Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Google

Submission + - Google sues internet scammers. (cnn.com)

Cwix writes: "Google filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for allegedly using the company's name and colorful logo to promote fraudulent work-at-home money-making schemes."

Submission + - How can a 16 year old get a job in IT?

psmaster writes: I am an A+ certified 16 year old, going on 17. I am currently studying for Security+ and then Network+. I attend a technical school for half the day to learn all that I can. My question is a simple one: How can I get a decent part-time job working in the field? I have plenty of hands-on experience with fixing and troubleshooting computers and networks. I know, some might say to just do odd jobs for friends, but I am looking for a more steady income and most of my friends want the "friend discount". Any help would be much appreciated.

Submission + - Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring (theregister.co.uk) 1

Shokaster writes: The Register reports that Virgin Media are to begin monitoring file sharing using a deep packet inspection system, CView, provided by Deltica, a BAE subsidiary. The trial will cover about 40% of customers, although those involved will not be informed. CView's deep packet inspection is the same technology that powered Phorm's advertising system.
Initially Virgin Media's implementation will focus on music sharing and will inspect packets to determine whether the content is licensed or unlicensed, based on data provided by the record industry. Virgin Media emphasised that records will not be kept on individual customers and that data on the level of copyright infringement will be aggregated and anonymised.

Submission + - SPAM: LSE trading hit by technical glitch

viralMeme writes: Trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been brought to a halt by technical difficulties.

The LSE said it had been affected by connectivity issues and at 1033 GMT had placed all orders for shares into an "auction call period".

This allows traders to put orders to buy or sell shares into the system but without executing them.

Link to Original Source
The Internet

Submission + - 30000 UK ISP Users Face Illegal P2P Threat Letters (ispreview.co.uk)

Mark.JUK writes: Solicitors at ACS:Law have been granted approval by the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand the private personal details of some 30,000 customers suspected of involvement with illegal file sharing from UK broadband ISPs. The customers concerned are "suspected" of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action. It's noted that 25,000 of the IP addresses that have been collected belong to BT users.
Networking

Submission + - Virgin Media Begins DNS Hijacking 1

Mopatop writes: The UK's largest cable ISP Virgin Media is following Comcast and Verizon in the recent trend of hijacking non-existent DNS requests. Instead of a traditional "not found" message, users are greeted with an advertisement-filled error page when attempting to visit a non-existent domain. Virgin have been playing by the book a lot recently, it's a shame that they've decided to hop on this worrying bandwagon.
Medicine

Submission + - You Too Can Learn Echolocation

The Narrative Fallacy writes: "Wired reports that with just a few weeks of training, you can learn to "see" objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain has developed a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters — or cat burglars. "Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you," says Martinez. "Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement." To master the art of echolocation, you can begin by making the typical "sh" sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed right away similar to the phenomenon when traveling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to "hear" gaps in the verge of the road. The next level is to learn how to master "palate clicks," special clicks with your tongue and palate that are better than other sounds because they can be made in a uniform way, work at a lower intensity, and don't get drowned out by ambient noise. With the palate click you can learn to recognize slight changes in the way the clicks sound depending on what objects are nearby. "For all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world," says Martinez."
Networking

Submission + - Free Wi-Fi for the Residents of Venice, Italy 1

pmontra writes: The City of Venice, Italy, started to offer free Wi-Fi to residents (Google translation from the Italian source) on July 3 2009. Tourists and other visitors will pay 5 Euros a day for the service starting from September. The hot spots are connected to a ten thousand kilometers (6.250 miles) fiber optic LAN the City started deploying in the '90s. The first day of free Internet access has been celebrated with a digital treasure hunt in the channels of the lagoon city.
Software

Submission + - Sothink Violated the FlashGot GPL and Stole Code

ShineTheLight writes: People at Sothink decided to violate the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) by stealing a piece of core code from FlashGot and use it without even the decency of covering their tracks. It is an exact copy of a previous version. This deception came to light when users reported to the FlashGot support forum that their software was not working right. Some digging led to the discovery that the older module that Sothink stole and used verbatim was overriding the more recent engine on the machines of those who had both installed and it was causing the issue. It has been reported to AMO at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499485 and the developer is aware of it at http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1654&p=6396#p6396 and the Sothink people have completed ignored and been silent on the subject. This is why most good programmers will stop contributing to the global community because there are those who will steal their work, pass it off as their own, never acknowledge or give credit and then shamefully stick their head in the sand and ignore the consequence.
Handhelds

