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United States

Submission + - Net Neutrality: You create the Net Neutrality Act. (truevoxpopuli.com)

Submitted by
zyzzx0
zyzzx0 writes: "The basis of this site, TrueVoxPopuli.com, is to submit bills to congress without the hands of Lobbyists involved (last year over 90% of bills submitted to congress were written by lobbyists!). I think that the slashdot community could do a better job at writing a net neutrality bill than well-paid lobbyists. We built the website, and must apologize in advance because a)we're not using ajax yet and b)getting slashdotted might bring the site to a crawl."
Television

Submission + - Plasma & LCD TVs sales is booming, CRT is dead (hdtvinfo.eu) 2

Submitted by
Xbm360
Xbm360 writes: "Sales of Plasma & LCD TVs grew by 90 per cent in the 1st quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter & by 41% compared to last year. http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/content/view/60/1/ Total panel shipments reached 2.4 million units in the first quarter of 2007. Asia Pacific remains the dominant region for set production despite the emerging trend to move production closer to end markets, like in Europe. Recently LG announced they've increased their Plasma panel production. http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/news/hdtv-articles/lg-incre ases-its-plasma-panel-production.html"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Toilet paper trauma: Are 5 squares enough? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Is the world ready for an automatic toilet paper dispenser? Kimberly-Clark Professional hopes so as today it rolled out the JRT Electronic Coreless touchless electronic toilet paper dispenser that will immediately ignite a toilet paper strategy battle: the device issues five sheets at a time and uses 20% less toilet paper than traditional hand dispensed paper. According to Kimberly Clark, Americans typically use twice as much toilet paper as Europeans — as much as an arm's length each pull. The company decided the ideal length is about 20 inches — or precisely five standard toilet paper squares, though the machine can also be adjusted to churn out 16 inches or 24 inches, depending on the demand. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1746 6"
Security

Submission + - Secretly monopolizing the CPU without being root

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This year's Usenix security symposium includes a paper that implements a "cheat" utility, which allows any non-privileged user to run his/her program, e.g., like so

cheat 99% program

thereby insuring that the programs would get 99% of the CPU cycles, regardless of the presence of any other applications in the system, and in some cases (like Linux), in a way that keeps the program invisible from CPU monitoring tools (like 'top'). The utility exclusively uses standard interfaces and can be trivially implemented by any beginner non-privileged programmer. Recent efforts to improve the support for multimedia applications make systems more susceptible to the attack. All prevalent operating systems but Mac OS X are vulnerable, though by this kerneltrap story, it appears that the new CFS Linux scheduler attempts to address the problem that were raised by the paper.
Privacy

Submission + - Privacy and the "Nothing to Hide" Argument 1

Submitted by privacyprof
privacyprof writes: One of the most common responses of those unconcerned about government surveillance or privacy invasions is "I've got nothing to hide." According to the "nothing to hide" argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The "nothing to hide" argument is quite prevalent. Is there a way to respond to the "nothing to hide" argument that would really register with people in the general public? In a short essay, "I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, Professor Daniel Solove takes on the "nothing to hide" argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.
Debian

Submission + - Ubuntu Deveopers Ignoring Critical Flaw?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Seems there is a lot of buzz on the bug reporting forum about Ubuntu
Linux and it's problem supporting many USB devices, many USB scanners,
and even some USB Teletype devices for the hearing impaired. The
Ubuntu Manifesto clearly states that "every computer user should be
given every opportunity to use software, even if they work under a
disability." Various work-arounds have been offered, none of which
work well for everyone. One "work-around" suggested was to recompile
the kernel, disabling the "USB-SUSPEND" option (which is part of the
problem). While this no doubt would work, how many of the people who
switched to Ubuntu solely because it was supposed to be user friendly
and didn't require an IT degree to use would be able to do this? And
do they expect a blind person to be able to follow the directions on
the screens when selecting the recompiling options? What was meant by
"even if they work under a disability?"

