Aaron5367 - Slashdot User

ISP Guarantees Net Neutrality, For a Fee 217

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @02:29AM from the what-price-fairness dept.

greedyturtle writes "Ars Technica has up an interesting article on the first ISP to guarantee network neutrality. It's called COmmunityPOwered Internet, aka Copowi. The offer of neutrality comes at a higher price — mostly due to uncompetitive telco line pricing schemes — $34 for 256K DSL, $50 for 1.5 Mbs, and $60 for 7 Mbps. The owner claims to need only 5,000 subscribers to move his ISP into the national arena from the 12 Western states where it now operates. Would you be willing to spend the extra bucks for network neutrality?"

Submission + - Google Throws Lead Paint on Movie Download Market 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19, 2007 @02:58PM

An anonymous reader writes: As promised Google shut down its video store Wednesday — and its DRM made sure all movie files purchased from the store ceased to funtion. This has sparked a firestorm of negative commentary from the Digerati who see it as pure theft. Cory Doctorow called it "...a giant, flaming middle finger, sent by Google and the studios to the customers who were trusting (as in dumb) enough to buy DRM videos". John Dvorak called it "old bait-and-switch tactics" where vendors make promises, but build-in the ability to reneg on those promises if they choose to do so later. Both Dvorak and Doctorow call for the judicial system to step in, but MP3 Newswire says that the abuse to consumer trust will do more damage to the paid download market than anything the courts could inflict. "As a consumer, if you purchase a digital movie file online only to have it unexpectedly repossessed you will probably think twice before ever buying any such download again. If you do consider it again it certainly won't be for the same price as before. Experience made these downloads worth far less to you. So what are feature film downloads that can be revoked at any time worth in the market place? To some Google Video customers the value of a movie download dropped all the way down to zero."

Submission + - Brit social services try to censor Youtube

Submitted by Kedyn's Crow on Sunday August 19, 2007 @12:13AM

Kedyn's Crow writes: Britain's social services, citeng the Data Protection Act, are trying to remove a audio recording from youtube. The recording posted by expectant parents Vanessa and Martin Brookes , shows social services attepting to force the adoption of her unborn child in spite of their own belief that there was "no immediate risk to your child from yourselves"

Submission + - RIAA Adds 23 Colleges to Hit List, Avoids Harvard

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Sunday July 22, 2007 @10:37PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike."

High-Tech Squirrels Trained to Conduct Espionage 269

Posted by Zonk on Sunday July 22, 2007 @07:37PM from the the-weekly-world-news dept.

Pcol writes "In the July 20 issue of the Washington Post, columnist Al Kamen reports that the BBC has translated a story headlined 'spying squirrels,' published in the Iranian newspaper Resalat on the use of trained animals to conduct espionage against their country: 'A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes.' According the story the squirrels had 'GPS devices, bugging instruments and advanced cameras' in their bodies. 'Given the fast speed and the special physical features of these animals, they provide special capabilities for spying operations. Once the animals return to their place of origin, the intelligence gathered by them is then offloaded. . . .' Iranian police officials captured the squirrels before they could carry out their assignments."

Submission + - Singapore cracks down on Anime, RIAA style (animenewsnetwork.com)

Submitted by Otaku on Sunday July 22, 2007 @01:38AM

Otaku writes: The Straits Times reports that The Anti-Video Piracy Association of Singapore (AVPAS), the equivalent for RIAA in anime representing giant distributor Odex (owning 90% of rights in anime titles), is serving out hundreds of legal letters to individual downloaders of anime and fansubs in Singapore without advance warning. The largest local forum HardWareZone reports that users who received the letter are ordered to pay out-of-court settlements for around US$2500, and come mostly from a single ISP that is linked to the government.

Odex has been said to be facing financing difficulties due to its inferior product quality (notably, Engrish) sold on market that is said to be worse than what fans download. The action angers several hardcare fans who call for boycott of Odex, and worry about the future of the anime scene in Singapore.

Submission + - Is there any future left for us in space?