We're Just Not That Into You, iPhone Apps 205

maximus1 writes "A new report compiled by iPhone analytics firm Pinch Media finds the majority of people stop using apps the day after they download them, and only 1 percent develop a long-term relationship with any given app. Instead, most tend to lose interest after a few minutes, according to this article. Paid apps fare slightly better. 30% of the people downloading a paid app return the next day compared to 20% who download a free app. No surprises that the survey found that apps that focused on games and entertainment seem to outlast other categories when it comes to long-term love."
Idle

Submission + - Goatse Mail To Spammer Ends In Police Citation 2

Dave writes: Locally, we have a happy hour event for Information Technology professionals to meet up and have a few drinks. Each month, it is hosted at a different location, and each month a different business sponsors the beer. As part of this event, there is an e-mail sign up for the actual happy hour mailing list to receive information about where the next event takes place and who is sponsoring it. The business where the event took place happened to take their own copy of this list and used it to start e-mailing me about their non-related promotions (Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, etc).

I replied nicely the first time with a title of 'UNSUBSCRIBE', the full original message (including the header showing which e-mail address the message was sent to), and quotes from the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 which says that there must be a clear unsubscribe mechanism (which there was not), and that requests must be honored within 10 days. This past week, I received more promotional materials and replied with an attached image of goatse.

I was contacted today by an officer in reference to "Unlawful Use Of Computerized Communication Systems". I was told that this could be prosecuted under state criminal law but that "since I had cooperated and returned the officer's phone call", I will instead be issued a municipal citation (locally adopted state law, references the same exact legal code 947.0125) for $300.

I fully plan on going to my court date to contest the citation on principle, but I thought maybe some other slashdotters might have had similar experiences or may be able to provide me with some basis on which to fight this.
Government

Submission + - Satirist Gets Three Months; the Judge, Likely More (nytimes.com)

ponraul writes: When Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, sentenced Hillary Transue, 17, on a harassment charge stemming from a MySpace parody of her high school's assistant principal, Hillary expected to be let off with a stern lecture; instead, the Wilkes-Barre, PA area teen got three months in a commercially operated juvenile detention center. In a reversal of fortune, Ciavarella and, his colleague, Judge Conahan, 56, find themselves trying to plea-bargain a 87 month sentence in Federal correctional facilities relating to a kick-back scheme that netted the pair $2.6 Million and PA Child Care 5000 inmates.
Censorship

Submission + - ISPs in Great Britain censoring Wikipedia (wikinews.org) 5

Joshua Zelinsky writes: "Wikipedia is being . censored by a variety of ISPs in Great Britian. The activity was first noticed when it appeared that almost all edits from Great Britain were coming through only a handful of IP addresses. This created serious problems in preventing vandalism from Great Britain. It then emerged that this was due to the system being used by ISPs to censor Wikipedia. At present it is not known in full which pages are being censored. However, at least one page which is being censored is a page is Virgin Killer about an album from a German heavy metal band which has a naked young girl on the cover. Individuals in Great Britain attempting to access the page report that they are simply getting error messages and not even being told that the page is being censored. Some commentators have already started referring to the Great Firewall of Britain."
Censorship

Submission + - UK ISPs Censor Wikipedia (wikinews.org)

An anonymous reader writes:

...six of the United Kingdom's main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors of the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation sites


Music

Submission + - Blogger charged with felony in leak of songs (latimes.com)

n0nsensical writes: [Blogger Kevin] Cogill posted nine leaked songs from an unreleased Guns N' Roses album, which has been in the works for more than a decade, on his music blog in June. Now he faces up to three years in prison and $250,000 in fines. On Wednesday he became the first Californian charged under a 3-year-old federal anti-piracy law that makes it a felony to distribute a copyrighted work on computer networks before its release.

Slashdot Top Deals

Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"

Working...