hellgate - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Have they nothing better to legislate for (Score 3, Informative) 495

by hellgate on Thursday June 02, 2011 @07:23AM (#36318022) Attached to: Tennessee Makes it Illegal To Share Your Netflix Password

The EU Rental Directive gives rights holders a lot more influence over the use of rentals than they have in the US, where the First-sale doctrine makes rental restrictions harder to defend. For now.

Submission + - A time for a change in the PhD system (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by

fysdt

on Monday April 25, 2011 @06:25AM

fysdt writes: "According to a series of articles published in Nature, the world has too many PhDs and not enough academic jobs to sustain them. Researchers point out that it is either time to make changes in the system or eliminate it altogether."

Submission + - RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @05:01AM

suraj.sun writes: RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file-sharing cases:

Last week, Washington, DC federal judge Beryl Howell ruled on three mass file-sharing lawsuits. Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers.

Beryl Howell isn't the only judge to believe this, but her important ruling is especially interesting because of Howell's previous work: lobbying for the recording industry during the time period when the RIAA was engaged in its own campaign of mass lawsuits against individuals. The news, first reported in a piece at TorrentFreak, nicely illustrates the revolving door between government and industry.

ARS Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/riaa-lobbyist-becomes-federal-judge-rules-on-file-sharing-cases.ars

Submission + - Paul Baran dead at 84 (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

gflammer

on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @04:40AM

gflammer writes: "Paul's group at Rand developed packet switching and companies he started and nurtured currently employ thousands. He will be remembered as the Father of the Internet and a true technology pioneer."

Comment Re:Cute, but not accurate (Score 1) 392

by hellgate on Monday March 21, 2011 @03:31AM (#35556836) Attached to: A Handy Radiation Dose Chart From XKCD

Therefore being exposed to 1 Sievert for a second (the real unit behind the sievert is the J/s, which is equivalent to Watts) is the same as being exposed to 1 milisievert for 1000 seconds, or 1 microsievert for 10^6 seconds.

Nope. Sieverts are J/kg. "1 millisievert for 1000 seconds" makes no sense, but "1 millisievert per 1000 seconds" does.

Submission + - Should Developers Be Liable for their Code? (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by

Glyn Moody

on Saturday May 09, 2009 @06:39AM

Glyn Moody writes: "They might be, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal, which suggests "licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions," becomes law. The idea of making Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage caused by flaws in its product is certainly attractive, but where would this idea leave free software coders?"

Submission + - Harvard Bookstore Bogus Legal Threat to Startup (thecrimson.com)

Submitted by

Jesse Maddox

on Saturday May 09, 2009 @05:32AM

Jesse Maddox writes: "Recently BrunoBooks.com (www.brunobooks.com) received a Cease & Desist letter from Barnes & Noble, with BN threatening to sue us for "damages, profits, costs and attorney's fees" for violating and infringing Barnes & Noble's "exclusive rights in the copyrighted work." BrunoBooks collects textbook information from the Barnes & Noble website at Harvard, and uses this information to allow students to compare prices at the bookstore with those of online vendors. The problem is that the copyright claims are patently false, as explained by Wendy Seltzer from Harvard Law School's Berkman Center: "I think Barnes & Noble is deliberating misinterpreting the law...They're claiming broader protections than the law would give us." According to Seltzer, who read the cease and desist letter, copyright law only covers the selection and arrangement of factual information and not the information itself, such as textbook titles and prices. Said BrunoBooks CEO Jesse Maddox, "Perhaps Barnes & Noble would be better off devoting more resources to finding ways to reduce textbook prices, rather than hiring lawyers to harass and intimidate startups with bogus legal claims." Or did Amazon just beat them to that? (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/05/06/1532239)"

Submission + - More Fake Journals from Elsevier

Submitted by daemonburrito on Saturday May 09, 2009 @04:39AM

daemonburrito writes: Last week, we learned about Elsevier publishing a bogus journal for Merck. Now several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of "advertorial" publications.

Excerpta Medica, a "strategic medical communications agency", is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous "Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine", it published a number of other "journals".

Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least six fake journals were published for pharma companies.

Submission + - Trademarks: The hidden menace

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09, 2009 @03:37AM

An anonymous reader writes: In a blog posting entitled "Trademarks: The Hidden Menace", Keir Thomas asks why open source advocates are keen to suggest patent and copyright reform, yet completely ignore the issue of trademarks, which can be just as dangerous. FTA: "Even within the Linux community, trademarking can be used as obstructively as copyright and patenting to further business ends. ... Is this how open source is supposed to work? Restricted redistribution? Tight control on who can compile software and still be able to call it by its proper name?"

