Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:the clueless comment. (Score 1) 363

by jim.hansson (#25186231) Attached to: Australian ISPs Claim Net Neutrality Is an 'American Problem'
my home, a small village up in the swedish mountains http://maps.google.se/?ie=UTF8&ll=64.065312,14.146914&spn=0.009216,0.027595&z=15 We have really good connectivity there, 8/1 Mb adsl is the normal for something around 300 sek. there is talk about laying a new fiber all the way to the village and it will be possible to get a fiber all the way to your own house but it will cost. a picture from the center of the village. http://www.fiskevalsjobyn.nu/bilder/valsjn.jpg

a map with all the houses as dot's so you see how small this town really is
http://gfx.aftonbladet.se/multimedia/archive/00424/valsjobyn_424985w.jpg
the X marks the spot where one person was killed last year by a bear.

And NO talk about paying per GB.
Software

Submission + - Who thinks Firehose software is working right? 6

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "I find the Firehose software to be infuriating. It seems to have no 'stickiness' but constantly reverts to other views and searches than what I was looking at. I'm about ready to give up on it unless they tell me they recognize it's dumb and are doing something to make it work right. Am I the only one who feels this way?"
Music

Submission + - Apple cracks down on the Hymn Project (hymn-project.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ever since the initial launch of the iTunes Music Store, an intrepid group of programmers over at the Hymn Project have engaged in a marvelous cat-and-mouse game with Apple. Now they're finally being hobbled by Apple's lawyers.

The purpose of the project has always been to provide software that can be used to losslessly remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection from music purchased through iTunes, so that the buyer may exercise their right of fair use and play the music on non-Apple devices (Hear Your Music aNywhere).

The software has gone through many incarnations. The original hymn has been succeeded by JHymn, QTFairUse6, MyFairTunes, and others. Regardless of the program, the emphasis has always been squarely on fair use — not piracy. Any discussions of piracy have been strongly and actively discouraged on the site's forums.

For years now, Apple has been content to mostly ignore the Hymn Project. At worst, they would introduce subtle changes to new versions of iTunes that would break the Hymn software. Nobody really knows if this was done intentionally, but it was usually just a matter of time before a new solution was found. This seemed like a reasonable approach for Apple to take. After all, why should they care? The DRM was only in place to placate the record companies. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has even expressed his opinion that all music should be free of DRM.

Well, now things have changed. Recently, a new program called Requiem was announced that appears to be a complete crack of the iTunes DRM scheme. Previous programs had relied on various forms of trickery or memory hooks to access the unencrypted audio data — none had ever completely cracked the encryption algorithms.

Requiem seems to have been the last straw. Earlier this week, the ISP hosting the site received a Cease and Desist order from Apple Legal, demanding that all downloads be removed from the site, and that the site post no links to any programs that could remove DRM from Apple music or video. Reportedly, similar C & D orders were also sent to at least one of the project's developers, and to another ISP where Reqiuem had been hosted. Ironically, Requiem was never actually hosted on the Hymn site — merely mentioned and linked to in one of the forums. Nevertheless, the Hymn Project has now come into the crosshairs of Apple's lawyers and, lacking legal resources, has seen no choice but to comply with the order.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - The List of Obsolete Technical Skills 3

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Robert Scoble had an interesting post on his blog a few days ago on obsolete technical skills — "things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us." Scoble's initial list included dialing a rotary phone, using carbon paper to make copies, and changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor. The list has now been expanded into a wiki with a much larger list of these obsolete skills that includes resolving IRQ conflicts on a mother board, assembly language programming, and stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next. "Feel free to contribute more if you can, and if you have the time, please make a page with a short description of the skill," writes Brad Kellett."
Privacy

Journal Journal: How to Convince Non-IT Friends that Privacy Matters?

