If we didn’t have enough to worry about in the grocery aisles, with GMOs, toxic additives, and pesticide-soaked foods, we can now add a new concern: nanoparticles. … Read More
The Navy’s newest combat ship could be hacked at any moment
A Navy official told Reuters this week that although one of America’s newest littoral combat ships (LCS) has been deployed to spend eight months off the coast of Singapore, its computer network failed to prove itself as impenetrable during a recent round of testing.Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Navy official tells Reuters that a team of computer hacking experts was assembled to conduct penetration tests on the fleet’s lead ship, the USS Freedom, and found deficiencies in the boat’s networks when simulating an attack.”We do these types of inspections across the fleet to find individual vulnerabilities, as well as fleet-wide trends,” the official says in an article published this week.Defense Department spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea responded to Reuters by confirming that the Pentagon’s chief weapons test agency addressed “information assurance vulnerabilities” for the fleet in an assessment that has been provided to the Navy, but adds that the details of that report are classified.Speaking to Bloomberg News, Elzea says that the Pentagon’s director of weapons testing “recommended those vulnerabilities be remediated without delay.”A spokesperson for the ship’s builder, Lockheed Martin, tells Reuters that the defense contractor remains at work with the Pentagon to ensure that the network vulnerabilities discovered during pentests won’t pose a problem during the ship’s deployment.The USS Freedom was deployed to Southeast Asia in early March, and is expected to spend most of 2013 in that part of the globe. Before the launch, Cmdr. Tim Wilke told ABC News, “We’ve spent the last six months proving that this ship and crew are prepared for this deployment,” adding, “We are spot on and ready to go.”Others weren’t as optimistic, though. Weeks earlier, Vice Admiral Tom Copeman told Defense & Security Intelligence & Analysis that the maiden trek to Singapore could bring to light a number of issues with USS Freedom that weren’t discovered during testing.“Do we have the best strategies for maintaining the ship? Is our strategy for how we’re going to do the crew swap correct? Logistics, maintenance, spare parts: do we have that right?” Copeman asked.According to a press release issued by the Navy, “lessons learned from logistics and maintenance support during the transit and port visits will inform follow-on rotational deployments as well as the overall LCS program.”At nearly 400-feet long, the USS Freedom is being touted as one of the Navy’s greatest additions in recent years: the latest ships in the LCS program are specifically designed to engage in combat while in shallower waters, and the Navy has announced plans to purchase more than 50 of the vessels during the coming years. As the Pentagon awaits that shipment, though, Bloomberg News notes that the construction cost of each vessel has doubled to $440 million apiece.Of course, one of the biggest selling points of the ship is its “Total Ship Computing Environment,” a sophisticated network of computers and sensors that connects the boat’s external communications system with its weapons control, surveillance, engineering and imagery components, as well as the command, control and intelligence infrastructure. With the USS Freedom’s assessment report classified, however, if and how the TSCE proved vulnerable remains a mystery.“As information assurance threats continue to evolve, so too will the LCS’s ability to counter them,” an official with Lockheed Martin tells Reuters.Even before this point, though, the genesis of the LCS was already becoming something of a learning experience for the Defense Department. Although the Pentagon has touted the LCS program as being among the best the DoD’s money can buy, the boat’s very brief history has already been marred by a number of mishaps. Last May, a Navy inspection report disclosed that the ship failed 14 of 28 inspection tests, including an assessment of its fire-fighting systems, communications, electrical systems and forward propulsion. Then in this January, J. Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, called the ship in its current state doomed, saying that the USS Freedom is “not expected to be survivable” in combat. … Read More
New Mexico Bill Would Criminalize Abortions After Rape As ‘Tampering With Evidence’
A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial. House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.” “Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says. Read More…
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Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Box Office Revenues
In common with every file-sharing service, Megaupload was used by some of its members to host copyright-infringing movies.
For this reason the MPAA was one of the main facilitators of the Megaupload investigation, which ultimately led to the shutdown of the company in January.
The movie industry was quick to praise the government’s actions, but a new report suggests that Megaupload’s demise actually resulted in lower box office revenues.
Researchers from Munich School of Management and Copenhagen Business School published a short paper titled “Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload.” The study analyzes weekly data from 1344 movies in 49 countries over a five-year period, to asses the impact of the Megaupload shutdown on movie theater visits.
The researchers theorize that some films may actually benefit from piracy due to word of mouth promotion, and their findings partly support this idea.
Comparing box office revenues before and after the Megaupload raids shows that overall box office revenues went down. The effects are small, but consistent across different sample designs when taking into account factors such as inflation, Internet penetration and the popularity of Megaupload in each country.
“In all specifications we find that the shutdown had a negative, yet in some cases insignificant effect, on box office revenues,” the researchers write.
The researchers therefore believe that their findings may support the notion that piracy can act as promotion. Those who pirate movies may talk about them to friends, who unlike them do pay for movie tickets.
“Our counter-intuitive finding may suggest support for the theoretical perspective of (social) network effects where file-sharing acts as a mechanism to spread information about a good from consumers with zero or low willingness to pay to users with high willingness to pay,” they write.
The researchers did find, however, that this effect does not occur for blockbuster movies that are shown on more than 500 screens. For these films box office revenues got a relative boost after Megaupload’s demise.
This suggests blockbuster movies may be less prone to word-of-mouth promotion by movie pirates.
“The information-spreading effect of illegal downloads seems to be especially important for movies with smaller audiences. ‘Traditional’ theories that predict substitution may be more applicable to blockbusters,” the researchers explain.
While the results are promising and controversial, more research is needed to prove causality of the effects that were found. Whatever the case, we don’t think the MPAA will cheer on Kim Dotcom anytime soon.
Source: Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Box Office Revenues
Kerry Trotter, 20, Charged With Raping Mentally Disabled Bus Passenger
LOS ANGELES — A man has been charged with raping an 18-year-old mentally disabled woman in the back of a Los Angeles County transit bus last week.Prosecutors say 20-year-old Kerry Trotter was charged Wednesday with one count each of forcible rape and rape of an incompetent person, and two counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object. If convicted, Trotter faces more than 20 years in prison.Read More…
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Microsoft unveils WP8, Windows Store reaches 120,000 apps
The always very excitable Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Windows Phone 8 today, outlining a number of new features and improvements over WP7x. Microsoft, of course, hopes WP8 will be the key to increasing the software giant's smartphone market penetration against well-entrenched rivals Google and Apple. … Read More
First Windows 8 commercial airs, already #1 sold software at Amazon
Microsoft is putting a lot of eggs in Windows 8's basket, making the operating system their make or break product for the coming year or so on both PCs (desktop/laptop) and on tablets, a category where the software giant has zero penetration as of today. … Read More
