Comment Re:US POLITICAL PRESSURE FOR THIS LAW (Score 1) 103
Someone did the translation: Opinión angloparlante de la polemica ley de internet.
Comment Re:Duh. (Score 1) 103
"And contrary to pirate's popular myth, its not always multinational, multi billion dollar companies. Many photographers, artists, writers, and developers are as small as one man shops".
In the later case, their main problem is not piracy, but amateurs and copyleft/CC authors who freely distribute their creations on the net. In the days of digital cameras, blogs, e-books and social networks, almost *everybody is an author*, who compete for attention.
Comment Re:US POLITICAL PRESSURE FOR THIS LAW (Score 1) 103
It's been already twitted and RT'd. Thanks, it's very interesting.
Submission + - Internet uprising in Spain against proposed change (google.com)
[rvr] writes: Last Monday, the Spanish Goverment published the latest draft for the Sustainable Economy Act, which would enable a Commission dependent of the Ministry of Culture to take down websites without a court order, in cases of Intellectual Property piracy. On Wednesday, using Google Wave, a group journalists, bloggers, professionals and creators composed and issued a Manifesto in Defense of Fundamental Rights on the Internet, stating that "Copyright should not be placed above citizens' fundamental rights to privacy, security, presumption of innocence, effective judicial protection and freedom of expression". Quickly, more than 50,000 blogs and sites re-published the manifesto. On Thursday morning, the Ministry of Culture Ángeles González Sinde (former president of the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) organized a meeting with a group of Internet experts and signers of the Manifesto. The meeting was narrated in real time via Twitter and concluded without any agreement. On Thursday afternoon, the Prime Minister's staff had a private meeting with the Ministry of Culture and some party members (who also expressed their oposition to the draft). Finally, Spain Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced in a press meeting that the text will be changed and court order will continue to be a requirement, but still will search for ways to fight Internet piracy. However, many activists remain skeptic about this announcement.
Submission + - Does computer science matter anymore? (networkworld.com)
stinkymountain writes: Not really, according to CIOs and IT staffing firms. "Computer science degrees mattered a lot 20 or 15 years ago, when IT was a cost center. But the job of being in IT has completely changed. The huge IT budgets are not even under CIOs; they're under the lines of business," says David Foote, CEO of Foote Partners, which conducts a quarterly survey of IT skills and pay. "This has brought in a whole new group of IT skills that come out of mathematics, economics, business and marketing."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040609-hot-tech-skills.html?hpg1=bn
Comment TypePad AntiSpam (Score 1) 183
TypePad Antispam is an open source project and a commercial (but free) service. The core is released as open source (GPL2) so you can install your own instance of TypePad Antispam in your servers. It has an Akismet compatible API and plugins already exist for Movable Type, WordPress and other CMSs.
The free service is what TypePad uses, and has some extensions not released in the open source version, so has some advantages to a single installation.
Google Native Client Puts x86 On the Web 367
t3rmin4t0r writes "Google has announced its Google native client, which enables x86 native code to be run securely inside a browser. With Java applets already dead and buried, this could mean the end of the new war between browsers and the various JavaScript engines (V8, Squirrelfish, Tracemonkey). The only question remains whether it can be secured (ala ActiveX) and whether the advantages carry over onto non-x86 platforms. The package is available for download from its Google code site. Hopefully, I can finally write my web apps in asm." Note: the Google code page description points out that this is not ready for production use: "We've released this project at an early, research stage to get feedback from the security and broader open-source communities." Reader eldavojohn links to a technical paper linked from that Google code page [PDF] titled "Native Client: A Sandbox for Portable, Untrusted x86 Native Code," and suggests this in-browser Quake demo, which requires the Native Code plug-in.
Submission + - CORRECTED ISBN for the OS X post on the front page (slashdot.org)
Fiery writes: "The OS X book review on the front page has the ISBN as "780596529529". It's actually preceded by a 9 — "9780596529529". Y'all should update this as it's very helpful when trying to find the book on various sites."
Comment News at eleven (Score 3, Funny) 156
Microsoft Plans *.* Competitor
Schools Banning Homework? 534
theodp writes "Alarmed by indicators of student stress like cheating and substance abuse, some SF Bay Area schools are reducing an education staple: homework. Homework is mostly banned at Menlo Park's Oak Knoll School, but some teachers apparently have higher 'expections' [sic]."
The Need For A Tagging Standard 200
John Carmichael writes "Tags are everywhere now. Not just blogs, but famous news sites, corporate press bulletins, forums, and even Slashdot. That's why it's such a shame that they're rendered almost entirely useless by the lack of a tagging standard with which tags from various sites and tag aggregators like Technorati and Del.icio.us can compare and relate tags to one another.
Depending on where you go and who you ask, tags are implemented differently, and even defined in their own unique way. Even more importantly, tags were meant to be universal and compatible: a medium of sharing and conveying info across the blogosphere — the very embodiment of a semantic web. Unfortunately, they're not. Far from it, tags create more discord and confusion than they do minimize it.
I have to say, it would be nice to just learn one way of tagging content and using it everywhere.""
Comment They did a bait and switch (Score 1) 98
Not just with the IPTV loophole, but on the commissioners too. Adelstein said: "the Commission takes a long-awaited and momentous step in this Order by requiring the applicants to maintain neutral network and neutral routing in the provision of their wireline broadband Internet access service. This provision was critical for my support of this merger and will serve as a "5th principle," ensuring that the combined company does not privilege, degrade, or prioritize the traffic of Internet content, applications or service providers, including their own affiliates."
but Martin said "These conditions are voluntary, enforceable commitments by AT&T but are not general statements of Commission policy and do not alter Commission precedent or bind future Commission policy or rules."
More here
but Martin said "These conditions are voluntary, enforceable commitments by AT&T but are not general statements of Commission policy and do not alter Commission precedent or bind future Commission policy or rules."
More here
Apple Announces More Options Troubles 159
fremen writes "Apple today announced that they will be withdrawing their financial reports back to September 29, 2002 and delaying the filing of future reports after finding more backdated options problems. Companies backdate their stock options by looking back over a period of time and choosing a historical low as the option strike price. While not illegal, this must be fully disclosed to investors and properly accounted. Expect more uncertainty in the coming weeks as regulators must now uncover how much of Apple's record profits were incorrect as well as whether or not Steve Jobs will be able to continue leading the company."
Full Body Dance Dance Revolution 125
tasty_beanburger writes "NewScientistTech has a story about a full body version of Dance Dance Revolution. It uses vision recognition to award points after assessing a player's ability to correctly mimic silhouetted dance shapes. Check out the video clip of it being demoed at SIGGRAPH 2006."
Comment Neutrality vs. priority tubes (Score 2, Interesting) 664
Reviewing the transcript, I see a rough analogy that can be grasped in a few minutes by many people. My bank uses vacuum tubes to conduct transactions. The Internet is made up of millions of vacuum tubes, each carrying deposits of requests and withdrawals of results. This analogy is more effective than many of my attempted explanations. The speaker states that mail should be the highest priority of the tubes. Neutral pipes are essential to the development of new architectures. I agree that some email should be delivered with more urgency than non-streaming media downloads.
Were the pros of neutrality reported in terms easily grasped by politicians?
Is the chosen analogy flawed beyond any hope of effectiveness?
Was every word of speech written ahead of time by someone else?
Were the pros of neutrality reported in terms easily grasped by politicians?
Is the chosen analogy flawed beyond any hope of effectiveness?
Was every word of speech written ahead of time by someone else?
