Fenresulven - Slashdot User

Submission + - Virgin Mobile cites Creative Commons in defense (google.com)

Submitted by Dachannien on Friday September 21, 2007 @04:13AM

Dachannien writes: The AP reports that Dallas teenager Alison Chang was photographed flashing the peace sign at a church event, and the photo was later posted on Flickr by the photographer, church youth counselor Justin Wong. Imagine her surprise when the photo appeared on billboards and web ads touting Virgin Mobile Australia's text messaging service with the taglines "Dump your pen friend" and "Free text virgin to virgin" appearing near her image. Chang and Wong are suing Virgin Mobile Pty Ltd., Virgin Mobile USA, and Creative Commons Corporation for libel, invasion of privacy, and copyright infringement. For its part, Virgin Mobile stated its belief that the photos, published on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, were used in compliance with that license, although it's not clear how they complied the attribution requirement on a billboard or banner ad.

Submission + - Creationists Silence Critics with DMCA (richarddawkins.net) 1

Submitted by Gothmog of A on Saturday September 15, 2007 @06:23AM

Gothmog of A writes: As richarddawkins.net reports. An organization called Creation Science Evangelism Ministries has been submitting DMCA copyright requests to YouTube resulting in the Rational Response Squad being banned after they protested against videos being taken down and accounts being closed by YouTube. Rational Response Squad are attacking creationism (AKA intelligent design) and promoting the atheist viewpoint.

The copyright requests are claimed to be without merit by the Rational Response Squad since the material in question is covered by fair use or has been declared to be in the public domain.

Behind Creation Science Evangelism Ministries is the infamous Kent Hovind (AKA Dr. Dino) who is currently serving jail time for tax evasion.

Submission + - Unix, Linux keywords banned from Xbox Live (techtarget.com) 1

Submitted by

shafty023

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @03:21PM

shafty023 writes: "It looks like Microsoft's Anti-Linux campaign has extended to Xbox Live where they have banned usernames like LINUXRULES, L I N U X, and other variations of these kinds. To what extent is Microsoft going to go to continue this childish anti-linux behaviour?"

Submission + - British Standards Institute votes NO to OOXML (bsi-global.com)

Submitted by mikeb on Monday September 03, 2007 @12:19PM

mikeb writes: Although it's not as plain as a pikestaff from the wording of the press release at http://www.bsi-global.com/en/About-BSI/News-Room/B SI-News-Content/Disciplines/Information-Management /ISOIEC-DIS-29500/ , the key bit is "a number of technical issues in the document which need to be addressed before the UK can approve ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML as an International Standard" — in other words, NO with comments (the alternative would be yes with comments but that cannot force a ballot resolution meeting). I wish anyone well who tries to resolve some of the comments!

Submission + - Cameraphone shots faked on promotional site (mobil.se)

Submitted by Rofa on Monday September 03, 2007 @09:52AM

Rofa writes: According to Swedish mobile news site Mobil (article in Swedish), at least one sample photo, featured on a german promotional site for the new Sony Ericsson K850 cameraphone, actually originates from a Sanyo S50 digital camera. This was discovered by examining the exif information in the images. Other photos on the site lacked exif information indicating the source device. When inquired, Sony Ericsson's Mattias Holm was unable to give an explanation, but promised to investigate the matter with his German collegues.

Submission + - HP-35s calculator announced and withdrawn 1

Submitted by

leighklotz

on Thursday August 02, 2007 @02:12PM

leighklotz writes: "HP announced their 35th anniversary version of the groundbreaking HP-35 calculator on July 11th, and the New York Times featured [reg warning] it in their Circuits section today. Sadly, today was also the day that HP apparently withdrew the product to correct reported manufacturing defects. For calculator geeks, note that it has a big prominent ENTER button and reportedly features good tactile feedback. No news about the recall on HP's website..."

Submission + - Humans 'affect global rainfall'

Submitted by

gollum123

on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @12:49PM

gollum123 writes: "Human-induced climate change has affected global rainfall patterns over the 20th Century, a study suggests ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6912527. stm ). Researchers said changes to the climate had led to an increase in annual average rainfall in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. But while Canada, Russia and northern Europe had become wetter, India and parts of Africa had become drier, the team of scientists added. The scientists from Canada, Japan, the UK and US used the patterns of the changes in different latitude bands instead of the global average. They compared monthly precipitation observations from 1925-1999 to those generated by complex computer models to see if they could identify if human activity was affecting rainfall patterns. The team estimated that human activity, such as burning fossil fuels, was likely to have led to a 62mm increase in the annual precipitation trend over the past century over land areas located 40-70 degrees north, a 82mm increase in the southern tropics and subtropics (0-30 degrees south), and a 98mm decrease in precipitation in the northern tropics (0-30 degrees north). They added that natural factors, such as volcanic eruptions, had contributed to shifts in the global rainfall patterns but to a much lesser extent."

Submission + - China Hitching a Russian Ride to Mars

Submitted by

simonbp

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @09:47AM

simonbp writes: "China is preparing its own Mars probe — Yinghuo-1 — that will hitch-hike a ride to the Red Planet with the Russian Phobus-Grunt probe (mission video). The development of the probe started at the Shangai Academy of Spaceflight in late 2006, and a prototype will be ready by April 2008. The Mars probe will be ready vehicle integration four months before being launched by a Soyuz-2 launch vehicle in October 2009."

Submission + - Vendors selling your contact info?

Submitted by

Sorthum

on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:34PM

Sorthum writes: "I ordered a memory card from Tiger Direct using a dedicated email address a few days ago. The card hasn't even arrived yet, and yet I found something VERY interesting in my inbox this morning: a lottery scam email to that tagged address, relayed through Cox's outbound servers. Apparently TigerDirect is either compromised, or selling their addresses to spammers — this address has never received a hit until I placed the order, and no one else has it. There is no evidence of a dictionary attack in the server logs either. My call to their customer service line proved to be fruitless — their drone refused to escalate the call, or provide a satisfactory response. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?"

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