FrnkMit - Slashdot User

Aussies Hit the Streets Over Gov't Internet Filters 224

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 03, 2008 @10:43AM from the thinking-of-the-children dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "Outraged aussies will hold simultaneous protests across Australia in opposition to the government's plans for mandatory ISP internet content filtering. The plan will introduce nation-wide filtered internet using blacklists operated by a government agency, away from public scrutiny. Politicians and ISPs will join protesters in the streets to voice their opposition to the government's plan, which has ploughed ahead, despite intense criticism that the technology will crippled internet speeds and infringe on free speech. Opponents said the most accurate filter chosen by the government will incorrectly block up to 10,000 Web pages out of 1 million."

Bittorrent To Cause Internet Meltdown 872

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 01, 2008 @11:14AM from the packet-schmacket dept.

Gimble writes "Richard Bennett has an article at the Register claiming that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for file transfers to avoid ISP 'traffic management' restrictions will cause a meltdown of the internet reducing everybody's bandwidth to a quarter of their current value. Other folks have also expressed concern that this may not be the best thing for the internet."

How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists 610

Posted by timothy on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @11:31AM from the council-of-wise-men-strikes-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)" The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren't doing the chemistry themselves: "Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry's greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin's Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist 'discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.'"

China Defines Internet Addiction 201

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 10, 2008 @05:45PM from the one-more-addiction-to-the-list dept.

narramissic writes "Three years after the first clinic dedicated to Internet addiction opened in Beijing, Chinese doctors have now officially defined it as an ailment. Those afflicted with this ailment spend six or more hours a day online and exhibit at least one of the following symptoms: difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress. Do you meet the criteria? You're in good company: About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said."

Comment Re:Better games? (Score 1) 243

by FrnkMit on Monday April 21, 2008 @01:03PM (#23146798) Attached to: D&D 4th Ed vs. Open Gaming

[I]Spirit of the Century[/I] technically uses the Open Gaming License, but it has no actual content from the d20 SRD. It just uses the text of the OGL for compatibility with FUDGE (which does the same), and in turn to make the core of the FATE system free for others to build upon.

See http://zork.net/~nick/loyhargil/fate3/fate3.html for the license (and the entire FATE 3/SotC SRD, as it currently exists).

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