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Education

+ - Wikipedia's 2008 donation campaign kicks off-> 1

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes "It's that time of year again: Wikipedia needs your money. The Wikimedia sites don't have ads — it all runs on donations. This year, the Wikimedia Foundation is hitting the theme that Wikipedia, the most popular Wikimedia site, is useful to you every day so deserves your support. The goal this time is six million dollars, which is approximately nothing to run a top 10 site (#8 on Alexa, #4 on ComScore). They're at almost $2 million so far. There's blog buttons and radio/podcast PSAs too. The site had its greatest traffic ever on election night, falling over for a short time under the strain."
Link to Original Source
Moon

+ - Vote to Eliminate Leap Seconds 6

Submitted by Mortimer.CA
Mortimer.CA writes "As mentionted on Slahdot previously, there is a proposal to remove leap seconds from UTC (nee 'Greenwich' time). It wil be put to a vote to ITU member states, and if 70% agree, the leap second will be eliminated by 2013. There is some debate as to whether this change is a good or bad idea. One philosophical point opponents make is that the 'official' time on Earth should match the time of the sun and heavens. People with appliances that blink '12:00' can probably ignore this issue."
Music

+ - Universal Offers Classical, Jazz Catalog DRM-Free-> 3

Submitted by Mode_Locrian
Mode_Locrian writes "Gramophone Magazine reports that Universal Classics and Jazz will be making its entire catalogue available for sale in DRM-free form. While Universal stresses that this will be a trial run, it certainly looks like a step in the right direction. Now, if only they'd offer downloads in formats other than mp3..."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Quantum cryptography and internet voting (Score 1) 91

by Zorglub1234 (#20950429) Attached to: Quantum Crypto in the Real World
This is mainly an advertising stunt. The State of Geneva has been promoting an evoting (internet) system for the past 6 years. They complain that citizens are not interested in the voting process, but every time computer scientists (mainly free software advocates) have indicated that they had doubts about the system (but noone except the State has access to the system), the criticisms were treated with disdain (to say the least !). Some background information about the system is at http://www.geneve.ch/evoting/english/welcome.asp (it does not talk about the criticisms, though).

Now, obviously, they can not link every citizen's computer with the central voting server with a quantum-encrypted link; here, they are just encrypting a 500 meters internal link between two servers of the State. This election does not use evoting; however, this is part of a general policy of showing "see, we do the best that's available, so our system is secure" -- they don't care about the fact that with evoting, the weakest link is the individual citizen's computer. Instead, they use quantum cryptography to protect an already secure link -- already secure, because votes are tabulated in the first center, so they get the results out from there on paper as well, which is pretty hard to hack...

Music

+ - Digital technologies creat classical music hoax

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "The classical music world is in a tizzy today, as it turns out that a recently-lauded pianist — Joyce Hatto — most likely did not play on any of the albums with here name on them. The late pianist, who died in June 2006, had become something of a star in the limited world of small-label classical releases, but some listeners questioned how she could have recorded so many CDs, and how here styles sounded different from one disc to the other. It turns out that some — if not all — of her discs were mere copies of other discs, with occasional digital tweaks, such as speed changes or EQ changes, to make them sound a bit different.

Many critics were fooled, and a minor Hatto-mania ensued following some of the more recent releases, but the digital music CSI teams have proven that some of the discs are simply copies of other recordings.

http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=2007021 6113905156"
Privacy

+ - Judge Restricts New York Police Surveillance

Submitted by
berberine
berberine writes "In a rebuke of a surveillance practice greatly expanded by the New York Police Department after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal judge ruled today that the police must stop the routine videotaping of people at public gatherings unless there was an indication that unlawful activity may occur. Nearly four years ago, at the request of New York City, the same judge, Charles S. Haight Jr., had given the police greater authority to investigate political, social and religious groups."
X

+ - X.Org 7.2 Ready for Primetime

Submitted by
F-3582
F-3582 writes "After three months of getting behind the schedule the X.Org Foundation has announced the release of a new X.
From the Press Release: "X11R7.2 [...] incorporates significant stability and correctness fixes, including improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for GL-based compositing managers such as Compiz and Beryl, and improved support for PCI systems with multiple domains. It also incorporates the new, more extensible XACE security policy framework.""
Google

