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Submission + - The Wikipedia Deletion Wars

Submitted by
The Narrative Fallacy
The Narrative Fallacy writes: "Nicholson Baker has written a good review of John Broughton's new book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" that details the Wikipedia War between deletionists and inclusionists that started in the fall of 2006, when groups of editors went around getting rid of articles on webcomic artists — some of the most original and articulate people on the Net. As the deletions and ill-will spread in 2007 — deletions not just of webcomics but of companies, urban places, Web sites, lists, people, categories, and ideas — all deemed to be trivial, "NN" (nonnotable), "stubby," undersourced, or otherwise unencyclopedic — Andrew Lih, one of the most thoughtful observers of Wikipedia's history, told a Canadian reporter: "The preference now is for excising, deleting, restricting information rather than letting it sit there and grow." Although the war seems to have subsided "someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue — a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal. Like other middens, it would have much to tell us over time. We could call it the Deletopedia." Kevin Kelly has some additional thoughts on the book."
Power

Submission + - Paint-on Solar Panels (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: "Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations."

Guess I won't need that Mr. Fusion after all.
Security

Submission + - Fingerprints at School 2

Submitted by
Inda
Inda writes: "My daughter, 7, is about to start at a new school that likes to think they excel in technology. They use an interesting system for checking out library books using a single thumb print. When I first heard this, alarm bells rang. The way I understand it, once a fingerprint is compromised, it is compromised forever.

I'm told the children enjoy using the fingerprint system and I would not want to single my daughter out as being different. The alternative to fingerprints are library cards, with barcodes, that are scanned manually.

I am not confident that the school's security is up to scratch. Their website is poorly written in FrontPage by the headmaster, all the staff use the Comic Sans MS font; I'm sure you get the picture. At the end of the day, they're teachers, not security experts. Security is not my field of expertise either.

Should I be concerned? Have I been reading Slashdot too long? Should I put the tinfoil hat down?"
United States

Submission + - U.S. has lost ability to build its own roads

Submitted by
michaelmalak
michaelmalak writes: "The land famous for its love of the automobile and construction of Interstates and other highways, with high-elevation tunnels, viaducts snaking through canyons, and water crossings of up to 20 miles is now outsourcing design and construction of its roads to Asia — not because it's cheaper, but because the U.S. has lost the expertise. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer regarding the newly opened span across the Tacoma Narrows, "the American steel industry had imploded, while steel-making — and the expertise needed to build suspension bridges — had moved to Asia" and "the detailed engineering and fieldwork and all the spinning and cable-wrapping equipment ... were provided by ... Japanese construction giants""
Education

Submission + - Students liable for School Insecurity?

Submitted by
yamamushi
yamamushi writes: "Within the past few weeks, students across Boerne ISD were being called into offices to discuss the use of proxies to circumvent the schools websense system. The problem is that some of these students are being punished so far as being suspended from school for up to (as far as anyone knows so far) 3 months at a time. Shouldn't the school district be liable for their own insecurity? Why are they punishing so many students for something that should be handled from the district's end? I know at the time I was going to school there, I was punished for using a linux livecd to login to their computers without using a password, even after I told the admins how to disable cdrom boots, they refused to update any of the computers and as such I was using the same tactic till the day I graduated."
Music

Submission + - Calls to Close "Copyright Gap", 50 Years T

Submitted by YouTalkinToMe
YouTalkinToMe writes: The BBC is reporting that Widows and Orphans (ok, just Widows) are calling to increase the term of Copyright in Britain.

From the story: "The widow of skiffle king Lonnie Donegan has warned that the families of dead music stars could face financial hardship when royalty payments end." Mrs. Donegan continued: "It's not even as though they made us rich. People say I must be a millionaire, but, no. The royalties were just enough to get by."

