Sir Mal Fet writes "In a very polemic move by the Spanish parliament, the infamous 'Sinde' law, already discussed here, was implemented on December 31st. Albeit modified from their original version, the law will allow the Spanish government to request ISPs to summary close a website due to copyright infringment (English translation). If the ISP refuses, then it's passed to court where a judge can order the website closed. It seems it's one good, one bad over there. The law is in public consult until March, and No Les Votes, a Spanish organization that opposes the law, has already started a campaign to boycott it (English translation)."

hypnosec writes with an excerpt from an IT Pro Portal article: "A recent survey conducted by a UK based divorce website disclosed that 33 percent of behavior divorce petitions filed cite Facebook as a cause for filing for divorce in 2011. In 2009 this figure was 20 per cent. 5000 people were surveyed by Divorce-Online, the UK divorce website, during 2009 and 2011 covering Facebook as a means to check behavior of spouse with the opposite sex and spouses using the social networking platform to comment about their exes post the separation. Three reasons that came out on the top for listing Facebook in divorce petition were inappropriate messages sent to the opposite sex, posting nasty comments about exes, and friends on Facebook reporting about spouse's behavior."

MojoKid writes "Renowned overclocker 'Hicookie' achieved a new high clock speed on the Intel Core i7 3930K processor by cranking the chip past 5.6GHz using a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 motherboard, the first mobo in the world to achieve a mulitplier of 57x. There was a bit of a scandal with Gigabyte recently when a YouTube video showed one of its X79 boards going up in smoke. Gigabyte released a BIOS update for several of its X79 boards to prevent such incidents from happening, and there were outcries that the new F7 BIOS would ... [reduce] overclocking performance; Hicookie's achievement should erase those concerns."

First time accepted submitter yuriyg_ua writes "[The] semantic line interface may combine features of both command line and graphical interface, which would allow even more complex applications than we have seen before." The idea is that the layer underlying user interfaces should define the semantic relations between data enabling the UI to provide better contextual information. Kind of a modern version of the CLIM presentation system.

rhartness writes "I am a long time Software Engineer, however, almost all of my work has been developing server-side, intranet applications or applications for the Windows desktop environment. With that said, I have recently come up with an idea for a new website which would require extremely high levels of security (i.e. I need to be sure that my servers are as 100% rock-solid, unhackable as possible.) I am an experienced developer, and I have a general understanding of web security; however, I am clueless of what is requires to create a web server that is as secure as, say, a banking account management system. Can the Slashdot community recommend good websites, books, or any other resources that thoroughly discuss the topic of setting up a small web server or network for hosting a site that is as absolutely secure as possible?"

jrepin sends this excerpt from an opinion piece at OSNews: "Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia — but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality."

An anonymous reader writes "Social networks played an important role in the last U.S. presidential election, but the explosive growth in smartphone usage and the introduction of tablets since 2008 could make or break the candidates for president in 2012. As the Republican primaries heat up, the major contenders show on their official websites a strong recognition of social networking and connecting in digital ways via desktop computers. But the GOP and President Obama's campaigns are not yet making many mobile-specific connections to supporters via smartphones or tablets, analysts noted. Some campaigns have special links on their websites for getting updates via SMS to a phone, but they don't appear to have candidate-specific downloadable mobile apps on Apple's App Store or the Android Market so far."

PolygamousRanchKid writes with this quote: "Sky watchers are in for their first treat of 2012, as the short but intense Quadrantid meteor shower will light up the northern sky in the early morning of Jan. 4. According to a NASA web page on the Quadrantids, there could be as many as 200 meteors per hour, though the average rate is about 60 to 100 per hour. ... The Quadrantids have not been studied as extensively as some of the better-known meteor showers like the Perseids and Geminids, possibly because it's best visible in far northern latitudes, where its appearance coincides with cold weather."

An anonymous reader writes "New analysis of financial records and online chat logs retrieved from the operators of Spamdot.biz — until recently the most notorious spam affiliate program — provides tantalizing clues about the identity of the man behind Cutwail, currently the largest spam botnet. Brian Krebs tells the story of 'Google,' the screen name used by the now-27-year-old botmaster who was part of a team of programmers in Moscow. Over the years, Cutwail has shifted from a spam cannon for male enhancement pills to a major vector for distributing malicious software."

bs0d3 writes "A new law in Belarus prohibits people from using 'foreign' websites. The law requires that all companies and individuals who are registered as entrepreneurs in Belarus use only domestic Internet domains for providing online services, conducting sales, or exchanging email messages. The tax authorities and the secret police are authorized to investigate violations."

symbolset writes "TheNextWeb is reporting that the first official jailbreak for Windows Phone 7, ChevronWP7, has 'sold out' of tokens to enable homebrew application support. Only 10,000 tokens to jailbreak Windows Phones were ever granted. According to an announcement through ChevronWP7's Twitter feed, they're discussing whether they will ask Microsoft to make more available. With Lumia falling flat in Europe Microsoft needs all the enthusiastic modding fans they can get."

SharkLaser writes "Google's search engine has always looked pretty much the same since it was introduced in 1998. However, Google is now testing a revamped look that is the largest change the search engine has ever done to its website. The new look strips the black bar running horizontally at top and places it as an openable menu on the left side. The move is said to promote Google's other services without making the search engine too cluttered. The new side menu is also more similar to Chrome OS and allows Chromebook and Google's website to have the same look and feel. Another consequence of the move is that it now takes users two clicks to enter other services such as Images and News, which is said to improve the amount of ad clicks and visitors advertisers get. Considering that European Commission is examining claims of Google downgrading rival websites and U.S. senators are calling FTC to inspect Google for unfair practices, the move comes at a surprising time."

Hugh Pickens writes "Despite a large body of work on satellite capture by the gas giants, mainly Jupiter and Saturn, there has been little published about the Earth's natural satellites other than the moon. Now Scientific American reports that although the moon has been with us for billions of years, Earth has also had countless other satellite companions and probably has one right now. These 'second moons' are boulders from the large population of near-Earth asteroids that get snagged by our gravity, orbit the Earth for a few months, then escape and move on. Known as 'Temporarily-Captured Orbiters' (TCOs), the irregular natural satellites are hard to see but astronomers spotted one such transient satellite in 2006. Dubbed 2006 RH120, the asteroid was a few meters in diameter, was captured by Earth for about a year and made four Earth orbits before being ejected after its June 2007 perigee back to interplanetary space. But TCOs are not just of academic interest. 'Once TCOs can be reliably and frequently identified early enough in a capture event they create an opportunity for a low-cost low-delta-v meteoroid return mission. The scientific potential of being able to first remotely characterize a meteoroid and then visit and bring it back to Earth would be unprecedented (PDF).'"

theodp writes "Google took some heat for pulling the plug on App Inventor for Android, but all was good with the announcement that App Inventor would live on at MIT. But try to run the App Inventor Java test today and you'll be told that 'as of December 31, 2011, Google ended support of App Inventor', even though the Google-funded Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab won't be able to provide a large scale App Inventor service for general public access until 'sometime in the first quarter of 2012.' Until then, schools offering App Inventor classes and others who desire continued access to the easy-to-use mobile development environment are advised to try to run their own App Inventor Services on Google App Engine using MIT's test JAR files, a seemingly daunting task, especially considering App Inventor's target audience. Any thoughts on why Google would unplug the old system before the new one was ready?"