Researchers Find Way to Steal Encrypted Data – New York Times — I think clubbing a guy over the head and forcing him to give up the passsword is more viable than this. It should be a good gimmick in a movie script though.

In a technical paper that was published Thursday on the Web site of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the group demonstrated that standard memory chips actually retain their data for seconds or even minutes after power is cut off.

When the chips were chilled using an inexpensive can of air, the data was frozen in place, permitting the researchers to easily read the keys — long strings of ones and zeros — out of the chip’s memory.

“Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power,” Edward W. Felten, a Princeton computer scientist, wrote in a Web posting. “Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.”

The researchers used special pattern-recognition software of their own to identify security keys among the millions or even billions of pieces of data on the memory chip.

“We think this is pretty serious to the extent people are relying on file protection,” Mr. Felten said.

Smash ‘n’ grab becomes YouTube hit

A video of two young women looting with gay abandon during rioting in the Serbian capital Belgrade was becoming a Balkan smash hit on the video-sharing website YouTube on Friday.

Police arrested some looters but public humiliation by YouTube may prove a far more painful punishment for the pair, whose spree on Thursday night was also aired on local television stations and was being discussed across the Internet.

A persistent amateur cameraman followed the women as they loaded up with chocolates at a corner shop, came out giggling, then went after designer bags, shoes and clothes at Belgrade’s swankiest stores in its vandalized main shopping street.

“Get lost, stop filming,” one of them shouted, so laden down with booty that clothes and bags dripped to the ground amid the broken glass below emptied storefronts.

“But you are the heroines of this protest for me,” the cameraman replied sarcastically above the din of burglar alarms.

The supposed “global cooling” consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can’t make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.

The ’70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.

But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends…

“A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.”

We will never run short of the odd, egregious git who thinks his own chilblains explain away science. It’s useful to see the record set straight.

Turkey’s military said it had sent ground troops into northern Iraq Thursday night in an operation aimed at weakening Kurdish militants there, the first confirmed ground incursion since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

The Turkish General Staff announced the action on its website on Friday. It gave no details of how many troops went or how long they would stay, and said only that they would return once goals had been achieved. Private NTV television reported 10,000 troops were involved and said they had pushed about six miles into Iraqi territory…

It was not clear what, if any, role the United States played in the incursion, which set one of its closest allies in a troubled region, Turkey, a NATO member that shares borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria, against another, Iraqi Kurds, the most important American partners in the Iraq war.

The Bush administration agreed to share information and open airspace to the Turkish military last year in a meeting between President Bush and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after 12 Turkish soldiers were killed in an ambush by militants. The military began bombing in December, in operations largely sanctioned by the United States, but it was unclear whether the military had sought approval for today’s attack…

They’ll probably leave when it’s “mission accomplished”.

A lot of people saw it coming. Rumors have been flying for more than a year that the high-flying, cash-laden nightclub scene was being scrutinized by the feds. The shoe dropped Wednesday when the Internal Revenue Service and other law enforcement authorities raided Pure nightclub and Pure Management Group headquarters, confiscating a number of computers. Cash-heavy operations are known to get the attention of the IRS.

Sources have been telling me that doormen at several clubs are clearing $8,000 to $10,000 a night before they share tips. So much cash is pouring in that some doormen are making $400,000 to $500,000 a year, several nightclub executives told me.

“Pure has guys at the door making more than the president,” said one executive with intimate knowledge of the cover-charge system. A Pure executive told me over the weekend that 5,000 people showed up for Paris Hilton’s 27th birthday party and her guest appearance with the Pussycat Dolls. About six months ago, on a busy night at Pure, I overheard two men bitterly complaining about the cover charge. “They wanted $1,000 per person. I said the highest I’d go was $800!” one said. It’s not just Pure, the largest club in town with a capacity of 2,400. “If people have been waiting all night, they’re not going to go somewhere else and start over,” said a club exec (not at Pure). “Club employees, usually the size of big league umpires, will go down the line and fish for people who really want to get in. The line guy might get $200, but now everyone in the group is still going to have to pay a $30 to $40 cover charge. Sometimes, the doorman demands more, maybe $50 to $100 per person.”

Then there’s bottle service, which means you have to buy a bottle to sit in the VIP section. The usual requirement is one bottle per three patrons. Two-bottle minimums are not uncommon. Bottles at most clubs are going for $350 to $650 a piece.

This is insane. Of course there will always be morans who stand in line like livestock to get into some trendy nightclub. So separating the idiots from thier money is probably a good thing. I won’t even stand in line for a movie if it’s more than 20 people.

Up front, the reason I’ve chosen this post is that media outlets worldwide wasted no time repeating the slander. Now, that it is proven – retractions made and damages paid – there won’t be a fraction of the attention.

Hollywood actor Will Smith has won an apology and damages from an entertainment news agency after it distributed a story in which it alleged he had called Adolf Hitler a “good person”.

London-based World Entertainment News Network admitted at the high court that the allegations were “misleading and published in error” and apologised for any distress and embarrassment they had caused to Smith…

WENN had distributed the article in December last year under the headline “Smith: Hitler was a good person”, in which it claimed the actor had praised the Nazi dictator in an interview with the Scottish Daily Record newspaper. The piece was widely picked up by media outlets worldwide…

The news agency agreed to pay Smith’s legal costs and an undisclosed amount in damages, which the actor said he would donate to charity.

