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Comment Re:Ummm...NOT Open Source (Score 4, Informative) 74

by mmurphy000 (#29723103) Attached to: Android Application Development

It's only open source until Google decides that they don't want someone else using the "Open Source" code and files a court injunction as was done last week.

And your proof of this claim is...what, exactly?

Perhaps you are referring to an incident from about 2-3 weeks ago, when a ROM modder was sent a cease-and-desist letter by Google for including closed-source applications in his Android ROMs. The consensus opinion is that Google was legally right but clumsy in how they handled this incident. However, misrepresenting what happened helps nobody.

If you are going to bash, bash evenly.

Better yet, bash factually.

In the interest of full disclosure, per my sig, I'm involved in the Android development community.

Comment Re:There is no freedom on smartphones (Score 3, Insightful) 684

by mmurphy000 (#29413835) Attached to: IPhone 3.1 Update Disables Tethering

The difference with Android, versus the other two options, is that the hardware manufacturer and the OS implementer are decoupled.

Android supports root just fine. However, device manufacturers offer no official means to get to root and no official means to flash root-enabled system images. This is no different than Linux supporting root but TiVo not exactly enabling it on their DVRs.

What Android needs is some manufacturer to step up and offer root-capable devices, with limited muss or fuss.
Security

Submission + - Leaning Tower of Pisa Secure for 300 More Years

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Medieval architects only got as far as the third floor of the tower of Pisa before it began to lean in 1178 and by 1990 it had tilted more than four meters off its true vertical, with conservationists estimating that the entire 14,500-ton structure would collapse "some time between 2030 and 2040." Now the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been stabilized and declared safe for at least another three centuries after it was anchored to cables and lead counterweights while 70 tons of soil was removed from the north side — away from the lean — and cement was injected into the ground to relieve the pressure. The tilt has now returned to where it was in the early 19th century and architects say there was never any intention to straighten the 56m tower, only to stop it sinking further. Nicholas Shrady, author "Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa" says that the tower was destined to tilt from the outset because of the decision to build the tower "on what is essentially a former bog" and that the tower has previously come close to collapsing in 1838, 1934, and 1995. Although Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped cannon balls from the tower in a gravity experiment, Shrady says the myth is the "result of the overripe imagination of Galileo's secretary and first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani.""
Yahoo!

Submission + - SPAM: Carl Icahn Takes on Yahoo Board 1

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "In a letter distributed this morning to the press and addressed to Yahoo's board Chairman Roy Bostock, Carl Icahn charges the board with acting irrationally and losing the faith of shareholders and Microsoft and announces he is nominating 10 candidates to replace all incumbent directors at the company's shareholders meeting in July. The move, rumored since earlier this week, is intended to ultimately reignite merger negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft.

'It is quite obvious that Microsoft's bid of $33 per share is a superior alternative to Yahoo's prospects on a standalone basis. I am perplexed by the board's actions. It is irresponsible to hide behind management's more than overly optimistic financial forecasts,' Icahn wrote.
"
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - Is inexpensive video surveillance possible? 2

Submitted by timholman
timholman writes: After a series of burglaries and auto break-ins in my neighborhood, I'm thinking about adding some video security cameras to my home. To me, the object isn't just deterrence — if someone tries to break into my house or my car (parked on the street in front of my house), I'd like to provide a high quality image of the perpetrator to give to the police. Inexpensive video surveillance systems are nearly useless, since the image quality is atrocious. The problem is being able to get good image quality at an affordable price. After some research, I've decided that using network cameras to FTP images to a central server over a HomePlug network is the best solution. However, good megapixel network cameras (e.g. Stardot or Axis cameras) can easily cost more than $1000 each. Has any Slashdotter dealt with a similar situation? Is there any way to get reasonable quality (preferably open source) video surveillance equipment for home use (daytime and nightime) without paying an arm and a leg? Is it better to go with a couple of expensive cameras, or a multitude of inexpensive cameras? Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?
The Media

