Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Feed Google News Sci Tech: FCC Will Consider 'Hybrid' Approach to Net Neutrality - io9 (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Forbes
FCC Will Consider 'Hybrid' Approach to Net Neutrality
io9
The Federal Communications Commission will soon consider a proposal that would grant the agency regulatory authority over the flow of Internet traffic between content providers and Internet service providers, the New York Times reports.
FCC Head Seeks to Retain Last-Mile Wholesale Access for CLECsChannel Partners
FCC seeks to expand phone net neutrality rules to broadbandDaily Digest
FCC's Wheeler may become ISPs' worst nightmare with hybrid approach: Here's ... Tech Times
Uncover California-Modern Readers-Businessweek
all 225 news articles

Submission + - Is Public Debate of Trade Agreements Against the Public Interest? 1

Submitted by onproton
onproton writes: The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being negotiated in secret, has been subject to numerous draft leaks that indicate these talks are potentially harmful to everything from public health to internet freedom. So why isn’t the public involved, and why are the terms of the agreement being debated bend closed doors? According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to “public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done.” Leaving one to question how revealing the full context and scope of the agreement talks would lead to an increase in misinformation rather than clarity.

Feed Techdirt: After Protests Continue, Hungary Dumps Stupid Internet Tax Idea (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder
Earlier this week, we wrote about widespread demonstrations against a monumentally stupid plan by the Hungarian government to tax internet usage on a per-gigabyte-downloaded plan. The protests caused the government to "modify" the plan and put a cap on how much tax would be charged, but that seemed to do little to stop the complaints -- and thus, the government is shelving the plan entirely, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban announcing that the "tax in its current form cannot be introduced." Of course, that leaves open the possibility of it coming back in "another" form. But perhaps Orban is learning not to take on the internet. An analysis from the BBC talks about why Orban backed down:

Viktor Orban does not often back down, but he has done so on this occasion for several reasons.
  • He saw how unpopular the tax was. He managed with one stroke to do something which opposition leaders had tried and failed to do for five years: unify his opponents
  • He took on the best-organised community in the country - internet users - and lost
  • The government's communication methods failed again - as they have with almost every major decision since Fidesz came to power
  • "We are not Communists. We don't go against the will of the people," he said - a sign that growing comparisons between Fidesz and the old Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party are hitting the mark.
At the very least, this is yet another example of how the public is not willing to just roll over when politicians attack the internet.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story








Submission + - Vulnerabilities Found In More Command-Line Tools (itworld.com) 2

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The critical Shellshock vulnerabilities found last month in the Bash Unix shell have motivated security researchers to search for similar flaws in old, but widely used, command-line utilities. Two remote command execution vulnerabilities were patched this week in the popular wget download agent and tnftp client for Unix-like systems. This comes after a remote code execution vulnerability was found last week in a library used by strings, objdump, readelf and other command-line tools.

Submission + - First Detailed Data Analysis Shows Exactly How Comcast Jammed Netflix

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: John Oliver calls it "cable company fuckery" and we've all suspected it happens. Now on Steven Levy's new Backchannel publication on Medium, Susan Crawford delivers decisive proof, expertly dissecting the Comcast-Netflix network congestion controversy. Her source material is a detailed traffic measurement report (.pdf) released this week by Google-backed M-Lab — the first of its kind — showing severe degradation of service at interconnection points between Comcast, Verizon and other monopoly "eyeball networks" and "transit networks" such as Cogent, which was contracted by Netflix to deliver its bits. The report shows that interconnection points give monopoly ISPs all the leverage they need to discriminate against companies like Netflix, which compete with them in video services, simply by refusing to relieve network congestion caused by external traffic requested by their very own ISP customers. And the effects victimize not only companies targeted but ALL incoming traffic from the affected transit network. The report proves the problem is not technical, but rather a result of business decisions. This is not technically a Net neutrality problem, but it creates the very same headaches for consumers, and unfair business advantages for ISPs. In an accompanying article, Crawford makes a compelling case for FCC intervention.

