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Censorship

Johnson & Johnson Loses Major Trademark Lawsuit 176

Dekortage writes "As previously discussed here, the health-products giant Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over use of the ubiquitous 'red cross' logo. J&J has now lost. The presiding judge said Johnson & Johnson's claim against the organization was doubtful because the manufacturer entered into a brand-sharing promotional agreement with the American Red Cross in 1986 — not to mention that the two organizations agreed to share the logo way back in 1895. Sounds like J&J may need to crack open some Tylenol and Band-Aids."
Slashdot.org

Welcome to the New Slashdot Chicago Cluster 149

Thanks to everyone who tested on Friday, as well as to all of SourceForge's netops crew, our corporate overlords at SourceForge for paying the bill, and of course all the engineers on Slashteam- Jamie McCarthy, Tim Vroom, Chris Nandor, Chris Brown, and Scott Collins, we are now running on the new iron in a cage in Chicago. We'll run a story in a few days about the ridiculously overpowered new hardware we have now, but now is the part of sprockets where we dance.
Communications

Submission + - SPAM: FAA mandates major aircraft "Black Box" up

coondoggie writes: "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today mandated significant upgrades to aircraft cockpit voice and flight data recorders in an effort to help investigators retrieve more and better data from airplane accidents and mishaps. Today's mandate means manufacturers such as Honeywell and L-3 Communications as well as operators of airplanes and helicopters with 10 or more seats, must employ voice recorders, also known as black boxes, that capture the last two hours of cockpit audio instead of the current 15 to 30 minutes. The new rules also require an independent backup power source for the voice recorders to allow continued recording for nine to 11 minutes if all aircraft power sources are lost or interrupted. Voice recorders also must use solid state technology instead of magnetic tape, which is vulnerable to damage and loss of reliability, the FAA said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Software

Submission + - Orrin Hatch - Software copyright violater (fudreport.com) 2

fudreporter writes: "Wired.com has an article referring to comments Senator Orrin Hatch(R-Utah) made about downloading copyrighted material from the Internet... Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes. The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website. "It's an unlicensed copy," said Andy Woolley, who runs Milonic. "It's very unfortunate for him because of those comments he made.""
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Typo causes $7,500,000 mistake (pcpro.co.uk)

Rakzor writes: "A typing mistake caused Dreamhost to accidentally charge its customers a year's worth of non-existent hosting fees, totalling $7,500,000. "It turns out due to my excessively fat fingers, nearly every one of our customers has been seriously over-billed in the last 12 hours," says Dreamhost founder, Josh Jones, on the company blog."

Firehose Car Lift

samzenpus writes "Ever wonder what Firemen do when there's no fire? It looks like they see what they can lift with water pressure."
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Frind Works 10 Hour Week, Makes $10 Million a Year

Reservoir Hill writes: "The New York Times reports that Markus Frind built the Plenty of Fish Web site in 2003 as nothing more than an exercise to help teach himself a new programming language, ASP.NET. The site first became popular among English-speaking Canadians. Popularity among online daters in many United States cities followed more recently, and with minimal spending on advertising the site. According to data from comScore Media Metrix for November 2007, Plenty of Fish had 1.4 million unique visitors in the United States. In December, Mr. Frind said, the site served up 1.2 billion page views, and page views have soared 20 percent since Dec. 26."
It's funny.  Laugh.

XKCD Inadvertently Causes Googlebomb 221

MrCopilot writes "As I noted yesterday (and was joined by many others)... in an offhand observation xkcd has singlehandedly changed a small section of the Internet. Changing the results from a Google search for "Died in a Blogging Accident" from 2 to (at this writing) over 7,170 in a little more than 24 hours." If you aren't reading xkcd, you're missing out.
Netscape

Submission + - The Netscape Story: From Mosaic to Mozilla

E5Rebel writes: "The news that AOL is ceasing to support its Netscape browsers is not only that, it is the end of a story that encompassed just about every major trend in the rise of the Internet as a mass medium, and that was crucially important for free software. A good take on slightly old news. http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=310"
Encryption

Submission + - Nanodisk Codes For Crypto and More (physorg.com)

palegray.net writes: "From the article summary: Researchers at Northeastern University have devised a way to use billionth-of-a-meter-sized disks to create codes that could be used to encrypt information, serve as biological labels, and even tag and track goods and personnel.

Seems like an interesting application of nanotech to information storage and manipulation."

Biotech

Submission + - How and Why Knots Spontaneously Form (sciencenews.org)

palegray.net writes: "According to this article in Science News Online, scientists believe they have found the underlying reasons why knots are so common in the universe. This research helps us understand how knotty arrangements in various molecules lead to biological patterns, as in certain proteins. The article also provides a look at the field of topology, and how it relates to knots."
Windows

Vista Named Year's Most Disappointing Product 842

Shadow7789 writes "No surprise here, but to complete its humiliation, PC World has declared that Windows Vista is the most disappointing product of 2007. Quoting: 'Five years in the making and this is the best Microsoft could do?... No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back. And when the fastest Vista notebook PC World has ever tested is an Apple MacBook Pro, there's something deeply wrong with the universe.'"
Linux Business

Submission + - Is Ubuntu playing trademark policy games? (classhelper.org) 7

palegray.net writes: "The subject could just as easily be stated "Does Ubuntu understand its own trademark policy?" or alternately "Does Ubuntu really want community support and involvement?" I thought so a week ago. If you're interested in the full write-up of the whole affair, check this page. It contains copies of all the emails I sent to Ubuntu's "trademarks" email address regarding this matter, along with copies of the replies I received.

First, a little bit of background on myself and how this situation started. I'm a pretty big nerd, and I mean that in more than just your general "loves computers and programming Linux applications" sense. I also happen to enjoy puzzles of all types, word games, and kite building. Yes, kite building, especially miniature kites that can be flown in very light winds (or even indoors, in some cases).

I decided it might be a good idea to offer some small kites for sale that were decorated with various open source and Linux themed logos. Given the amount of support the Ubuntu project gives to education, especially considering their focus on education through the Edubuntu project, I thought their logo would look nice on small kites designed for Linux enthusiasts and school-age children. The way I see it, the more kids are exposed to operating systems like Ubuntu, and the less they're forced to use Microsoft products, the better off we all are in the long run. Who knows, maybe a simple kite might spark some kid's curiosity...

So I decided to do the right and proper thing by asking for permission to use the Ubuntu logo on small kites. After a few email exchanges with the folks at Ubuntu, my request was flatly denied with no commentary on my stated interpretation of their trademark policy and the procedure one should use for requesting licensed use of their logos.

What does the Slashdot community think of this? I offered to contribute a percentage of any revenue generated from the kites to the Ubuntu (or Edubuntu, whichever they prefer) project, but received no acknowledgment of that offer. What gives?"

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