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iCEBaLM (34905)

iCEBaLM
  icebalm@nosPaM.icebalm.com

iCEBaLM (34905)

Submitted by b0nes on Thursday May 15, @04:41PM
b0nes writes "Today, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Thursday released a letter addressed to Bell Canada Inc. and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, which represents 55 smaller ISPs around the nation, requesting comments on a dispute over traffic shaping between the two parties. CAIP in April complained that Bell had extended its traffic shaping — which slows speeds of internet applications such as BitTorrent — to its members, who rent portions of the company's network to provider their own internet services. The hearings open to the public are to be held in the fall, a move that will prompt a raft of submissions and may result in greater regulation of internet access in Canada by the fall. On the same day, it denied an application by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers for a temporary injunction against the practice."
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 [+] submission, yro, networking

  U.S. Senators Pressure Canada on Canadian DMCA 2007-03-05 23:04 Anonymous Coward

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2007, @11:04PM
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. copyright lobby brought out some heavy artillery last week as it continued to pressure Canada to introduce a Canadian DMCA. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins gave a public talk in which he described Canadian copyright law as the weakest in the G7, while Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to urge him to bring in movie piracy legislation."
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 [+] submission, politics, internet
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  IT: Telecom Refunds $8 Million for Bad Service 2007-02-24 12:20

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday February 24 2007, @12:20PM
from the whoops-our-bad dept.
Gearu writes in with an article about a hefty refund coming to New Zealanders. It opens, "Telecom New Zealand has admitted it made an error with its Go Large broadband plan and is to credit customers of the service. An internal technical review of the service, launched in October, identified an issue with how internet traffic was being managed on the plan. The Go Large plan was promoted as having traffic management applied to certain applications, but since December the traffic management process had affected all forms of activity. With around 60,000 customers on the Go Large service, the refunds were expected to total $7.5 million to $8.5 million."
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 [+] story, it, internet, money
Submitted by zakkie on Saturday February 24 2007, @11:41AM
zakkie writes "According to InfoWorld, Google's Desktop indexing engine is vulnerable to an exploit (the second such flaw to be found) that could allow crackers to read files or execute code. By exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on Google.com, an attacker can grab all the data off a Google Desktop. Google is said to be "investigating"."
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 [+] submission, google
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  Upside down Rainbow 2007-02-24 08:34 bennett77

Submitted by bennett77 on Saturday February 24 2007, @08:34AM
bennett77 writes "What looks like an upside-down rainbow is actually a rare atmospheric spectacle called a circumzenithal arc. According to the San Francisco Chronicle: its an unusual phenomenon caused by sunlight shining through a thin, invisible screen of tiny ice crystals high in the sky and has nothing at all to do with the rain."
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 [+] submission, science, announcement
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  Microsoft loses Fraunhofer lawsuit 2007-02-24 05:27 bunder

Submitted by bunder on Saturday February 24 2007, @05:27AM
bunder writes "The Associated Press SEATTLE (Feb 24, 2007) A U.S. federal jury's ruling that Microsoft infringed on two MP3 patents and must pay $1.52- billion US in damages could turn into a major sour note for other technology companies in the digital music business. The victory for France's Alcatel-Lucent SA could embolden the telecommunications equipment maker to pursue claims — or seek royalties — from other companies that it believes infringe on the technology, experts said yesterday. The two patents in question cover the encoding and decoding of audio into the digital MP3 format — a popular way to convert music from a CD into a lightweight file on a personal computer and vice versa. Microsoft said it paid for the technology from Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute, which licences it to hundreds of companies, including Apple Inc. and RealNetworks Inc. When the software maker decided to add MP3 decoding and encoding capabilities to its Windows Media Player, it paid Fraunhofer $16-million US for the relevant intellectual property licences and source code."
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 [+] submission, microsoft
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Submitted by balloonpup on Friday February 23 2007, @09:15PM
balloonpup writes "On February 23, 2007, the FCC dropped all requirements to learn Morse Code (warning, PDF) for all amateur license classes. All existing technicians will be upgraded to tech-plus privileges, and many others who have taken the General or Extra class written tests will be automatically updated to those classes without the code. More information can be found at the Amateur Radio Relay League's website."
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 [+] submission, toy, oldnews, keyword, dupe
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  Vista network folder hell 2007-02-23 20:20

