mbencomo - Slashdot User

Two Bills of Interest Advancing In Congress 129

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @10:32PM from the not-all-gloom-and-doom dept.

pgn674 writes "While the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 failed to pass in the House of Representatives, two other bills of interest to this community are currently moving through the US lawmaking process. One is the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which Communications Workers of America claims will help us towards bringing high-speed Internet access to all Americans. It will have the FCC increase their granularity in reporting the Internet accessibility of an area in the US, and redefine broadband measurements. It has passed through the House and the Senate, and differences in the passed versions are currently being resolved. The other bill is the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008. Pandora is excited for this one as it will give them time to negotiate with SoundExchange (i.e. the RIAA) for new, more affordable royalty rates. The bill is currently in the Senate, and is expected to pass with ease."

RealNetworks, Film Industry Headed To Court 173

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @12:41PM from the in-your-face-film-industry dept.

netbuzz writes "Apparently tired of waiting to be sued by the movie studios over its new DVD-to-PC copying software, RealNetworks this morning announced it will file a preemptive lawsuit in an attempt to authoritatively establish that the product does not infringe on copyright restrictions. Within an hour or so, the Motion Picture Association of America said it would have a litigation announcement of its own this afternoon."

New Jersey's Cablevision Hijacks DNS Error Pages 200

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @08:58AM from the fine-line-between-service-and-serviced dept.

Selikoff writes "I just noticed Cablevision's Optimum Online service has begun hijacking DNS Error pages with, you guessed it, ad-supported results. Aside from hurting the underlying stability of the Internet, there have been instances where hackers have used such tools against customers. I know Road Runner customers have had to deal with this for a couple months now, although at least they have an outlet to turn it off." Update: 09/30 13:18 GMT by T : Note, as several readers have pointed out, this hijacking is of DNS errors rather than 404 errors as originally presented.

Submission + - Windows Update Disables Firefox as Default Browser

Submitted by

TheDawgLives

on Friday March 16, 2007 @05:24PM

TheDawgLives writes: "Blame it on carelessness or just bad assumptions, but it seems that the latest windows updates disable Firefox as the default web browser. Let the conspiracy theories [continue]."

Feed Microsoft Toolbar to Go on Lenova Computers (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @02:12AM

The agreement between Lenovo, the world’s third-largest PC maker, and Microsoft replaces a similar deal the Chinese computer maker had with Google.

Submission + - Slashdot FireHose Beta Sneak Preview

Submitted by

Davak

on Sunday March 04, 2007 @02:42PM

Davak writes: "The old fogey slashdot has announced a new (dare I say, Web 2.0) youthful, digg-like voting system-Firehose. This new code is described as a "collaborative system designed to allow users to assist editors in the story selection process." This review of the Firehose describes the new features and implications of this new system. For example, much of Firehose's AJAX eye candy is built around yahoo's ajax toolkit."

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