he U.S. Department of Justice won't say when it believes an American citizen should be forced to divulge his or her PGP passphrase.

We've been trying for the last two days to get the DOJ to answer this question, which became an important one after last week's news about a judge ruling a criminal defendant can't be forced to divulge his passphrase on Fifth Amendment grounds.

The Fifth Amendment, of course, protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

In the case of U.S. v. Sebastien Boucher, federal prosecutors think that the defendant has child pornography encrypted with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) on his Alienware laptop. They sent him a grand jury subpoena demanding the passphrase--which is what a judge rejected on Fifth Amendment grounds.

"I won't be able to provide anyone for an interview," said DOJ spokesman Jaclyn Lesch. "The point you raise is one that we would want to address in court. I hope you understand."

We had asked the DOJ this: "In the DOJ's view, under what circumstances can a person be legally compelled to turn over an encryption passphrase?"

In one view, which prosecutors tend to share, a passphrase is like a document or key that must be forcibly turned over. The civil libertarian view treats a passphrase as the contents of someone's mind, which a defendant cannot be compelled to divulge.

The distinctions between these views are important to Americans' privacy rights and law enforcement needs. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for future legal filings to find out what our public servants actually think.

DOJ: No comment on forcing encryption passphrases

Effective January 1, 2008, the following rules apply to the spare lithium batteries you carry with you in case the battery in a device runs low:

* Spare batteries are the batteries you carry separately from the devices they power. When batteries are installed in a device, they are not considered spare batteries.
* You may not pack a spare lithium battery in your checked baggage
* You may bring spare lithium batteries with you in carry-on baggage – see our spare battery tips and how-to sections to find out how to pack spare batteries safely!
* Even though we recommend carrying your devices with you in carry-on baggage as well, if you must bring one in checked baggage, you may check it with the batteries installed.

The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours:

* Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.
* You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
* For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.
* Almost all consumer-type lithium metal batteries are below 2 grams of lithium metal. But if you are unsure, contact the manufacturer!

New Lithium Battery Rules for U.S. Airplanes

My wife handed me a large, very heavy flat box. Inside was a silver Zero Halliburton briefcase.

Now, if you missed the ’80s, let me explain what this was. It was the ultimate briefcase. It was the one you saw in the movies, carried by Feds, moguls, guys in sports cars, drug dealers. It was the kind that was filled with rows of hundreds and then handcuffed to somebody’s wrist. I had admired one in a window at the mall. My wife had clocked that and delivered. It cost $300. Our rent was $800 a month.
It was so extravagant, so ridiculous, so desired. I was speechless. My wife knew what I wanted. I wanted to feel successful. I wanted to go somewhere everyday with my papers in that gleaming hand-held Learjet.

When I saw that gift, I knew that no matter what I felt like, she somehow saw me as the kind of person who carried that thing. She somehow saw me as a success.

These used to come with a laptop anti-theft program that I designed...

One hell of a briefcase...

and try out a new HP laptop with imbedded Altec Lansing speakers — it’s half the price of a MacBook, with a far better audio experience.”

Wow, better speakers in an HP notebook? No wonder MacBook sales are tanking. Sell your Apple shares now.

Samsung already sells a touch-screen phone. So does Motorola.

Chevy already sells a sedan with a V8 engine. So does Ford.

Sprint has a touch-screen phone that runs “thousands” of third-party applications

And they’re all great.

Gruber eviscerates the latest "ZOMG APPLE IS IN TROUBLE!!!" missive, this one from FastCompany.

Daring Fireball:

Decius wrote:
It did not "just work." Within a few minutes I'm googling around for long winded explanations of how I have to configure this and compile that and download this other thing in order to get this OS working on this extremely ubiquitous hardware.

This HOWTO describes how to get Wifi working on your Dell Inspiron E1505/6400 laptop using Ndiswrapper.

Im sorry, but if in 2007 you STILL have to compile something in order to get a basic thing like wireless networking working on an extremely popular hardware platform, LINUX WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL ON THE DESKTOP.

I would concur with your perception. I installed Ubuntu Gutzy Gibbon on my new Lenovo T61, and sorry to say, it just works.

I don't see a need to move to a proprietary laptop (osx) to run an operating system. If I was closer in miles, I'd volunteer to fix it for you. I love my Ubuntu, and at work, all the mac users are jealous of the graphics that I have, compared to the $$$$ they shelled out to get a mac.

RE: Ubuntu sucks, nothing has changed.

A brand-new laptop PC for $150 including a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron processor, 14” screen, 256MB of RAM, wireless connectivity and a Fedora Linux operating system pre-installed. If you think it sounds to good to be true, you’re not the only one – and its 6-week lead time on deliveries means the Medison Celebrity has almost 2 months in which to make blind sales before the first orders actually hit buyers’ doorsteps and we can find out whether the company delivers what it promises. Still, if it’s true, this has to go down as one of the most amazing pricing offers of recent times, and if positive customer reviews start coming in, you’ll have to get in line behind us!