Submission + - Secret manuals show the spyware sold to despots and cops worldwide (firstlook.org)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: The manuals describe Hacking Team’s software for government technicians and analysts, showing how it can activate cameras, exfiltrate emails, record Skype calls, log typing, and collect passwords on targeted devices. They also catalog a range of pre-bottled techniques for infecting those devices using wifi networks, USB sticks, streaming video, and email attachments to deliver viral installers. With a few clicks of a mouse, even a lightly trained technician can build a software agent that can infect and monitor a device, then upload captured data at unobtrusive times using a stealthy network of proxy servers, all without leaving a trace. That, at least, is what Hacking Team’s manuals claim as the company tries to distinguish its offerings in the global marketplace for government hacking software.

Submission + - Comet Summer Siding's about to graze Mars' orbit. Could we use this? (cnet.com)

Submitted by tqk
tqk writes: The linked article explains that this thing started on its way here a million years ago. It's going to be going back out there. That would be one seriously celestial bird's eye view. That got me thinking.

We already have another mission about to harpoon an asteroid. Well, how about we try to harpoon Summer Siding and hitch a ride. It's handling the propulsion problem. We just have to meet it on its way through our neighbourhood. I'm imagining some sort of automated observatory.

Has this idea been considered (and shot down for a million reasons) before? If we can't use Summer Siding this way (it was only discovered in 2013), how about we gin something up for the next traveller that comes through? And the next one, and the next one, ... Pretty soon, we'd have a constellation of these things way the hell out there reporting back everything they can see.

That would be really cool, I think, not to mention pretty useful.

Submission + - Apple Doesn't Design for Yesterday

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Erik Karjaluoto writes that he recently installed OS X Yosemite and his initial reaction was “This got hit by the ugly stick.” But Karjaluoto says that Apple’s decision to make a wholesale shift from Lucida to Helvetica defies his expectations and wondered why Apple would make a change that impedes legibility, requires more screen space, and makes the GUI appear fuzzy? The Answer: Tomorrow.

Microsoft’s approach with Windows, and backward compatibility in general, is commendable. "Users can install new versions of this OS on old machines, sometimes built on a mishmash of components, and still have it work well. This is a remarkable feat of engineering. It also comes with limitations—as it forces Microsoft to operate in the past." Bu Apple doesn't share this focus on interoperability or legacy. "They restrict hardware options, so they can build around a smaller number of specs. Old hardware is often left behind (turn on a first-generation iPad, and witness the sluggishness). Meanwhile, dying conventions are proactively euthanized," says Karjaluoto. "When Macs no longer shipped with floppy drives, many felt baffled. This same experience occurred when a disk (CD/DVD) reader no longer came standard." In spite of the grumblings of many, Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn’t later look upon as the right choice.

What about the change to Helvetica? It ties to the only significant point in yesterday’s iMac announcement: Retina displays. Just take a look at Helvetica on any high-fidelity screen, and you see a crisp, economical, and adaptable type system. "Sure, Helvetica looks crummy on your standard resolution screen," concludes Karjaluoto. "The people at Apple are OK with this temporary trade-off. You’re living in Apple’s past, and, in time, you’ll move forward. When you do, you’ll find a system that works as intended: because Apple skates to where the puck is going to be."

