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The Media

Murdoch Says, "We'll Charge For All Our Sites" 881

Posted by timothy from the subverting-the-dominant-paradigm dept.
Oracle Goddess writes "In what appears to be a carefully planned suicide, Rupert Murdoch announced that his media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape. 'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,' Murdoch said."
Music

EMI Only Selling CDs To Mega-Chains From Now On 334

Posted by samzenpus from the another-brick-in-the-wall dept.
farrellj writes "According to Zeropaid, record company EMI has been notifying small music stores that they will no longer be able to buy EMI CDs from EMI, and will have to buy product from mega-chains like Walmart. Independent record store customers are some of the most loyal music buyers around. You are not going to find the back catalog, what used to be the staple of the music business, at your local Walmart. One wonders when the music business is going to run out of feet to shoot?"
Security

Could Cyber-Terrorists Provoke Nuclear Attacks? 183

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the telling-woprs dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that according to a study commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), a joint initiative of the Australian and Japanese Governments, terrorists could use information warfare techniques to make a nuclear attack more likely — triggering a catastrophic chain of events that may be an easier alternative 'than building or acquiring a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb themselves.' While the possibility of a radical group gaining access to actual launch systems is remote, the study suggests that terrorists could focus on feeding in false information further down the chain — or spreading fake information to officials in a carefully orchestrated strike. According to the study 'Hacking Nuclear Command and Control' [PDF], cyber-terrorists could 'provoke a nuclear launch by spoofing early warning and identification systems or by degrading communications networks.' Since command and control systems are placed at a higher degree of exploitation due to the need for rapid decisions under high pressure with limited intelligence, cyber-terrorists 'would not need deception that could stand up over time; they would only need to be believable in the first 15 minutes or so.'"
The Internet

AT&T Blocks Part of 4chan 342

Posted by timothy from the do-you-hear-that-tremendous-whining-noise? dept.
holdenkarau writes "Several news sources (Mashable, The Inquistr, etc.) are reporting that AT&T is blocking img.4chan.org in the southern United States. That server is used for the infamous /b/ board (the home of anonymous). TechCrunch calls the decision to block 4chan 'stupid,' noting that they may have 'opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms.' The Inquisitr suggests that 'The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free.' moot (who runs 4chan) asks users to call AT&T, while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber)." Update: 07/27 09:23 GMT by T : Readers' comments below suggest that a) the purpose of the block was to curtail the effects of a serious DDoS attack and b) that the block has now been lifted, at least for some regions.
The Internet

EU Publishers Want a Law To Control Online News 168

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the protect-yourself-right-out-of-the-market dept.
suraj.sun writes with news that European publishers are also seeking ways to "protect" their content from the big bad intertubes. Their rant, termed the "Hamburg Declaration," asks the government to step in with a legislative fix. "Most of the statements in the relatively short declaration, which will surely take its place among thousands of other European declarations on intellectual property and other matters that have come out over the past few years, hinge on the idea that 'universal access to news' does not equal 'free.' In this respect, the publishers want to maintain the democratic ideal of a 'fourth estate' that provides news to an informed citizenry, while simultaneously restricting access to that news to those who can pay for it directly. What sets this declaration apart from the other Hamburg declarations out there, or from the various Geneva declarations or Berlin declarations, is that this one is intended to give the publishers' favorite solution to the news-stealing problem, the Automated Content Access Protocol, the force of law."

Comment Taxi Drivers (Score 1) 519

by 68kmac (#28634175) Attached to: Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge?

Somewhat related: These days even the taxi drivers don't know the way any more. It used to be such that you could jump into a taxi, mention the address and off we'd go.

Last time I used a taxi, the driver asked me for directions. Then, when I couldn't provide them, I had to spell out the address for him (he hadn't heard of the street before) so that he could type it into his sat-nav.

