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Comment Re:That's not the same. (Score 1) 284

by Compunexus (#26254079) Attached to: What Will Spam Be Like In 20 Years?
The problem with your method of rejecting during the SMTP transfer is that in most European countries it is illegal to not deliver all mail sent to a user. So European Companies and ISP's "facilitate" sorting suspected spam into a spam folder for you. You can always look there or turn off the sorting altogether. Google being the world spanning provider just uses the same rules for filtering in all countries. However, I agree with some of the other posters, that if it is not in my language, send it to spam.
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: CSIRO claims revolutionary waste into fuel process

Submitted by
WirePosted
WirePosted writes: "Australia's Commonwealth and Industrial research Organization (CSIRO) and Monash University in Melbourne have developed a chemical process that turns common green waste into a stable bio-crude oil. The reasearchers claim the energy is renewable, greenhouse gas neutral and eliminates the food versus fuel debate."
Link to Original Source
It's funny. Laugh.

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

Submitted by
Reservoir Hill
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."
The Courts

Submission + - Revote likey because Diebold recount impossible

Submitted by Aidtopia
Aidtopia writes: A judge in Berkeley, California, has ordered a re-vote in a 2004 medical marijuana measure which had lost by fewer than 200 votes. A group supporting the measure requested a recount, which was meaningless since the Diebold electronic voting machines didn't produce physical ballots. The group petitioned for audit logs and other supporting documentation. The Registrar initially gave them the run-around, and, with a lawsuit pending, shipped the machines back to the manufacturer where 96% of the stored votes were erased. The ruling is tentative. The revote, if it happens, will be in the 2008 general election, using different electronic voting machines that produce a paper trail.
Patents

Submission + - IBM frees patents for everyone... (ibm.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the website: "IBM wants to encourage broad adoption of the Covered Specifications listed below. Therefore, IBM irrevocably covenants to you that it will not assert any Necessary Claims1 against you for your making, using, importing, selling, or offering for sale Covered Implementations2. However, this covenant will become void, and IBM reserves the right to assert its Necessary Claims against you, if you (or anyone acting in concert with you) assert any Necessary Claims against any Covered Implementations of IBM or of any third party. This covenant is available to everyone directly from IBM, and does not flow from you to your suppliers, business partners, distributors, customers or others. So, if your supplier, business partner, distributor, customer or other party independently takes an action that voids the covenant as to itself, IBM reserves the right to assert its Necessary Claims against that party, even though this covenant will remain in effect for you. By making this irrevocable patent covenant with regard to the Specifications listed below, IBM does not represent that it holds any or all Necessary Claims regarding the Open Specifications you choose to implement." Find the specific patent listings here: http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/opensource/isplist.sht ml
Software

Submission + - Open Standards Threatened in Europe (lwn.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From Open Standards: 'On June 29 2007, the European Commission agency IDABC published a document revising the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the Architecture Guidelines (AG). This second version wants to 'update' the previous version of the EIF but, contrary to the first version, it threatens explictely the good process of more open standards that had been a long time push of IDABC. "EIF v2.0 should facilitate the most profitable business model(s) of cost versus public value, under proper recognition of intellectual property rights, if any. The support for multiple standards allows a migration towards open standards when appropriate in the long run." There are unacceptable drawbacks from the previous "EIF 2004" that promoted the use of open standards as defined in this European definition, the use of free and open source softwares as well as XML.'

Who also reads 'Microsoft and OOXML out again to find some weak spot' between the lines? Help signing the campaign and sending complaining emails in the request for comments.
The Courts

Submission + - Army Sergeant in Tennessee Sues RIAA

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A 33-year old Army Sergeant stationed at Fort Campbell, in Tennessee, has counterclaimed against the record company palintiffs, in Warner v. Paternoster. His counterclaim seeks forfeiture of the plaintiffs' copyrights, and other relief, against Warner, BMG, Arista, Virgin,, and UMG, based on his claim (pdf) that they had colluded together in violation of the antitrust laws, had deliberately padded their court filing with embarrassing material in order to "shame" the defendant into paying a settlement for actions he did not commit, and "conspired together on other activities ...including: (1) bringing, without investigation sufficient to establish that the allegations ... have evidentiary support, lawsuits against persons who are not specifically known to have infringed copyrights, including persons who are deceased, disabled or who lack knowledge of how to use computers or download files from the internet; (2) making false and unsupported allegations ... by making the unwarranted and technologically erroneous assumption that an Internet Protocol address is a unique identifier of a computer or an individual; (3) using a corporation as their agent to make extortionate threats to take criminal action and to defame defendants' names and credit, in order to force defendants to pay sums which have no relation to plaintiffs' actual damages, if any, and by delivering releases to settling defendants (few of whom are represented by counsel) which are fraudulent in that they do not constitute true releases of all claims by putative plaintiffs, thereby misleading settling defendants into erroneously believing that they cannot be sued again; (4) jointly agreeing upon exorbitant settlement amounts which are nonnegotiable and are arbitrarily increased at set intervals thereby depriving the defendants in these actions of any reasonable opportunity to negotiate a settlement; (5) commencing ex parte "John Doe" lawsuits which they have no intention of pursuing, but by means of which they are able to communicate with District Judges, Magistrate Judges, and other judicial officials on a daily basis, without providing defendants with notice or opportunity to be heard, in violation of attorneys' ethical obligations as officers of the Courts; (6) invading the privacy of these "John Doe" defendants by then serving subpoenas on Internet Service Providers without notice to the putative defendants; (7)withdrawing such actions upon being challenged and thereby preventing defendants from obtaining relief for having to defend them; and (8) engaging in other unconscionable conduct.....[They] have commenced tens of thousands of actions in the District Courts of the United States in the past five years, the overwhelming majority of which have resulted either in default judgments or extortionate settlements far in excess of any actual damages incurred by Counter-Defendants... Such actions represent an attempt by Counter-Defendants to secure for themselves rights far exceeding those provided by copyright laws....""
Microsoft

