Hyram Graff - Slashdot User

Comment Re:And now... (Score 2, Informative) 263

by Hyram Graff on Monday February 25, 2008 @04:49PM (#22550470) Attached to: Judge Makes Lawyers Pay For Frivolous Patent Suit

If you read the article, or at least the summary, you would have seen that this was held up by a court of appeals. There are only two more possible challenges left 1) an En banc rehearing by the 10th circuit, and 2) The Supreme Court of the United States.

Submission + - Recut, Reframe, Recycle - Fair Use Online (centerforsocialmedia.org)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @03:48PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "If one listens to content distributors, any use of copyrighted material that doesn't bring in significant quarterly revenue is "piracy" and some have gone so far as to say that websites or games that allow user-submitted content are infringement engines. However, the Center for Social Media disagrees. In their study, "Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video," they found that most of the videos studied qualified for fair use protections under US law. Unfortunately, copyright filters aren't able to understand things like satire, parody, commentary, illustrations, or collages."

Submission + - Phishers Get Phished

Submitted by jcaldwel on Thursday January 03, 2008 @03:26PM

jcaldwel writes: Netcraft reports that a downloadable phishing toolkit, actually sends private information to to tool's author.

Submission + - A year in Xbox 360 failures: 2007 Edition - Joysti (joystiq.com)

Submitted by

antek9

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @02:48PM

antek9 writes: "The failure rate of Xbox360 consoles amongst the editorial team of Joystiq has almost hit 100%, just one last box remains standing. From the article: "A few of us experienced issues back in 2006, but almost every person on staff (including those who've left for other opportunities) — with the exception of The One — have experienced a Red Ring of Death, disc drive failure, or other non-user-error console bricking incident. There's no denying at this point that as much as we love the games, the Xbox 360 is the most defective console ever manufactured.""

Submission + - 500-fold growth in space comms squeezes SETI@home (networkworld.com) 3

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @01:08PM

coondoggie writes: "The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is receiving 500 times more data from an upgraded telescope and better frequency coverage than project planners anticipated, meaning the SETI@home project is in dire need of more desktop computers to help crunch the data. New, more sensitive receivers on the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and better frequency coverage are generating 500 times more data for the project than before, project leaders said in a release. SETI@home software has been upgraded to deal with this new data as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) enters a new era and offers a new opportunity for those who want to help find other civilizations in the universe. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23469"

Submission + - Poll: Favorite irrational number

Submitted by davidwr on Thursday January 03, 2008 @12:34PM

davidwr writes: Poll: What is your favorite irrational number:

e
pi
2^0.5
3^0.5
sin(my birthday)
None. I am completely rational
Cowboyneal's favorite song

Submission + - The Trouble with Virtualization: Cranky IT Staffs (cio.com) 3

Submitted by

lgmac

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @11:19AM

lgmac writes: "A new survey on enterprises' results from virtualization to date shows that the ROI is spreading a lot of love. What's killing the party? Political squabbles among IT staffers, fighting for turf after being forced to work together in new ways. Seems some people still don't know how to play nicely with others."

Submission + - The Collaboration Tools Used by Wesnoth Devs (gmane.org)

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @03:37PM

stoolpigeon writes: "In a post to gmane.emacs.devel Eric S. Raymond describes the collaboration toolkit in use by the developers for Battle for Wesnoth. He lists each tool in the set and follows up with an explanation as to why he believes that combination makes for a more productive team. There is nothing all that new or revolutionary but I thought it was an interesting look into how team development can take place."

Submission + - Tenth Largest Known Prime Found (seventeenorbust.com)

Submitted by

Hyram Graff

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @08:19PM

Hyram Graff writes: "The distributed computing project Seventeen or Bust has found the tenth largest known prime. The 2,116,617 digit number, 33661*2^7031232+1, was found as part of the projects attempt to prove that 78,557 is the smallest Serpenski number. 33661 is the eleventh of seventeen canidates to be busted."

Submission + - UW-Madison defies RIAA

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19, 2007 @07:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: UW-Madison Division of Information Technology is refusing to pass on the RIAA's settlement letters. "These settlement letters are an attempt to short circuit the legal process to rely on universities to be their legal agent" says Brian Rust, communications manager for the UW Division of Information Technology. Rust said DoIT receives about 10 to 20 cease-and-desist notices per day, which they are obligated to forward to their users. The notices are only warnings, Rust added, but the settlement letters brought on by the Recording Industry Association of America are more of a threat.

