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Censorship

Submission + - Digg gives in

roninuta writes: Kevin Rose at Digg blog reports: In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Movies

Submission + - Digg is down!

An anonymous reader writes: As of 0:53 CST, Digg.com is now displaying a "We'll be back shortly" page. Were they simply flooded? Did Kevin Rose changing his mind again? Or did the police seize the servers?
Censorship

Submission + - Digg Has Honor

Bob9113 writes: "Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, posted the following. Doing what you believe is right, what your customers believe is right, in the face of impossible odds — that is honor. The following is copied verbatim.

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...

In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin"
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Digg is dugg.

An anonymous reader writes: Digg has been pulled and has their famous "We'll be back shortly." page up. Looks like the HD DVD Riots of '07 have claimed their first victim.
Censorship

Submission + - Digg.com succombs!!

xaviel writes: digg.com is offline, that should teach them a lesson about censorship!
The Internet

Submission + - Digg willing to "go down fighting"

ZPWeeks writes: After an overwhelming user revolt on Digg after the site deleted submissions linking to the recently leaked HD-DVD decryption key, Digg CEO has responded on Digg's blog: "...after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."
Announcements

Submission + - Digg.com submits

uncreativ writes: Looks like Digg.com is no longer removing posts of that certain number. They plan to discontinue removing posts and plan to "go down fighting" in support of their user's backlash.
Censorship

Submission + - Digg gives into Protest

tedivm writes: "From the Digg Blog: "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you 've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.""
Programming

Submission + - Open Source alternative to Java/Flash/Silverlight

dgym writes: Having applications that can be deployed on the net and run either in a browser or from a standalone player is an old idea, but still not one that has been done really well.
Java is one solution, but for various reasons hasn't attained ubiquity. Now that it is being open sourced it might find itself on more platforms, but it still may be too big for some devices, and too slow to start up to not be annoying.
Flash is geared towards video and animation, but can also lend itself to RIAs and it is certainly a very popular plugin. However, like any closed standard, it is only available on the platforms Adobe decide to support.
Silverlight might be a better platform for RIAs from a technical perspective, but is otherwise in the same position as Flash (only with even fewer platforms).

So why are there so many poor choices for such a simple problem? After all the requirements for developing applications are rather low:
  • A sand boxed virtual machine for running client side code.
  • A means to display information, i.e. graphics drawing primitives.
  • Event handling for user input.
  • Networking back to the originating server.
Can we not have an open standard for these, and open source plugins implementing it? The "virtual machine" could either be defined in terms of a language (e.g. ECMAScript), or be a true byte code engine such as Parrot or Mono. The graphics are straight forward, and using a cross platform library such as Cairo would help make these plugins extremely portable. Networking is almost trivial, although being able to make HTTP requests using the browser's proxy settings would be an important consideration.

The need is there, where is the open standard?
Communications

Samsung's UpStage Looks To Trump iPhone 197

bj sends word of Samsung's recently unveiled cell phone, called UpStage. It will ship April 1 (no fooling) for $300, or $150 with a 2-year contract from Sprint Nextel. "...the UpStage is a candy-bar style handset that's less than half an inch thick and not much taller or wider than an iPod Nano. Other multimedia-friendly cell phones struggle to balance the sometimes-conflicting requirements of a conventional handset and a music or video player; the UpStage solves this quandary by simply putting phone functions on one side of the device and the multimedia functions on the other side."

The Business of Software 24

pankaj_kumar writes "The business of software usually gets tons of footage by the tech media covering its various facets: products, people, organizations, its economics, business models, technology trends and myriad other related things. So one would think that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say something original. However, this collection of blog entries by noted blogger Eric Sink, founder of SourceGear, a vendor of source code control system, and developer of a Web browser at Spyglass that later came to become Internet Explorer, manages to do just that. He does so by focusing on workings of a lesser known niche in software business, that of privately held small ISVs, relating to his own personal experiences in a very engaging manner." Read the rest of Pankaj's review.

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