny body with the model's head larger than her pelvis. Doctorow says that one of the things that makes their ISP Priority Colo so awesome is that they don't automatically act on DMCA takedowns and proceeded to dare Lauren to sue. 'This is classic fair use: a reproduction "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting," etc,' writes Doctorow. 'Copyright law doesn't give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings.' Doctorow adds that every time Lauren threatens to sue he will 'reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it,' 'publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery,' and 'offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models.'"

100 Years of Copyright Hysteria

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/13/0037246/100-Years-of-Copyright-Hysteria?art_pos=10

Nate Anderson pens a fine historical retrospective for Ars Technica: a look at 100 years of Big Content's fearmongering, in their own words. There was John Philip Sousa in 1906 warning that recording technology would destroy the US pastime of gathering around the piano to sing music ("What of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?"). There was the photocopier after World War II. There was the VCR in the 1970s, which a movie lobbyist predicted would result in tidal waves, avalanches, and bleeding and hemorrhaging by the music business. He compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler — in this scenario the US public was a woman home alone. Then home taping of music, digital audio tape, MP3 players, and Napster, each of which was predicted to lay waste to entire industries; and so on up to date with DVRs, HD radio, and HDTV. Anderson concludes with a quote from copyright expert William Patry in his book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars: "I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."

Dont Talk to Police

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

A Review of the Pirated Copy of Windows 7 I Bought On eBay

http://www.cracked.com/blog/using-windows-7-may-lead-to-murder/

Installation
Very difficult. The install for Windows 7 comes on four floppy disks, and as my laptop doesn’t have a floppy drive, I was worried I’d have to travel 10 years into the past to find a computer that did. Fortunately, my local Best Buy was offering a USB floppy drive for $80, which, not withstanding certain recent software purchases, struck me as the greatest ripoff the world has ever seen. I’d advise anyone wanting to install Windows 7 on their own machine should make sure their hardware can support it.

Ministry of Defense's "How To Stop Leaks" Document Is Leaked

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/0349209/Ministry-of-Defenses-How-To-Stop-Leaks-Document-Is-Leaked?art_pos=7

"A restricted 2,400 page-document put out by the MoD designed to help intelligence personnel with information security has been leaked onto the internet. Wikileaks notes that Joint Services Protocol 440 (JSP 440), was published in 2001 and lays out protocols to defend against hackers, journalists, and foreign spies. it says, 'Leaks usually take the form of reports in the public media which appear to involve the unauthorized disclosure of official information (whether protectively marked or not) that causes political harm or embarrassment to either the UK Government or the Department concerned... The threat [of leakage] is less likely to arise from positive acts of counter-espionage, than from leakage of information through disaffected members of staff, or as a result of the attentions of an investigative journalist, or simply by accident or carelessness.' "

Sweet, sweet irony.

FF Copy - Windows Queue File Transfer Manager

http://www.ffprojects.net/ffcopy/

FF Copy is a file queue transfer manager for windows networks. It allows you to add files to a copy/move transfer queue which will be downloaded one after another. This increases speed in comparison to transferring multiple files / folders at the same time.

In comparison to copying with the windows explorer you can start/stop/pause/resume transfers. If the source becomes unavailable, FF Copy tries to continue the transfer for a while, then goes to the next file in the queue. Once it tried all files it will again resume with the first incomplete file. So you will not loose the whole transfer if the network connection breaks down after 99%!

New Bill Proposes Open Source Requirement for Publicly Funded Books

"On September 30th, the 'Open College Textbook Act of 2009' was introduced to the Senate and referred to committee. The bill proposes that all educational materials published or produced using federal funds need to be published under open licenses. The reasoning behind it takes into account the changing way information is distributed because of the Internet, the high price of college and textbooks, and the dangerously low college graduation rates in the US. Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"

I think this is a valid concern. It is the same reason I oppose vaccines, as they endanger the iron lung industry.

Nice Use of Diversion During a Robbery

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/nice_use_of_div.html

During a daring bank robbery in Sweden that involved a helicopter, the criminals disabled a police helicopter by placing a package with the word "bomb" near the helicopter hangar, thus engaging the full caution/evacuation procedure while they escaped.

I wrote about this exact sort of thing in Beyond Fear.