Mrs. Donegan is joined by Sir Cliff and others who will lose Copyright protection on their performances in the near future. Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), the UK broadcast royalties collection society, calls the situation "the Copyright Gap", and is lobbying for "harmonization" with songwriters and photographers, meaning Copyright terms of life plus 70 years.
Google

Submission + - Google screws over Owner of popular OSS project

Submitted by buhatkj
buhatkj writes: The guy who runs the popular OSS 3d engine project Irrlicht just got banned from Google AdSense, after an accusation of click fraud!
From the Blog Post:

"Maybe you've noticed, for the last few days some google ads appeared on this blog, but they have disappeared now again. That's because I just got banned from google adsense for life time (as it seems), although I didn't do anything wrong."

Not only that, but they are witholding monies already earned by his ads prior to the accusation.

"In that mail, they did not even tell me any information about their problem with my ads, only "invalid clicks or page impressions". No IP adresses, no channel ID, no website, no time or date, no amount of clicks, nothing. No way for me to find out what was wrong. There was the possibility to contradict, and I tried to explain some possible causes like the sudden increased amount of traffic, but they ignored me. The interesting thing: They now even won't pay out the money I already earned before the occurance of their 'invalid clicks' assert. "

Check out the full story HERE
The Internet

Submission + - The Pirate Bay to stay in Sweden

Submitted by paulraps
paulraps writes: The Pirate Bay has ditched plans to buy its own nation so as to avoid international copyright laws. One of the founders says that the operation is now less vulnerable to police raids in Sweden now that it has spread its servers around different locations. Amusingly, they may still buy an island, but for more modest reasons: "We have 20,000 to 25,000 dollars to spend. Really we just want somewhere we can name The Pirate Bay, so we can look on Google Maps and find ourselves there," said Tobias Andersson, who, despite running the most poopular site in Scandinavia, still works as an electrician.
Music

Puretracks Music Store Drops DRM 236

Posted by kdawson from the apple-could-do-this dept.
khendron writes "The Canadian online music store Puretracks (a store I have generally avoided because of their Microsoft-specific solutions) has announced that it will immediately start selling part of its catalog as DRM-free MP3 files. The site's unprotected catalog, which includes artists such as The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, will initially feature only 50,000 of its 1.3 million tracks, but their number will grow weekly. The Globe and Mail says the move will likely profit Puretracks because its DRM-free-music will be playable on iPods. It quotes one industry watcher saying 'We're seeing the death of DRM.'" Essentially Puretracks is relaxing the major-label mandated DRM rules that it had initially applied to all labels, even the indies that wanted no part of DRM.
Businesses

Submission + - AT&T and BellSouth to Merge...Here comes Ma Be

Submitted by kangdangalang
kangdangalang writes: News is amuck about a merger between AT&T and BellSouth AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and BellSouth Corporation (NYSE:BLS) announced today an agreement to merge the two companies, a combination that will create a more effective and efficient provider in the wireless, broadband, video, voice and data markets. The merger will streamline the ownership and operations of Cingular Wireless, which is jointly owned by AT&T and BellSouth. The new company will be more innovative, nimble and efficient, providing benefits to customers by combining the Cingular, BellSouth and AT&T networks into a single fully integrated wireless and wireline Internet Protocol network offering a full range of advanced solutions. Seems like AT&T is trying to reacquire all the baby bells to get back to being the communications supergiant of decades past, do you think this will be allowed by the FCC or will this get shot down because of fear of AT&T becoming a monopoly once again?
Security

Submission + - NY Times Trashes Open Source

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/business/smallbu siness/20hack.html?pagewanted=2&ref=smallbusiness
In a NY Times article about small businesses and network security : "Many use open-source software, which is free on the Internet...Some of that software, because it is written by relatively unskilled programmers, has a poor security record." It goes on to discuss the 'threat' of PHP and Ajax.
Television

Submission + - Sex doesn't sell

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1060 Sex won't sell ads, say British researchers who found that sexual content in a TV show prevents viewers from remembering accompanying ads.

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