thorshammer42 - Slashdot User

Study Says P2P Downloaders Buy More Music 158

Posted by Zonk on Saturday November 03, 2007 @12:17AM from the not-all-that-kooky dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist posts to his site about a study commissioned by the Canadian government intended to look into the buying habits of music fans. What the study found is that 'there is a positive correlation between peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing.' The report is entitled The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study For Industry Canada, and it was 'conducted collaboratively by two professors from the University of London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research, who surveyed over 2,000 Canadians on their music downloading and purchasing habits. The authors believe this is the first ever empirical study to employ representative microeconomic data.'"

Submission + - Dislike a Relative? Turn Them in as a Terrorist! 9

Submitted by Stanislav_J on Friday November 02, 2007 @04:23PM

Stanislav_J writes: A Swedish man who had less than fond feelings for his daughter's hubby, took advantage of the son-in-law's trip to America by reporting him to the FBI as a terrorist. The e-mail, which the father-in-law admits to sending, earned him a libel charge after his poor son-in-law was arrested on his arrival in Florida, handcuffed, interrogated, and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being released.

It's a brief article, but dovetails nicely with the recent Slashdot story about "The War on the Unexpected." That article touched on many examples of well-meaning, but misguided and paranoid citizens reporting innocent activities to the authorities. In the current climate, the potential also exists for maliciously false and far from well-meaning reports made to the Feds about people one simply doesn't care for, or those made merely as a sick prank.

While the man admitted to sending the e-mail to the FBI, he claims he thought no harm would come from it because "he did not think the US authorities would be stupid enough to believe him." To quote the great philosopher Bugs Bunny, 'Nyahh....he don't know us very well, do he?'

Submission + - Unpatched QuickTime-to-Firefox flaw dings IE too (zdnet.com)

Submitted by SlashNot on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:46AM

SlashNot writes: Security researcher Aviv Raff has found a way to use the one-year-old (and still unpatched) QuickTime vulnerability to automate XAS (cross application scripting) attacks against users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. To demonstrate the attack scenario, Raff embedded a rigged QuickTime file on Google's BlogSpot to force a Skype shutdown if an IE user is tricked into visiting that Web page. Any limited Web environment that allows embedded QuickTime files can be used to host an attack against IE, Raff said.

Submission + - Mark Shuttleworth on Goals and Success (abclinuxu.cz)

Submitted by

tykev

on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @02:30AM

tykev writes: "Mark Shuttleworth talks about success, failure, and the lessons he has learned. He gives his thoughts on Linux gaming, KDE vs. Gnome in Ubuntu, Microsoft's patent deals, the OpenXML format, and tivoization. From the interview: 'My interest is always in finding big changes in the world and then trying to accelerate them, and be part of them. [...] I won't start looking for another project until I'm comfortable that Ubuntu has fulfilled all its potential.'"

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 45

by thorshammer42 on Monday September 10, 2007 @10:47PM (#20548131) Attached to: More Details on Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition

So they've made an Animal Crossing RPG?

Submission + - German ISP blocks adult web sites

Submitted by on Monday September 10, 2007 @10:37PM

An anonymous reader writes: As German news service Heise reports, German ISP Arcor is blocking the IP addresses of several web sites with adult content. Among the blocked web sites several are community-driven or provide some free content. The ISP states they acted after complaints about the web sites' disregard of German youth protection law came in. According to Heise, the complaints actually came from a company that also offers adult content online. Many worry now more companies will try to get rid of unwanted competition that way if ISPs really give in that easily.

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