Submission + - Red scientology tomato rotting in Firehose? (slashdot.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A posting to the Slashdot Firehose related to a Wikinews story on Wikileaks and legal threats from Scientology, seems to be stuck in the Slashdot firehose red as a ripe tomato for more than 24 hours.
The story that covers a recent press release on Wikileaks relating to copyright claims made by the Church's legal representatives towards the published "Operating Thetan" cult manual, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in scam money, already spawned a hot discussion on the Wikinews portal. With critics of cult-critics trying to shut the story down for hours, it finally went online. And now seems stuck in the Firehose. One can only hope not for the wrong reasons.
The Courts

Submission + - Why Your e-Books Are No Longer Yours 1

Submitted by
Predictions Market
Predictions Market writes: "Gizmodo has an interesting analysis of the issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader and an answer to the fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book? In the fine print that you "agree" to, Amazon and Sony say you just get a license to the e-books — you're not paying to own 'em, in spite of the use of the term "buy." Digital retailers say that the first sale doctrine — which would let you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay — no longer applies. It's a license that you can't sell. But is this claim legal? Just because Sony or Amazon call it a license, that doesn't make it so. "That's a factual question determined by courts," says one lawyer. "Even if a publisher calls it a license, if the transaction actually looks more like a sale, users will retain their right to resell the copy.""
Government

Submission + - Church of Scientology violates Federal Law (rapidshare.com) 5

Submitted by
FreedomToThink
FreedomToThink writes: "This is a very long story I'm sure the editors will have fun with, but I couldn't see how to cut it down at all.

On the eve of the Ides of March protest, from the source of the recent 'Anonymous' submitted CCHR leak on wikileaks, comes this message

"Dear $cientology,You attempt injunctions.I respond.Shall we continue the game? Much Love, DEEP CLAM"

Included was yet another PDF this time including yet more emails leaked from a Church of Scientology front group.

Vote Rigging?

From: "Mike Kaplan" <mkaplan@tampabay.rr.com>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: Fw: RE-ELECT FRANK HIBBARD, MAYOR OF CLEARWATER
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 11:53:07 -0400

See below. Everyone in Clearwater MUST vote. Every vote will be needed to be
sure Hibbard gets re-elected. The alternative is Rita Garvey who is an SP.

— Original Message —
From: Shelly <mailto:shelly.bauer@Earthlink.net> Bauer
To: Shelly Bauer <mailto:shelly.bauer@earthlink.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 8:09 AM
Subject: RE-ELECT FRANK HIBBARD, MAYOR OF CLEARWATER

DO YOUR PART
RE-ELECT FRANK HIBBARD
MAYOR OF CLEARWATER
VOTE!!!
JANUARY 29TH
TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED!

Lunch with your preferred Presidential candidates for a high price?

ONE SEAT LEFT

I have arranged a private one-hour luncheon with Ron Paul on 11/28 in St.
Pete when he will be in town for the CNN/YouTube Republican debate.

This luncheon is reserved for $1000+ donors to Ron Paul's presidential
campaign. 19 people so far have paid and confirmed and will have the honor
and pleasure of having lunch and communicating with Ron Paul directly.


From the head of the "Non Proffit" CCHR Bruce Wiseman

Go the the HELP committee website. The link is here.
http://help.senate.gov/About.html
Here you will see the names of the Committee members on the left hand
side
of the page. Please go to the individual websites of the Republican =
members
(this will take just a bit of leg work on your part by putting their =
name
into Google) and calling their office or sending a fax to them (email is =
the
least effective) stating your opposition to S. 1375 The Mother's Act.


Currently, the law prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one "which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."

An OCMB (Operation Clambake Message Board)regular adds :

I downloaded myself a copy and started looking through them. I found an interesting one on pages 47-48.
http://rapidshare.com/files/99292051/CCHRLeak3.pdf.html

Karin Pouw of OSA of CofS writes a message.
It's forwarded by Michael Genung. He's the guy who runs ACSR, Association for Citizens Sociel Reform. http://www.citizensforsocialreform.org/ ["CSR Background and Philosopy: CSR was founded in 2001 by a group of Scientologists and other like-minded individuals concerned with the escalating social ills in society. CSR's purpose is to work with in the field of public policy to bring about more effective and humane solutions to these social ills of illiteracy, criminality substance abuse and general decay of character."]