Submitted by on Friday February 23 2007, @08:20PM
An anonymous reader writes "A reader at The Register has reported that there are issues with renaming folders or files created on network drives with Vista. The affected systems contain pre-installed editions of Vista shipped on new PCs and Laptops. A number of manufacturers are affected and these issues have been reported in this thread on Microsoft's Technet forum well before Vista shipped to retail channels."
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 [+] submission, it, windows
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  MP3 Patent Troubles 2007-02-23 19:08 Vengance Daemon

Submitted by Vengance Daemon on Friday February 23 2007, @07:08PM
Vengance Daemon writes "The New York Times and many other sources are reporting that Microsoft lost the patent case regarding "...the way the Windows Media Player software from Microsoft plays audio files using MP3..." They go on to say "If the ruling stands, Apple and hundreds of other companies that make products that play MP3 files, including portable players, computers and software, could also face demands to pay royalties to Alcatel."

At first glance, it appears that Fedora, and the other distributions that did not include MP3 capabilities in their products because of patent concerns were quite right. Ogg Vorbis works great for music, and many commercial players support it."
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 [+] submission, yro, music
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Submitted by lithis on Friday February 23 2007, @07:06PM
lithis writes "A new version of the Creative Commons licenses has been released. What's new: “we have spun off the "generic" license to be the CC US license and created a new generic license ... we are ensuring that all CC jurisdiction licenses and the CC unported license have consistent, express treatment of the issues of moral rights and collecting society royalties ... [the license now explicitly declares that] a person may not misuse the attribution requirement of a CC license to improperly assert or imply an association or relationship with the licensor or author ... licenses will now include the ability for derivatives to be relicensed under a "Creative Commons Compatible License" ... the licenses include minor clarifications to the language of the licenses to take account of the concerns of Debian and MIT.”"
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 [+] submission, yro, announcement, nolink, freeculture, stealthisbook
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  The United States is Insolvent 2007-02-23 18:46 The True Messiah

Submitted by The True Messiah on Friday February 23 2007, @06:46PM
The True Messiah writes "What the BIG Media is not telling you! Prepare to be shocked.

The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for our national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Our combined federal deficits now total more than 400% of GDP.

That is the conclusion of a recent Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06), deep in the holiday season, with little fanfare. Sometimes I wonder why the Treasury Department doesn't just pay somebody to come in at 4:30 am Christmas morning to release the report. Additionally, I've yet to read a single account of this report in any of the major news media outlets but that is another matter.

The Complete story."
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 [+] submission, politics, censorship
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  March is Boycott the RIAA Month 2007-02-23 18:15 A Name Similar to Di

Submitted by A Name Similar to Di on Friday February 23 2007, @06:15PM
A Name Similar to Di writes "Sick of the RIAA's actions against consumers, Gizmodo has declared March Boycott the RIAA month

Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. Am I saying you should start pirating music? Not at all. You can continue to support the artists you enjoy and respect in a number of ways."
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 [+] submission, yro, privacy, !privacy, joinme
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  ESA Uses U.S. Law To Target Mod Chips in Canada 2007-02-23 17:39 CanuckGamer

Submitted by CanuckGamer on Friday February 23 2007, @05:39PM
CanuckGamer writes "Michael Geist is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association is targeting mod chips in Canada by claiming that U.S. copyright law applies north of the border. An ESA lawyer has tried to import the U.S. Grokster case into Canada, which Geist argues should be subject to a claim of copyright misuse and reveals the ESA's double talk on mod chips and copyright reform."
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 [+] submission, yro, court
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Submitted by on Friday February 23 2007, @03:05PM
An anonymous reader writes "After filing a prayer for relief to continue the selling of his WoWGlider, an automation bot for Blizzard's fanatical World of Warcraft, Michael Donnelly has again found himself in some deep water: Blizzard has retorted demanding WoWGlider be shut down, his URL, and financial compensation, but more interestingly they want all of WoWGlider's sales records. Presumably, Blizzard will cross-reference this with their current user database and ban anyone who bought the program. Furthermore, Blizzard claims that WoWGlider violates copyrights by accessing the game client's RAM space, a process which is also done by every anti-virus program. So why is there no Blizzard vs. Symantec?"
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 [+] submission, yro, rpg, privacy
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