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Google and Verizon try to shape net-neutrality law->

Submitted by V!NCENT
V!NCENT writes "Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. may soon announce an agreement that the companies hope could be used as a model for legislation aimed at preventing telephone or cable companies from delaying or blocking Internet traffic.

The two companies have been negotiating with each other for months on a compromise on the thorny issue of so-called net neutrality—the principle that Internet providers such as phone or cable companies should not deliberately slow or block Internet sites or services."

Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:WorldPlay? (Score 5, Informative) 52

by CrispBH (#33177110) Attached to: Ringleader of RBS WorldPay Heist Faces Charges in US

Yes, we use it for one of our websites. It is Royal Bank of Scotland WorldPay - as would make sense, as opposed to Worldplay. KDawson strikes again - obviously it'd be too much to ask him to spend 10 seconds editing as his job title would suggest.

http://www.rbsworldpay.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBS_WorldPay

Comment: Notifications (Score 5, Informative) 620

by CrispBH (#27687277) Attached to: Ubuntu 9.04 Released

Seems generally more stable, I've been running the RC for a couple of days now. Not many immediately noticeable changes but lots of improved under the hood support. Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.

Anyway, the thing I'm really not sure of is the notifications system. Just about the only option with them seems to be to change their positioning via gconf-editor (and even that seems to be broken). I understand the philosophy behind them (see http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/253) but they seem to be a little too unconfigurable, even for Gnome. Their black appearance would suit the KDE default theme, but it certainly doesn't fit in well with my much lighter Clearlooks theme in Gnome and there's no way to change that. One of the things I like about Gnome is the integrated look and feel of the entire system, whereas these stand out oddly. There is no way to dismiss them, so things get irritating when I want to use the search bar in Firefox and there's a notification covering it (these things could well be click transparent but it's still irritating). There is no way to configure what gets displayed as a notification either; I don't think I need each and every Pidgin message to be displayed as a notification for reasons of both privacy and distraction. To me, the notifications system seems a little too much like an answer looking for a problem. I may well disable them soon, after giving them a fair trial. The only sane way to do that seems to be to remove the notify-osd daemon. So much for ease of use!

That all said, it's my only major gripe with the upgrade, and that system was always going to be controversial. Hopefully it grows and improves. If not, I'm not forced to run it. Overall, this seems to be a steady incremental release that smoothes over a few rough patches and should hopefully do me well for another 6 months. Ubuntu is still the only distribution that I have not had very regular problems with on the desktop.

Comment: Re:Huh. (Score 3, Insightful) 1297

by CrispBH (#27516565) Attached to: South Park Creators Given Signed Photo of Saddam Hussein

Assuming a bullet through the head is as reliable as you think it is (it is not), a large problem with this method of execution is the unnecessary stress it causes on the executioner. Firing squad executions are provided by a squad in no small part due to the inability to detect who was responsible for the lethal shot (there are other reasons). A point blank shooting causes a lot of psychological issues for most mentally stable people, and anyone working in the death row system should certainly be that.

It is my opinion that revenge and justice are two very separate ideas, and that state killing (if you accept such an idea; I don't) should be firmly restricted to the latter. Therefore, the quicker and more painless the execution the better, regardless of the crime.

The Courts

Ontario Court Wrong About IP Addresses, Too 258

Posted by kdawson
from the reasoning-by-bad-analogy dept.
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton comments on a breaking news story out of the Canadian courts: "An Ontario Superior Court Justice has ruled that Canadian police can obtain the identities of Internet users without a warrant, writing that there is 'no reasonable expectation of privacy' for a user's online identity, and drawing the analogy that 'One's name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state.' But why in the world is it valid to compare an IP address with a street address in the phone book?" Read on for Bennett's analysis.

Comment: Re:Rules? (Score 1) 315

by CrispBH (#26418527) Attached to: Flying Car Ready To Take Off

Well, the rules above ground are drafted for professionals with thousands of logged hours. We can either require that for everyone who wants to fly or we can draft simpler rules in height-confined airspace. Maybe we already have, in VFR flight levels, I don't know.

You can get a PPL with a minimum of 45 (40 in the USA I believe) hours total time. Hell, you can get a fAPTL and jump in a 747 with 250 hours experience (not likely in the current economic climate but still legal).

So, just to nit pick, you have to be neither professional nor have thousands of logged hours; indeed you can be a professional with hundreds of logged hours. Most flight instructors start in the 250-500 hours category just to cheaply hours build.

Also, we already have enough light aircraft crashes as it is; the ones that usually don't make the national news (UK here). Relaxing the rules would be devastating in my opinion, and remember when a plane crashes, there's the whole mess on the ground too - will it crash into a field or a house?

What I've said holds true for FAA and JAA pilots pretty much the same. Anyway, if you're buying one of these bad boys for $200k, I doubt the extra ~$8-10k for a PPL is going to bother you, although perhaps the time spent learning and revising for the exams would.

Supercomputing

Roland Piquepaille Dies 288

Posted by kdawson
from the in-memoriam dept.
overheardinpdx writes "I'm sad to report that longtime HPC technology pundit Roland Piquepaille (rpiquepa) died this past Tuesday. Many of you may know of him through his blog, his submissions to Slashdot, and his many years of software visualization work at SGI and Cray Research. I worked with Roland 20 years ago at Cray, where we both wrote tech stories for the company newsletter. With his focus on how new technologies modify our way of life, Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web. Rest in peace, Roland. You will be missed." The notice of Roland's passing was posted on the Cray Research alumni group on Linked-In by Matthias Fouquet-Lapar. There will be a ceremony on Monday Jan. 12, at 10:30 am Paris time, at Père Lachaise.
Sci-Fi

New Star Trek Trailer 591

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the please-jj-don't-hurt-em dept.
roelbj writes "The full trailer to the next Star Trek movie is now available at the movie's official web site. The upcoming J.J. Abrams-helmed installment represents a changing of the guard, a reboot of the franchise, and a return to the original-series crew. It should prove interesting to see how Abrams' writing staff (Cloverfield, Lost, Alias) tackles the Star Trek universe and all the continuity and baggage that comes with it."

Oh, I get it!! "The BEACH goes on", huh, SONNY??

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