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Submission + - YouTube Takedowns: Any 15-year old can do it

Submitted by BillGatesLoveChild
BillGatesLoveChild writes: Recently Slashdotters wondered how easy it would be to take down YouTube videos. Wonder no longer:

A 15-year old Australian Boy with nothing more than a HotMail account emailed YouTube saying he was the "Australian Broadcasting Corporation" and under the DMCA ordered YouTube to take down hundreds of videos. They did without immediately and without question. YouTube did not try and call the ABC back, nor ask why the email came from Hotmail. Given Cringely's recent report which lead to Slashdotters asking the question, YouTube seem remarkably slow to learn. How many more DMCA attacks will there be before they get the message?

Many of the Video's were from the ABC's The Chaser, including one where a prankster rolling a cigar asked Senator Hillary Clinton if he could be her new intern. The Chaser Staff were impressed with the youngster, "I don't think we should prosecute him — we should probably hire him."
America Online

Submission + - ACS (aka AOL's Crappy Software)

Submitted by
Speaker for the Masses
Speaker for the Masses writes: "Hiya Slashdotters. I just got done a reboot after using XP's Add/Remove feature to remove the program "AOL Connectivity Services from my computer. It boots up as a little AOL logo on my system tray that was impossible to close without going into CTL+ALT+DEL. I uninstalled it, and lo and behold, upon reboot, it's still there. According to XP though, it's no longer installed, but booted up like I hadn't done a thing to it. Any help for removing AOL software that DOESN'T involve formatting the HD?"
Data Storage

Submission + - Plextor Exits DVD drive market

Submitted by
mrshowtime
mrshowtime writes: "It's a shame, but Plextor, maker of the best DVD burners in the business has decided to exit the business. They cited competition from Korea and falling profit margins.
http://wesleytech.com/plextor-exits-cd-dvd-marke ts/"
Software

Journal Journal: Why "C:\Program Files\" ?!? 2

Journal by ChezWhiz
I've always installed software to the default location authored by the vendor, usually somewhere under "c:\Program Files\". Most installation software vendors (InstallShield, Wise, etc.) tout that location as an "industry standard best practice" for installing software on Windows systems and point to Microsoft's Application Development Guidelines. Now I'm working on the next release of some software that has been installed to a folder on the root of the hard drive for 25 years (that's not a ty
Businesses

Submission + - Whatever happened to Aerogel?

Submitted by
BK117
BK117 writes: "When I first saw the news releases for this amazing material (in the early 1990's) they said it would revolutionize refrigerators, hot water heaters and many other devices needing lightweight insulation. Well, I have yet to see any consumer-level appliances using aerogels. Why not?"
The Media

Submission + - Dinosaurs, humans coexist in U.S. creation museum

Submitted by jlowery
jlowery writes: Yeah, yeah: flamebait. But it's not the museum I find darkly amusing, it's the following paragraph in this Reuters story.

Mocking publicity is free publicity," Looy said. Besides, U.S. media have been more respectful, mindful perhaps of a 2006 Gallup Poll showing almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve, but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
I long for the days when journalists aspired to the old-fashioned ideal of being guardians of the truth. Instead, media chooses to be 'respectful' of quaint pre-19th century theologic explanations of the natural world just because half of Americans would rather be spoonfed fairy stories instead of cracking open a science book. If they did, they would soon understand how the miraculous world they live in today is due entirely to men and women applying the scientific method to understand the world around them.

While the truth may be murky at times, that does not mean that every half-baked extreme point of view has to be given equal deliberation or respect.
The Internet

Submission + - High Latency on my Internet Connection

Submitted by
Hoganchild
Hoganchild writes: "For the past week, my connection has been troubled with bouts of unusually high ping. Anyone who plays games online knows how frustrating it can be trying to play an FPS with a ping of about 150-200... It just doesn't work. It started sometime last Sunday, and has been popping up here and there ever since. It usually lasts a few hours, then goes away. I've scanned for spyware with spybot and adaware, and removed some "threats". I did the same with my antivirus (used AVG free, and avast!). When this didn't work, I promptly phoned my ISP, and was on the phone with tech support for at least an hour, trying to fix it. Alas, this was to no avail. My question is, is there anything I can do on my end, by tweaking my connection settings, or anything else, that can help stop this lag? I'm not running on a router or anything, my modem is hardwired directly to my pc. Any help would be greatly appreciated."
Microsoft

Submission + - Submitting Federal Proposals Requires Windows

Submitted by Petronius Arbiter
Petronius Arbiter writes: The US federal government is requiring that proposals for grants etc be submitted using a common system at http://grants.gov/ . That's would be a good idea, except that, effectively, you must use Windows and Explorer. See http://www.grants.gov/resources/download_software. jsp :

To operate PureEdge Viewer, your computer must meet the following system requirements: Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP... PureEdge on Grants.gov will not run within the Firefox browser.


