Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Music

Submission + - Slashdot Reverses Facts about Radiohead 1

Submitted by Apro+im
Apro+im writes: The popular news aggregation website, Slashdot today reported that the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows was pirated more than it was procured via legitimate means, setting off a flurry of speculation on their online discussion board as to the implications of this "fact". Strangely overlooked in much of the discussion, however, was the fact that the article they linked contained the exact opposite information, stating:

"The file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day — adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads. That's less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com"
Questions about what this implies about Slashdot's editorial practices and readership remain unanswered.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Tax is 1/3 Price of French Laptop (heise.de) 1

Submitted by kripkenstein
kripkenstein writes: According to a recent court case in France, almost one third of the cost of a particular Acer laptop goes to Microsoft, while another portion goes to other software vendors:

The total of 311.85 euros of the overall purchase price of the notebook of 599 euros [...] was made up of 135.20 euros for Windows XP Home, 60 euros for Microsoft Works, 40.99 euros for PowerDVD, 38.66 euros for Norton Antivirus and 37 euros for NTI CD Maker.
In the ruling, Acer was forced to refund the cost of the software, which the purchaser returned and did not want. If this price ratio is representative of other computers, is the 'Windows Tax' even worse than previously speculated, especially with more expensive Microsoft OSes such as XP Professional or Vista Home Premium and above?
Privacy

Submission + - Designing software with Privacy in mind 6

Submitted by dalektcalum
dalektcalum writes: Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Canada's Information and Privacy Commissioner, recently gave a talk entitled Privacy by Design. The talk starts of by covering the basics of privacy, and privacy law, and then moves onto the important component, how to design software that properly protects users privacy. The majourity of the time is spent on design principles, but also examines specific technologies (such as Elliptical Curve Cryptography).
The Military

Submission + - Inside France's secret war (independent.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
MT
MT writes: "For 40 years, the French government has been fighting a secret war in Africa, hidden not only from its people, but from the world. It has led the French to slaughter democrats, install dictator after dictator — and to fund and fuel the most vicious genocide since the Nazis. Today, this war is so violent that thousands are fleeing across the border from the Central African Republic into Darfur — seeking sanctuary in the world's most notorious killing fields."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Japanese Wikipedia 'editors' rapped by employer (scotsman.com) 1

Submitted by
sufijazz
sufijazz writes: "JAPAN'S agriculture ministry has reprimanded six bureaucrats for shirking their duties after an internal inquiry found that they had spent many work hours contributing to the Wiki-pedia website — including 260 entries about cartoon robots.
The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry."
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Seeks Patent for Spam-Fighting Lion

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Remember how the press gushed over Bill Gates' plans for a spam-less future? Well, some of the spam-fighting techniques are detailed in Microsoft's just-published patent application for Order-Based Human Interactive Proofs (HIPS), annoying little puzzles that are the CAPTCHAs of the future. As an example, Microsoft provides an exemplary maze through which a user must maneuver an object while avoiding things that human knowledge would indicate are dangerous, such as a canon and a lion. Choose path D-A-F-O-B-H-K to prove you're a Human and you get access to e-mail!"
Censorship

Submission + - China blocking RSS feeds (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Phurge
Phurge writes: Savvy Internet fans in the people's republic have known for a long time, however, that there have been simple ways to get forbidden information. One of those ways was the magical gift of Real Simple Syndication, or RSS. The Great Firewall can block specific web sites all it wants, but as long as there's an RSS feed, many Chinese surfers can use feeds to access otherwise forbidden information. Unfortunately, China appears to have finally gotten wise to RSS as of late — reports have been popping up from our readers and around the web of not being able to access FeedBurner RSS feeds as early as August of this year. More recent reports tell us that the PSB appears to have extended this block to all incoming URLs that begin with "feeds," "rss," and "blog," thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites — including ones that aren't blocked in China, such as Ars Technica — useless.
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Two iPhone Class-Action Cases Emerge

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two new class-action cases against Apple are taking shape. The first involve the widely reported suit by Queens, NY woman Dongmei Li over the $200 iPhone price cut. Li's lawyer Jean Wang tells InfoWeek she's seeking to broaden the case. "I'm looking for a class action," Wang said. "Right now, I'm seeking as plaintiffs people just like Li, who feel their property was devalued. We're suing them not for lowering their prices, but for the various anti-trust violations that have resulted from them lowering their prices." The second case comes from California lawyer Damian Fernandez, who's looking for plaintiffs to join an iPhone warranty suit over iPhones that were "disabled, malfunctioned, or you had third-party applications erased after you downloaded iPhone update 1.1.1"
Security

Submission + - Sony developing gigapixel imaging

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Sony and the University of Alabama are working on a gigapixel resolution camera for improved satellite surveillance. It can see 10-km-square from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. As well as removing annoying artefacts created by tiling images in Google Earth and similar, it should allow CCTV surveillance of entire cities with one camera. It does it with an array of chips that record small parts of the image and place them at the focal plane of a large multiple-lens system.
Media

Submission + - MediaDefender Leaks Saga : unexpected outcomes (p2pnet.net) 4

Submitted by ShakaZ
ShakaZ writes: Following the leaks of all the internal emails and later the source code of all the anti-p2p software of MediaDefender, the boss and an employee of the company have been arrested by the LA police. They are charged for illegal uploading with intent to deceive, bandwidth theft, and grievous misrepresentation.
More handcuffs there : http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13397

Due to the released emails, ThePirateBay have proof of infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, for which they filed a complaint to the Swedish police. 10 companies of the music, movie and gaming industries are listed in the complaint.
More pirates here : http://thepiratebay.org/blog
Enlightenment

Submission + - You are not Free

Submitted by
JAB Creations
JAB Creations writes: "There is no law that requires you to pay income tax. The Supreme court ruled taxes as only profits and only corporates make profits yet citizens paid nearly one trillion in taxes compared to corporate American's quarter of a trillion dollars in taxes at the value of four cents to the dollar. This is not about tax evasion but about your rights to life, liberty, and freedom. In 2008 you will not be able to buy food, clothing, or obtain shelter without having your every move and financial transaction monitored and that includes the not for long anonymity of cash. The government that should be answering to the people is answering only to the private institution of the Federal Reserve (private bank) under which who's ownership is unknown. Sound crazy? Once you watch the video, do some research, and connect the dots then you'll understand why people who live in the woods have lots of guns."
Announcements

Submission + - Australia Outlaws Incandescent Lightbulb

Submitted by
passthecrackpipe
passthecrackpipe writes: "The Australian Government is planning on making the incandescent ligtbulb a thing of the past. In three years time, standard lightbulbs will no longer be available for sale in the shops in Australia (expect a roaring grey market) and everybody will be forced to switch to more energy efficient Fluorescent bulbs. In this move to try and curb emissions, the incandescent bulb — which converts the majority of used energy to heat rather then light — will be phased out. Environmental groups have given this plan a lukewarm reception. They feel Australia should sign on to the Kyoto protocol first. (Article in Dutch). A similar plan was created together with Phillips, one of the worlds largest lighting manufacturers. What do other slashdotters think? Is this a move in the right direction? Will this boost the development of better fluorescent bulbs? Improve the design and lower the costs of LED lightbulbs? Will this plan make a big difference to the environment at all?"

Slashdot Top Deals

HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

Close