Kenosha News

A jury in Wisconsin found Mark Jensen guilty of first-degree murder Thursday in the 1998 poisoning death of his wife after a trial that included what prosecutors said was a haunting letter from the grave…

Jensen sat stonefaced at the defense table as the jury was polled. He showed little emotion during the six-week trial…

The jury’s verdict came nearly a decade after Julie Jensen was found dead in her bed. The cause of death: Poisoning by ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in antifreeze…

Julie Jensen, the victim, had given a neighbor a letter pointing an accusing finger at her husband should anything happen to her.

Do you think justice was served?

Karl “50 cent” Rove

CBS News

(CBS) A Republican operative in Alabama says Karl Rove asked her to try to prove the state’s Democratic governor was unfaithful to his wife in an effort to thwart the highly successful politician’s re-election. Rove’s attempt to smear Don Siegelman was part of a Republican campaign to ruin him that finally succeeded in imprisoning him, says the operative, Jill Simpson. Simpson spoke to Pelley because, she says, Siegelman’s seven-year sentence for bribery bothers her. She recalls what Rove, then President Bush’s senior political adviser, asked her to do at a 2001 meeting in this exchange from Sunday’s report.

“Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman?” asks Pelley.
“Yes,” replies Simpson.
“In a compromising, sexual position with one of his aides,” clarifies Pelley.
“Yes, if I could,” says Simpson.

Simpson says she found no evidence of infidelity despite months of observation. Rove would not speak to “60 MINUTES”, but elsewhere has denied being involved in efforts to discredit Siegelman. Siegelman was convicted of bribery in a case that has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans. In fact, 52 former states’ attorneys general from both political parties petitioned Congress to investigate Siegelman’s case, resulting in hearings held last fall. “I haven’t seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done.”

UNL calls dorm’s ‘Assassin’ game inappropriate and bans it – Boston.com — What a farce. Do they make the students at the University wear diapers too…”just in case?” Har!

In “Assassin,” each player gets another’s name as his or her target. The players then try to “assassinate” their targets by hitting them below the head with foam darts or paperclip “bullets” or some other benign projectile.

In some version of the game, water pistols are used. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, the would-be assassins used socks.

The “killer” get the vanquished target’s target and continue his or her bloodless trail to the final showdown against another player. In some games, the winner claims a pot of money.

Some student players said they were surprised the game caused such a stir, because the bright orange and yellow toy Nerf guns they preferred obviously were not real.

But Keith McGuffey, 20, said organizers could have done a better job of warning authorities about the game.

“We could have put up signs and notified police about what was going on,” McGuffey said.

Nanny Franco

The university worries that the game could turn deadly. “We want to make sure we don’t have students running around campus with guns, even if they’re plastic,” said the vice chancellor for student affairs, Juan Franco, on Thursday.

Dilbert retells story of Iowan fired over comic | DesMoinesRegister.com | The Des Moines Register — It’s more than a little common for workers to thumbtack cartoons in and around their private workplace. I guess this hit too close to home. People should never go to this casino ever.

“Dilbert,” the newspaper comic that routinely ridicules self-important office managers, is taking aim this week at an Iowa company that fired an employee for posting a “Dilbert” strip in the office.

In a bit of self-referential cartooning, “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams has penned a series of strips that indirectly describe the plight of Dave Steward, a former security supervisor for Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington. Steward, 50, a resident of Fort Madison, was fired by the casino last fall after seven years of employment. He had posted on an office bulletin board a “Dilbert” strip in which the protagonist compares his bosses to a bunch of “drunken lemurs.”

Found by Aric Mackey

Cartoons courtesy of Scott Adams at Dilbert.com

TAMPA – A 21-year-old Clearwater man was arrested at Tampa International Airport this weekend after security personnel found a box cutter in a hollowed-out book, authorities said. If convicted, Baines faces up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine for a federal charge of attempting to board an airplane with a concealed dangerous weapon. He is currently serving a 30 day sentence after pleading guilty Monday to a state misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon. About 7:30 a.m. Sunday, airport security ran Benjamin Baines Jr.’s backpack through an X-ray machine and saw the image of a box cutter, according to a report from the Transportation Security Administration. When searching the backpack, a security officer found a book titled “Fear Itself.” The book was hollowed out, and the box cutter was inside.

After Baines was read his rights, he said his cousin had cut away the pages to make the hollow section in the book. Later, reports state, he said he had hollowed it out himself to hide money and marijuana from his roommates. Officers found books in the backpack titled “Muhammad in the Bible,” “The Prophet’s Prayer” and “The Noble Qur’an.” He also had a copy of the Quran and the Bible.

Several sheets of paper in the backpack included rap lyrics that referred to police, narcotics, weapons and killing. Baines told officers he is a rapper who writes his own lyrics and that rap music writers need to “play the part,” the report states.

Benjamin Baines Jr.

Plaque altered at Police request

EagleTribune.com

LAWRENCE — They were real looking enough. Three wooden plaques each embossed with a gold police shield, a small gun piece and each engraved with an officer’s name.

But these “plaques” sent to the police department Sunday were no awards. They came from a bogus address in Puerto Rico, supposedly sent from a former assistant district attorney and were in recognition for the officers being “corrupt.” They were dated “9-11-2007.”

As first reported on The Eagle-Tribune’s Web site eagletribune.com yesterday, police Chief John Romero has launched an investigation into who sent the packages. He said police are contemplating criminal charges, possibly at the federal level. Police yesterday dusted the plaques for fingerprints. Romero was one of the recipients of the so-called award.

Lawrence police also notified the postal inspector in Boston. The sender could face federal charges for using the U.S. Postal Service “to threaten, harass or intimidate,” Romero said.

Need some cheese with that whine?