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Comment Yes, demonstrators ARE loony. But so is BART. (Score 1) 196

Why are people presenting the false dilemma of having either no cellular service or station/service interruptions?

"Protesters" have zero right to vandalize websites or physical property, steal personally identifying information, or cause service disruptions. They should expect to be caught when CCTV and cell records are subpoenaed & should look forward to felony conspiracy charges.

These demonstrators were doubly stupid because they alienated people who agreed with them. The transit union and mayor came out against the cell shutdown, as did many riders. Why infuriate those who agree with you? But just because the messengers are in the wrong does not mean their message is.

BART is not a private company that can do whatever they please. The California Public Utilities Commission regulates BART, and BART is partially funded by taxes. The public (and the transit union) have been supportive of cell phone coverage due to the safety benefits they bring (this was particularly true after people learned of the cell use during 9/11). I'm unconvinced that cell shutdowns disrupt protesters so much that it is worth losing this piece of mind. Any communications disruption has real financial costs & nobody has shown the math that shows those costs were lower than alternative actions that could have been taken.

BART receives $6.7M a year in telecommunications revenue ($2M from cell service). You take that away because you cut service & you have to make it up some how. That'd be a 2% fare hike (not including FCC-imposed penalties or fees for breaching the telecom contracts).

Comment Zotero Donations (Score 3, Insightful) 60

Trevor's blog also had this post:
http://www.zotero.org/blog/help-zotero-by-donating-to-the-center-for-history-and-new-media/
which says that all tax-deductible donations made in June will be matched twice-over. This seems like a good opportunity to congratulate the team for making it through their legal hurdles & to support the development of great free/open source software.

Comment Sharing ENS Styles (Score 4, Insightful) 60

Now it seems they have corrected the license statement to allow such sharing.

Kind of. Their terms of use state:

EndNote includes customization options that licensed individual and institutional customers can use to create new and modify existing EndNote style (.ens), filter (.enf), and connection (.enz) files for their personal use and to share with other licensed EndNote users for use only in conjunction with EndNote.

(emphasis mine). In other words, they claim that you can't use the files that you create using their software in third-party software, such as Zotero. This would be like saying you can't open an MS Word Document in OpenOffice.org Writer.

Software

An Open Source Legal Breakthrough 292

jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens writes in Datamation about a major court victory for open source: 'An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux.' The case, Jacobsen v. Katzer, revolved around free software coded by Bob Jacobsen that Katzer used in a proprietary application and then patented. When Katzer started sending invoices to Jacobsen (for what was essentially Jacobsen's own work), Jacobsen took the case to court and scored a victory that — for the first time — lays down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. The case hasn't generated as many headlines as it should."
Software

Submission + - SPAM: Free software tools for archivists

Roland Piquepaille writes: "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) archivists have developed a free software kit named Archon to help other librarians to manage their collections. This software has been designed for archivists with limited access to technological resources. It's free and you can download it to manage your own music or book collection even if you're not a librarian. But all the materials in the collection need to be available with descriptions and tags. One interesting feature of the software is that it will build a searchable website for you. But read more for many additional details and references."
Software

Submission + - Orrin Hatch - Software copyright violater (fudreport.com) 2

fudreporter writes: "Wired.com has an article referring to comments Senator Orrin Hatch(R-Utah) made about downloading copyrighted material from the Internet... Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes. The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website. "It's an unlicensed copy," said Andy Woolley, who runs Milonic. "It's very unfortunate for him because of those comments he made.""
Operating Systems

Submission + - ReactOS - The Desktop Operating System Revolution (reactos.org) 1

frik85 writes: "With yesterdays release, ReactOS got nearly 100% binary and API compatible with Win2003 (NT 5.2). And they are aiming for full Vista (NT 6) compatibility.
The ReactOS Win32 subsystem is in the beginning of a total overhaul to make it completely compatible with NT5 and it has had a positive impact on stability and compatibility with Win32 applications. As a generic result of these internal changes, the system feels a lot more stable in comparison to previous releases. ReactOS ships with a bunch of open source default drivers for various hardware devices and of course support for third party NT 5 drivers.
A download utility (unofficially called "ReactOS Package Manager") now contains a set of applications (opensource and shareware apps) which you can install right away in ReactOS with one click of a mouse. And those apps will actually work!
Fresh ReactOS screenshots say more than written words!"

Software

Submission + - No gnu/linux love from ID software (beyond3d.com) 1

gnarlin writes: "According to golem.de's article (in German) ID software will no longer be porting their games to gnu/linux starting with the new Rage game being developed. Another article at beyond3d has the details in english. Is this due to lack of sales? This seems to be a major blow to gnu/linux gamers everywhere, especially when gnu/linux users are finally getting good Free software drivers for AMD's/ATI's graphic chips."
Data Storage

Submission + - Why are tape drives not scaling with hard disks? 4

An anonymous reader writes: Every 3-6 months, we see an announcement about something adding to hard disk storage. However, tape drives don't seem to be improving on anywhere near the scale of hard disks.

