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The Internet

Submission + - Public rallies behind free wireless broadband

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: A proposal to deliver free wireless broadband to 95% of the US population is finding public support, even as it looks like it will be rejected by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). According to the company behind the proposal, M2Z Networks, more than 1000 people from 49 states have written to the FCC in an attempt to reverse a draft order by FCC Chairman Martin that is believed to deny the application.
Privacy

Submission + - Rick Rubin discloses Sony rootkit called home

Submitted by caffeinemessiah
caffeinemessiah writes: Rick Rubin, the legendary music producer, recently signed on as co-head of Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony BMG. In a recent New York Times interview (on pg. 4 of the online version), he discloses (possibly accidentally):

It was the highest debut of Neil [Diamond]'s career, off to a great start. But Columbia — it was some kind of corporate thing — had put spyware on the CD. That kept people from copying it, but it also somehow recorded information about whoever bought the record...
Seems like the rootkit might have been a little more than your vanilla invade-your-rights-DRM scheme.
Worms

Submission + - August a Dead Season for Virus Epidemics (net-security.org)

Submitted by BaCa
BaCa writes: August once again turned out to be "dead season" for virus epidemics in 2007. Since August 2003, when the Lovesan worm caused the biggest epidemic in history, the final month of summer has typically been the quietest and most uneventful, as it is a period when both virus writers and antivirus professionals often go on holiday. Even the waves of mass-mailings sent out by the Warezov and Zhelatin worms were missing in action in August. Warezov.pk, the leader in July, disappeared suddenly from our virus radar screens.
Programming

Submission + - Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths (itwire.com.au)

Submitted by
Coryoth
Coryoth writes: "A new book is trying to claim that computer science is better off without maths. The author claims that early computing pioneers such as Von Neumann and Alan Turing imposed their pure mathematics background on the field, and that this has hobbled computer science ever since. He rejects the idea of algorithms as a good way to think about software. Can you really do computer science well without mathematics? And would you want to?"
United States

Submission + - NYT Sunday Editorial Calls for Withdrawl from Iraq (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "In it's main Sunday editorial called "The Road Home" The NYT has called for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Saying that the situation cannot be worse than it is now they argue that six months is needed to withdraw troops, perhaps through Turkey. They call for bases in Kuwait or Kurdish territory to continue to stage raids on terrorists who have gained a foothold in Iraq as a result of the war. They call on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to host refugees with the US and EU to foot the bill but those Iraqis who have worked for us to be offered permanent resettlement in the US. They now call the war unnecessary and reiterate that it's management has been incompetent. They say that Bush is just trying to pass the disaster on to the next President and he must be prevented from doing this.

The (subscription) column by Frank Rich goes on at length calling Bush a coward.

With republican Senators defecting, can the Times have put it's finger in the wind or has it left the real stuff of its reputation bleaching behind it in the sun?"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Boston Man Sues State Bar Over Gay Test Question (connexion.org)

Submitted by caol.kailash
caol.kailash writes:
A man who flunked Massachusetts' bar exam is claiming in federal court that he failed test because he refused to answer a question related to gay marriage.
The reason he didn't answer? It was "morally repugnant" to him to have a "contemporary issue" question, especially one regarding gay marriage, on the bar exam and he refused to answer. Isn't that a lawyer's job? To know all laws regardless of their "repugnance" or not?
The Internet

Submission + - Building a Linux P2P MMOG (cmpnet.com) 1

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "Researchers from Thailand and China are building a Linux-based peer-to-peer massively multiplayer online game and have published a paper on the problems they encountered: "Building real-time interactive P2P game playing applications in Linux posses many challenges and opens a wide area of research. There have been many implementations of remote interactive servers for game playing in some universities or companies providing collaborative access to the remote services. Most current systems that provide a collaborative remote game environment either use the (multi) Unicast technique or the Multicast technique to transmit data packets to the participants of the experiment group in the network. Both of these schemes have disadvantages and advantages. In this paper we implement architecture under Linux for real-time multiplayer game application based on XCAST especially for the cases where there exist numerous small collaborative groups. We had provided extension to the Linux kernel and XCAST and show that formation of numerous simultaneous groups, where each group would collaborate for a separate game, is possible. The system proposed is robust in consistently providing group formation and collaboration activities in real time, back-up route or priority queuing, and on time packet delivery with minimum delay in network in the presence of continuous node arrival and departure in the entire game playing procedure. We also show that for data packets of low size, the use of XCAST in the network layer decreases the stress at the sender in each group whereas due to the increased header size of the XCAST packets. Our implementation has shown significant improvements to meet the demands of some real-time game applications.""
Slashback

Submission + - blatent plagerism by anonymous coward (slashdot.org)

Submitted by jdc
jdc writes: I realize this is totally the wrong place to post this... BUT i couldn't find anywhere else to put it Comments are owned by posters, but what about anonymous cowards? See the link. Copywrited text is copied and pasted into this article. Looks like someone paid $39 for this article and posted the text on /. Sorry again for posting this here
Microsoft

Submission + - A new type of computer

Submitted by
johnaobrien
johnaobrien writes: "I was perusing the web and found an article that might be enjoyable to every one who likes computing. The article talks about how a new type of computer will be used to add pictures etc. right from the camera. After they are added by putting the wireless devise onto the desk top the pictures will automatically be added. The article is at http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=93374293 0&channel=212469179 and talks about millan. Very interesting."
The Internet

Submission + - MediaDefenders caught violating copyright law?

Submitted by uglydog
uglydog writes: MediaDefenders is hosting a pdf of a Wall Street Journal article on its site in a manner that appears to violate section 6. b. of the WSJ subscriber agreement (read the disclaimer at the end of the pdf). The link to the pdf is off of MediaDefenders marketing page (mouse over "News" on the left navbar and check out link for the 2nd item on the page). This happens right after an incident where MediaDefenders was allegedly entrapping p2p users.
Quickies

Submission + - Netcraft confirms ebuyer powered by ZX Spectrum

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet monitoring company Netcraft today confirms that eBuyer is running an assortment of unexpected website hardware. The Apache 2.0.59 powered website using is reported to be using hardware including a CRAY, ZX Spectrum 48k (with Rubber Keys), and a Commodore C64.
Announcements

Submission + - Dreamliner Rollout to be Webcast

Submitted by roc_machine
roc_machine writes: This Sunday Boeing will unveil the highly anticipated (and fully assembled) 787 Dreamliner to the public. Boeing will have a webcast allowing fans of aviation to follow the event. Please note that this event will not be the inaugural flight, which is currently scheduled to happen next month.

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