Medison calls it “the laptop for everyone” – and at a frankly ridiculous price of $150, the Celebrity is certainly affordable enough to make that claim. The basic but functional setup looks like a very workable system – and at that jaw-dropping price, would be an absolute no-brainer.

The website, however, and the somewhat dubious Swedish company behind it, are yet to gain the confidence of many would-be buyers. The company history states that Medison is 11 years old, and all its previous work is in the internet, media and education fields – no mention is made of any prior manufacturing efforts.

How are they making such cheap laptops then? Let’s consult the FAQ: “We see this from a democratic point of view where we believe everyone should be able to afford to have a laptop. The other reason is that we have our own plants where we assemble our laptops.”

They’ve certainly got my attention, but I’ll personally be waiting until I hear from somebody who’s actually seen one before my credit card comes out

Bargain or baloney? Medison Celebrity, the US$150 “laptop for everyone” - gizmag Article

I'm in Japan and got to the hotel. I was on a plane for 14 hours. Its about 5pm here but my laptop clock (Still on EST) says 3:45am.

I think my head is going to explode from sleep dep, but I know if I crash before 8pm or 9pm, I'll be screwed up for tomorrow.

I keep asking for Red Bull, but people just smile and say "so-sorry."

:-(

:-( [REDBULL] )

:-)

Why can't I get to stage 2?

This question appears every few months in my life, as I ponder a way to reduce physical complexity through software complexity, wishing to trade a cluttered desktop with a cluttered process list. To be fair, Synergy does exist for the Mac. However, the Synergy port that was written is not a native Cocoa or Carbon application, but instead the port uses X Windows, which also requires installing Xcode, and thus sacrificing some portion of the user's hard drive to appease the gods of software dependency. The problems seen with using the X Windows port of Synergy on the Mac go much deeper than merely wasting hard drive space, which is a precious commodity for any laptop user -- a population that I feel I represent quite well, as do many of the users on this forum. No, the problem is that X Windows on the Mac has utterly no concept as to what other windows are littered about on the screen, as Mac OSX's window manager keeps up with a merged list of it's own windows in addition to X Windows' windows, while X Windows is left in the dark as to anything outside of the X Windows sandbox. The reasons for this are simple and easy to understand; X Windows is an add-on product and in the realm of software, one does not desire to have an add-on component cause instability to what amounts to core functionality of an operating system. As to the motivations of programmers, and why no one has written a native port of Synergy, I cannot answer. People are wont to do as they are motivated to do. My solution for the problem is two-fold: To place a bounty on the prize of having a native port of Synergy written, tested, and made free to the world and to plant a seed for an alternative to writing a native port of Synergy. Such are the limits of my capability at this time; I am neither a programmer nor do I aspire to be one. I do like to think of myself as "an idea rat". When an idea comes along that I am incapable of doing much with myself, I feel compelled to share it with the outside world, in the hopes that my addled mind continues to contribute to that world.
My idea is therefore to make (ab)use of the built-in VNC functionality of Mac OSX to implement or simulate keyboard and mouse input, as VNC handles this function quite well. VNC can also deal with a sudden change in the cursor position, and in the short run, may be used as a genuine hack to deliver the same functionality without coding an entire application.

Atlanta Seed-Stage Second Office

AS3O is an open coffee group for entrepreneurs, freelancers, renegade venture capitalists, creative types, developers, etc. – anyone who would like to get together outside of the office/house on a laptop – to work. We looked around Atlanta for a community of startups, artists, small businesses, etc., and not finding the exciting, entrepreneurial nexus of our dreams, we figured we’d start one of our own.

We now meet every Friday at Inman Perk at 11AM. Feel free to show up, introduce your startup and get down to co-working.

http://www.as3o.org

Atlanta Seed-Stage Second Office

When I'm in bed the last thing I want to do is strain my eyes ...

"The last thing I want to do is cause a panic."

The last thing I want is to come across as a serious, stuffy bore.

Mostly, men urinate while we hear intriguing snippets of conversations ("I'm not a prude, but the last thing I want... ")

Obviously, I write this in the hope that none of them read this article -- the last thing I want to be doing is going and upsetting them and giving them any reason to want to get even with me!

The last thing I want is for you to feel uncomfortable with having to make policy decisions while "assholes" practice their First Amendment and speak out against the decisions you are allowing to be made or the flawed speeches lined with rhetoric you are allowing to go unchallenged at the expense of the lives of our American soldiers who will come home as veterans and live pitiful lives on the streets or in VA hospitals until they die.

The last thing I want to see is Hutu and Tutsi justifying themselves to continue to kill one another.

Wallowing is the last thing I want to do, but -- and you are going to have a hard time believing this -- the real problem is I have not been able to find anyone else willing to do it for me.

The last thing I want to do when I sit down at the end of the day is watch something with me in it.

But the last thing I want to say about this is it's not shocking that -- first of all, I think Senator Obama is entitled to express his view.

"Americans of all ages need to take a step back and re-evaluate the image they are trying to portray with their clothing. That being said, the last thing we need are more laws and ordinances."

"I leave for work really early and get home quite late and the last thing I want to be doing is splitting ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]