Awel - Slashdot User

UK ISP Says No To Music Industry Pressure 70

Posted by kdawson on Friday April 04 2008, @09:51AM
from the police-it-yourself dept.

siloko sends us to the BBC for the story of one ISP standing up to the music industry. (But note that this ISP is one of the ones said to have worked with Phorm on plans to track customers' surfing.) "The head of one of Britain's biggest internet providers has criticized the music industry for demanding that he act against pirates. Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, which runs the TalkTalk broadband service, is refusing. He said it is not his job to be an internet policeman."

Engadget: Hands-on with the O2 iPhone-> 0

From feed by engfeed on Tuesday September 18 2007, @06:52AM

Filed under: Cellphones

O2 is the first network provider to get the iPhone outside of the US, so what's new on the UK's very own iPhone? Well, it turns out, not much. In simple terms, it's almost identical to the US version, albeit running the 1.1.1 firmware version features of which we've already seen on the iPod Touch. You'll notice the iTunes WiFi Store icon, and an O2-UK network symbol up top. If you look carefully, you'll see that the E logo for EDGE is missing: we guess that 30% network coverage on O2 don't quite stretch inside the Apple Store. Along with the 1.1.1 firmware comes double tap quick access to currently playing songs, options for closed captioning on videos, and rather oddly, user selection options for carrier (we thought this was an exclusive?) There's also support for European language keyboards, and an option for turning off EDGE roaming. All in all, a rather predictable update for the UK.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Comment: Re:Hunters and gatherers were not poor (Score 1) 504

by Awel on Wednesday August 08 2007, @08:55AM (#20155057) Attached to: New Explanation For the Industrial Revolution

I've looked at the website and suspect that there's a number of things the authors aren't taking into account; most prominently, the inherent laziness of most of the human race. I include myself in this. There's a lot of things I tell myself I'd do if I only had more time: fun things that nevertheless take a little bit of effort, like practising musical instruments more (and maybe learning new ones), setting up a website for my family, writing in my blog (on a subject I'm interested in, but which I nevertheless haven't updated in over a month), writing stories... Yet when I did have more time, during a period of unemployment a few years ago, I did none of these things, but just faffed around in the house all day. Most of us need some feeling of obligation before we are prepared to make any effort, even for things we enjoy.

How Adobe Rips-Off a little guy of everything...-> 0

Submitted by

JagsLive

on Saturday July 07 2007, @07:58AM

JagsLive writes "a little guy from http://www.colourlovers.com/ responds to " Adobe Rip-Off " : " Back in Nov. of last year Adobe Labs launched Kuler: A 5 color palette creation tool, built around rating, tagging, commenting and sharing the palettes. Craftzine gushed, ?Not only can you create your own palettes, you can get inspired by the popular color combinations already uploaded by other users. Genius!? I take the last word in that sentence with pride. The idea is genius? I should know, I created it 2 years earlier when I built COLOURlovers. Adobe Took a Proof of Concept and Duplicated It. ""
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UK copyright extension in exchange for censorship?-> 0

Submitted by

Awel

on Friday July 06 2007, @07:37AM

Awel writes "The UK opposition leader, David Cameron, says in a speech to the British Phonographic Industry that his party would work to extend the copyright term to 70 years and crack down on piracy. But in return, labels would have to agree to bear more 'social responsibility', which appears to translate into avoiding lyrics that glorify 'an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny'. He doesn't spell out how this would be achieved in practice. This follows the publication in December of a UK government report recommending that the standard copyright term in Europe remain at 50 years (and not be raised to 70 or 95 years)."
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The Atrophy of Educational Fair Use?-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2007, @10:16AM

An anonymous reader writes "The Copyright Clearance Center has a new blanket license for educational institutions.. It is billed covering all copyright clearances, though it doesn't really.. Defenders of educational fair use are worried by this apparently benign development, or so says an article in the Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/25cf260c-265c-11dc-8e18-00 0b5df10621.html

"Teachers and students may come to understand their freedom to make educational copies as granted by license, not law. That may not be of much concern for wealthy colleges that find it easier to just pay a flat fee rather than educate their students and teachers about fair use. But it is a great concern for poorer institutions and for the rest of us...
The Copyright Clearance Center's goals are respectable. Publishers and authors have completely legitimate interests to defend. But is the result of this new license a buy-out by wealthy institutions, the only ones who could afford to defend the principle of academic freedom called fair use? Is it a retreat to licensed "gated communities," leaving the poor, the uninformed and the dissident to with no license and an atrophied culture of fair use?""
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Truth Behind the Great Pyramids->

Submitted by cbroglie on Monday June 04 2007, @03:13PM

cbroglie writes "Ever feel like less of a man because the ancient Egyptians could lift heavier things than you? You can rest easy now that professor Michel Barsoum from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel has discovered that the great pyramids were actually made from a primitive cement."
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Cancer docs gets death threat over drug approval->

Submitted by

nbauman

on Monday June 04 2007, @12:53PM

nbauman writes "Two oncologists got death threats from angry prostate cancer patients because they voted, as members of the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval panel, to delay approval of a new cancer drug. http://psa-rising.com/blog/index.php/2007/06/03/pr ostate-cancer-doctor-receives-death-threat-over-pr ovenge#more-325 The issue is rigorous science vs. immediate access. Howard I. Scher and Maha Hussain said that the studies of Provenge, a prostate cancer vaccine, done by manufacturer, Dendreon Corp., didn't show improved survival. After the FDA studies were done, supporters of the drug went back and found ways of interpreting the data that did show an advantage, which sometimes came out to 4 1/2 months longer survival depending on how you look at it. Critics say they're data-dredging evidence selectively to make the drug look good. http://psa-rising.com/blog/index.php/2007/04/17/sc her-to-fda-about-provenge-hearing An ongoing 500-patient study will give the answer — in 2 years. Prostate cancer patients say they'll be dead by then, they have nothing to lose, and they have a right to use a new drug now. "We want Provenge to work; that's our raison d'etre," Scher said, but in order to know whether it works, they need to complete the study. Paul Goldberg, editor of The Cancer Letter, said that basing decisions on reliable evidence is also "patient advocacy. This is just another form of it through science." http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/05/10/cancer-vacc ine-activists-unhappy-but-unbowed/ Usually unmentioned is the question of who should pay for the treatment. The FDA would let Dendreon give the vaccine to cancer patients now as "compassionate use," but Dendreon says it would be too expensive. Cancer patients want it to be approved so Dendreon can sell it normally and insurance companies (and Medicare) will pay for it."
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Journal: Guitartabs.com shutdown under legal pressure 348

Journal by T-ice on Saturday June 02 2007, @09:33PM

Recently the definition of intellectual property has been stretched by the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) to include by ear transcriptions of music. Guitartabs.com is currently not offering tablature, and is evaluating their legal rights.
For more information: http://www.guitartabs.com/nmpa.php

Insecure Firefox Add-Ons Invite Browser Hijacking

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2007, @02:47PM

An anonymous reader writes "Many makers of extensions or add-ons for Firefox are introducing ways for bad guys to hijack the Web browser, new research suggests. A great many add-ons are updated over insecure (non https:/// connections, providing an avenue for attackers to replace the extension with an evil update. From the story: "As a result, if an attacker were to hijack a public Wi-Fi hot spot at a coffeehouse or bookstore — a fairly trivial attack given the myriad free, point-and-click hacking tools available today — he could also intercept this update process and replace a Firefox add-on with a malicious one.""