Dotnaught - Slashdot User

Submission + - Ansca's Corona Challenges Flash Lite (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Dotnaught on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:19PM

Dotnaught writes: Ansca Mobile, a start-up founded by engineers with experience at Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) and Apple, on Monday released the Corona 1.0 SDK, a tool for rapid mobile application development. The Lua-based framework is iPhone-only at the moment but support for Symbian and other platforms is in the works. For developers without Objective-C expertise, it offers an easy way into creating mobile apps.

Submission + - Scientology Charged with Slavery, Human Traffickin (courthousenews.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @01:39PM

eldavojohn writes: A formal complaint was filed in California last week by John Lindstein naming David Miscavige and, most importantly, the Church of Scientology International as defendants. He claims that for sixteen years (age 8 on) he was forced to work as a slave at Gold Base, a secret CoS site run by Golden Era Productions with 'razor wire, security guard patrols, surveillance posts and three roll calls each day.' The pay was $50 a week. The allegations include 'Violations of wage and hour laws as well as unfair/illegal business practices actionable under California B&P 17200 Et. Seq.' and are laid out on Infinite Complacency's blog with members of the group Anonymous praising the summons.

Submission + - CBS Interactive Sued For Distributing Green Dam (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Dotnaught on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @05:25PM

Dotnaught writes: Solid Oak Software, maker of Internet filter CYBERsitter, on Monday filed a $1.2 million copyright infringement lawsuit against CBS Interactive's ZDNet China for distributing the Green Dam Internet filtering software. Green Dam was going to be mandatory on all PCs in China starting in July, but widespread criticism, including reports of stolen code, forced the Chinese government to reconsider. The lawsuit, if it succeeds, could force companies to give more thought to the risks of complying with mandates from foreign governments that violate US laws.

Submission + - Google slammed as China, US quarrel over Internet (bdnews24.com) 2

Submitted by

H.M. Arif

on Monday June 29, 2009 @04:26PM

H.M. Arif writes: "BEIJING, Thu Jun 25, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) — China on Thursday stepped up accusations that Google is spreading obscene content over the Internet, a day after US officials urged Beijing to abandon plans for controversial filtering software on new computers. The growing friction over control of online content threatens to become another irritant in ties at a time the world is looking for the United States and China to cooperate in helping to pull the global economy out of its slump. China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused Google's English language search engine of spreading obscene images that violated the nation's laws, less than 24 hours after disruptions to the company's search engines and other services within China. Spokesman Qin Gang did not directly say whether official action was behind the disruptions, but he made plain the government's anger and said "punishment measures" taken against Google were lawful. "Google's English language search engine has spread large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and pornographic, seriously violating China's relevant laws and regulations," he told a regular news conference. A spokesman for Google in China declined to comment. Separately, US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Wednesday voiced concerns over the "Green Dam" software in a letter to Chinese officials. "China is putting companies in an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to pre-install software that appears to have broad-based censorship implications and network security issues," Locke said in a statement. China says the "Green Dam" filtering software is to protect children from illegal images and insists the deadline of July 1 for new computers to be sold with the software will not change. An official at the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, which handles trade rows, said the ministry had no immediate response to the US criticism and referred questions to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which also had no comment. Critics have said the program, sold by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co, is technically flawed and could be used to spy on users and block sites Beijing considers politically offensive. The proposed new rules raised fundamental questions regarding the transparency of China's regulatory practices and concerns about compliance with WTO rules, the U.S. officials said. GOOGLE DISRUPTED The software plan coincides with criticisms of Google by China's Internet watchdog and access disruptions in China to the U.S. company's websites. The watchdog last week ordered the world's biggest search engine to block overseas websites with "pornographic and vulgar" content from being accessed through its Chinese-language version. Late on Wednesday evening, Internet users in China were unable to open several Google sites for around an hour, and some reported disruptions throughout Thursday. A company spokeswoman at Google in the United States said the firm was checking reports of problems with access in China. The disruption — coming soon after Google was criticized by China — "seems beyond mere coincidence," said Mark Natkin, Managing Director of Marbridge Consulting, a Beijing-based company that advises on telecommunications and IT. Google's problems reflect the difficulties of foreign Internet firms competing in the world's biggest online market while facing controversy over censorship. Chinese officials have said their Internet moves are driven by worries about exposing children to disturbing online images, but an official newspaper reported on Thursday that a plan to recruit volunteers to scour the Internet for banned content and report to officials also has a political element. The Legal Daily reported that 10,000 volunteers sought by Beijing would also search for "harmful content" that includes "threats to state security," "subverting state power," and "spreading rumours and disturbing social order." Natkin, the consultant, said the official pressure was most unlikely to deter Google and other Internet companies from continuing to operate in China. "Google has to be looking at China as a long-term play," he said. "The allure of the Chinese market, not just for Google and not just for Internet companies, is so compelling, so alluring.""

