Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Security

Submission + - Should Developers Be Liable for their Code? (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "They might be, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal, which suggests "licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions," becomes law. The idea of making Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage caused by flaws in its product is certainly attractive, but where would this idea leave free software coders?"
The Internet

Submission + - Harvard Bookstore Bogus Legal Threat to Startup (thecrimson.com)

Submitted by
Jesse Maddox
Jesse Maddox writes: "Recently BrunoBooks.com (www.brunobooks.com) received a Cease & Desist letter from Barnes & Noble, with BN threatening to sue us for "damages, profits, costs and attorney's fees" for violating and infringing Barnes & Noble's "exclusive rights in the copyrighted work." BrunoBooks collects textbook information from the Barnes & Noble website at Harvard, and uses this information to allow students to compare prices at the bookstore with those of online vendors. The problem is that the copyright claims are patently false, as explained by Wendy Seltzer from Harvard Law School's Berkman Center: "I think Barnes & Noble is deliberating misinterpreting the law...They're claiming broader protections than the law would give us." According to Seltzer, who read the cease and desist letter, copyright law only covers the selection and arrangement of factual information and not the information itself, such as textbook titles and prices. Said BrunoBooks CEO Jesse Maddox, "Perhaps Barnes & Noble would be better off devoting more resources to finding ways to reduce textbook prices, rather than hiring lawyers to harass and intimidate startups with bogus legal claims." Or did Amazon just beat them to that? (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/05/06/1532239)"
Medicine

Submission + - More Fake Journals from Elsevier

Submitted by daemonburrito
daemonburrito writes: Last week, we learned about Elsevier publishing a bogus journal for Merck. Now several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of "advertorial" publications.

Excerpta Medica, a "strategic medical communications agency", is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous "Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine", it published a number of other "journals".

Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least six fake journals were published for pharma companies.
Linux Business

Submission + - Trademarks: The hidden menace

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a blog posting entitled "Trademarks: The Hidden Menace", Keir Thomas asks why open source advocates are keen to suggest patent and copyright reform, yet completely ignore the issue of trademarks, which can be just as dangerous. FTA: "Even within the Linux community, trademarking can be used as obstructively as copyright and patenting to further business ends. ... Is this how open source is supposed to work? Restricted redistribution? Tight control on who can compile software and still be able to call it by its proper name?"
Censorship

Submission + - Fired for writing concerns about anti piracy to MP (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by neurone333
neurone333 writes: France, may, 6th 2009, Libération reported this story, now all over French newspapers : A TV executive has been fired for writing his concerns about anti-piracy law (HADOPI aka 3 strikes and you're out) to his Member of Parliament, the UMP Françoise de Panafieu.

Françoise de Panafieu forwards this email to the UMP Christine Albanel, France's Minister for Culture and Communication, author of the anti-piracy law "HADOPI".

The email was then forwarded to TF1, the largest TV network in Europe. The author of the email, Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim.he was called into his boss' office and shown... an exact copy of his e-mail. He was then fired for "strong differences with the strategy"... in a private email sent from a private (gmail) adress.

Irish times has an explanation for "the incestuous relationship between his government and TF1" : TF1's owner, the construction billionaire Martin Bouygues, is godfather to Mr Sarkozy's youngest son, Louis. Mr Bouygues suggested to Mr Sarkozy that he ought to ban advertising on TF1's rival stations in the public sector, which was done in January. Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Mr Sarkozy's presidential campaign, is now number two at TF1. Last year, TF1 sacked Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, the station's star presenter for the previous 21 years. Poivre had angered Mr Sarkozy by saying he "acted like a little boy" at a G8 summit. He was replaced by Laurence Ferrari. Mr Sarkozy reportedly told Mr Bouygues he wanted to see the young blonde on the news.
Security

Submission + - Will Visa's security protocol kill virtualizaiton? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Julie188
Julie188 writes: "Visa PCI has done more to secure IT networks, servers and applications than any other regulation but it is weirdly mute on anything regarding virtualization, reports Network World. That's unusual because PCI tends to be more prescriptive than regulations like HIPAA or GLBA or SOX. If you are an IT person, why should you care what Visa thinks about anything? If your company handles credit cards then you need to care because it leaves PCI-approved auditors to interpret and decide how virtualized servers and applications might be subject to PCI security requirements. Yikes."
Software

