Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Canadian Official Proposes "Privacy by Design" Principles

Submitted by memnock
memnock writes: NPR covered Ann Cavoukian, the privacy commissioner for Ontario, Canada.
"... She developed a framework for approaching privacy issues back in the 1990s that's been recognized around the world.

Her approach of seven principles, called 'Privacy By Design,' advocates that tech designers and engineers need to bake privacy provisions into their products and work from the start, not as an afterthought."

Submission + - The Social Engineering of Blu-Ray

Submitted by zakkudo
zakkudo writes: No one likes DRM. I have recently found that I enjoy playing DVDs more over my Wii (no homo) with WiiMC than with my brand new Sony bluray player. I've bought thousands of dollars in equipment so that I could autoswitch devices when they are turned on through my soundbar to my television. But because of HDCP I have no audio and the signal is downgraded to SD from the Sony Bluray player.

On my Wii, it just works. I don't have to wait to get to the menu screen. I have a remote without a rediculous amount of buttons and a recharable battery. I don't have to worry about a lack of a 'play' button on the player that actually plays the content. My next step is XMBC I think to make a Linux media playing appliance.

I've decided... from now on no matter how much I like a movie I've bought from Amazon, if it includes the Bluray version I give it a 1 star rating. How are you showing your contempt for the current situation? The only thing I have seen HDCP do is hurt the people who are actually trying to buy content. In my reviews, I explicitely explain how HDCP is exactly the equivalent the blinking NES light as most people can identify with it, but didn't know what it was.

Submission + - London UK Police demand summary domain takedown, hijack traffic to competing www (easydns.org)

Submitted by Stunt Pope
Stunt Pope writes: This morning Toronto based domain registrar easyDNS received a request from the City of London (UK) police demanding that they summarily take down a bittorrent search site based out of Singapore — or else they would "refer the matter to ICANN" — suggesting easyDNS could lose its accreditation.

They directed them to point all traffic for the domain at an IP address that promoted competing commercial online music services based out of London, UK.

Submission + - How to turn off Slashdot Auto-Refresh? 4

Submitted by Futurepower(R)
Futurepower(R) writes: Slashdot's Auto-Refresh is annoying. I go to another window to do something, and when I come back, what I was reading is not there!

How do I turn Auto-Refresh off?

Submission + - How to foil NSA sabotage: use a dead man's switch (theguardian.com) 4

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: Cory Doctorow has an interesting idea published in todays Guardian on how to approach the problem of NSA "gag orders" which prevent web sites, etc. from telling anyone that they have been compromised. His idea is to set up a "dead man" switch where a site would publish a statement that "We have not been contacted by the government" ... until, of course, they were contacted and compromised. The statement would then disappear since it would no longer be true.
He points out a few problems... Not making the statement could be considered a violation of disclosure... but, can the government force you to lie and state that you haven't been contacted when you actually have?

Submission + - Gut bacteria in slim people extract more nutrients (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: Researchers discovered that inserting gut bacteria from obese people into mice without gut bacteria led to the mice becoming obese. Gut bacteria from slim people inserted into the same mice did not lead to mouse obesity. The researchers concluded that gut bacteria from the slim people were more efficient at extracting nutrients from food than those of the obese.

Comment Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account. (Score 1) 443

by Festering Leper (#44766479) Attached to: PayPal Freezes MailPile's Account

Those are nice for Steam games but try ordering from parts vendors like Newark or Digikey or stores like Newegg, NCIX and TigerDirect and you'll find that they aren't accepted (I've tried). While great for subscriptions and games gift cards, for the most part, cannot be used to buy physical goods. :(

Slashdot Top Deals

2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League

Close