Submission + - China Bans Gold Farming (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Monday June 29, 2009 @02:26PM

Dotnaught writes: "In addition to its ongoing crackdown on Internet porn, the Chinese government has declared that virtual currency cannot be traded for real goods or services."

Submission + - Sony Begins Shipping PCs With Green Dam In China (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Monday June 29, 2009 @11:20AM

Dotnaught writes: "Sony is now shipping computers in China with Green Dam installed, in advance of the Chinese government's July 1 deadline. But the company is disclaiming responsibility for any damage caused by the Web filtering software. Documents posted by Hong Kong-based media studies professor Rebecca MacKinnon also suggest that the Chinese government is considering similar filtering requirements for mobile phones."

Comment Re:Not mandatory anymore (Score 3, Informative) 63

by Dotnaught on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @09:31AM (#28451585) Attached to: Protesting China's Required Censorship Software

Apparently the Chinese government has backpedaled on its backpedaling: The Green Dam mandate stands.

It's likely however that the government will change its mind at the last minute. There's precedent for brinkmanship in negotiations over cyber security rules in China.

Submission + - Adblock Plus Maker Proposes Change To Help Sites (informationweek.com) 1

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Monday May 11, 2009 @04:15PM

Dotnaught writes: "Wladimir Palant, maker of the Firefox extension Adblock Plus, on Monday proposed a change in his software that would allow publishers, with the consent of Adblock Plus users, to prevent their ads from being blocked. Palant suggested altering his software to recognize a specific meta tag as a signal to bring up an in-line dialog box noting the site publisher's desire to prevent ad blocking. The user would then have to choose to respect that wish or not."

Submission + - Exploding iPod Touch Prompts Lawsuit Against Apple (informationweek.com) 1

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Friday March 13, 2009 @01:26PM

Dotnaught writes: "The mother of a boy from Kentucky on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Apple for burns allegedly caused by an iPod Touch. The lawsuit, filed in Ohio where plaintiff Lynette Antrobus purchased the music player, claims that Antrobus' son suffered second-degree burns on his leg after his iPod Touch "exploded and caught on fire in his pocket.""

Submission + - Antitrust Suit Filed To Halt Apple Music Monopoly (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:23PM

Dotnaught writes: "An anti-trust lawsuit filed against Apple on December 31st, 2007, charges the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market. The complaint charges Apple with crippling its hardware as a means to maintain online music market dominance. "Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod's software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple's FairPlay-modified AAC format," the complaint states. "Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as 'crippling' a product, and software that does this is known as 'crippleware.'""

Submission + - Amazon Launches SimpleDB Database Service (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Friday December 14, 2007 @10:15AM

Dotnaught writes: "Amazon Web Services is getting a on-demand database called SimpleDB, upping the company's ante on its bet that it can sell on-demand computing. Adam Selipsky, VP of Product Management and Developer Relations describes it as a lightweight relational database that's ideal for storing metadata about objects or files such as those stored with Amazon's S3 service. Amazon's Alexa uses the service already. Sign-ups for the beta are being accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis."

Submission + - iPods Less Sought After By Criminals? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Friday September 28, 2007 @05:17PM

Dotnaught writes: "The popularity of the iPod and other portable media devices has driven the robbery rate higher, according to a report issued on Thursday by the Urban Institute, a non-profit policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. While that may have been the case in 2005 and 2006, it appears to be less true now, at least in San Francisco. According to the SFPD, there were 195 iPod robberies last year involving force or fear. This year, there have been about 7 iPod thefts per month on average. "They're not quite as hot as they used to be," said Lt. John Loftus of the SFPD robbery division."

Submission + - Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy (informationweek.com) 3

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @05:56PM

Dotnaught writes: "The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion, said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."

Submission + - Google and Others Sued For Automating E-mail (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:13PM

Dotnaught writes: "Six major Internet companies — AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo — have been sued for using computers to provide automated responses to e-mail. The plaintiff, Texas-based Polaris IP, charges the companies with implementing systems that "comprise interpreting electronic messages with rule base and case base knowledge engines," a process the plaintiff has patented. Dennis Crouch, associate professor of law at University of Missouri School of Law, expects a payday for Polaris, given that other suits based on the same patent have been settled."

Submission + - Hollywood Blamed For Scientific Ignorance (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @06:38PM

Dotnaught writes: "Two University of Central Florida professors argue that the disregard for the laws of physics evident in Hollywood films is contributing to students' poor understanding of science. In a related paper, the academics argue, "Hollywood is often willing to sacrifice scientific accuracy for the sake of drama. The problem with this is that many people, without the tools for critical analysis, accept what they see on-screen as realistic and accurate." The only thing missing from this theory: scientific evidence that people believe in film physics."

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