Comment Re:Tray 3? (Score 1) 397
More likely, they'd have to attempt to spam plotters with ANSI E sized paper
Comment Re:*bing* (Score 3, Funny) 122
Me too!!!!!!
Comment Openfire (Score 1) 360
I would recommend Openfire. It is a Jabber / XMMP implementation from Jive Software, and is open source (GPL).
See http://www.igniterealtime.org/
I can say from experience that it is fairly easy to administer, is multi-platform, and scales nicely. It has a rather nice size of plugins and should meet compliance standards.
Comment Re:Hollow Men (Score 5, Funny) 582
"Pull My Finger!"
--Earth
Yahoo Offers Compensation For Unplayable Music 143
DrEnter writes "According to this article, Yahoo will offer some compensation after they turn off their DRM servers and Yahoo Music customers will no longer be able to access their music. The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo's new partner, RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the MP3 format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who 'have serious problems with this arrangement,' Yahoo said. Nice to see them step up and do something, especially without trading one DRM scheme for another."
Submission + - The Alternative Distribution Alliance and RIAA?
ta11geese3 writes: So as a slashdot reader and as an indie fan, I've been heavily influenced to look down upon both RIAA's music and policies. While reading up on Matador Records on Wikipedia, I find out that they said they were not under the RIAA. However, they are part of the Alternative Distribution Alliance, which has big name indie labels such as Merge (Spoon, Arcade Fire, M. Ward), Touch and Go Records (Pinback, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and even the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It turns out, however, that the ADA is 95% owned by Warner. Does this mean that the whole time that I was actually supporting the RIAA the whole time? Am I doomed to listen to ultra obscure stuff if I want to really boycott the RIAA? Or is the ADA not covered by the RIAA, despite being owned by one of the Big Four? On a side note, I've noticed that the cds I bought under the ADA labels all lack the ugly FBI warning on the back of the typical RIAA bands.
Submission + - US Government caught manipulating Wikipedia 1
surfi writes: As The Inquirer points out, someone with a House of Representatives IP address has been feeding propaganda into the 'invasion of Iraq' article on Wikipedia. Well, it seems they're not the only ones messing..
Submission + - Atlantis launch delayed again (washingtonpost.com)
Z80xxc! writes: According to an article by the Washington Post, NASA has delayed the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis until January 2nd, 2008 at the earliest. The latest in a series of delays is due to a faulty fuel gauge. NASA did say that it should not vastly affect either the space station construction or the launch the European Space Agency's $2 billion Columbus lab.
Submission + - Photoshopping about to get harder to detect
Frosty Piss writes: "We all know by now that you can't trust magazine covers and advertisements for skin-care products. The power of Photoshop is startling when you see it in action, and realize how much the representations of reality we see all around us are distorted and "improved" according to whatever the current standards of blemish-free beauty are. While we learn how to detect the tell-tale smudges, spots of flat color, inconsistencies in lighting, and pixilated artifacts left behind by digital manipulation, Dr. Ariel Shamir has developed a technique called Seam Carving that will make detection of Photoshopping much more difficult in the near future. As shown in this video, it's astonishing and almost disturbing how easy and fast it is to distort distances or remove objects entirely with this new tool."
Submission + - Role of endogenous retroviruses in human evolution
mhackarbie writes: The current edition of the New Yorker magazine has a fascinating story about endogenous retroviruses in the genomes of humans and other species. Although researchers have known about such non-functional retroviral 'fossils' in the human genome for some time, the large amount of recent genomic data underscores just how pervasive they are, in a compelling tale that involves humans, their primate cousins, and a variety of viral invaders. Some researchers are even bringing back non-functional viral remnants from the dead by fixing their broken genes.
Submission + - flatulence ban (bbc.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: There's a short, not very long-winded article at BBC about a stink being raised in Devon, UK. Seems one Maurice Fox has been asked (formally, in writing, though in bad English) to stop farting.
article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7126973.stm
article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7126973.stm
Submission + - New York times hockey blog conspiracy (imageshack.us)
Vir writes: On November 20th the New York Times unveiled its new hockey blog, but only now has the true inspiration for that blog been revealed. Mike Rodden? Wayne Gretzky? The answer may be a little closer to home, and we don't mean Jaromir Jagr or Red Fisher either.
Submission + - California Testers Find Flaws in Voting Machines (arstechnica.com) 1
quanticle writes: According to Ars Technica, California testers have discovered severe flaws in the ES&S voting machines. The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, allowing for a man-in-the-middle attack.
Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Submission + - Microsoft fueling HD wars for own benefit? (electronista.com)
DaveyJJ writes: "According to Transformers' director Michael Ray, in a story over on Electronista, Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, he says in a response to a question posed through his official forums.
The producer contends that Microsoft is writing "$100 million dollar checks" to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format's actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand. Bay's own Transformers is available on disc only in the less popular HD DVD format despite his stated preference for Blu-ray. To the director, this is primarily a stalling tactic while Microsoft refines its own online-only technology," Electronista reports.
"'What you don't understand is corporate politics,' he says in the response," Electronista reports. "'Microsoft [officials] want both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads.'"
More in the full article, including link to Bay's post in which he describes Blu-ray as the "leading, superior" format, over at http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/12/04/bay.on.microsoft.hd/."
The producer contends that Microsoft is writing "$100 million dollar checks" to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format's actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand. Bay's own Transformers is available on disc only in the less popular HD DVD format despite his stated preference for Blu-ray. To the director, this is primarily a stalling tactic while Microsoft refines its own online-only technology," Electronista reports.
"'What you don't understand is corporate politics,' he says in the response," Electronista reports. "'Microsoft [officials] want both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads.'"
More in the full article, including link to Bay's post in which he describes Blu-ray as the "leading, superior" format, over at http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/12/04/bay.on.microsoft.hd/."
Submission + - Can my rights granted by the LGPL be limited? 2
An anonymous reader writes: I recently had a brief e-mail conversation with the people of Ext JS — a rather neat JavaScript/AJAX library — about their licensing terms. They offer their library under the LGPL 3.0 which is their alternative open-source offering next to their commercial license.
However, unlike MySQL — where you can also choose between GPL and a commercial license — they limit your freedoms as to what you can do with their software under the LGPL 3.0 license. It is my understanding that once I obtain a copy of a work under LGPL 3.0 I can do with it pretty much anything I want — including re-distribute it — as long as I comply with the terms of the license.
Specifically, they say you cannot build your own framework on top of their software when using the LGPL 3.0 version. For that you need to buy their commercial license. It seems strange to me to limit users in such a way and still claim you're distributing under the LGPL.
I have two specific questions for the Slashdot audience:
To ask the second question in another way: can I or anybody else consider their additional limitations void and assume they offer their software under the terms (and freedoms) of the LGPL?
However, unlike MySQL — where you can also choose between GPL and a commercial license — they limit your freedoms as to what you can do with their software under the LGPL 3.0 license. It is my understanding that once I obtain a copy of a work under LGPL 3.0 I can do with it pretty much anything I want — including re-distribute it — as long as I comply with the terms of the license.
Specifically, they say you cannot build your own framework on top of their software when using the LGPL 3.0 version. For that you need to buy their commercial license. It seems strange to me to limit users in such a way and still claim you're distributing under the LGPL.
I have two specific questions for the Slashdot audience:
- Is it allowed to extend the LGPL by imposing limitations in freedom of usage?
- If limiting the freedoms granted by the LGPL is not allowed, is their entire open-source licensing offer void OR only their additional limitations.
To ask the second question in another way: can I or anybody else consider their additional limitations void and assume they offer their software under the terms (and freedoms) of the LGPL?
