mcoon - Slashdot User

TV Networks Don't Want DMCA Protection For YouTube 197

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @12:46PM from the well-of-course-they-don't dept.

sburch79 writes "A brief filed in the Viacom v. Google case asserts that the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions were never meant to apply to sites like YouTube. It also goes on to say the if safe harbor were given to these sites, it would put too big a burden on networks to police their own material."

Most File Sharers Would Pay For Legal Downloads 370

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 07, 2010 @01:14PM from the enthusiastic-fans-by-another-name dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Two separate studies from Australia and Holland give the lie to corporate entertainment industry claims that file sharers are unprincipled thieves out to rob the honest but harshly treated movie and music studios. Over in Oz, news.com.au reports, 'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.' And from the EU, 'Turnover in the recorded music industry is in decline, but only part of this decline can be attributed to file sharing,' says Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing, an academic study, which also states, 'Conversely, only a small fraction of the content exchanged through file sharing networks comes at the expense of industry turnover. This renders the overall welfare effects of file sharing robustly positive.'"

Canonical Explains Decision to License H.264 For Ubuntu 372

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 06, 2010 @04:51PM from the less-painful-to-pay dept.

tux writes with this snippet from The Register: "Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical has tried to clarify how — if not why — it has licensed a closed-source and patented codec for video on PCs running its Linux. Canonical is the first Linux shop to have agreed to license the codec in question, H.264, from MPEG LA. Even though Red Hat and Novell are also available for use on PCs, they have not licensed H.264."

Open Source Guacamole Puts VNC On the Web 180

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @01:03PM from the there's-an-app-for-that dept.

tbitiss writes "A new open source project dubbed Guacamole allows users to access a desktop remotely through a web browser, potentially streamlining the requirements for client support and administration. Guacamole is an HTML5 and JavaScript (Ajax) VNC viewer that makes use of a VNC-to-XML proxy server written in Java. According to its developers, Guacamole is almost as responsive as native VNC and should work in any browser supporting the HTML5 canvas tag. Supporting 10 Linux desktops in 10 browser tabs? I like the sound of that."

Hundred-Ton Dome To Collect Oil Spill 565

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @11:31AM from the big-fire-go-boom dept.

eldavojohn writes "After failing to contain the Gulf oil spill any other way, a massive containment dome had the finishing touches put on yesterday. It amounts to a giant concrete-and-steel box made by Wild Well Control that is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water. They expect an 85 percent collection with this device. It's not a pretty situation as Google Earth illustrates."

OpenDLP Aims To Stem Data Loss 53

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 02, 2010 @03:05PM from the fly-free-little-bot-but-phone-home dept.

rollcall writes "A new free and open source tool, OpenDLP, has been released that will help organizations fight data loss caused by stolen laptops, missing HDDs, or compromised systems. OpenDLP is managed from a centralized Web application and it can simultaneously send and control thousands of non-intrusive agents to Microsoft Windows systems over NetBIOS that look for user-defined regular expressions in data at rest. When sensitive data is found, the agents 'phone home' to the Web app with their results. While organizations have continued to lose sensitive data even though many commercial products are available to help prevent this, perhaps the introduction of a free alternative will finally spur organizations to locate their sensitive data proactively before it is lost."

Comment Re:Focus Fusion (Score 2, Interesting) 372

by mcoon on Thursday April 29, 2010 @08:25AM (#32028414) Attached to: Can World's Largest Laser Zap Earth's Energy Woes?

Not only that, but their current results generate 50% of the input energy without any of the neutron rich dirty output typical of deuterium based fusion.

Climate Researchers Fight Back 641

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 23, 2010 @04:06PM from the best-defense-is-a-good-offense dept.

tomduck writes "The Guardian reports that climate researcher Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post newspaper in Canada in a libel action for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods.' The Post claimed he cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and tried to blame the 'evil fossil fuel' industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from mistakes in the 2007 IPCC report. This comes fast on the heels of another Guardian article describing lessons learned from the exoneration of UEA scientists involved in the so-called Climategate affair. Are climate scientists finally fighting back against their critics, who they were previously more inclined to ignore?"

The Pirate Party of Canada Is Official 430

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 14, 2010 @04:53AM from the arrrr-eh dept.

wasme writes "The Pirate Party of Canada has become the first Pirate Party outside of Europe to become an official political party. Elections Canada confirmed with the party that the PPCA has gained 'eligible for registration' status, and can run in elections starting June 14. From the PPCA's official announcement: 'We are pleased to announce that as of April 12, 2010, the Pirate Party of Canada is officially eligible for Party Status. After 10 months of dedication and hard work, we have reached eligible status, which only leaves a 60-day "purgatory" period. After that, we will field candidates in subsequent federal elections, and begin the real work of a political party.'"

Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode 464

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 09, 2010 @03:16PM from the bears-are-dangerous dept.

Crazzaper writes "I have been using Firefox for many years, and the war of the browsers has been around for longer than that. It just so happens that now we have a lot of options out there: IE, FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and others. People are always talking about how one browser is going to take down another, but maybe that's not the issue at all. It seems very possible that one browser, like Firefox, can be taken down by multiple browsers at once, whether or not there was any intention to compete specifically with Firefox. I hadn't seen it this way, but I do now."

Wisconsin DA Threatens Arrests Over Sex Ed 703

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @07:36PM from the talk-about-genitals-go-directly-to-jail dept.

WrongSizeGlass writes "USA Today is reporting that the DA of Juneau County, Wisconsin, is warning teachers that they could face arrest over the new sex-ed curriculum. District Attorney Scott Southworth said a new state law that requires students learn to use condoms and other contraceptives 'promotes the sexualization — and sexual assault — of our children.' Southworth also said, 'I'm not looking to charge any teachers. I've got enough work to do.'"

Novell Wins vs. SCO 380

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 30, 2010 @04:20PM from the now-wait-a-minute dept.

Aim Here writes "According to Novell's website, and the Salt Lake Tribune, the jury in the SCO v. Novell trial has returned a verdict: Novell owns the Unix copyrights. This also means that SCO's case against IBM must surely collapse too, and likely the now bankrupt SCO group itself. It's taken 7 years, but the US court system has eventually done the right thing ..." No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this.

Computer Vision Tech Grabs Humans In Real-Time 3D 110

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 30, 2010 @02:15PM from the my-soul-is-in-there dept.

Tinkle writes "Toshiba's R&D Labs in Cambridge, UK have developed a system capable of real-time 3D modeling of the human face and body — using a simple set of three different colored lights. Simple it may be, but the results are impressive. Commercial applications for computer vision technology look set to be huge — according professor Roberto Cipolla. On the horizon: cheap and easy digitized everyday objects for ecommerce, plus gesture-based interfaces — a la Natal — and in-car safety systems. Ultimately even driver-less cars. 'This is going to be the decade of computer vision,' predicts Cipolla."

Warner Brothers Hiring Undercover Anti-Pirates 443

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 29, 2010 @07:29PM from the WB-privateers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak reports that Warner Brothers UK is hiring college students with an IT background to participate in an internship that will pit them against pirates on the Web in an effort to crack down on illegal digital distribution. The intern will literally be on the front-lines of the epic battle against pirated content, ensnaring users in incriminating transactions, issuing takedown requests, and causing general frustration amongst the file-sharing population on the Internet."

Disputed Island Disappears Into Sea 460

Posted by samzenpus on Friday March 26, 2010 @10:28AM from the say-hi-to-atlantis dept.

RawJoe writes "India and Bangladesh have argued for almost 30 years over control of a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have ended the argument for them: the island's gone. From the article: 'New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"

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