Why is this? Both are magnetic media, and with a tape drive, a manufacturer has far more space to put data on than the platters of a hard disk, and still leave plenty of space for error correction data. Tape drives also don't spin nearly as fast as hard disks, so tolerances involved can be less.
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Complaint Dismissed as "Boilerplate"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The decision many lawyers had been expecting — that the RIAA's "boilerplate" complaint fails to state a claim for relief under the Copyright Act — has indeed come down, but from an unlikely source. While the legal community has been looking towards a Manhattan case, Elektra v. Barker, for guidance, a case in which amicus briefs had been submitted by various industry groups and the US Department of Justice (see case file, and from Warner v. Cassin, a similar motion in the same Court's Westchester division, the decision instead came from Senior District Court Judge Rudi M. Brewster of the US District Court for the Southern District of California, in a decision denying a default judgment (i.e. the defendant had not even appeared in the action). Judge Brewster not only denied the default judgment motion but dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. Echoing the words of Judge Karas at the oral argument in Barker , Judge Brewster held (pdf) that "Plaintiff here must present at least some facts to show the plausibility of their allegations of copyright infringement against the Defendant. However, other than the bare conclusory statement that on "information and belief" Defendant has downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution to the public copyrighted works, Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation. The complaint is simply a boilerplate listing of the elements of copyright infringement without any facts pertaining specifically to the instant Defendant. The Court therefore finds that the complaint fails to sufficiently state a claim upon which relief can be granted and entry of default judgment is not warranted.""
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - You can not reverse-engineer our GPL-violations... 6

phorm writes: "If appears that Monsoon Technology, the makers of the Hava media-transmission systems, don't quite understand the GPL. As some users pointed out in their forums, their systems appear to be based on Linux and various GPL'ed software, with the output of "strings" and other tests showing signs of running busybox and others. A monsoon spokesperson on the forum has indicated that they are aware it uses GPL'ed software, and are "working" on making source available, but at the same time are dropping various threats against supposed reverse-engineering of the software by those that determined the GPL violations.

A few snippets from the Monsoon rep include: I have a little secret to let you in on — HAVA runs Linux! Yes, much of the source is GPL and we should publish those sections which we have modified per the terms of GPL. A project is underway to pull this together. A couple of observations — some of you appear to be violating the terms of the End User License Agreement

You recognize and agree that the HAVA Software including its structure, source code and the design and structure of modules or programs, constitute valuable trade secrets owned by Snappymultimedia or its licensors. You will not copy or use the HAVA Software except as expressly permitted by this EULA and, specifically, you will not ...

(b) yourself or through any third party modify, reverse engineer, disassemble or decompile the HAVA Software in whole or part, except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law, and then only after you have notified Snappymultimedia in writing of your intended activities; Seems to me that some of you have just come out blatantly admitting you are reverse engineering the firmware — or trying to. How should we handle this? As responses have indicated, the methods used to determine the violation do not seem to constitute reverse-engineering. Moreover, the initial friendliness of the rep is severely marred by the apparent hostility of the later message, as forum members have indicated. The overall message seems to be "we have not lived up to our obligations under the license of the software which we are using, but we'll get to it... sometime. Meanwhile, do not attempt to poke around our code yourself or things will get ugly."

The owners of BusyBox have been notified of this violation, however the response is still troubling. Is this the response we should come to expect as more and more commercial software uses and misuses GPL'ed components?"

The Internet

Submission + - Public rallies behind free wireless broadband

thefickler writes: A proposal to deliver free wireless broadband to 95% of the US population is finding public support, even as it looks like it will be rejected by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). According to the company behind the proposal, M2Z Networks, more than 1000 people from 49 states have written to the FCC in an attempt to reverse a draft order by FCC Chairman Martin that is believed to deny the application.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Doctor Who goes on hiatus for a year (bbc.co.uk)

BigBadBus writes: "Looks like Dr.Who fans will have to go without their hero in 2009 after the BBC revealed the Time Lord will take a gap year. Might be a good idea considering the unpopular choice of Catherine Tate as the new companion. However, to please die-hard Whovians, there will be three specials in 2009."

PC World Editor Resigns When Ordered Not to Criticize Advertisers 327

bricko noted a story of our modern journalism world gone so wrong it makes me sad. "Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken quit abruptly today because the company's new CEO, Colin Crawford, tried to kill a story about Apple and Steve Jobs." The link discusses that the CEO was the former head of MacWorld and would get calls from Jobs. Apparently he also told the staff that product reviews had to be nicer to vendors who advertise in the magazine. The sad thing is that given the economics of publishing in this day and age, I doubt anything even comes of this even tho it essentially confirms that PC World reviews should be thought of as no more than press releases. I know that's how I will consider links from them in the future. But congratulations to anyone willing to stick to their guns on such matters.

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