Slashdot Mirror
Domain: courant.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to courant.com.
Stories · 9
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Six Charged For Hacking Lottery Terminals To Spew Only Winning Tickets (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader cites an article on The Register: Six people have been charged with exploiting a bug in lottery terminals to print off winning tickets on demand. Connecticut prosecutors say the group conspired to manipulate automated ticket dispensers to run off '5 Card Cash' tickets that granted on-the-spot payouts in the US state. According to the Hartford Courant, a group of shop owners and employees set up the machines to process a flood of tickets at once, which caused a temporary display freeze. This allowed operators to see which of the tickets about to be dispensed would be winning ones, cancel the duff ones, and print the good ones, it's alleged. The winning tickets would be cashed and billed to the state lottery. -
Best Buy Scans Drivers License For Returns — No More Allowed For 90 Days
rullywowr writes "A customer with a defective Blu-Ray disc returns to the Best Buy store where he purchased it. After having his driver's license scanned into the system, he is now banned from returning/exchanging goods for 90 days. This is becoming one of the latest practices big-box stores are using to limit fraud and abuse of the return system — for example, the people who buy a giant TV before the big game and then return it on Monday. Opponents feel this return-limiting concept has this gone too far, including the harvesting of your personal data." -
Researchers Dispute Closing of the Bruce Ivins Anthrax Case
Stirling Newberry writes "The New York Times reports that an upcoming paper by Martin E. Hugh-Jones, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, and Stuart Jacobsen – all of whom have long questioned the closing of the Bruce Ivins anthrax case – points to the presence of tin in the spore samples as a sign that the samples mailed had been processed beyond what Ivins alone could have done. While not disputing that the spores came from Ft. Detrick, Hugh-Jones, who has co-authored several papers on anthrax signatures, contends according to the Times: 'it appears likely that Dr. Ivins could not have made the anthrax powder alone with the equipment he possessed, as the F.B.I. maintains. That would mean either that he got the powder from elsewhere or that he was not the perpetrator.' For a good summary of the case from a medical standpoint, this paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine is an excellent place to start. A review by the National Resources Council that stated the evidence available was not sufficient to locate the source of the spores is also available." -
Misdemeanor Plea Ends Norwich Pornography Case
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Hartford Courant: "Almost 18 months after a pornography conviction that could have sent her to jail for 40 years was thrown out, former Norwich substitute teacher Julie Amero plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct Friday afternoon. The plea deal before Superior Court Judge Robert E. Young in Norwich ends a long-running drama that attracted attention from around the world. ... She had originally been charged with 10 counts of risk of injury to a minor and later convicted on four of them. ... In June of 2007, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out Amero's conviction on charges that she intentionally caused a stream of 'pop-up' pornography on the computer in her classroom and allowed students to view it. Confronted with evidence compiled by forensic computer experts, Strackbein ordered a new trial, saying the conviction was based on 'erroneous' and 'false information.'" -
Misdemeanor Plea Ends Norwich Pornography Case
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Hartford Courant: "Almost 18 months after a pornography conviction that could have sent her to jail for 40 years was thrown out, former Norwich substitute teacher Julie Amero plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct Friday afternoon. The plea deal before Superior Court Judge Robert E. Young in Norwich ends a long-running drama that attracted attention from around the world. ... She had originally been charged with 10 counts of risk of injury to a minor and later convicted on four of them. ... In June of 2007, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out Amero's conviction on charges that she intentionally caused a stream of 'pop-up' pornography on the computer in her classroom and allowed students to view it. Confronted with evidence compiled by forensic computer experts, Strackbein ordered a new trial, saying the conviction was based on 'erroneous' and 'false information.'" -
Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant
rcastro0 writes "Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, announced today that it will start to commercialize a new type of solar power plant. A new company called SolarReserve will be created to provide heat-resistant pumps and other equipment, as well as the expertise in handling and storing salt that has been heated to more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla 'Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.' Molten Salt storage is already used in Nevada's Solar One power plant. Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?" -
Connecticut Wants to Restrict Social Networking
csefft writes "According to the Hartford Courant, Connecticut became the latest state to want to restrict the use of MySpace and other social networking sites. The proposed bill would require that all such sites verify the identity and age of users, as well as get parent's permission for those under 18. Sites that failed to comply would be subject to a $5,000 per day fine. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said of the proposition, 'If we can put a man on the moon, we can verify age on the Internet,' but quickly followed with the acknowledgment that there is no foolproof method." -
Best Buy Confirms 'Secret' Version of its Website
Iberian writes "The Courant site confirms an oft-rumoured possibility: Best Buy does indeed maintain a second website for what one could assume is for the purpose of defrauding its customers. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after columnist George Gombossy disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com. Says Gombossy, 'What is more troubling to me, and to some Best Buy customers, is that even when one informs a salesperson of the Internet price, customers have been shown the intranet site, which looks identical to the Internet site, but does not always show the lowest price. [State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal] said that because of the fuzzy responses from Best Buy, he has yet to figure out the real motivation behind the intranet site and whether sales people are encouraged to use it to cheat customers.'" -
Swahili Wiki-Dictionary?
Martin Benjamin writes "The Hartford Courant just published a feature article on the Kamusi Project Internet Living Swahili Dictionary. This project is using the Net to put together dictionaries that are as scholarly as any university publication, yet with a secure participatory model that draws on knowledge from users around the world. Now the project is developing learning tools that will build on the Kamusi model of collaborative scholarship."