i_like_spam - Slashdot User

Submission + - eBay Auctions Canceled for Charging Too Little

Submitted by jcgam69 on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @04:24PM

jcgam69 writes: Although interference with eBay sales is nothing new, companies in two recently filed federal cases explicitly invoke Leegin as a justification for terminating the eBay auctions of competitors that charge lower prices online. These cases not only show Leegin's likely effect on Internet sales, but are also, unfortunately, fairly typical examples of the sort of anticompetitive actions companies take to fight lower-priced competition online.

Submission + - Say good bye to internet bargains on eBay (typepad.com)

Submitted by ScaredOfTheMan on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @03:23PM

ScaredOfTheMan writes: Companies are using the Supreme Court's decision in Leegin Creative Leater Products v. PSKS to force eBay to start pulling auctions because the prices are too low, or (You won't believe this) the auction itself is an infringement of their intellectual property rights.

The Consumer Law & Policy Blog has the story.

How do we get this silly law overturned (reverted really) & when will this craziness end?

Submission + - Gecko inspired adhesive tape produced

Submitted by unchiujar on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @02:39PM

unchiujar writes: The remarkable adhesive abilities of geckos and mussels have been combined to create a super-sticky material. Unlike other adhesives inspired by the nimble reptiles, "geckel" can attach to both wet and dry surfaces, the team that developed the material says.

Submission + - IRENE Makes Old Sound Recordings Audible Again

Submitted by

orgelspieler

on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @01:55PM

orgelspieler writes: "NPR is running a story on a safe way to reproduce sound from ancient phonographs that would otherwise be unplayable. The system, called IRENE, was installed in the Library of Congress last year. It can be used to replay records that are scratched, worn, broken, or just too fragile to play with a needle. It scans the groves optically and processes them into a sound file at speeds approaching real time. IRENE is great at removing pops and skips, but can add some hiss. Researchers are also working on a 3D model that is better at removing hiss."

Submission + - Mozilla Patches Firefox; Warns About Using IE (mozilla.org)

Submitted by Growmash on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @01:34PM

Growmash writes: Mozilla has rolled out Firefox 2.0.0.5 with patches for a total of 9 nine vulnerabilities, including cover for the controversial IE-to-Firefox code execution attack vector. Even after plugging the hole, Mozilla inserted a blunt message into its alert: "This patch does not fix the vulnerability in Internet Explorer." The open-source group is also urging Web surfers to use Firefox to browse the web "to prevent attackers from exploiting this problem in Internet Explorer."

Submission + - Magnetic avalanches cause hard drive failure

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @11:55AM

An anonymous reader writes: According to this report by IT PRO, scientists working at the University of California have discovered the main reason of hard drive failure. According to researchers, some materials used in hard drives are better at damping spin precession than others. Spin precession of magnetic material effects its neighbors' polarity and this can spread and cause sections of hard drives to spontaneously change polarity and lose data. This is known as a magnetic avalanche. So next time Windows fails to start, you'll know why!

Submission + - Fingerprints at School 2

Submitted by

Inda

on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @06:05AM

Inda writes: "My daughter, 7, is about to start at a new school that likes to think they excel in technology. They use an interesting system for checking out library books using a single thumb print. When I first heard this, alarm bells rang. The way I understand it, once a fingerprint is compromised, it is compromised forever.

I'm told the children enjoy using the fingerprint system and I would not want to single my daughter out as being different. The alternative to fingerprints are library cards, with barcodes, that are scanned manually.

I am not confident that the school's security is up to scratch. Their website is poorly written in FrontPage by the headmaster, all the staff use the Comic Sans MS font; I'm sure you get the picture. At the end of the day, they're teachers, not security experts. Security is not my field of expertise either.

Should I be concerned? Have I been reading Slashdot too long? Should I put the tinfoil hat down?"

Submission + - Italy forbids RIAA scare tactics (www.ansa.it)

Submitted by eiapoce on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @05:08AM

eiapoce writes: In Italy it is forbidden for anybody to monitor internet trafic. This is stated in a recent article by the national press agency ANSA that I gladly translate for the slashdot readers:

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/internet/n ews/2007-07-18_11897954.html

ROMA, 18 LUG — An italian court "ruled illegal for anyone to monitor network trafic". This is as declared by the innovation responsible of the green party, Mr. Cortiana. As announced by the green leader the Giudges approved the points forwarded from the Privacy Authority in the case of Peppermint against Telecom. This is a important ruling, sais Cortiana, because it sets a important principle: On the internet it is a (exclusive) duty of law forces and judges to investigate and enforce the law.

— - —

The case Peppermin Jam Records VS Telecom originated when the Swiss firm Peppermint used scare tactics like those employed by the RIAA sending 3636 notification letters to Italian Users sharing licensed music on P2P network. Those letters were containing a invitation to deposit a sum of money or face a trial. Telecom initially opposed but was forced to deliver the names on spite of a european directive. Now the Giudges overturned this previous ruling.