Journal by mmtux

As technology becomes more advanced I am more and more worried about my privacy in all aspects of my life. Unfortunately, whenever I attempt to discuss the matter with my friends, they show little understanding and write me off as a hyper-neurotic IT student. They say they simply don't care that the data they share on social networks may be accessible by others, that some laws passed by governments today might be privacy infringing and dangerous or that they shouldn't use on-line banking with
Media

Journal SPAM: DRM Nightmare - Use HD and Lose Previously Purchased Media 7

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Davis Freeberg ran into the nightmare scenario of losing access to his DRM-disabled purchases, simply by upgrading a PC monitor. "I recently purchased a new HD monitor, but when I installed it, I lost the streaming capabilities on Netflix's website. When I tried to troubleshoot the issue, I had to agree to let Netflix "reset my DRM" by destroying my Amazon.com files. Because Hollywood wants to punish people for using techn
The Courts

Submission + - EU Encouraging Standardized DRM, Licensing (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The European Commission is trying to encourage a standard licensing and DRM scheme for all of Europe and "cooperation procedures" and "codes of conduct" for ISPs, copyright holders, and customers. No legislation has been proposed yet, but the "cooperation procedures" sound like a push for an EU version of the DMCA Takedown Notices, which are already routinely sent to people outside the US. And while simplified licensing might be nice, it's interesting that they don't appear to understand the inherent tension between standardization, interoperability and DRM — break once, copy everywhere."
Software

Submission + - iPhone Goes Adult With iSteamy (isteamy.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The iPhone went adult today with the launch of the first native adult application for the iPhone and iPod Touch; iSteamy. http://www.isteamy.net/ iSteamy brings the adult media world to your pocket with an ever growing and user contributable collection of audio, video, and zoomable pictures, as well as off-line storage for when you are away from the internet.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Dead game designer updates her blog (10zenmonkeys.com)

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "As Vanity Fair ran a cover story about the death by suicide of Theresa Duncan (creator of Zero Zero), she was updating her blog. Theresa left behind a posthumous post, raising questions about how the process of death itself will be impacted by technology. "It isn't hard to imagine a future scenario when people will be able to generate AI-controlled virtual selves who will stroll around digital worlds like Second Life, having conversations with grief-stricken friends and family after their living counterparts are dead.""
Education

Submission + - Japanese envy Indian Schools?

Submitted by sas-dot
sas-dot writes: Nytimes article writes that Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education..India's more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade. America has to learn something from this? or not?
Robotics

Submission + - The latest SAAB goes hypersonic

Submitted by G3ckoG33k
G3ckoG33k writes: SAAB has launched, quite literally, the world's first remote controlled hypersonic missile. The missilie is operated at more than Mach 5.5 (about 6500 km/h). The domain-b article says "A manoeuvrable missile fired at hypersonic speeds is difficult to oppose. The speed means that reaction times are minimal [...]". Who would argue with that?!
Mozilla

Submission + - Detention for using Firefox (uploadgeek.com)

Submitted by BaseLineNL
BaseLineNL writes: A student at Big Spring High School in Newville PA has received two hours of detention for using the Firefox browser claiming that it was a "better" browser.
The Internet

Submission + - Why the coming exaflood won't drown the Internet (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by High Waters
High Waters writes: Ars Technica examines predictions of an exaflood of data that some alarmists believe will overwhelm the Internet. 'Doomsday predictions about the collapse of the Internet have never been hard to come by. Most recently, concern has focused on the rise of Internet video, one of the key drivers of traffic growth over the last couple of years. Should Internet traffic surge more quickly than networks can keep up, the entire system could clog up like a bad plumbing job.' But a closer look reveals that many of those raising the alarm about an exaflood are generally doing so to make the case against 'Net neutrality regulation. 'There's a reason that "exaflood" sounds scary. It's supposed to. Though Brett Swanson's Wall Street Journal piece tried to avoid alarmism, it did have an explicitly political point in mind: net neutrality is bad, and it could turn the coming exaflood into a real disaster'
The Military

Submission + - Downside of Dominance -- Lockheed and the F16 (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mlimber
mlimber writes: The Washington Post reports that Lockheed Martin is building the F35, the Joint Strike Fighter, for all the branches of the military, but some are asking why it is needed. The F16, which is also manufactured by Lockheed, is significantly cheaper, has upgrades to modernize it from its origins in the 1970s, and has never lost an air-to-air battle (not to mention, "with 200,000 sorties flown, the plane has been shot down just six times"). In short, "Lockheed's most potent competitor in the fighter business is Lockheed."
Privacy

Submission + - Judge:Man can't be forced to divulge passphrase (news.com) 2

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with his Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."

Especially if this ruling is appealed, U.S. v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled "Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.")"

Slashdot Top Deals

I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.

Close