bgerlich - Slashdot User

Submission + - Experiment involving rope trick in space goes awry (gulfnews.com)

Submitted by

Tjeerd

on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @06:00AM

Tjeerd writes: "Quote from the site: "Moscow: An experiment that envisaged sending a parcel from space to Earth on a 30-kilometre tether fell short of its goal yesterday when the long fibre rope did not fully unwind, Russian Mission Control said. It was intended to deliver a spherical capsule, called Fotino, attached to the end of the tether back to Earth — a relatively simple and cheap technology that could be used in the future to retrieve bulkier cargoes from space.""

Submission + - First U.S. GPL lawsuit filed (linux-watch.com)

Submitted by angryfirelord on Thursday September 20, 2007 @07:16PM

angryfirelord writes: For the first time in the U.S., a company and software vendor, Monsoon Multimedia, is being taken to court for a GPL violation. Previously, alleged GPL violations have all been settled by letters from the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or other open-source organizations, pointing out the violation.

The SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) announced on Sept. 20 that it had just filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of its clients. The group's clients are the two principal developers of BusyBox. BusyBox is a small-footprint application that implements a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities. It is commonly used in embedded systems, and is open-source software licensed under the GPL version 2.

Submission + - First Ever U.S. GPL Violation Lawsuit Filed (softwarefreedom.org)

Submitted by

Adam Hazzlebank

on Thursday September 20, 2007 @06:06PM

Adam Hazzlebank writes: "The Software Freedom Law Center has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GPL on behalf of the developers of BusyBox. The device in question is a manufactured by Monsoon Multimedia who have publicly acknowledged their use of BusyBox, but have so far refused to make the source available, as required by the GPL. This should be an interesting and important test case for the GPL."

Submission + - Vista attacked by 13-year-old virus

Submitted by

Aviran

on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:13AM

Aviran writes: "A batch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium was found to have been infected with a 13-year-old boot sector virus. The boot sector virus 'Stoned.Angelina', first seen as long ago as 1994 and last included on the official WildList in 2001. The computers had been loaded with Microsoft's latest operating system Vista and Bullguard's anti-virus software, which failed to detect and remove the malware. Although the infection itself is harmless, Stoned.Angelina will undoubtedly have left Microsoft and Bullguard execs blushing with embarrassment about the apparent flaws in their software which allowed an ancient virus to slip through the back door."

Submission + - Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music" (youtube.com)

Submitted by THX-1138 on Sunday September 16, 2007 @11:30PM

THX-1138 writes: A few months ago, Trent Reznor (frontman of the band Nine Inch Nails), was in Australia doing an interview when he commented on the outrageous prices of CDs there. Apparently now his label, Universal Media Group is angry at him for having said that. During a concert last night , he told this to fans, "...Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these mother**** will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that that's not right."

The YouTube link contains a video recorded by a fan that shows his full speech during the concert.

Submission + - Firefox Adblock May Be Theft (iht.com)

Submitted by

cthulu_mt

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @05:58PM

cthulu_mt writes: "The International Herald Tribune reports "Adblock Plus threatens the online revenue model" based on a move by several small website to block users of the Firefox browser. On the grounds that Firefox users are stealing their content by running Adblock Plus a popular Firefox extension. In some cases users of the browser are redirected to the web page Why Firefox is Blocked; which goes on to say; "Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.""

Submission + - Press release: innotek releases VirtualBox 1.5 (innotek.de)

Submitted by

innotek

on Monday September 03, 2007 @06:45AM

innotek writes: "Stuttgart, Germany, September 3, 2007. innotek today released VirtualBox 1.5.0 for Windows and Linux. Major new features and many small improvements make this update a very significant software release.

A new "seamless" windowing mode allows the windows of a VM to integrate directly with your Linux or Windows desktop — making VirtualBox the first product to offer this support on the Windows and Linux platforms.

In addition, VirtualBox now supports 64-bit versions of Windows as a host operating system, and IBM OS/2 Warp is now fully supported as a guest operating system, including Guest Additions. Version 1.5.0 also adds support for serial ports and comes with a fully standard compliant Intel PXE network boot agent.

A full changelog is available here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

As with its predecessors, VirtualBox 1.5.0 is available both as Open Source under the GPL as well as under a commercial license which, in most cases, allows you to use the product free of charge. Packages for Windows and a large number of Linux distributions are available at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads.

innotek is a privately held and internally funded software company located near Stuttgart, Southern Germany. Since its creation in 1992, a team of international software specialists focuses entirely on the development of high-tech system software. innotek has developed outstanding expertise in low-level system software development for 32-bit and 64-bit Intel and AMD platforms. Having been involved in the development of PC virtualization technology from the very beginning, InnoTek staffs Europe's largest and most experienced team of PC virtualization software experts. Visit http://www.innotek.de/ for details."

Submission + - Samsung Croix to go up against Apple iPhone

Submitted by

i4u

on Monday September 03, 2007 @05:43AM

i4u writes: "Samsung developed a new Touch screen phone to battle the Apple iPhone. The new phone features Samsung's new user interface Croix (French for Cross). The finger input system is supported by cross like menus and lists. Samsung just won and iF Communication Design Award 2007 for the new UI (photos). When Samsung is actually starting to offer a Croix based touch screen mobile phone is not known at this point."

Submission + - Forget Sweden, another Scandal in Poland

Submitted by quest on Monday September 03, 2007 @05:15AM

quest writes: Due to ambiguities and procedural reservations that materialized recently during the works of KT-182 committee, companies Google, IBM plus the polish Foundation Of Free and Open Software" and part of members of KT-171 committee submitted a letter to the chairman of Polish Normalizing Committee (PKN) asking him to make PKN take neutral position in the voting over OOXML standarization in JTC.