Submitted by jollyreaper on Sunday June 10, 2007 @04:19PM

jollyreaper writes: I was born in the late 70's and cut my science geek teeth on the promise of a better tomorrow. NASA had all these bold ideas of where we'd be going and what we'd be doing. What happened to the future we were promised? For a microcosm of what's happened to our national ambition, look at Epcot. Epcot, "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow." According to Wikipedia, "It was dedicated to international culture and technological innovation." And you know something? I remember it being that way as a kid. It was Disney for geeks. I remember seeing hydroponics, technology demos from our leading corporations, showcasing the bleeding edge of human innovation. And even that was a downscaling of Disney's original vision. But what's it about now? Minimized expectations. It's just another theme park, another way to surgically extract money from the wallets of indifferent tourists. Instead of doing and being something visionary, Disney executives settled for mediocrity and the fast buck.

NASA seems to share more in common with Disney these days than just proximity. The shuttle program has been described as a 30 year detour for the American space program. The shuttle was designed by a committee to satisfy multiple contradicting goals, none of which remained by the time the vehicle was completed. It cost more than the disposable vehicles it replaced, could not go high enough to do anything interesting, possessed capabilities that proved unnecessary, and contained so many design compromises that many engineers thought it to be a widowmaker before Challenger was even lost. Right now NASA doesn't make headlines for shuttles blowing up, they make headlines for shuttles NOT blowing up. After the cancellation of several shuttle successors, NASA has decided to go back to capsules with Project Constellation. There are vague talks of moonbases and a showboat Mars mission that will undoubtedly be canceled after squandering millions, possibly billions of dollars. NASA at this point is divided between the manned space flight camp (a political creature which suffers for it) and the "everything else" camp which includes the wildly successful pure science missions. Nobody can agree on the agency's goals and, even they they could, political appointees will change with every administration and sabotage whatever progress has been made.

NASA at this point seems to be like an 800lb man, trapped in his own house, suffocating under his own weight, too far gone to do anything to change his condition, just waiting to die. I think NASA is a lost cause.

Who represents the future in space? The private concerns like Virgin Galactic? Perhaps SpaceX? Government-sponsored programs such as China and India's? And even at that, these efforts represent small thinking. Tourists in space? More communication satellites? Whatever happened to proper space colonies like O'Neill Habitats? What about solar power satellites? How about space mining and manufacturing? How about a cost-effective heavy lift vehicle like Sea Dragon? I suppose an Orion Drive vehicle might be too much to ask for, though I have heard that there might be ways to generate the nuclear-style explosions without fallout and environmental damage.

What I find the most frustrating here is that none of what I've mentioned is technologically infeasible, it is all within the realm of possibility. What is lacking is the political will to make it so. Of course, the same thing can be said about world hunger: we have the resources and technology to feed the world, what prevents that from happening is politics. Most wish-fulfillment sci-fi involves individual men and women of genius who are capable of developing and applying revolutionary technology while cleverly circumventing the stifling hand of government oversight and bureaucracy. That isn't how it works in the real world.

My question boils down to this: I'm not asking what is theoretically possible, I'm asking what we can realistically expect. What can we expect our future in space to be?

Submission + - Do you care that downloading music hurts artists?

Submitted by

Melugo

on Sunday June 10, 2007 @01:48PM

Melugo writes: "Yes
No
They have too much money anyway!"

Submission + - Pentagon considered building a 'gay bomb' (cbs5.com)

Submitted by

nicobn

on Sunday June 10, 2007 @01:13PM

nicobn writes: "Soldiers more interested in engaging sexual activities than fighting ? Interestingly enough, this is an idea coming from US Airforce's Wright lab. From the article: "A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.""

Apple's DRM Whack-a-Mole 352

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:08PM from the ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch dept.

Mateo_LeFou writes "Gulf News has a nice piece exposing the last couple generations of Apple's DRM strategy (you didn't really think they were abandoning DRM, did you?). Article focuses on how quickly the tactics are worked around, and how nasty the latest one is: purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network."

Microsoft, Sony Clash Over Vista Turbo Memory 161

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:25AM from the why-can't-we-just-get-along dept.

Anonymous writes "Sony is claiming that the current release of Vista does not support Intel's Turbo Memory technology, but Microsoft has dismissed the allegation. If Microsoft is telling the truth then all is well. But if Sony is right, Microsoft has opened itself to being sued for deceptive marketing practices."

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