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Censorship

Submission + - Users Overtake Digg

Submitted by
econoar
econoar writes: "Well, digg pissed off their users, and the users have just fought back. I've never really seen anything like this on user run websites, but chaos is taking place over on Digg. As I have mentioned before, Digg is my favorite website out there, but after they banned me earlier today I got a little pissed. I submitted a story about a T-Shirt with the now famous HD-DVD hex key on it, and I was banned for "violating the terms of use". Stories were getting deleted and user accounts were being banned all because of a stupid HD-DVD copyright Hex code that can be used to unlock HD-DVD. Digg claimed that they could be sued and what not for it so they decided to censor all of the stories that had to deal with the key. The whole thing is just bull, you can't copyright a sequence of numbers and letters. People come to digg for the sole reason of not having to deal with censorship. The users have become pissed and now every story on the front page is about the HEX key. I'm not going to post it here, but you can go see for yourself. Oh, and not to mention that HD-DVD is a main sponsor on Digg's podcast, Diggnation, of which I am a fan of. Digg really screwed the pooch on this one. Don't fuck with your users. Submissions are now shut down on digg also."
The Internet

Submission + - The downfall of digg summarized by numbers.

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "There has been quite a bit of talk going on lately regarding the HDDVD code- Followed by C&D letters from HDDVD lawyers. For the most part, these are being ignored- However, Digg Has chosen to remove all story's containing the code, as well as banning any user who submits such a item. The community fought back, and now the entire homepage is being overrun by HDDVD story's and the site is failing. Is this the expected result from no moderation? Was this Doomed to happen? As of yet- Digg has no official response- However the damage already done is unspoken, with many users returning to age old sites such as slashdot and newcomers like reddit."
Censorship

Submission + - HD-DVD key censorship revolt at digg.com

Submitted by
earthforce_1
earthforce_1 writes: "It looks like the founders at digg.com have received and complied with a takedown notice regarding the HD-DVD master keys, and blocking accounts of some users attempting to repost the keys. Subscribers have revolted en-masse and have reposted the keys in at least a dozen story threads and thousands of comments in countless ways. They also modded up all stories about the censored keys until at one point, every single front page story was about the HD-DVD keys! Until the original story was taken down, it was modded up over 15,000 times, an all time record.

This has been a totally unprecedented subscriber revolt against the website moderators, and at least one story thread suggests one of the founders had taken promotional money from the HD-DVD consortium."
Businesses

Submission + - T-Mobile Hacker Penetrates Secret Service

Submitted by
eieken
eieken writes: "According to this article, "The US Secret Service, which played the dual role of investigator and victim in the drama, said Tuesday it couldn't comment on Jacobsen because the agency doesn't discuss ongoing cases". For a secret intelligence agency, makes me wonder what else they don't know about."
Programming

Submission + - Choosing to program or stay at home with the kids

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been back working for 10 months after taking a one year leave of absence to stay at home with our first baby. I loved it, but also love programming, so I went back to work. Now our second child is here, and I'm thinking about going back to being Mr. Mom for a few years until the kids are in grade school. My question is, if I quit doing software development for 5 years, how hard would it be to get back into it? I have six years experience now and a BS in CSci. Thoughts on what my chances would be of getting a job with a company at an entry level since my skills would probably be out of date? What could I do for a few hours per week to keep my skills at least somewhat up to date? Thanks.
Software

Submission + - Co-Processors Used for Bloatware

Submitted by
RX8
RX8 writes: "Velocity Micro Director of Product Development, Chris Morley says that system builders are taking advantage of the new Dual-Core processors and "load down their systems with extraneous software that you do not need and only chew up clock cycles. Microsoft has dubbed this bloatware "craplets," and they're worried it's going to ruin Vista's reception by the public. These craplets of course are revenue streams for the Tier 1s." Some of the worst manufacturers to do this include Dell and Hp. Microsoft is worried that this bloatware will lead consumers to blame Vista for the slowdown."
Math

Submission + - Your web browser, now a graphing calculator

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Taking advantage of the vector graphics features offered by the latest browsers, a recently created website called FooPlot turns your web browser into a function plotter (in 2-D and 3-D), offering a few basic graphing calculator features with a promise for further developments and integration with popular online spreadsheet applications. Gaining popularity in an educational context both in high schools and universities, this is another great example of the potential of the Internet to become the application platform of the future.

As an added extra, FooPlot also permits functions to be tacked onto the URL: http://fooplot.com/x^2+2x+1.
Portables

Submission + - PSP Keyboard: TyDoPad v0.01 beta

Submitted by
Jaime
Jaime writes: "You might be a little confused here. The title says the PSP keyboard has arrived but today the news comes in the form of a homebrew application, not a USB keyboard for PSP. That's because madruscoe (also known as moneytoo from our forums) has managed to create a homebrew application which lets you make short notes and save them as .txt files on your Memory Stick using the Palm(One) Universal Wireless Keyboard. This is the only keyboard supported at the moment and the good news is you can pick them up for around $50 on Amazon and they'll work with your Palm PDA."
Security

Submission + - Microsoft shakes up secure VPN technolgy

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Microsoft is working on a remote access tunneling protocol for Vista and Longhorn Server that lets client devices securely access networks via a VPN from anywhere on the Internet without concern for typical port blocking issues. The company hopes the protocol will help reduced help desk support calls associated with IPSec VPNs when those connections get blocked by firewalls or routers. In addition, SSTP won't foster retraining issues because it does not change the end-user VPN controls. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/011907-micro soft-secure-vpn-tunneling-protocol.html"
United States

Submission + - US Changes Story on Spy Coins

Submitted by Aqua_boy17
Aqua_boy17 writes: As a follow up to a story previously reported on Slashdot regarding bugged Canadian coins, the US Defense Department is now claiming that the original story was false. In an AP story published today the department states that its previous claims have proven to be unsubstatiated according to subsequent investigations. The US Defense Security Service was never able to provide evidence to support its original claim regarding the fake coins, and has now begun an internal investigation to determine how the original report was leaked to the public. Industry experts were intially baffled by the first reports, as such devices would have had a very limited capability to deliver significant amounts of reliable intelligence data.

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