Developers insist that the power-saving USB_SUSPEND function (it's
debatable among laptop users how well this works anyway) is more
important than supporting the USB devices that don't work with this
function enabled, and this function is enabled by default in the
kernel itself.

The problem is marked "low" in importance for fixing the kernel. A new
Linux kernel that fixes this problem is available to the developers
and could be incorporated into Ubuntu before the next release. From
developer's feedback, this doesn't look likely to happen, as it
doesn't seem to be important. We'll have to wait and see if the Ubuntu
Manifesto really means anything, or if it is just empty words. Many
are waiting to see if this issue is resolved in the next release
(Gutsy Gibbons) and will decide whether to switch to one of the other
distros available if it is not fixed by then. I must admit, for the
most part, reading the bug reporting forum, the Ubuntu community has
been very patient. Will their patience wear out before the problem is
fixed? We will have to wait and see.

The bug reporting forum can be read here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-bac kends/+bug/85488
Editorial

Submission + - EA Exec says games "boring and hard" (wsj.com)

Submitted by
GamerJar
GamerJar writes: "The WSJ Online reports:

In his first in-depth comments since taking the job in April, John Riccitiello says he worries that the Redwood City, Calif., company and others in the industry make too many games that lack innovation. He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court "casual" consumers and to experiment more with new sales approaches — outside the norm of selling $50 to $60 discs with 40-hour games that he says few players ever finish.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play," Mr. Riccitiello said in an interview.
"
Communications

Submission + - Sprint cancels PCS wireless of over 200 soldiers (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Newer Guy
Newer Guy writes: Sprint has cancelled the PCS service of over 200 military members for "excessive roaming". This is on the heels of last week's news about Sprint where they were cancelling PCS service for "excessive complaining" to Customer Service. Time to cancel my Sprint PCS I guess!
Software

Submission + - Attempts to Count Linux Users Remain Pointless (earthweb.com)

Submitted by anonymous reader
anonymous reader writes: A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma.
United States

Submission + - H1-B: Cut the Cap! (cio.com)

Submitted by
Chris Lindquist
Chris Lindquist writes: "The debate over keeping or raising the current cap on H1-B visas rages on. CIO magazine's publisher Gary Beach proposes another solution: Cut the cap by 50 percent next year, sunset it to oblivion by 2014, and replace guest worker programs with efforts to promote technical education for US students. His rallying cry? "Cut the Cap!""
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Xbox 360 repairs cost Microsoft $1.15 billion

Submitted by
UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: "Microsoft announced that repairs to it's Xbox360 console will cost the company $1.15 billion for the quarter ending on June 30. But in good news for customers, Microsoft also announced that they will extend the 1-year warranty to 3-year to cover issues like what some customers have called the "red ring of death". Due to the repairs, the Xbox division of Microsoft is still unprofitable and has been since 2001. Additionally Microsoft narrowly missed its goal of 12 million units selling 11.6 million. I don't own a 360 but are hardware problems that prevalent?"
Microsoft

Microsoft States GPL3 Doesn't Apply to Them 509

Posted by Zonk from the they-is-special-you-understand dept.
pilsner.urquell writes "Microsoft yesterday issued a statement proclaiming that it isn't bound by GPLv3. Groklaw has a very humorous rejoinder to the company's claim. From that article: 'They think they can so declare, like an emperor, and it becomes fiat. It's not so easy. I gather Microsoft's lawyers have begun to discern the GPL pickle they are in. In any case it won't be providing any support or updates or anything at all in connection with those toxic (to them) vouchers it distributed as part of the Novell deal ... These two -- I can't decide if it's an elaborate dance like a tango or more like those games where you place a cloth with numbers on the floor and you have to get into a pretzel with your hands and feet to touch all the right numbers. Whichever it is, Novell and Microsoft keep having to strike the oddest poses to try to get around the GPL. If they think this new announcement has succeeded, I believe they will find they are mistaken. In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, GPLv3 worked.'" EWeek has further analysis of this proclamation.

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