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Movies

Submission + - How Hollywood Got A Canadian Movie Piracy Law

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government will introduce anti-camcording legislation today, accompanied by a high profile press conference featuring government ministers and lobbyists. Canadian law prof Michael Geist has released a short video demonstrating how Canada caved to Hollywood lobbying in only six months.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Battlestar Galactica to end after 4th season (yahoo.com)

Submitted by thanksforthecrabs
thanksforthecrabs writes: After months of the Sci Fi channel denying rumors, there's official word that the upcoming season is the end of the road for Battlestar Galactica. The decision to end is reportedly a creative one. With Dr. Who and BG ending — what will nerds do with their new-found free time? http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070601/tv_nm/battlest ar_dc
Security

Submission + - SANS Offers New Secure Coding Certifications

Submitted by mushupork
mushupork writes: The SANS Institute, which offers the coveted GIAC security professional certification, now offers new GSSP Certifications for secure coding in Java and C. Per the email sent out by SANS this morning: "Hacking Web applications is now more common than hacking networks and operating systems. One recent analysis showed that more than 60% of Web applications had exploitable security flaws." So, do secure coding certifications have value, or is the CISSP all a coder needs to say "I can code securely!"
Power

Submission + - New Solar Cells Reach 40% Efficiency (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A subsidiary of Boeing has created a photovoltaic device at 40% efficiency which surpasses current solar cell capabilities (which held a theoretical 37% limit). The article notes that current technologies focus on a single range of photons with single-junction silicon cells that are specific to our sun. The team that developed this new technology experimented both with expanding the range of sunlight wavelengths harnessed and utilizing "concentrator multijunction solar cells that use high intensities of sunlight, the equivalent of 100s of suns, concentrated by lenses or mirrors." Their research paper is available from the Journal of Applied Physics Letters. The best part is that the team predicts they can push this to 58% efficiency."

Feed Oh Look: You're Still Getting Plenty Of Spam (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
Yesterday we noted how silly it was for federal authorities to tell the press that by arresting a single spammer that spam could start to drop. While the guy clearly was a big spammer, there's no shortage of others willing to fill his place. And the idea that this would scare off other spammers is simply false. Other spammers have received huge fines and long jail terms in the past and it hasn't decreased spam one bit. Also, many of the biggest spammers aren't based in the US anyway, so they don't care what's happening here. So it's nice to see the press pushing back (though, a day late) pointing out that the arrest appeared to have no impact on spam rates while quoting many critics pointing out that it's ridiculous to think that this arrest would have any impact on spam rates.
Announcements

Submission + - Ebay's New User Agreement Terminates User Rights

Submitted by THESuperShawn
THESuperShawn writes: (Paraphrased from http://www.firemeg.com/2007/05/july-9th-genocide-b egins-how-ebay-inc.html)"A recent Auctionbytes article (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m05/i21/s 01) about a new update to the eBay User Agreement seems to make eBay look a lot more like Big Brother, if not a full blown communist regime where your thoughts belong to the "community" and where those with bad thoughts may be disappeared. The changes in question went into effect immediately for new members and will be enforced site-wide starting on July 9th, 2007. Most notable of these changes is that eBay seems to have given itself autonomy to strike down anyone they see fit, and use any and all copyrighted material that members post on the site, without permission or royalties.

In the user agreement additions there is a section entitled "Abusing eBay." The section begins like something out of Orwell's 1984, "eBay and the Community work together to keep the Sites working properly and the Community safe. Please report problems, offensive content, and policy violations to us." Seems to be a call to arms for the collective community gestapo to quash anything from listing violations to dissent among users, and of course for the betterment of the community with no financial incentives for users to do the work that many feel should be done by Trust & Safety. The second paragraph goes on to describe the VERO program designed to keep members from using intellectual property that has been copyrighted previously by third parties.

The "Abusing eBay" section then turns an even more diabolical shade of Big Brother in the last paragraph which reads: Without limiting other remedies, we may limit, suspend, or terminate our service and user accounts, prohibit access to our website, delay or remove hosted content, and take technical and legal steps to keep users off the Sites if we think that they are creating problems, possible legal liabilities, or acting inconsistently with the letter or spirit of our policies. We also reserve the right to cancel unconfirmed accounts or accounts that have been inactive for a long time."

Has eBay finally jumped the shark? Is their a better auction service around the corner ready to embrace scorned eBay users? Or have the scammers won (http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/ebayhacks/?N=A) and eBay will continue to remove negative posts/NARU users that complain (http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/boardsnippets.htm) , and allow scammers to sell "their wife exposed" (http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/)?
Censorship

Submission + - 72-year-old's dating site bans short people, gays (blorge.com)

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "There's 14-million registered users on eHarmony — but none of them are gay. A lawsuit filed today charges eHarmony discriminates against same-sex dateseekers. Earlier complaints said the site's algorithm also rejected men who were too short. Will California's law trump the entrepreneur's protocol? The 72-year-old who founded the site is an evangelical Christian with ties to a conservative political group. One lawsuit even charged that they refused services to a man who was "legally separated" from his wife because they were technically still married."
AMD

Submission + - The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux (phoronix.com)

Submitted by
Xaxo
Xaxo writes: "Earlier this month AMD's Henri Richard promised open graphics drivers for Linux. While the drivers aren't open sourced yet, they have opened their development and release cycle information to Phoronix. In this article called The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux they have authenticated slides from AMD about their Linux development cycle and quotes from the AMD Graphics Products Group. From the article: "...each AMD Linux "fglrx" driver release takes usually about eleven to twelve weeks from start to finish. With the development, validation, beta, and bake phases, there are always at least two releases being prepared. This rigid development cycle allows AMD to release updated drivers on a monthly basis while ensuring that each driver has been tested and contains more changes than just a simple version bump.""
Censorship

Submission + - Censorship fails: governments vs. YouTube (destinyland.org)

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "The internet thwarted an attempt by the government of Venezuela to censor coverage of a mass protest. President Hugo Chavez invoked Emergency Broadcast procedures to take over all television channels while police fired on the crowd, an eye-witness reports. But footage of the protest found its way to YouTube, racking up huge download numbers in a country with less than 15% internet penetration. Censoring political speech just got a lot harder."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Gaming's 'baddest' villains (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Computerworld's Ken Gagne claims that inner turmoil makes for great opera, but in video games, it's whoever has the biggest guns and the evilest laugh. He gives the Most Terrifying prize to the Nazis of Castle Wolfenstein. Dr. Wily wins for Most Persistent. "All your base are belong to us" gets Cats a Most Memorable. Pious Augustus might not be happy with Most Creative. His top 10 also include Ganon, Bowser, Sephiroth, among others.

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