Then it's forwarded by Doyle Mills, of LEAF fame (Letters to the Editor Attack Force).
Then it's forwarded by Mary C. (possibly one of two Mary C's I'm thinking of, but unsure).
Then it's forwarded by Mike Kaplan, another person who runs an email list and forwards CCHR type stuff to CofS members.

If that ain't stringing a line from the CofS to CCHR and the CofS front group ("grassroots") movements, then I don't know what is!


Apologies in advance as the Enturbulation servers will not be up to a slashdotting so the Coral Cache link is here Enturbulation Discussion (already cached for you)

ANYONE CAN REPORT TAX FRAUD DIRECTLY TO THE IRS : http://www.irs.gov/compliance/enforcement/article/0,,id=106778,00.html It does require that you print out and mail in an actual hardcopy, but it does not require you to identify yourself.

Just a casual user passing on a message from the Enturbulation forum, this is already out there, there's no reason to attack the messenger."
The Military

Submission + - Social Networking Goes to War in Iraq 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "More than 1,500 junior officers in Iraq — about a fifth of patrol leaders — are using a new technology called the Tactical Ground Reporting System, or TIGR, a map-centric application that junior officers can study before going on patrol and add to upon returning. By clicking on icons and lists, they can see the locations of key buildings, like mosques, schools, and hospitals, and retrieve information such as location data on past attacks, geotagged photos of houses and other buildings (taken with cameras equipped with Global Positioning System technology), and photos of suspected insurgents and neighborhood leaders. They can even listen to civilian interviews and watch videos of past maneuvers. It is just the kind of information that soldiers need to learn about Iraq and its perils. "The ability ... to draw the route ... of your patrol that day and then to access the collective reports, media, analysis of the entire organization, is pretty powerful," says Major Patrick Michaelis. "It is a bit revolutionary from a military perspective when you think about it, using peer-based information to drive the next move. ... Normally we are used to our higher headquarters telling the patrol leader what he needs to think.""
Music

Submission + - Apple cracks down on the Hymn Project (hymn-project.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ever since the initial launch of the iTunes Music Store, an intrepid group of programmers over at the Hymn Project have engaged in a marvelous cat-and-mouse game with Apple. Now they're finally being hobbled by Apple's lawyers.

The purpose of the project has always been to provide software that can be used to losslessly remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection from music purchased through iTunes, so that the buyer may exercise their right of fair use and play the music on non-Apple devices (Hear Your Music aNywhere).

The software has gone through many incarnations. The original hymn has been succeeded by JHymn, QTFairUse6, MyFairTunes, and others. Regardless of the program, the emphasis has always been squarely on fair use — not piracy. Any discussions of piracy have been strongly and actively discouraged on the site's forums.

For years now, Apple has been content to mostly ignore the Hymn Project. At worst, they would introduce subtle changes to new versions of iTunes that would break the Hymn software. Nobody really knows if this was done intentionally, but it was usually just a matter of time before a new solution was found. This seemed like a reasonable approach for Apple to take. After all, why should they care? The DRM was only in place to placate the record companies. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has even expressed his opinion that all music should be free of DRM.

Well, now things have changed. Recently, a new program called Requiem was announced that appears to be a complete crack of the iTunes DRM scheme. Previous programs had relied on various forms of trickery or memory hooks to access the unencrypted audio data — none had ever completely cracked the encryption algorithms.