Submission + - AMD Launches Radeon R7 Series Solid State Drives With OCZ (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD is launching a new family of products today, but unless you follow the rumor mill closely, it's probably not something you'd expect. It's not a new CPU, APU, or GPU. Today, AMD is launching its first line of solid state drives (SSDs), targeted squarely at AMD enthusiasts. AMD is calling the new family of drives, the Radeon R7 Series SSD, similar to its popular mid-range line of graphics cards. The new Radeon R7 Series SSDs feature OCZ and Toshiba technology, but with a proprietary firmware geared towards write performance and high endurance. Open up one of AMD's new SSDs and you'll see OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller on board—the same controller used in the OCZ Vector 150, though it is clocked higher in these drives. That controller is paired to A19nm Toshiba MLC (Multi-Level Cell) NAND flash memory and a DDR3-1333MHz DRAM cache. The 120GB and 240GB drives sport 512MB of cache memory, while the 480GB model will be outfitted with 1GB. Interestingly enough, AMD Radeon R7 Series SSDs are some of the all-around, highest-performing SATA SSDs tested to date. IOPS performance is among the best seen in a consumer-class SSD, write throughput and access times are highly-competitive across the board, and the drive offered consistent performance regardless of the data type being transferred. Read performance is also strong, though not quite as stand-out as write performance.

Submission + - Poll: Magnets near my electronics?

Submitted by TWX
TWX writes: Poll Options:
Get that thing away from me!
I know in my head it's fine, but no.
Eh, whatever.
Pretty magnets stuck to my case.
Tablet magnetized to my case!

Submission + - Ridiculous Patent Troll Gets Stomped By CAFC (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've written a few times about Vringo, a patent troll (which got its name, and public stock status, from a reverse merger with a basically defunct public "video ringtone" company and a pure patent troll called I/P Engine). The company was using some very broad patents (6,314,420 and 6,775,664) to claim that Google and Microsoft were infringing based on how their search ad programs worked ..

The case took a slight detour into the bizarre when Microsoft not only settled with Vringo for $1 million — but also with a promise to pay 5% of whatever Google had to pay ..

Between February and now, however, something wonderful happened. That something wonderful was the Supreme Court's ruling in CLS Bank v. Alice. As we noted at the time, depending on how you read it, it certainly could be interpreted that nearly all software patents were invalid — even as the ruling itself insisted that wasn't the case. Still, the early returns are promising, with CAFC (apparently finally getting the message) starting to smack down software patents.

Submission + - Rightscorp's new plan: Pay our copyright fees, or we take your browser (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Online copyright cop charging $20 per song explains 2014 strategy to investors.

Internet copyright enforcer Rightscorp has told investors some revelatory details about its strategy in its second-quarter earnings call, as reported by TorrentFreak.

Rightscorp was founded to be a kind of RIAA-lite, getting online pirates to pay record companies and other rights-holders without the need to resort to high-stakes litigation. Instead, it creates e-mail notices demanding $20 per song from users it deems "repeat infringers" and insists that ISPs forward those notices.

The company is growing fast, but is still way, way in the red. Last year it earned $324,000 in revenue, while spending more than $2.1 million to run its operations. This year it's earning more revenue: $440,414 in the first six months of the year. However, operating costs during the same period have already hit $1.8 million.

Rightscorp's two marquee clients are BMG and Warner Music. Together, those two clients account for around one-third of Rightscorp's income.

The company is now working with more than 140 Internet service providers, although they provide differing levels of cooperation. Rightscorp's pitch to these ISPs is that since it has ironclad evidence of which users are "repeat infringers," they're obligated under copyright law to forward the notices; otherwise the ISPs become liable to a high-stakes copyright suit.

Submission + - Operation Spicer

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: ICAC blowtorch on Free Enterprise Foundation

As a corruption investigation of political funding began private hearings last July, the NSW National Party updated its 2010-11 accounts with an extra $300,000 that it had not declared to the Australian Electoral Commission.

The money involved an obscure funding body called the National Free Enterprise Foundation. It was spectacularly bad timing, coming as investigators for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption’s Operation Spicer were tracing the links between property developers, a different body based in Canberra called the Free Enterprise Foundation and the NSW Liberal Party.

ICAC’s public hearings for Operation Spicer, which resume on Wednesday, have already put the blowtorch on the Free Enterprise Foundation’s role in channelling prohibited donations to the NSW Liberals.

What is less known is that the National Party has its own Free Enterprise Foundation.

Slashdot Top Deals

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison

Close