Take a picture in Miami, go to jail

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Mark Frauenfelder:
Miami police didn't want a photojournalist named Carlos Miller taking pictures of them, so they arrested him.


200702281859
Miller said that in the next instant, he was surrounded by the officers. One attempted to trip kick him to fall to the ground, but he was concerned about his expensive camera equipment, so he tried not to fall on his face. He heard one officer say “He’s resisting arrest!”

Miller tried to explain he wasn’t, but he’d lost his negotiating leverage a few minutes back. He went down hard on one knee. The officers planted (Miller said slammed) his face into the concrete and twisted his wrists and arms behind him to the point of pain.

“They were treating me like I was uncontrollable, a meth addict or something,” he said. “I tried to explain, but one of them said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’m going to tase you.’”

Miller, at last, shut up.

Link | Link to more info (Thanks, Thomas!)

(Via Boing Boing.)

Boston PD: putting the error in terror

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Cory Doctorow:
Bruce Schneier has a great new slogan for the Boston PD (who recently followed up their million-dollar panic over lite-brite boxes by blowing up a traffic-counting machine):


Boston PD: Putting the "error" in "terror."

Link

See also:

Boston police blow up traffic counter chained to lightpost

Deconstructing the Great ATHF Freak Out of 2007



Update
Greg sez, "The folks at Controvert have a sticker that, though a few years old, is timely once again in light of the recent ATHF attacks on 1/31."

(Via Boing Boing.)

Lord of the Rings Online - First Impressions

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The most exciting MMO news in recent memory for many of us was a Lord of the Rings themed MMORPG. Of course, no MMORPG can be discussed without pointing out the massive World of Warcraft currently shadowing over all games in the genre. Can Tolkein's hobbits slay the beast that is WoW? Or will they be quickly disposed of by Blizzard's fierce orcs?

read more | digg story

Followup: “Display Eater” to go Open Source after failed “scare campaign”

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I first heard about this “Display Eater” application on Boing Boing. The short version of the story is that it appeared that if you attempted to pirate the software, it would delete your “home” file on your Mac…essentially destroying your computer.


Not surprisingly, people didn’t take well to this idea, and the backlash for Reverse Code has been pretty severe. So severe in fact, that the Reverse Code website now simply features a short essay from “Reza” the software’s creator.


From the site:


There exist two illegal cd-keys that can be used to register the program without paying for it. When Display Eater detects these keys, it would delete your home directory.


However, this is not the case in reality. The whole purpose was to create a scare campaign. You can download, the file linked from the main page, which is now down(the link is still intact here), and check it for yourself. It has been this way since 2/7/07.


It was my hope that by creating a scare campaign, I could stop wasting time writing copy protection routines to be broken over and over.


It turned out to be a mistake.


“It turned out to be a mistake”…ya think?


Reza has decided to make Display Eater freeware, and open source, in the wake of this marketing blunder. If you want to download the software, you can visit the Reverse Code site and do so. Until the program is released as an open source application you can use the following key to unlock it.


PROD-9PNRM6-4RPRY-JUA5D-XW20G-J0MPY-9MTWX-2L9KW-1


Update: I tried it, and the key wouldn’t work. Let me know if any of you are brave enough to give it a shot.

(Via Apple Gazette.)

AACS cracked again: WinDVD key found

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Filed under: ,

AACS has already been compromised in at least two widely known ways, after DRM hackers posted on the Doom9 forums methods to retrieve and utilize volume, and later, processing keys to copy every Blu-ray and HD DVD movie released so far. Today a third method has appeared, as poster ATARI Vampire reports they were able to find the "sub device key" of the WinDVD 8 playback software. That key identifies the player and allows it to decode AACS protected titles. You might remember the software was also the victim of a simple "print screen" attack several months ago that was quickly patched. The method used to find it was based on arnezami's previous approach of watching memory dumps and finding it through a "bottom up" approach. Coming on the heels of the cracks already widely available, this doesn't really affect the current state of easily copied high def movies, but could make disabling the vulnerable player from playing future releases, finding the hole and preventing it from being hacked again, that much more difficult.

[Via Slashdot]

 

Read

(Via Engadget.)