They do have a Citrix substitute for non-Windows users. However:

Note that a limited amount of users can access the Citrix Server at any one time... Finally, you will find the best time to work and submit an application via Citrix is during off-peak hours, usually between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., EST.


Finally, if your organization has more than 10 non-Windows users, they want you to add a dedicated Windows box to handle the traffic.

Why is it legal for the federal government to require applicants to use an expensive, proprietary system with terrible security? This is particularly surprising because many technical people, from program officers to computer administrators, in the government personally like open source and detest MS.

As a crazy guess, over 100,000 different people each year submit proposals. That's 100,000 people who must have MS Windows licenses whether they want to or not.

Anyone who was concerned about the open format fight in Massachusetts last year should be concerned about grants.gov.

Finally, for National Science Foundation clients, this is a big step backwards. NSF has had an excellent online system, http://fastlane.nsf.gov/ for years. Fastlane has no bias towards MS. However, by federal edict, NSF people must also use grants.gov.
The Internet

Submission + - PirateBay raising funds to buy their own country!

Submitted by Adeptus_Luminati
Adeptus_Luminati writes: Check out the new logo on The Pirate Bay's (TPB) front page and you will notice it resembles that of the contravertial Sealand once featured (July 2000) in the front page of Wired magazine. Click on TPB's new logo and you will redirected to their buysealand.com website where they have setup a public forum allowing anonymous posts, but specifically stating their very brief Plan A & Plan B intentions and asking for Paypal donations. Apparently, the owners of Sealand are looking to sell the man-made island for an unspecified sum — which some external sources value at an incredible 750Million Euros! Seeing as the entire Wikipedia is struggling to raise even $1Million in donations, I doubt the TPB will succeed in raising enough funds... but hey, maybe if enough slashdotters contribute, perhaps they can at least proceed with a much needed paint job.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - RAW passes away

Submitted by flonker
flonker writes: Robert Anton Wilson passed away on 1/11/2007 at 4:50 AM. Details are available on his blog.
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - Peter Jackson 86ed from "Hobbit" In LOTR P

Submitted by
mbstone
mbstone writes: "Peter Jackson, who, of course, produced and directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has been blacklisted by New Line Cinema co-chairman Bob Shaye from directing any more films for the studio, specifically including the upcoming LOTR prequel, The Hobbit. Shaye's action was in response to Jackson's lawsuit in which he alleges the studio refuses to account for financial anomalies that he says surfaced from a partial audit of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and that it has denied his repeated requests to audit The Two Towers and The Return of the King. "
Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Anonymous comments 2

Journal by jesboat

I tend to get mod points with decent frequency, and often want to post and mod the same discussion. I'm perfectly happy to post the comments anon, to avoid the whole karma thing, but it would be nice if people could check that they still were written by me. Thus, this journal entry: in it, I'll note which anonymous comments are mine (and link here from the comments.)
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Apple witohut Jobs?

Submitted by CDPatten
CDPatten writes: The internet is buzzing with speculation that Steve Jobs may step down over reports that he profited $7.5 million in stock options by falsifying an executive board meeting. The financial times has a good overview of the unfolding story.

From the Article:

"Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorization from the company's board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs' remuneration, as required by Apple's procedures, were later falsified. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as it decides whether to pursue a case against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these people."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Live Mail (beta) snubs Linux users

Submitted by
tuxtattoo
tuxtattoo writes: "So it would seem that Microsoft is once again snubbing Linux users. Using Firefox to use the beta version of Microsoft's Live Mail seems to work just fine in OSX or Windows. But, it seems the same version of Firefox on Linux only warrants the "Lite" (ie — stripped down and super lame) version. See this message when logging in using Firefox in Linux:

"This version works better with your browser. The full version of Mail runs on Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher (make sure you check the system requirements before you install it). The full version also works on Firefox 1.5."

Further tests verify this is indeed the case. By changing your Firefox user agent to say your OS is OSX or Windows the full functionality becomes available to you in Linux. Going the other way, making your user agent say you are using Linux even though you are in Windows or OSX will give you the lite version.

I know, I'm lame for even having a hotmail account. I guess I deserve it."

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