Requiem seems to have been the last straw. Earlier this week, the ISP hosting the site received a Cease and Desist order from Apple Legal, demanding that all downloads be removed from the site, and that the site post no links to any programs that could remove DRM from Apple music or video. Reportedly, similar C & D orders were also sent to at least one of the project's developers, and to another ISP where Reqiuem had been hosted. Ironically, Requiem was never actually hosted on the Hymn site — merely mentioned and linked to in one of the forums. Nevertheless, the Hymn Project has now come into the crosshairs of Apple's lawyers and, lacking legal resources, has seen no choice but to comply with the order.
Businesses

Submission + - SPAM: The web vs. U.S. Bank

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Online information is creating problems for U.S. Bancorp. A new federal law lets customers opt-out of high-fee overdraft protection. In October a consumer site published an internal U.S. Bancorp memo, which inspired a Washington customer to confront a local manager who insisted that opting out was impossible. He ultimately received an apology from the bank's CEO — but two days later recorded the bank's tellers again wrongly advising customers that opting out was impossible. Now he's posted the audio recording online, targetting the $50 billion a year banks earn from their "courtesy" overdraft protection."
Link to Original Source
Privacy

Journal Journal: How to Convince Non-IT Friends that Privacy Matters?

Journal by mmtux

As technology becomes more advanced I am more and more worried about my privacy in all aspects of my life. Unfortunately, whenever I attempt to discuss the matter with my friends, they show little understanding and write me off as a hyper-neurotic IT student. They say they simply don't care that the data they share on social networks may be accessible by others, that some laws passed by governments today might be privacy infringing and dangerous or that they shouldn't use on-line banking with
Networking

Submission + - Net Neutrality: National Defense vs. Copyrights? (erbbysam.com)

Submitted by
erbbysam
erbbysam writes: "As Ars Technica reported, Comcast is getting into some trouble with the FCC for using Sandvine and "slowing down" packets to help manage there bandwidth. One of the many ligimate applications that are effected by this throttling is Vuze, a P2P operation for content publishers, and they recommend, on both their website and Ars Technica, that users use just enough encryption to bypass any filtering technologies such as Sandvine. With AT&T getting into the filtering business, spurred by MPAA, there's never been a better time for totally encrypted traffic to reach the masses, not just the security paranoid.

As more and more average users recognize and hear about the backbone ISP's efforts to try and hamper there web traffic, everybody will start to look for means around this, and the most obvious one right now is encryption, which raises an interesting question about the government: Where are they through all of this? The government has shown a history of being anti-encryption since it's modern form was invented in the 70's because it limits data wiretaps ability to fully function. They obviously are using the ISP's to spy on us, so wouldn't that care that there is a current push to get all traffic encrypted on the internet, specifically for national defense and interception of terrorist communications. If the FCC and the government push out a net neutrality bill than that would quickly end all talk of encryption and the US could continue it's communications spying. But if they don't, and let ISP's listen to major corporations such as the RIAA and MPAA than we're going to see a significant increase in encrypted traffic than what we're already seeing.

Using this logic you can make the case that net neutrality can be simplified down to whether or not the US government truly cares about national defense and defending us, or is in bed with xxAA."
Security

Submission + - SPAM: National cybersecurity threats abound, Senate told

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Over the past year, cyber exploitation activity has grown more sophisticated, more targeted, and more serious and the national intelligence community expects these trends to continue in the coming year, J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today. As government, private sector, and personal activities continue to move to networked operations, as our digital systems add ever more capabilities, as wireless systems become even more ubiquitous, and as the design, manufacture, and service of information technology has moved overseas, our vulnerabilities will continue to grow, McConnell said. He went on to say that the agency thinks recent National Security Presidential Directives which implement a comprehensive national cybersecurity plan will deter hostile action in cyber space by making it harder to penetrate the government's networks. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: Time-Warner slaps $10 surcharge on iTunes movies? 4

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Time-Warner wants to charge a per-gigabyte fee. A leaked memo reveals they're now watching how many gigabytes customers use in a "consumption-based" pricing experiment in Texas. "As few as 5 percent of our customers use 50 percent of the network," Time-Warner complains, mulling plans to cap usage at 5-gigabytes, with more expensive pricing plans granting 10-, 20-, and 40-gigabyte quotas. Steven Levy suggests Time-Warner's real aim is to hobble iTunes, raising the cost of a movie download by $10 (or $30 for a high-definition movie). Eyeing Time-Warner's experiment, Comcast cable also says they're evaluating a pay-per-gigabyte model."
Link to Original Source

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