shma writes "This morning the senate has a scheduled cloture vote to cut off debate on the FISA bill which grants retroactive immunity to telecoms who engaged in warrantless wiretapping. Senators Russ Feingold and Christopher Dodd have pledged to try and filibuster the bill, but require the vote of 40 senators to keep the filibuster alive. The article states that a similar 'threatened filibuster failed in February, when the Senate passed a measure that granted amnesty and largely legalized the President's secret warrantless wiretapping programs.' Should they lose the cloture vote, the bill is all but assured of passing. A proposed amendment stripping the immunity provision from the bill is also expected to fail."

stavros-59 writes "An internal BT report on the BT secret trials of Phorm (aka 121Media) Deep Packet Inspection has been revealed on Wikileaks today. The leaked document shows that during the covert trial a possible 18 million page requests were intercepted and injected with JavaScript and about 128 thousand charity ads were substituted with the Phorm Ad Network advertisements purchased by advertisers specifically for the covert trial period. Several ISPs are known to be using, or planning to use, DPI as a means of serving advertising directly through Layer 7 interception at ISP level in the USA and Europe. NebuAd claim they are using DPI to enable their advertising to reach 10% of USA internet users." CT: nodpi has updated their page with a note that says that the charity ads were "purchased and not hijacked"- read there to see what the latest is.

The corporate overlords at SourceForge asked me to name a Slashdot category for their upcoming Community Choice Awards and to let you guys select the winner. I have named my category "Most Likely to be Shut Down by a Government Agency." We're going to run this like we do an Ask Slashdot call for questions — post your nominations into the comments here. Use moderation to send up good ideas. In the upcoming days we'll post another story where you can vote on the actual winner. Nominations need to include the project name, a link to some sort of official website, and a paragraph of why you think they deserve to win. The project that wins will gain fame, notoriety, and maybe a cease and desist order that they could print out and frame if they had that kind of time.

mikesd81 writes "Mobile technology group Ericsson is predicting a 'swift end' for Wi-Fi hotspots, according to the PC Pro site. Johan Bergendahl, the company's chief marketing officer, offers this analysis: 'The rapid growth of mobile broadband is set to make Wi-Fi hotspots irrelevant ... Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era. Industry will have to solve the international roaming issue ... Carriers need to work together. It can be as simple as paying 10 euros per day when you are abroad.' He also pointed to a lack of coverage as a potential hindrance to the growth of the technology."

jsuda writes "The preeminent general reference source for Mac OS X has always been the Missing Manual Series written by David Pogue. The latest iteration in the series is its Mac OS X Leopard Edition, completely revised, and it is the biggest, most comprehensive, and most useful of all the editions in the series. It covers the Mac OS X desktop and file system, the free applications included with the Mac OS X installation, the system components and technologies, networking and online features and components, and includes welcome appendices on installation, troubleshooting, Windows/Mac comparisons, and a Master Keystroke list." Read on for the rest of John's review.

A large number of readers are submitting the news that Microsoft has made a major announcement about interoperating with others including specifically the FOSS world. The impetus is the ongoing EU antitrust case against Microsoft. The announcement comes in the context of the release of 30,000 pages of API documentation for Microsoft Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 — and a listing of patents that apply to these technologies, and a pledge not to sue open source developers who use the APIs. InfoWorld summarizes by saying that Microsoft "promised greater transparency in its development and business practices." Fortune is blunter, saying "Microsoft declares truce in open source war." Here's Microsoft's FAQ on the open source interop initiative.

An anonymous reader writes "French scientists have developed a new rubber that can heal itself after being cut or broken. If two broken ends of the material are pushed together, and left for an hour, they join to become just as stretchy as before. There is even a video of the supposed creation in action. 'Regular rubber gets its strength from the fact that long chains of polymer molecules are coupled, or "crosslinked," in three different ways: through covalent, ionic, and hydrogen bonding between molecules. Of these three bond types, only the hydrogen bonds can be remade once a material is fractured, although normally there are not enough hydrogen bonds for the rubber to re-couple in this way. The solution devised by Leibler and colleagues is to simply get rid of the ionic and covalent bonds. They developed a transparent, yellowy-brown rubber in which crosslinking is performed only by hydrogen bonds.'"

Two years ago the word was AOL was planning a split from Time-Warner, because it was so successful. Now Time-Warner is considering a split of its own, deciding whether or not to separate the two 'halves' of the AOL pie. The split would see its 'access' ISP side made into an entity separate from its 'audience' side, consisting of portals, advertising and blogs. "[Time-Warner chief executive Jeffrey Bewkes] also said [AOL's] 84 percent ownership stake in Time Warner Cable is 'less than optimal' for both companies. He said the two companies are talking about operating improvements and changes to the ownership structure. The chief financial officer, John Martin, said it will take 'several more months' to separate the AOL businesses 'because it's fairly complicated.' The company expects AOL's advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2008 to be 'essentially flat to down slightly' versus the year-earlier quarter, he said."

An anonymous reader noted yet another story about credibility and disclosure on-line. An OLPC news site highly critical of the project was run by an Intel employee who actually is working on a project that competes with the OLPC. Oh, and the site failed to disclose this pretty serious bit of bias. The article talks about the most extreme interpretation ("Intel secretly bankrolls blog that disses competitor") but even the less extreme version ("insider badmouths competitors anonymously at night") is pretty fishy. Just more reasons to never believe anything on-line, including me I guess.

Ian Lamont writes "The OLPC Project and Microsoft are developing a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on the laptops, according to an interview with Nicholas Negroponte. The article is thin on details, as the OLPC/Microsoft talks are apparently at an early stage. Could this be the end of the OS wars in Nigeria and other developing countries?" While Microsoft has been working on an OLPC-capable version of Windows for some time now, the interesting thing here is the dual-booting provision, rather than forcing users into an either-or choice.

An anonymous reader writes "PC Magazine reviews the $200 Linux desktop wonder sold by Wal-Mart. This desktop sold out quickly and has been cited as proof that consumers are tired of the Windows tax and ready for Linux. Not so according to PC Magazine, which gave the gPC a 1.5 star rating." Previous discussions we've had about system reviews were realistic but not quite so harsh; is this just nitpicking or is the 'shiny' starting to wear off of the cheap Linux PC concept?

An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"