Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Almighty Buck

Congress Asks Universities To Curb Piracy 405

The Illegal Subset of the Integers writes "According to Ars Technica, Congress has sent letters to 19 universities identified by the RIAA and MPAA as havens for copyright infringement. In it, they not only seek to discover what these universities are doing to dissuade students from infringing activities, but give the implied threat. House Judiciary Committee member Lamar Smith (R-TX) was quoted as saying, 'If we do not receive acceptable answers, Congress will be forced to act.' One wonders, though, what the universities are supposed to do when international disrespect for imaginary property rights is so widespread that there are currently over two million hits on Google for a certain oft-posted illegal number, up from the three hundred thousand hits from sometime yesterday."
Privacy

Submission + - Are electronic speeding tickets going to far?

coondoggie writes: "No one likes to get a speeding ticket and lord knows most traffic citations are irritating in general, but do you want to see them move into the digital age? The question may be moot in certain parts of the country in fact. According to a story on Stateline.org, the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest, home to Microsoft and other high-tech icons, is the latest to join the e-citation trend. It's outfitting several state police cars with devices that permit traffic citations to be processed electronically. Other states are looking into similar systems, Maryland for example recently said it would be implementing an "e-citation" program soon. North Carolina and Alabama already have them and a study by the U.S. Department of Transportation said at least 27 states were handling citations electronically in some form. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1486 5"
The Internet

Submission + - EU Moving to Ban Online "Hate" Speech

WED Fan writes: "Several members of the EU parliment are moving to ban online hate speech.

Calls on providers in somewhat vague language to make provisions against "hate pages" part of their standard terms and conditions


ISP's will be required to police the pages deemed as "hateful". Someone should remind them that freedom of speech must cover even the most unpopular of ideas, lest the slippery slope silences or makes criminal anyone with a dissenting opinion."
Spam

Submission + - Http:BL Returns Control of Websites to Web Admins

An anonymous reader writes: Project Honey Pot has been tracking spammers and harvesters for nearly two years. For all of that time, the front page of the site has promised that they would help "stop spammers before they even get your address." Today they made good on that promise with the launch of http:BL . Much like DNSBLs that protect mail servers (e.g., Spamhaus or SURBL), the new service allows website owners to query against the data gathered by Project Honey Pot's vast network of traps. Website administrators can then make decisions as to what visitors are allowed onto their site, blocking known email harvesters, comment spammers, or other malicious robots. They've published an API for the new service as well as opened an Apache module (mod_httpbl) that leverages the service for public beta testing.
XBox (Games)

Two 360 Titles Lose Their Exclusivity 77

While for the most part we've been hearing about formerly PS3-exclusive games heading to Microsoft's console, as the PS3 begins to get some momentum up in the marketplace we'll start to see the opposite happening. The first converts are the titles Kane & Lynch (a stealth shooter), and Crossfire (a co-op military shooter). Both are now slated to launch on the PlayStation 3, as well as the Xbox 360. Opposable Thumbs reports: "'[SCi Entertainment's] Board believes that a release of these products simultaneously on all three platforms (PS3, Xbox 360 and PC) including the two next generation platforms will benefit the long term revenue potential for these two strong franchises rather than releasing different versions at different times.' It's hard to say that this move is all that surprising. We've said time and time again the high development costs of current generation software are going to lead to an increase in the number of cross-platform software, as extending the possible player-base for a title is crucial for profit. From the looks of these two games, this is a solid win for the PS3: two more quality games to add to the growing list of the PS3's star software."
Censorship

Submission + - Books, DEA, Homework Censored by Boston WiFi

subluminal writes: "An MIT student reports that the no-cost, government-funded wifi pilot at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall, 'The Cradle of Liberty', uses phrase lists to block public access to many sites. Among those blocked are Cory Doctorow's book Eastern Standard Tribe , information about lotteries (but not the Massachusetts State Lottery site), criminal justice policy sites, the ATF and the DEA."
Sony

Submission + - Blue Laser Costs Coming Down; Could PS3 Price Cut

njkid1 writes: "Sony is ramping up blue laser diode capacity for its Blu-ray players much faster than we anticipated, and the costs are coming down. A price drop on the PS3 this year is starting to seem more and more likely. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter tells GameDaily BIZ that PS3 could cost 100 dollars less by mid-year. The Blu-ray drive in the PlayStation 3 has been a source of much contention among industry observers. The inclusion of Blu-ray in the PS3 is one of the main reasons the console is being sold for $600. But as with any product, economies of scale should help to eventually bring costs down. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=1593 1&ncid=AOLGAM000500000000025"
Java

Submission + - Controlling Microsoft Office from Java, seamlessly

sbohmann writes: Widely ignored, but still fully functional, I recently discovered IBM / Rational's good old Java-COM-bridge. I had long been searching for a way to control Microsoft Office and other Windows Applications from Java, and it turned out that with just minimal effort, doing that is not much more sophisticated than doing it from .Net, because unlike with other solutions, Java classes and packages are created that reflect the bridged COM API, so there is no need to pass method and parameter names as strings.

I was immediately able to start MS Word, create a new document, fill it with text and tables and save it to a file, all from Java code. And, unlike some proprietary tools, this Java-COM-bridge seems to be free to use and integrates excellently with recent versions of Eclipse, despite its age.

Does this support the idea of doing virtually anything in Java, including Desktop Applications, even with COM support?
Privacy

Submission + - RIAA Secretly Tries to Get ISP Subscriber Info

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA secretly went into federal district court in Denver, Colorado, the home town of its lawyers, and — in an attempt to change the rules of the game — made an ex parte application to a federal judge there, asking him to rule (pdf) that the federal Cable Communications Policy Act does not apply to the RIAA's attempts to get subscriber information from cable companies. ("Ex parte" means application was secret, no one else — neither the ISP nor the subscribers — were given notice that this was going on.). They were, in effect, asking the Court to rule that the RIAA does not need to get a court order to be able to force an ISP to disclose confidential subscriber information. The Magistrate Judge declined to rule on the issue (pdf), but did give them the ex parte discovery order they were looking for."
Microsoft

Submission + - Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source

tlockney writes: "Next week at Microsoft's MIX, whurley will be leading a discussion on "Open Source, the Web, Interoperability, and Microsoft". To kick of a bit of pre-session discussion and enlist the help of others in putting Microsoft on the spot, whurley, king of all things open source at BMC has written an article entitled "Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source"."

Slashdot Top Deals

Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division.

Working...