dantal - Slashdot User

Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1 225

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 02 2010, @06:37PM
from the token-victory dept.

Translation Error writes "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."

Why Won't Apple Sell Your iTunes LPs? 306

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 13 2009, @08:52AM
from the can-anyone-think-of-a-reason? dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Over the weekend there's been a bit of controversy over the fact that Apple has effectively shut indie artists out of the iTunes LP market by charging $10,000 in design fees. But the real question is why Apple is in charge of designing the new iTunes LP at all, since the format is based on open Web design technologies. There's at least one iTunes LP already available outside the iTunes store. Why won't Apple sell it?"

Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon 780

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 05 2009, @12:46PM
from the can't-say-that-it's-too-severe dept.

Mike writes "Law prof Eugene Volokh blogs about a US House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other Web media 'to cause substantial emotional distress through "severe, repeated, and hostile" speech.' Rep. Sanchez and colleagues want to make it easier to prosecute any objectionable speech through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The bill is called The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, and if passed into law (and if it survives constitutional challenge) it looks almost certain to be misused."

Navisite Massively Botches Datacenter Move-> 0

Submitted by

9InchRails

on Tuesday November 06 2007, @01:45PM

9InchRails writes "In a move to consolidate a newly acquired datacenter, web hosting provider Navisite shutdown, boxed and transported hundreds of servers, effectively stranding in excess of 200,000 web sites and authoritative name servers. This fiasco is in its fourth day as noted here and here. How could a company been so completely incompetent?"
Link to Original Source

How to take a vacation as a one man IT dept? 2

Submitted by wgoodman on Wednesday October 31 2007, @11:41AM

wgoodman writes "I work at a small company as the sole geek. It's been a few years now and I'm forced to actually use some of the vacation time that I've built up otherwise I lose it. Since I'll be gone for a few weeks with no cell phone and only intermittent internet access not to mention nearly constant drunkenness, what precautions and steps to avoid things going south in my absence do you recommend? I've scripted as much as i can of the day to day stuff, got a lackey to swap backup tapes, and given my boss contact info on the equipment that we have support contracts with. What am I forgetting?"

Management Information Systems.. a worthy degree? 0

Submitted by biggyfred on Wednesday October 10 2007, @01:44PM

biggyfred writes "After attending a career panel on MIS, I'm intrigued by the possibility of an MIS degree. They work very hard to point out that they aren't Computer Science, but that makes me a little nervous because my impression is that they're coders with the ability to proficiently code. I enjoy business and the aspects that surround management, which makes this hybrid-feeling major all the more intriguing. Do any /.ers have any insight on the MIS degree pertaining to marketability, field compentency, job satisfaction, or daily work experience?"

Current programming languages-> 1

Submitted by

RMDonna

on Friday October 05 2007, @11:55AM

RMDonna writes "I've been out of programming for about 3 years and am wondering where to start to pick up my skills. In the past I was mainly working with Java 2, ASP 3 and Visual Basic 6. Most of my work these days focuses on database design and programming for pda's/smart phones with an off the shelf product. So Im wondering where do I start to continue my database development skills specifically and programming in general. Thanks"
Link to Original Source

PC Mag's 20th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey-> 0

Submitted by Dekortage on Friday October 05 2007, @11:54AM

Dekortage writes "From the article: "For almost 20 years PC Magazine has asked our readers to rank the vendors they use, and this year is no exception... We received detailed information from users of 20,690 PCs, both desktop and notebook, as well as over 21,000 printers running the gamut from inexpensive color ink jets to color lasers with integrated scanners and fax capabilities, or AIOs (all-in-ones). A lot of the top-rated players remain the same — hello, Steve Jobs! — but you may be surprised at some of the vendors that are clawing their way to the top of the Reader Satisfaction Survey ratings.""
Link to Original Source

Where are all the classic Western games? 0

Submitted by

mr_sifter

on Monday September 24 2007, @08:56AM

mr_sifter writes "The recent release of 3:10 to Yuma and Seraphim Falls has put the Western back in the public eye. In a column on Custom PC, one gamer points out that Westerns had the key plot elements of computer games sorted out long before the first games even appeared: the hero is good with a gun, looks mean and moody and doesn't say a lot. Then he shoots loads of baddies and when it's over, he rides off into the sunset. Given this, you'd think the Wild West and games would be a perfect match. But that's not the case. The article wonders why, when the Wild West has inpsired so many classic movies, there aren't any decent Western computer games."

$150 laptop is failing to deliver. 1

Submitted by

nnm.one

on Tuesday August 07 2007, @11:01AM

nnm.one writes "After several weeks of amazing discoveries and debunked claims made by 'Medison Europe Ltd' (the $150 laptop) the latest that has happened is that EMEA Services (contractor to Medison for the shipping of the laptops) has said in a public statement that they have canceled the [non existent] partnership (in Swedish) with Medisons CEO and founder Valdi Ivancic. Just hours before this, yet another statement from Valdi Ivancic was debunked, where he was caught lying about having an average 1.5 million (article in swedish) unique visitors per day and about ~10 million/week, a user of the forum on "cint.se" found out that by adding /webalizer to the end of the URL's (www.medisoncelebrity.com, www.medison.se) you are able to see the traffic stats updated in regular intervals, which show 70k unique visitors so far in August. You can follow the news about the Medison Celebrity laptop and the discussions and Swedish articles translated to english here."