An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that Canadian cultural groups including ACTRA and SOCAN have called on Canada's telecom regulator to implement a massive new Internet regulation framework. This includes a new three-percent tax on ISPs to pay for new media creation, Canadian content requirements for commercial websites, and licensing requirements for new media broadcasters, including for user-generated content."

svnt writes "Janella Spears wiped out her husband's retirement account, remortgaged their paid-for house, and took out a lien against the family car in an attempt to cash in on the deal. A undercover officer involved with the investigation called it the worst example of the scam he's ever seen. Thoughtfully, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim."

holy_calamity writes "After launching in a blaze of publicity that even warmed Slashdot, Google's browser grabbed a 3% share of the market, but has been slipping ever since, and now accounts for 1.5%. Google has also stopped promoting the browser on its search page. Assuming they wanted it to grab a significant share of the browser market, have they dropped the ball, or is this part of the plan?" On Slashdot, Chrome is still the #4 browser (after FF, IE, and Safari) but it was ahead of Safari for a few days, hitting almost 10% of our traffic.

Being in a relationship is not easy, more than half of all first marriages fail in this country. That statistic doesn't improve if you spend most of your time reading your favorite website and not tending to the needs of your family. Instead of asking me to help fix your relationship maybe you should try playing with your kids, talking to your wife, and not staring at a computer screen all day. You should realize that the help link doesn't provide help with your life. It's mostly for getting passwords and stuff. Below you'll find a collection of people that should have reached out to Dr. Phil and not Dr. Sam.

With the entry to sub-orbital flight, and even orbital flight, becoming ever so slightly easier, the obvious thought of space porn kicks in. Who wouldn't want to see two or more people going at it like rabbits in a weightless environment (or at least trying to go at it like rabbits in a weightless environment)? Sadly, Virgin Galactic has turned down a $1 million offer to do just that. The offer was made by an unidentified party who was willing to put the money up front to do a space porn movie. Considering that a flight aboard VG costs $200,000 for a two-hour flight, $1 million doesn't seem too bad. Though how much you could actually do and perform in two hours is debatable. And what if one or more of the actors gets sick?

ds writes "Apple, this morning, announced they are dropping the iPhone Developer NDA in respect to released software. Previously, iPhone developers were legally bound even after their software had been released." Another reader adds, "Early release software is still covered, but this should bring about increased developer interaction, as well as a slew of iPhone dev books." The complete message about the NDA change can be seen for now at Apple's iPhone Developer site, and is reproduced below.

I get a lot of mail from obviously unbalanced people. Enough in fact, that I've often wondered if there was a institution that allowed their patients to only read Slashdot. We've even had a few visits from some questionable individuals. A man who tried to bribe me with a car if I let him "reverse engineer" Rob Malda's Life comes to mind. He insisted on Rob being present for the process and couldn't explain to me what it entailed, so I suggested he leave. The personal visits are rare, however, compared to the amount of mail I get. Here are a few of my favorites; let's hope these people have started to take their medication. Read below and don't be worried if you don't understand all of it.

Ironsides writes "After faking the fireworks at the Olympics this year, one would have thought China had learned their lesson. Now, it appears they announced the success of their manned space mission before liftoff even occured, complete with dialogue."

Fjan11 writes "Over 150 man-years of work were added to the Open Source community today when Zarafa decided to put their successful Exchange server replacement under GPLv3. This is not just the typical mail-server-that-works-with-Outlook, it is the whole package — including 100% MAPI, web access, tasks, iCal and Activesync. (The native syncing works great with my iPhone!) Binaries and source are available for all major Linux distros."

Gizmodo is reporting that the Hubble space telescope has found a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. Some are even suggesting that this could be a new class of object. Of course, without actually understanding more about it, the speculation seems a bit wild. "The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn't there before. In fact, they don't even know where it is exactly located because it didn't behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can't be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It's not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It's something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don't have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is."

Since we covered people who wanted out of Slashdot last week, I thought we'd look at some people who wanted back in. These users found that living without Slashdot was a lot harder than they thought. Maybe you've just been married and are finding out your wife is less interesting than Slashdot or maybe you were bad and want to make amends. These people found out it's hard to make it without your favorite website. Keep reading to find out what they'll do to get back.

Everyone likes to belong to something. Whether it be for fun, a sense of belonging, or a need for attention, a group gives you a feeling of solidarity. Surrounding yourself with people that share common goals and ideas can be comforting. Sometimes however, you realize that you hate the people you've surrounded yourself with. Your religion doesn't allow you to read anything that has profanity or you've subscribed to Slashdot thinking you could learn more about hockey. This week's collection is composed of people who don't want to play, read, or be associated with us anymore. Read below to find out how bad they want out.

Nick writes "A few weeks ago a video of a talk given by Adam Savage of the television show MythBusters spread across the internet (including a mention on Slashdot.) On the video, Savage stated that the show was unable to produce an episode about previously known RFID vulnerabilities due to a conference call to Texas Instruments that unexpectedly included several credit card companies' legal counsel. TI (via a spokesperson talking with cnet.com) stated that only one lawyer was on the call and that the majority of the people on the call were product managers from the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) invited by TI to speak. Then Savage (via a Discovery Communications statement) reaffirmed that he was not on the call himself and that the decision was not made by Discovery or their advertising sales department but rather MythBuster's production company, Beyond Productions."

arcticstoat writes "Are you the USB keymaster? You could be soon if you pick up PNY's new 2GB USB flashdrive, which comes pre-loaded with Ghostbusters. A spokesperson for PNY explained that it comes with a form of DRM that prevents you from copying the movie. 'They have DRM protection,' explained the spokesperson, 'so customers can download the movie onto their laptop or PC if they wish, but they have to have the USB drive plugged in to watch the movie, as the DRM is locked in the USB drive.' The music industry has been playing around with USB flash drives for a few years now, but it hasn't been a massive success yet; will USB movies fare any better?"

User AttheCoalFac pointed us to an interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing criminal charges after a repairman says she threatened to hold him hostage until he fixed her Internet connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP. Having a lot of experience on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.