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Censorship

Comcast May Face Lawsuits Over BitTorrent Filtering 378

An anonymous reader writes "It's been widely reported that Comcast is engaged in a sneaky form of Internet filtering. The company is terminating its customers' BitTorrent sessions by sending misleading data onto the network. The end result is that instead of targeting key heavy users, Comcast is instead engaged in an all out war against P2P protocols. In an interview with CNET, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann states that Comcast is 'throwing a spanner in the works of the Internet, hoping that this will somehow reduce bandwidth usage overall.' Other lawyers seem to have smelled blood, and are circling in the water. Lohmann reveals that '[The EFF has] already been contacted by attorneys who are considering legal action against Comcast.' Could Comcast be facing a class-action?"
United States

White House Wins On Spying, Telecom Immunity 658

EllisDees sends in a Washington Post report that Senate Republicans have outmaneuvered Democrats, who withdrew a more stringent version of legislation to control the government's domestic surveillance program. The legislation that will go forward includes a grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program.
Google

A Google Blunder- the Sad Story of Urchin 164

Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"
Science

Printing With Enzymes 43

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at Duke University have developed a new printing technique using catalysts to create microdevices such as labs-on-a-chip. Their inkless printing technique uses enzymes from E. coli bacteria and has an accuracy of less than 2 nanometers. While they're are now using enzymes to stamp nanopatterns without ink, the research team is already working with non-enzymatic catalysts. And it added that 'future versions of the inkless technique could be used to build complex nanoscale devices with unprecedented precision.'"
Security

Ebay Hacked, User Info Posted 242

An anonymous reader writes "This morning a hacker posted the personal contact information and credit card data of 1,200 ebay users on the eBay.com Trust & Saftey forums. eBay pulled the Trust & Safety forums off line, but not before one user made a video of the hacked forums and posted it on youtube.com. eBay response is on the eBay chatter page, and seems to try and down play this "fraudster"'s activity."
Censorship

Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt 1142

fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."
Privacy

Submission + - Sarkozy wins piracy case

njondet writes: "Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister and presidential candidate for the centre-right UMP party, has won a privacy case against a Swiss newspaper which had published information about his marital difficulties. The tribunal held that, though the announcement of his couple's separation did not breach his private life, the publication of details and allegations surrounding the separation did. http://french-law.net/index.php?option=com_content &task=view&id=16&Itemid=1"
Microsoft

Teacher Avoids Getting Sent to Siberia For Piracy 252

Piracy Support Line writes "Russian principal Alexander Ponosov will not be visiting Siberia any time soon, at least not for the allegedly illegal Microsoft software that were preloaded on the computers they bought and Microsoft supported the reseller's story. Although Bill Gates rejected Mikhail Gorbachev's personal appeal for mercy on behalf of the teacher, the judge was kinder. Judge Elvira Mosheva decided to dismiss the case because 'Microsoft's financial damage is too insignificant for a criminal investigation.'"
The Courts

RIAA Victim Wins Attorney's Fees 171

VE3OGG writes "Debbie Foster, one of the many caught-up in the RIAA's drift-net attacks who was sued back in 2004 has recently seen yet another victory. After having the suit dropped against her "with prejudice" several months back, Foster filed a counter-claim, and has just been awarded "reasonable" attorney's fees. Could this, in conjunction with cases such as Santangelo, show a turning of the tide against the RIAA?"

Video of Fedora On PS3 331

klippoth writes, "I just thought I would let you guys know, not only do I have Fedora Core 5 for PPC installed on my Playstation 3, but I video-captured running through the boot loader to demonstrate how it works. And yes, I am selling the PS3 on Ebay, although that was not my original intention. But hearing about people making ten grand... well, let's just say my love for my PS3 is NOT unconditional. Metal Gear Solid 4 doesn't come out for another year anyway! (Although it seems that sales of PS3s are starting to slow down... oh well, I can think of worse things to be stuck with!!)"

Root Exploit For NVIDIA Closed-Source Linux Driver 548

possible writes, "KernelTrap is reporting that the security research firm Rapid7 has published a working root exploit for a buffer overflow in NVIDIA's binary blob graphics driver for Linux. The NVIDIA drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris are also likely vulnerable. This will no doubt fuel the debate about whether binary blob drivers should be allowed in Linux." Rapid7's suggested action to mitigate this vulnerability: "Disable the binary blob driver and use the open-source 'nv' driver that is included by default with X."

Apple and Windows Will Force Linux Underground 554

eastbayted writes "Tom Yager at InfoWorld predicts: 'At the end of the decade, we'll find that Apple UNIX has overtaken commercial Linux as the second most popular general client and server computing platform behind Windows.' That's not a gloom-and-doom omen for the ever-popular Linux kernel, though, he stresses. While Apple and Microsoft will grapple for dominance of client and server spaces, Linux will be 'the de facto choice for embedded solutions.' And by 'embedded,' Yager means 'specialized.' With a push of a button and a flip of switch, he predicts, you'll be able to create a configured database and a mated J2EE server — all thanks to Linux."

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