Why You Can't Buy a Naked PC 367

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @04:41PM from the put-some-clothes-on dept.

ZDOne writes "A piece up on ZDNet looks at the issue of naked PCs. ZDNet UK phoned around all the major PC vendors and not one of them would sell a machine without Windows on it. IT professionals are being forced to adopt Microsoft's operating systems — even if they tell their PC supplier they want a system free of Microsoft software. On the other hand, even if it's almost impossible to buy a PC without an operating system installed, companies like Dell and HP are now committed to supporting Linux as well. 'Murray believes there is a market for Linux in the UK but is also aware of the issues facing any large supplier who wants to make Linux boxes available. "It means diverting production lines and that is a lot of money and so we have to prove the business case," he said. However, he made it clear that he is enthusiastic about the idea and wants to make it work. "We just have to show it is worthwhile," he said.'"

Victims Fight Back Against DMCA Abuse 111

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @03:55PM from the hey-not-so-fast dept.

Cadence writes "The DMCA is being used a lot recently to demand takedowns of all sorts of content on the Internet. But how many of those DMCA-fueled demands are abusive? Lately, some victims of takedown demands have begun to fight back with the help of the EFF, including some against Viacom: 'Finally, a Viacom executive admitted last month that less than 60 of his company's 100,000 takedown requests to YouTube were invalid. John Palfrey of Harvard's Berkman Center wonders what rights those 60 people have? We may find out. The EFF called for people who had videos pulled inappropriately to contact the group, though the EFF tells The National Law Journal that it cannot comment on its future legal plans. One of the reasons companies misuse the DMCA and cease-and-desist copyright letters is that the tools can quickly accomplish what they want to have happen; stuff they don't like goes bye-bye in a hurry. When the alternative is moving slowly through the court system, letters look like an excellent alternative.'"

Submission + - People Don't Know Which Network They're On

Submitted by

Elliot

on Friday March 16, 2007 @03:45PM

Elliot writes: "You don't really know which wireless network you're connected to. "About 14.3 million American households use wireless Internet," and millions of their laptops are configured to automatically connect to common open networks. Attackers can easily set up a wireless hotspot named "Linksys", "D-Link", or "NETGEAR", and unsuspecting laptop users will connect to it. At that point, the hacker could access the laptop's network shares, or act as a "man in the middle" and log their website usage activity. Even more sinister is when the attacker names the network something official, such as "USC Wireless", "Marriott Wireless", or "LAX Wireless", and then redirects the visitor to an official-looking page asking for their log-in and password. Lawmakers are aware of the problem: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the Wi-Fi User Protection Bill on Sept. 30. Elliot Lee discusses the problem, and suggests that using a reliable VPN is the only way to get a secure connection away from home."

Submission + - AT&T/Cingular Blocking legitimate phone number

Submitted by

kickassweb

on Friday March 16, 2007 @03:05PM

kickassweb writes: "PennPIRG is reporting that AT&T/Cingular is blocking calls to the popular, and competing, service, FreeConferenceCall.com, as well as other similar services.

PennPIRG has learned that AT&T/Cingular recently began blocking phone numbers on its wireless service used by consumers to access free conference call services, such as those provided by Free Conference Call.com. The telephone giant has argued that calls to free conference call services are resulting in millions of dollars in losses to the company due to re-routing and termination fees, and has sued free conference call services and local phone companies in Iowa over the fees.

The article goes on to state that the free conference call service being blocked competes directly with Cingular's conference call service, and that this is the type of anti-consumer action we can expect on the internet if Net Neutrality is not mandated."

Submission + - A United Federation of Planet Earth

Submitted by

UltimaGuy

on Friday March 16, 2007 @02:48PM

UltimaGuy writes: "Fourteen space agencies around the world have agreed to coordinate their space exploration efforts, paving the way for truly planet-wide collaboration in space science. The agencies involved are from Italy, Japan, China, Britain, France, America, India, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Germany, Australia and ESA, the European Space Agency. Will this be the beginning of a new era in space exploration ?"

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