Microsoft Excludes GPLv3 From Linspire Deal 342

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the v3-is-a-hard-sell dept.
rs232 writes to tell us that Microsoft is excluding any software licensed under the new GPLv3 from their recent patent protection deal with Linspire. "Microsoft has since been treating GPLv3 software as though it were radioactive. 'Microsoft isn't a party to the GPLv3 license and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license,' the company said in a statement released shortly after GPLv3 was published on June 29. In addition to excluding GPLv3 software from the Linspire deal, Microsoft recently said that it wouldn't distribute any GPLv3 software under its SUSE Linux alliance with Novell, even as it maintains in public statements that the antilawsuit provisions in the license have no legal weight. "
Television

Submission + - MPAA Shuts ShowStash

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While popular TV site ShowStash did not host any infringing material, it did index episodes of popular television fare located on servers throughout the world. That was more than enough to get them locked into the crosshairs of the Motion Picture Association of America, who last week launched a suit against ShowStash for massive copyright infringement. This afternoon when users went to the site to catch their dose of vids they were greeted with a shut down notice. Peekvid.com, which is also being sued, is still up and streaming, but for how long remains a question.
Privacy

Will Security Firms Detect Police Spyware? 269

Posted by kdawson from the who-do-you-trust dept.
cnet-declan writes "A recent appeals court case dealt with Drug Enforcement Administration agents using a key logger to investigate a suspect using PGP and Hushmail. That invites the obvious question: Will security companies ever intentionally overlook police spyware? There were somewhat-muddled reports in 2001 that Symantec and McAfee would do just that, so over at News.com we figured we'd do a survey of the top 13 security firms. We asked them if it is their policy to detect policeware. Notably, Check Point said it would 'afford law enforcement' the courtesy of whitelisting if requested. We've also posted the full results, with the companies' complete answers. Another question we asked is if they have ever received a court order requiring them to overlook police key loggers or spyware. Symantec, IBM, Kaspersky, and others said no. Only Microsoft and McAfee refused to answer."
Censorship

Submission + - FBI wants to put restrictions on student freedoms (theinquirer.net)

Submitted by
Chebab
Chebab writes: "The FBI has been visiting top universities in New England and recommended the university heads to follow a set of guidelines intended to protect the universities from foreign spies and terrorists. Among other things, the guidelines prevent students from showing interest in colleagues' work, engaging in independent research and going abroad. From the article:
"Following rules which have been abandoned in Eastern Europe, faculty, staff and students are encouraged to spy on their colleagues for signs of suspicious behaviour and report any concerns to the FBI or the military.""
Businesses

Submission + - My company's website was plagiarized: what next? (ripstyles.com) 1

Submitted by
Anonymous
Anonymous writes: "After a recent design revamp, I discovered that my company's website (www.ripstyles.com) has had a large portion of its content "ripped off." After digging through this other site (I am purposefully leaving out the URL) I have discovered that they have taken quite a bit of content from multiple other websites besides my own. A few calls and emails have been disregarded on their part ("Sorry....my boss is out sick...), and I'm trying to avoid legal action for as long as possible. It seems inevitable though, and I have to ask: do I owe it to the other companies to show them that their content has been plagiarized, or is it their own problem? If so, should I take this on alone? What would you Slashdot readers do in this situation?"
The Internet

Submission + - Bush Official Freaks Over Net Neutrality (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by LukeCage
LukeCage writes: Things aren't looking good for net neutrality. Apparently a couple of monopolies now constitute "the free market", and an angry former-telecom-lobbyist-turned-Assistant-Secretary loses it at a tech conference.
Privacy

Privatunes Anonymizes iTunes Plus 176

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-don't-know-if-anonymizes-is-a-word dept.
njondet writes "French-law.net reports that Ratatium.com, a French website specialized in technology news and software downloads, has just launched Privatunes, a free software that anonymizes DRM-free files bought on iTunes Plus. Last month's revelations that the DRM-free files sold by EMI on iTunes Plus came with user's full name and account e-mail embedded in them had raised serious privacy concerns. Ratatium.com explains (in French) that Privatunes is aimed at guaranteeing the privacy of users but also their rights as consumers to freely share and trade the songs they have purchased. However, the claim that this software is perfectly legal will surely be tested."
Microsoft

Submission + - MS to drop (some) DRM for the Zune

Submitted by
wedgiesaurus
wedgiesaurus writes: " From Computerworld (via BoingBoing):

Microsoft's apparent change of heart on selling DRM-free music came in response to Apple's deal earlier in the week to sell unprotected content from recording company EMI Group PLC. The company previously claimed that DRM was necessary for current and emerging digital media business models. "The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the IDG News Service today. She said Microsoft has been talking with EMI and other record labels "for some time now" about offering unprotected music on its Zune players in an effort to meet the needs of its customers."
So, has the end of DRM for music files finally come, or is this simply a little gamesmanship from Microsoft?"

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