On 9th August mr. Tomasz Schweitzer (deputy of The PKN chairman) informed the public opinion that KT 171 PKT is the basic committee in this case, but meantime KT 182 started it's own consultations in the matter of the project. KT 171 gave a negative opinion about the norm project with large majority of votes (82%).

For no obvious reason, the case was moved to KT 182, wchich during confidental voting decided to give a positive opinion about the norm project. Committee 182 also decided not to take (negative) votes of KT 171 under consideration. PKN till now has not explained why the project was reviewed by two committees or why the works were unexpectedly moved from one committee to another.

Nobody from PKN has also explained how is that possible that one committee has produced disapproval" opinion while the other approval" and only the opinion of the second is valid. The position of KT 182 is also completely incomprehensible as most of submitted opinions stated an objection to normalize OOXML.

All that incidents causes that Poland is not able to state clear and fair opinion in the case of OOXML specification. Polish Normalization Committee (PKN) has found itself in a situation where two technical committees voted differently, so companies, organization and private persons stated above believe that the proper decision is to abstain from voting.

Submission + - Men allegedly Googled 'how to blow up ATMs'

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @09:25AM

An anonymous reader writes: THREE Sydney men charged with conspiring to blow up ATMs with powerful homemade explosive, allegedly obtained information on how to do it from the internet, police said today. The men, who were among five arrested yesterday in a joint operation by federal and NSW police, were denied bail by a Sydney court today. Fadi Bassil, 20, from Lakemba, Elias Taouk, 19, from Kingsgrove, and Badawi Nassour, 20, of Greenacre, were all remanded in custody until October 23. A fourth man, Linley Desire Jose Anthony, was refused bail when he appeared in the same court yesterday. The fifth was released after questioning by police. Police said the arrests followed a tip-off from Northern Territory authorities about the purchase of otherwise legal chemicals that could be used in the manufacture of nitroglycerine. Police documents tendered in Sydney Central Local Court said the men bought 23 litres of chemicals as well as mixing equipment such as beakers, thermometers and droppers from a Darwin company. The products could have been used to manufacture up to 40kg of nitroglycerine, police said. Police said internet surveillance revealed that Mr Bassil had Googled "how to blow up ATM machines" and "how much money is kept in bank ATMs". The men also had Googled a recipe for the explosives, and eventually gained all they needed from the internet in terms of knowledge and know-how to carry out the job, police said. They said the men discussed by mobile phone and SMS how to best mix the chemicals to form the explosive and when and where to carry out tests using fireworks as detonators. Mr Taouk was allegedly intercepted fantasising about what he would do with the loot from the planned roberies. "Taouk said he couldn't wait to be on video and couldn't wait until he parked his Porsche in front of Roxy's (nightclub) in Parramatta," the police documents stated. When refusing bail today, Magistrate Paul Lyon said: "the sheer volume of the substance takes it into the serious category". Looks like Google is giving up search history to the man. http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,22327 716-5005940,00.html

Submission + - Sony fingerprint drive installs a rootkit (f-secure.com)

Submitted by

badzilla

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @08:07AM

badzilla writes: "Respected Finnish anti-virus company F-Secure has identified yet another Sony rootkit, this time in the Windows software packaged with a fingerprint-reading USB drive. No comment yet from Sony."

Submission + - Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML (os2world.com)

Submitted by CoolCat on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:29AM

CoolCat writes: From the site: "As bad as it sound it currently looks like that the vote that took place at the SIS, Swedish Standards Institute, was a total joke due to the facts that 23 new companies applied to take part of today's voting and most of them in favour of Microsoft agenda. One would think that SIS would not accept new companies to participate in the vote since they haven't been part of the earlier discussions and meetings. But according to SIS they didn't see any problem that new companies wanted to take part in this vote without prior notice. So what happened here is that Microsoft gather together a bunch of loyal partners that would vote yes to their standard without any questions."

Submission + - Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML (www.idg.se)

Submitted by Valpis on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:27AM

Valpis writes: When SIS (Swedish Standards Institute ) should vote yes or no to OOXML as a standard the result became yes. The group consisted earlier of 11 companies and the result was supposed to be no. But the last couple of days several companies recieved letters from Microsoft urging them to join SIS (cost only $2000) and vote yes so in the last days 25 more companies joined, most of the microsoft partners,some even the same day as the voting took place. The list of the companies can be found on http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.118249 (in swedish).

Submission + - Copyright advocacy group violates copyright (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by

word munger

on Monday August 27, 2007 @02:46PM

word munger writes: "Commercial scholarly publishers are beginning to get afraid of the open access movement. They've hired a high-priced consultant to help them sway public opinion in favor of copyright restrictions on taxpayer-funded research. Funny thing is, their own website contains several copyright violations. It seems they pulled their images directly from the Getty Images website — watermark and all — without paying for their use! Clearly their agenda is simply to make using copyrighted materials inconvenient and expensive for everyone but THEMSELVES."

Submission + - TorrentSpy Blocks Searches From US Visitors

Submitted by

Ernesto

on Monday August 27, 2007 @07:26AM

Ernesto writes: "Starting today, TorrentSpy.com blocks all searches from US visitors and redirects them to a privacy statement. TorrentSpy is caught up in a lawsuit in which the MPAA demands that TorrentSpy hands over all user info stored in "random access memory" (RAM). This service denial seems to be a preventive measure to protect their users, when US users try to search on TorrentSpy they now get this message."

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