Julie Amero Sentencing Delayed Again; Prosecutors May Be Trying To Figure Out How To Back Out Gracefully

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The Julie Amero case has been getting plenty of attention lately, after prosecutors (and the local press) in Connecticut condemned a local substitute teacher after the classroom computer she was using was overrun with porn popups from spyware. For this, she was facing 40 years in jail. While the local paper and the prosecutor kept insisting that everyone didn't know the full story, once the transcripts became available it became clear that it was the prosecutors, the local police and the local press who didn't seem to recognize the full story. While the local Norwich Bulletin continues to insist she deserves to be thrown in jail (update: they no longer support jailing Amero, but still get twisted about trying to explain how she's guilty of something), it sounds like the prosecutors on the case may be recognizing that they were wrong. The sentencing has been delayed for another month, and the suggestion is that its the prosecution that's looking for a way to get out of this mess cleanly without looking too bad. In the meantime, the Hartford Courant put together a good article summarizing the details of the case that make it clear this whole thing was something of a witch hunt.

(Via Techdirt.)

Secure Programming Exams Launched - Jacob Quoted in article!!!!

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An anonymous reader writes "The SANS Software Security Institute, in conjunction with organizations such as Siemens, Symantec, Juniper, OWASP, and Virginia Tech, has announced a program for testing whether programmers know how to write secure code. The Secure Programming Skills Assessment is split into separate language families (C/C++, Java/J2EE, Perl/PHP, and ASP/.NET). Director of research Alan Paller says 'This assessment and certification program will help programmers learn what they don't know, and help organizations identify programmers who have solid security skills.' The pilot exam will be held in Washington DC in August, followed by a global rollout."

(Via Slashdot.)

CNN: Military Sources Respond To McCain’s Escalation Remark With ‘Laughter Down The Line’

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Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told radio host Bill Bennett that President Bush’s escalation is working. “There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today,” he said. Today, when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked McCain why Americans still aren’t able to safely leave the Green Zone in Iraq, the senator replied that Blitzer was giving three-month-old talking points:


General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee. I think you oughta catch up. You are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media.


But according to CNN reporter Michael Ware, who has been in Iraq for four years, McCain is “way off base.” He stated, “To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.”


Ware also rebutted McCain’s assertion that Petaeus travels in an unarmed humvee: “[I]n the hour since Sen. McCain’s said this, I’ve spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed.” Watch it:



Screenshot


(Crooks and Liars has more.)

(Via Think Progress.)

Web Services Coming To Twitter

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twitter.pngEarlier this year we talked about the usefulness of a simple command line to query multiple web services via a set syntax. Yubnub, one of the web services we discussed, does just that. Enter “Weather 90210″ into Yubnub and get the weather from Weather.com. Or query thousands of other services with that single command line.


A subtle upcoming change to Twitter’s API will allow this kind of functionality, too. Twitter, which is a kind of social network around sms/text messages, has a rapidly growing community of users that spend hours each day sending text messages about what they are doing or thinking. To post a message, a user simply texts the message they want to post to “40404.” Anyone who cares to follow the meanderings of another user can do so. All messages from people you follow can be seen on your Twitter page and, optionally, delivered to your mobile device via SMS.


A popular feature with Twitter is a “direct” message that you send to just a single friend. The syntax is simple - you type “d [username] [your message].”


Until now, Twitter’s API hasn’t allowed you to access those direct messages though. With today’s API addition, you can now retrieve Twitter direct messages. What does that mean? A lot, quite frankly.


Users can now send a command (”direct message”) to a username which is just a name for a web service like weather.com. For example, there could be a Twitter username “weather”, which I could send a Twitter message of “d weather 14202″ by text, web, or IM. The Twitter username “weather” could get this command (er, Twitter “direct message”) via the API, run a process on a web server to retrieve the current weather forecast for 14202, and send that as a direct message back to me ( i.e. “d TechCrunch Currently: Partly Cloudy, 50F. Tomorrow’s Forecast: AM Clouds/PM Sun. High: 55 Low: 40″).


Or there could be a username “score”, which you could send “d score Yankees”, to immediately request the score of the Yankees game. Or another example could be “d 411 Starbucks 14202″ to retrieve the phone number of the closest Starbucks to zip code 14202.


Currently, it costs a lot of money to launch a start-up in the SMS/mobile space — you have to license a shortcode monthly ($500-$1000/mo), pay a SMS gateway provider, and then pay anywhere from $0.03 - $0.05 per inbound or outbound text message. It adds up. But now, if a start-up chooses to use Twitter as a command line to their web service, it’s free (until Twitter starts charging for it).


As you can tell, the one thing that is kind of annoying is prefacing messages with “d”, but Twitter is internally discussing use of “@” as possibly becoming the equivalent of “d” — I hope they do this. Currently, people are using “@(username)” to publicly reply to other Twitter messages — which can be annoying if you’re a friend of a user that is replying to what another user said (and you don’t even know what was originally said).


The updated Twitter API code should be posting live by morning and accompanying API documentation should be posted by the end of today as well.

(Via TechCrunch.)

The Filter: Instant Playlists for iTunes

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The Filter

The Filter, an ‘instant playlist generator plugin for iTunes’, just launched today. This little plugin, backed by Peter Gabriel, is a great way to build playlists of music on the fly.


The Filter

You can create playlists in a number of ways, but what seems the most intuitive and accurate for me is selecting a few songs that you’re in the “mood” for and then hitting the “F” on The Filter. The Filter then immediately creates a playlist for you with around two dozen songs based on factors such as your listening habits and the listening habits of other users.


This thing is freakishly good at creating playlists you’d like. I’m not kidding.


Setup was a bit clunky at first and it still seems to have a couple of moments where it feels slow, but otherwise this really is one of my favorite new gadgets for consuming music.


Be sure to check out the screencast that covers a lot of the functionality of it.


Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

(Via The Apple Blog.)