On this page http://www.hardwaremax.it/20070718767/network/caso -peppermint-vietati-i-monitoraggi-in-rete.html

Cortiana also criticises the private firm: "Internet is not a 'nobody's land' where there are no rules and you can apply do-it-yourself laws, also on the internet real world citizenship rights apply" and continues as "business models should adapt and cosider that network sharing is a collective cognitive process"

Submission + - Linus: "I've never used Debian" (oneopensource.it) 1

Submitted by

javipas

on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @04:37AM

javipas writes: "On a recent interview, Linus has confessed a surprising fact: "the only major distribution I've never used has actually been Debian, exactly because that has traditionally been harder to install". Torvalds seems to be running Fedora 7 on most of his systems, though he has used a bunch of other well known distros. He also has comments on GPLv3, patent violation and the future of Linux on the desktop. "I think it just needs more time. We basically have all the pieces, but we can improve on them"."

Submission + - Seeing Yellow: fighting printer tracking dots (miscmeta.com)

Submitted by

jkrobin

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @04:21PM

jkrobin writes: "MIT's Computing Culture research group has established the 'Seeing Yellow' project, which wants to preserve the right to anonymous communication by fighting both printer tracking dots and the government bullying used to sustain them.

We've known for years that color laser printers can embed a series of tiny yellow dots on pages they print. The dots — almost invisible under normal circumstances — can be used to determine which particular printer produced the image. Essentially, each printer outputs its own serial number. This is great for busting counterfeiters but raises all sorts of privacy concerns. Now, MIT students are getting involved in the campaign against the dots with the new Seeing Yellow project.

Imagine that every time you printed a document, it automatically included a secret code that could be used to identify the printer — and potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from an episode of "Alias," right?

Unfortunately, the scenario isn't fictional. In a purported effort to identify counterfeiters, the US government has succeeded in persuading some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. That means that without your knowledge or consent, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you're using in everyday life could become a tool for government surveillance. And what's worse, there are no laws to prevent abuse.

More at: http://www.shadowmonkey.net/articles/privacy/seein g-yellow.html"

Submission + - openMosix - Condition Terminal

Submitted by

jd

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @03:29PM

jd writes: "Despite having one of the largest userbases of any clustering system for Linux, openMosix is to be shut down. Top developers have left and they lack the means or motivation to continue. Their official claim of multicore CPUs making clustering redundant is somewhere between highly improbable and totally absurd, as has been pointed out elsewhere.

Why is this shutdown so important? Well, from a technical standpoint, the open-source bproc (the Beowulf process migration module) is ancient, MOSIX is very hard to obtain unless you're a student and kerrighd is (as yet) immature. From a user standpoint, openMosix is the mainstay of the Open Source clustering world and has by far the best management tools of any. The ability of this project to continue will likely have a major impact on the future of Open Source in the high-end markets — if the best of the best couldn't survive, people will be more careful about anything less."

Submission + - A new Worm for Your Apple (Rape.osx) (beskerming.com)

Submitted by

SkiifGeek

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @01:03PM

SkiifGeek writes: "Controversy is slowly building over the development of a new worm that targets OS X systems, dubbed 'Rape.osx'. Using a currently undisclosed vulnerability in mDNSResponder, the worm gives access to root as it spreads across the local network. As with a number of recent Apple-related security discoveries, the author, InfoSec Sellout, is delaying reporting of the vulnerability to Apple until after completing full testing of the worm.

While the worm has yet to leave a testing environment (with 1,500 OS X systems), it is bound to join the likes of Inqtana and Leap as known OS X malware."

Submission + - Why Upright Walking Evolved (msn.com)

Submitted by

InvisblePinkUnicorn

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @10:07AM

InvisblePinkUnicorn writes: "There have been various explanations for the evolution of upright walking, such as the need to get above tall grass and look across longer distances. Now a study published in the PNAS points to a simpler explanation — efficiency. According to the study, humans walking on two legs consume only a quarter of the energy that chimpanzees use while 'knuckle-walking' on all fours. The energy saved by walking upright gave our ancient ancestors an evolutionary advantage over other apes by reducing the costs of foraging for food. The abstract is available from PNAS."

Submission + - Australian Man uses APC to destroy Cell Towers (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

Teslacuted

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @08:11AM

Teslacuted writes: "A 45 year old Australian has used an APC to mow down six cell towers after an undisclosed dispute with his carrier. Sydney police arrested the man while he was on his way to his seventh."

Submission + - Six-Stroke Gasoline/Steam Hybrid Engine (autoweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @04:15AM

An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Crower has made a fascinating modification to traditional internal combustion engines: a fifth and sixth stroke. His six-stroke engine injects water into the hot cylinder to achieve a second power stroke with the expanding steam. The engine "burns" equal amounts of gasoline and water, thereby reducing fuel consumption by a whopping 40%. Could this technology the future of petroleum powered vehicles? More information is available on Wikipedia.

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