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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 32 declined, 5 accepted (37 total, 13.51% accepted)

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Privacy

Submission + - MPAA University 'Toolkit' Raises Privacy Concerns

NewbieV writes: "On the heels of the MPAA's efforts to eliminate peer-to-peer file sharing in colleges and universities, The Washington Post is reporting on a new development:

The Motion Picture of Association of America is urging some of the nation's largest universities to deploy custom software designed to pinpoint students who may be using the schools' networks to illegally download pirated movies. A closer look at the MPAA's software, however, raises some serious privacy and security concerns for both the entertainment industry and the schools that choose to deploy the technology.
The University Toolkit (website), also known as peerwatch, uses xubuntu, Snort, ntop and Apache to gather data and phone home. More from the article:

Steve Worona, director of policy and networking programs at EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association that promotes the use of information technology in higher learning, said he'd like to think that "no university network administrator in their right mind would install this toolkit on their networks." But he said some campus IT personnel may fail to dig too deeply into what the device actually does before installing it.
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The Media

Submission + - Demonoid - Down For Good?

NewbieV writes: "This is what the front page of Demonoid looks like this morning:

The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

We have brought online a forum in order to help the community stay together. This forum is not file sharing related in any way, it's just a mean to help the community stay together — please read the forum rules before posting. You can use your Demonoid account info to log in.
A history of the site is available in its Wikipedia entry."
Spam

Submission + - Court tosses $11 million judgment against Spamhaus

NewbieV writes: "From the NewsBlog on news.com.com.com:

At least for now, Spamhaus, the popular British spam-blacklisting organization, won't have to cough up $11.7 million as part of a spat with an Illinois e-mail marketing company.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Thursday vacated a lower court's decision last fall to award the damages and to impose an injunction, which required the organization to cease causing any e-mail sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be "blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in any way" and to publish an apology.
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Mozilla

Submission + - 386 Million Firefox Downloads. 96 Million Users. (zdnet.com)

NewbieV writes: "Three out of every four people who download Firefox don't use it actively. According to the Spreadfirefox website, Firefox has been downloaded over 386 million times. According to an article in the Ziff Davis blog roll, Firefox has about a 25% retention rate: half the people who download it, try it. Half of those people end up actively using it.

How to improve that retention rate? The Mozilla Foundation has a plan (which is also discussed here). What would Slashdotters recommend?"

Media

Submission + - Jack Valenti, ex-MPAA President, Dies at 85

NewbieV writes: "The New York Times is reporting that Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA for 38 years, has died at his home in Washington at the age of 85.

One of his more famous quotes was given during testimony before the US House of Representatives in 1982: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone".

An interview in Engadget from 2004 reveals this choice quote: "When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies. Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever. ""
Education

Submission + - Georgia: Board Yields on Evolution Stickers

NewbieV writes: "Quoting a one-paragraph story from The New York Times:

"A suburban Atlanta school board that put stickers in its high school science books saying evolution was "a theory, not a fact" abandoned its legal battle after four years. The board, from Cobb County, agreed in federal court never to use a similar sticker or to undermine the teaching of evolution in science classes. The parents who sued agreed to drop all legal action.""

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