Not sure if that's really a problem, but I somehow felt cheated. Isn't it his job to know these things?
Censorship

Submission + - German member of parliament joins Pirate PArty

Submitted by Political Observer
Political Observer writes: Jörg Tauss, member of the German Parliament, Bundestag, left the social democratic party SPD, which is part of a coalition government, and announced (German article on his site) to join the German Pirate Party. He left the SPD after most members of the party voted for a new censorship law which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at blocking child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS based content blocking and is subject of major critics from Internet users.

In March 2009 Tauss became subject of investigations by the German police for owning child pornographic material. He said he owned this material only due to research as part of his role as member of parliament. Investigations are still running.
Censorship

Submission + - German Member of Parliament supports Pirate Party 1

Submitted by
erlehmann
erlehmann writes: "On todays rally against internet censorship in Berlin, German long-term member of parliament Jörg Tauss announced he had quit the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and will support the Pirate Party in the upcoming elections (Twitter status, press statement, both in German). Tauss, Member of Parliament since 1994, is widely regarded as an internet expert and was one of only 4 politicians of the ruling coalition voting against the bill implementing secret lists of censored web content under the guise of fighting child porn, which has since become law.

Critics point to an ongoing investigation against Tauss regarding child porn, while he himself says he only purchased the pictures in question to prove that the internet is not a primary distribution channel and had hopes of blowing up a child porn ring. The Social Democratic Party has asked Tauss to resign from parliament after he quit the party."
Censorship

Submission + - Pirate Party may enter German parliament

Submitted by
pirap
pirap writes: "Today Joerg Tauss (SPD) announced the leave from his party due to a recently decided law which introduces entry-censorship in the German internet. As he is currently a member of the German parliament and just confirmed his application for the German Pirate Party (German press release), he may become the first pirate in a national parliament until the next elections in September."
Medicine

WHO Declares H1N1's Spread Officially a Pandemic 368

Posted by timothy from the didn't-you-see-pandemic-in-concert-with-sepultura? dept.
juggledean writes "The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global flu pandemic after holding an emergency meeting, according to reports. It means the swine flu virus is spreading in at least two regions of the world with rising cases being seen in the UK, Australia, Japan and Chile." Whether it's called a pandemic or not, there's a hopeful note in the story about H1N1's spread: "...there were people who believed we might be in a kind of apocalyptic situation and what we're really seeing now with H1N1 is that in most cases the disease is self-limiting."
Java

Java Gets New Garbage Collector, But Only If You Buy Support 587

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the putting-on-the-squeeze dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The monetization of Java has begun. Sun released the Java 1.6.0_14 JDK and JRE today which include a cool new garbage collector called G1. There is just one catch. Even though it is included in the distribution, the release notes state 'Although G1 is available for use in this release, note that production use of G1 is only permitted where a Java support contract has been purchased.' So the Oracle touch is already taking effect. Will OpenJDK be doomed to a feature-castrated backwater while all the good stuff goes into the new Java SE for Business commercial version?"
Space

Star Trek's Warp Drive Not Impossible 541

Posted by samzenpus from the engage dept.
Trunks writes "No doubt trying to ride the hype train that's currently going for the new Star Trek film, Space.com has a new article detailing how warp drive may not be impossible to acheive. From the article: '"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving." One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang. "If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.' Simple, right?"
Businesses

Time Warner To Spin Off AOL 141

Posted by samzenpus from the goodbye dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Time Warner is inching closer to untangling one of the worst mergers in American corporate history that began with the merger of Time Warner with America Online, a deal that has resulted in the evaporation of more than $100 billion of shareholder value. "Although the company's board of directors has not made any decision, the company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner's stockholders, in one or a series of transactions," Time Warner said in the filing. Tech industry analysts have speculated for years that Time Warner would spin off AOL; the two companies merged in 2001 with the idea that AOL's strengths as a new media company could benefit an old media company like Time Warner, and vice versa. But few synergies ever arose from the marriage and even AOL founder Steve Case, who is no longer with the company, has said that he believes the two companies should be separated."

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