+ - Google Bought, Burned NC Seniors' Homes

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes "Nicholas Carr has a nice roundup of the latest Googlegate News, including the heartwarming story of how NC government officials acting on Google's behalf hounded the elderly into selling their homes, keeping prices down by using a nonprofit front funded by Google to conceal the search giant's identity from folks like Eugene and Violet Anderson, both 86. As former homeowners took up residence in apartments and doublewides, the local fire department burned down a number of their homes to make way for Google, whose tax incentives are now being pegged at $260M."
Announcements

+ - Horizontal Jetpack Flight

Submitted by aureliusm
aureliusm writes "Every nerds dream just came to life. Yves Rossy from Switzerland on 10th of December, became the first person to gain altitude and maintain a stable, horizontal flight using the kerosene powered jetpack. The event didn't receive much coverage though. I caught a glimpse of the video yesterday on Euronews and that was it. Not even Slashdot reported anything on it. You can see a video of the flight on his site. (in French)"
Republicans

+ - Tom Delay's blog licensed under creative commons

Submitted by phlipp
phlipp writes "It looks like Tom Delay is going to work in the blogosphere now that he's no longer in congress. The New York Times chronicles this in in the hammer strikes a comeback blow. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/us/politics/21d elay.html) The interesting fact is that Delay licensed his blog (http://www.tomdelay.com/) under the Creative Commons. Who knew he was a fan?"
It's funny. Laugh.

+ - I suppose you're wondering why...

Submitted by shanen
shanen writes "I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all together? Well, I wanted to tell you a funny story about a guy who called everyone together. They wondered why, so he started by telling them a funny story about a guy who called everyone together. Then the story recursed forever, the stack was consumed, and the entire story crashed.

Ergo, the real problem is that I don't know any funny stories, recursive or otherwise? Can you help?

Seriously, this is the season for holiday cheer and good humor. Do you have funny stories to share? Extra kudos if they are related to the year now ending and have a computerized twist.

I hope you and yours are all doing well, and seasons greetings to all! (No, it isn't a war on Christmas, but I'm not a Christian, so it would seem kind of bogus for me to pretend to be so Christian about it. New years is the big holiday in this country. So there.)"
Sony

+ - Sony to payout $1.5M for rootkits

Submitted by
krotkruton
krotkruton writes "There is a wired article running about Sony settling in Texas and California over the rookit fiasco.

FTA:
Each state will receive $750,000 in civil penalties and costs... If your computer was infected by the XCP variant, you get a new copy of that CD and $7.50 plus either one or three album downloads from Sony Connect, Apple iTunes, or Wal-Mart. For the MediaMax variant, you get either a free digital version of the CD (for MediaMax 3.0) or a digital version and a second digital album (version 5.0).
Affected individuals will have until 12/31/2006 to file a claim, which doesn't leave a lot of time if you're one of them."
The Courts

+ - Piracy Suit Being Dropped Against NY Mom

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press writes about the recording industry is giving up its lawsuit against Patti Santangelo, a mother of five who became the best-known defendant in the industry's battle against music piracy. However, two of her children are still being sued. From the article: "The five companies suing Santangelo, of Wappingers Falls, filed a motion Tuesday in federal court in White Plains asking Judge Colleen McMahon to dismiss the case. Their lead counsel, Richard Gabriel, wrote in court papers that the record companies still believe they could win damages against Santangelo but their preference was to "pursue defendant's children.""

Santangelo's lawyer, Jordan Glass, said the dismissal bid "shows defendants can stand up to powerful plaintiffs." He noted, however, that the companies were seeking a dismissal "without prejudice," meaning they could bring the action again, "so I'm not sure what that's worth." The companies, backed by the RIAA, has sued over 18,000 people. When Santangelo, 42, was sued last year, she said she had never downloaded music and was unaware of her children doing it. If children download, she said, file-sharing programs like Kazaa should be blamed, not the parents. The judge called her an "Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo." Last month, the record companies filed lawsuits against Santangelo's 20-year-old daughter, Michelle, and 16-year-old son, Robert, saying they had downloaded and distributed more than 1,000 recordings. The companies said that the daughter had acknowledged downloading songs on the family computer — which Glass denied — and that the son had been implicated in statements from his best friend. The suit against the children seeks unspecified damages."

Nemo me impune lacessit. [No one provokes me with impunity] -- Motto of the Crown of Scotland

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