Submission + - Fired for writing concerns about anti piracy to MP (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by neurone333 on Saturday May 09, 2009 @12:23AM

neurone333 writes: France, may, 6th 2009, Libération reported this story, now all over French newspapers : A TV executive has been fired for writing his concerns about anti-piracy law (HADOPI aka 3 strikes and you're out) to his Member of Parliament, the UMP Françoise de Panafieu.

Françoise de Panafieu forwards this email to the UMP Christine Albanel, France's Minister for Culture and Communication, author of the anti-piracy law "HADOPI".

The email was then forwarded to TF1, the largest TV network in Europe. The author of the email, Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim.he was called into his boss' office and shown... an exact copy of his e-mail. He was then fired for "strong differences with the strategy"... in a private email sent from a private (gmail) adress.

Irish times has an explanation for "the incestuous relationship between his government and TF1" : TF1's owner, the construction billionaire Martin Bouygues, is godfather to Mr Sarkozy's youngest son, Louis. Mr Bouygues suggested to Mr Sarkozy that he ought to ban advertising on TF1's rival stations in the public sector, which was done in January. Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Mr Sarkozy's presidential campaign, is now number two at TF1. Last year, TF1 sacked Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, the station's star presenter for the previous 21 years. Poivre had angered Mr Sarkozy by saying he "acted like a little boy" at a G8 summit. He was replaced by Laurence Ferrari. Mr Sarkozy reportedly told Mr Bouygues he wanted to see the young blonde on the news.

Submission + - Wikipedia does deal with Orange (wikimediafoundation.org)

Submitted by

David Gerard

on Wednesday April 22, 2009 @07:55PM

David Gerard writes: "Wikipedia has done a deal with Orange, France Telecom's mobile brand in several European countries (France, UK, Poland and Spain). Orange gets Wikipedia content and gets to use the Wikipedia puzzle globe, the Wikimedia Foundation gets publicity and money. There's FAQ and a video (in French)."

Submission + - Chandler PIM reaches 1.0, loses financial support (chandlerproject.org)

Submitted by TuringTest on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @12:10PM

TuringTest writes: I was surprised to learn that Chandler, the open-source Personal Information Manager (covered on Slashdot after releasing some stable versions), has silently reached its 1.0 milestone this summer only to (or maybe because of) having its financial support removed at the end of 2008. Chandler inherits organization concepts from Lotus Agenda and is a brainchild of Mitch Kapor (of Firefox, EFF and Lotus fame). It shares an approach to unified information representation with recent PIMs like MIT's Haystack and KDE's Nepomuk. What happened to the persistent universal data storage that object-oriented desktops and metadata filesystems were never able to provide? Did it finally arrive as a userland application, and nobody cared?

Submission + - Samba Success in the Enterprise?

Submitted by

gunnk

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @10:11AM

gunnk writes: "We've deployed a Samba server here to replace some aging Novell Netware boxes. It works great: fast, secure, stable. However, we have one VIP that feels that Samba is "amateur" software and that we should be buying Windows servers. I've been searching with little success for large Samba deployments in enterprise environments. Anyone out there care to share stories of places that are happily running large Samba installations for their file servers? Or not so happy, for that matter — better to be informed!"

Submission + - iowaconsumercase archive disappered

Submitted by jbrax on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @07:46AM

jbrax writes: Microsoft's dirty tricks archive seems to have vanished.

The Register: Plaintiffs maintained a website at iowaconsumercase.org, which included daily media updates, full transcripts of the previous day's proceedings, and an archive of some 2,000 exhibits of alleged misdeeds going back to the 1980s.

The website is now password-protected. Microsoft's own archive of exhibits and transcripts has similarly disappeared. Microsoft maintains a comprehensive record of its antitrust proceedings, making Comes a notable absence.

Submission + - Merck HIV vaccine trial begins in South Africa

Submitted by Neme$y$ on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @03:21AM

Neme$y$ writes: The BBC reports that "An international team of researchers, led by experts from the US, will oversee the trial of the vaccine, created by the drug company Merck.". According to CBC News : The study is a "test of concept" trial that will help researchers determine if the vaccine prevents HIV infections, results in lower HIV levels in those who become infected after vaccination or both. "South Africa is an excellent location for this trial due to the high levels of infection coupled with the good clinical infrastructure, including internationally recognized immunology laboratories, a well-established national vaccine initiative and experience in running clinical trials," said James Kublin, M.D., M.P.H., one of study's lead investigators, along with Glenda Gray, MBBCH, FCPaeds (SA), of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, based at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. A more detailed explanation here.

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