Submission + - Chandler PIM reaches 1.0, loses financial support (chandlerproject.org)

Submitted by TuringTest
TuringTest writes: I was surprised to learn that Chandler, the open-source Personal Information Manager (covered on Slashdot after releasing some stable versions), has silently reached its 1.0 milestone this summer only to (or maybe because of) having its financial support removed at the end of 2008. Chandler inherits organization concepts from Lotus Agenda and is a brainchild of Mitch Kapor (of Firefox, EFF and Lotus fame). It shares an approach to unified information representation with recent PIMs like MIT's Haystack and KDE's Nepomuk. What happened to the persistent universal data storage that object-oriented desktops and metadata filesystems were never able to provide? Did it finally arrive as a userland application, and nobody cared?
Biotech

Submission + - Curing Malaria with the Bugs that Cause It (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99
mattnyc99 writes: Six years ago, we talked about applying genetically engineered, malaria-resistant mosquitoes to the large-scale prevention of malaria, which kills two people per minute worldwide. Last year, we made progress. Now, as detailed in a great new profile of one Gates-funded doctor's quest to engineer a vaccine ASAP, it looks like money, testing and government bureaucracy may be delaying the delivery of the breakthrough drug. From the article: "It means that before Hoffman can sell the vaccine to First World tourists and Third World governments and global public-health agencies and replenish the grant money he has burned through--before he can give the vaccine a chance to prove its worth in human tests scheduled for the United States and Africa--he has to sit around and wait. The FDA has asked for additional safety tests, which should be completed by January. Safety studies are necessary but expensive. 'You have to be so assiduous,' says Hoffman. 'And it's really good. We cannot do harm. The Hippocratic oath and all that. But it is mind-boggling.'"
Earth

Arctic Sea Ice Rallies a Bit 152

Posted by timothy from the mysterious-ways dept.
radioweather writes "Like the recent stock market rebound, Arctic sea ice is making a big rally over the record low set last year. According to the Alaskan IARC-JAXA website, satellite data which shows sea ice extent as of 10/14/08 was 7,064,219 square kilometers, when compared to a year ago 10/14/08 it was 5,487,656 square kilometers. The one-day gain between 10/13/08 and 10/14/08 of 3.8% is also quite impressive. On May 5th, The National Snow and Ice Data Center suggested the possibility of an ice-free north pole in 2008, but so far, this year has been a banner year for sea ice recovery."
Businesses

Submission + - Nokia to acquire Trolltech (nokia.com)

Submitted by Iloinen Lohikrme
Iloinen Lohikrme writes: From press release: Nokia and Trolltech ASA today announced that they have entered into an agreement that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech.. The acquisition of Trolltech will enable Nokia to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business.. Nokia aims to continue the development of Trolltech's products and support of new and existing customers.. Nokia intends to continue to enhance Trolltech products through active and ongoing development, for both desktop and mobile. To further stimulate industry innovation based on Trolltech's products, Nokia plans to continue to license Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses.
Linux Business

Submission + - Samba Success in the Enterprise?

Submitted by
gunnk
gunnk writes: "We've deployed a Samba server here to replace some aging Novell Netware boxes. It works great: fast, secure, stable. However, we have one VIP that feels that Samba is "amateur" software and that we should be buying Windows servers. I've been searching with little success for large Samba deployments in enterprise environments. Anyone out there care to share stories of places that are happily running large Samba installations for their file servers? Or not so happy, for that matter — better to be informed!"
Microsoft

Submission + - iowaconsumercase archive disappered

Submitted by jbrax
jbrax writes: Microsoft's dirty tricks archive seems to have vanished.

The Register: Plaintiffs maintained a website at iowaconsumercase.org, which included daily media updates, full transcripts of the previous day's proceedings, and an archive of some 2,000 exhibits of alleged misdeeds going back to the 1980s.

The website is now password-protected. Microsoft's own archive of exhibits and transcripts has similarly disappeared. Microsoft maintains a comprehensive record of its antitrust proceedings, making Comes a notable absence.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz

Close