CaseyG - Slashdot User

Submission + - AT&T/Cingular Blocking legitimate phone number

Submitted by

kickassweb

on Friday March 16, 2007 @03:05PM

kickassweb writes: "PennPIRG is reporting that AT&T/Cingular is blocking calls to the popular, and competing, service, FreeConferenceCall.com, as well as other similar services.

PennPIRG has learned that AT&T/Cingular recently began blocking phone numbers on its wireless service used by consumers to access free conference call services, such as those provided by Free Conference Call.com. The telephone giant has argued that calls to free conference call services are resulting in millions of dollars in losses to the company due to re-routing and termination fees, and has sued free conference call services and local phone companies in Iowa over the fees.

The article goes on to state that the free conference call service being blocked competes directly with Cingular's conference call service, and that this is the type of anti-consumer action we can expect on the internet if Net Neutrality is not mandated."

Comment Re:please... (Score 4, Insightful) 322

by CaseyG on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @03:37PM (#18170622) Attached to: Vanishing Honeybees Will Affect Future Crops

I hope you have learned from this that there can be no sarcasm so obvious that it will not be taken seriously.

-c.

Submission + - MySpace Not Responsible for Sexual Assault

Submitted by

Common Sense

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:51PM

Common Sense writes: "Those looking to cash in after meeting sexual predators on websites like MySpace have been dealt a serious legal setback. The US District Court in Austin, Texas ruled in favor of MySpace in the $30 million lawsuit questioning whether it was responsible for allowing a 13 year old girl to lie about her age and meet a man who turned out to be a sexual predator. Judge Sparks wrote in his ruling that, "if anyone had a duty to protect [the victim], it was her parents, not MySpace." Score one for common sense."

Submission + - Possible 25 million year old frog found

Submitted by dispatch on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:47PM

dispatch writes: A frog was found that researchers in Mexico City are saying could be 25 million years old! According to the article, "The chunk of amber containing the 0.4-inch frog was uncovered by a miner in southern Chiapas states in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the scientists will be allowed to drill into the rock at the owner's request which means we're going to have to wait a while longer before we can make Jurassic Park a reality...

Submission + - Bulletproof USB flash drive not so bulletproof

Submitted by emakinen on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:41PM

emakinen writes: Pretec is marketing it's USB flash drive as bulletproof. Well, it seems that it does withstand shot from .357 Magnum, but .44 Magnum is too much. There's a video of the test made by a finnish IT-magazine Tietokone.

Submission + - Convert Trash Into Energy With No Pollution

Submitted by happylucky on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:41PM

happylucky writes: Remember when Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) dumped some garbage into his engine for fuel in Back to the Future II? Startech Environmental Corporation has come up with a similar process that can take both hazardous and non-hazardous waste and convert it into energy, glass and hydrogen.

They use a plasma process that doesnt burn the garbage but breaks the molecules down into their individual elements (atoms). It is a safe process that involves a closed-loop system so no pollutants are released into the environment. All of it is converted into a safe material.

The company says that it will convert all hazardous waste, except nuclear waste, into an obsidian-like glass and hydrogen. The technology could potentially solve two problems at one time. It could help us solve our energy problem and our landfill problem.

Submission + - Congress wants to monitor emails, IMs, etc.

Submitted by

Josh Nelson

on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:07PM

Josh Nelson writes: "A bill introduced last week by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is beginning to raise eyebrows.

[It] would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely. The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term of one year on ISPs which failed to keep full records. (emphasis mine)
This is a terrifying development and it must be stopped before it gains any significant momentum. Background, Action items and contact information at this link."

Submission + - Blu-ray Secretly Courting Porn Studios

Submitted by

ahoehn

on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:01PM

ahoehn writes: "In contrast to previous coverage on Slashdot, the LA Times is reporting that both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have been actively courting the adult video industry. Even though Sony is still publicly refusing to manufacture adult Blu-ray discs, the article states that, "Last summer, a group pitching Blu-ray visited the Canoga Park offices of Wicked Pictures, whose films include 'As Sleazy as 1-2-3' and 'Womb Raiders.' Wicked executive Jackie Ramos said the Blu-ray proponents spent hours explaining how the movie studio could benefit from releasing Blu-ray DVDs, which deliver dramatically higher picture quality than conventional discs. But what amused Ramos was the warning that came after the presentation — 'They said, 'We can help you, but remember: We were never here.''"

The article implies, but doesn't implicitly state that the representatives came directly from Sony."

Submission + - New Hiking Maps of Mars

Submitted by

sighted

on Monday February 12, 2007 @03:38PM

sighted writes: "The European Space Agency has released new topographic 'hiking maps' of Martian canyons. The maps provide detailed height contours and names of complex geological features in the Iani Chaos region, which in the past was the site of ice melted by volcanic heat. These days, if you want to hike the labyrinth of canyons and cliffs in Iani, you'll have to bring your own water."

Submission + - Students suspended for remarks on Prinicpal

Submitted by Uthic on Monday February 12, 2007 @03:36PM

Uthic writes: The Toronto Star reports that 11 students at Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School were suspended for up to eight days for remarks they made about their principal, Edward McMahon, on a Facebook group. The remarks were apparently derogatory and insulting due to the students' discontent with their principal and fell under the category of cyber-bullying. Additional information can be found on The Caledon Enterprise Website. Bruce Campbell, spokesman for the local school board, added that it's one thing to complain about your teacher or principal, but "you're taking it to a whole new level when you're putting it out there on the Internet." The group appears to have disappeared from Facebook, but there are other groups up that have some discussion about it, so one can't really verify what was said.

Submission + - Is Wikipedia Becoming a Totalitarian State?

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday February 08, 2007 @03:19PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The Wikipedia admins are deleting Esperanza. Esperanza is a massive Wikipedia subculture that invested years promoting quality, community and mentorship on Wikipedia. Powers that be at Wikipedia have decided Esperanza is non-Encyclopedic. Now disenfranchised Wikipedians are leaving Wikipedia in frustration. What is going on?"

Submission + - New universes will be born from ours

Submitted by

David Shiga

on Thursday February 08, 2007 @02:59PM

David Shiga writes: "What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now, physicists have combined these two ideas to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces, with each shard growing into a whole new universe. The model could solve the mystery of why our early universe was surprisingly well ordered."

Submission + - Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia

Submitted by

Unpaid Schill

on Monday January 22, 2007 @04:27PM

Unpaid Schill writes: "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article the article (and I am not making this up), it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not "enable death squads with their UUIDs" and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization. In an unrelated note, does anyone happen to know what the going rates are? I think I'm being underpaid."

Submission + - Big Business Wants Bush to Go Green

Submitted by Nitack on Monday January 22, 2007 @04:03PM

Nitack writes: CEOs of ten major industrial corporations call for Bush to address global warming in the State of the Union. Climate change is finally an issue that has galvanized those would be opponents such as BP, DuPont, and others. Even utility giant PG&E is on board.

Submission + - Caught in the Web: Top 10 Internet Scandals of All

Submitted by

Tiny Tuba

on Monday January 22, 2007 @03:52PM

Tiny Tuba writes: "The Web is a great way to deliver information, but it is also a great way to expose, spread, or jump-start a scandal. In this article, Dan Tynan looks back at some infamous scandals many of us have probably forgotten. It includes greats like how The Drudge Report surfaced the Monica Lewinksy scandal, and how AOL out-ed Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128554/article.h tml"

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