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Music

Submission + - UK copyright extension in exchange for censorship? (conservatives.com)

Awel writes: "The UK opposition leader, David Cameron, says in a speech to the British Phonographic Industry that his party would work to extend the copyright term to 70 years and crack down on piracy. But in return, labels would have to agree to bear more 'social responsibility', which appears to translate into avoiding lyrics that glorify 'an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny'. He doesn't spell out how this would be achieved in practice. This follows the publication in December of a UK government report recommending that the standard copyright term in Europe remain at 50 years (and not be raised to 70 or 95 years)."
Security

Submission + - Insecure Firefox Add-Ons Invite Browser Hijacking

An anonymous reader writes: Many makers of extensions or add-ons for Firefox are introducing ways for bad guys to hijack the Web browser, new research suggests. A great many add-ons are updated over insecure (non https:/// connections, providing an avenue for attackers to replace the extension with an evil update. From the story: "As a result, if an attacker were to hijack a public Wi-Fi hot spot at a coffeehouse or bookstore — a fairly trivial attack given the myriad free, point-and-click hacking tools available today — he could also intercept this update process and replace a Firefox add-on with a malicious one."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - 802.11n Draft 2.0 Finaly Approved by Working Group

[Geeks Are Sexy] writes: "Yes folks, the 802.11 Working Group has finally approved Draft 2.0 of the 802.11n spec, brigning us a step closer to its final form. From the article: "With the positive vote from the 802.11n Working Group, the Wi-Fi Alliance will now begin officially certifying equipment as being compliant with Draft 2.0. That's an important step, as official Draft 2.0-compliant gear is guaranteed to be fully compatible with the final 802.11n standard.""
Communications

Unlimited Wireless Plans Coming 206

An anonymous reader tells us about a BusinessWeek story claiming that in a few years most wireless plans will be unlimited. And pretty costly: unlimited cell calling, SMS, and data for on the order of $115 - $150 a month. Sprint is conducting a trial of such an offering in San Francisco, with the intent of rolling it out nationwide, and other carriers are said to be sure to follow suit. An interesting claim in the article is that in 5 years time, 40% of the US population will be untethered from landlines and using their cell numbers exclusively (vs. 15% now).
Sci-Fi

Scientifically Accurate Sci-Fi for High-Schoolers? 268

Raul654 asks: "A member of my immediate family is a biology teacher at an all-girls high school. For some years, she's been giving her students the option to earn extra credit by reading a science-related book. What scientifically accurate science fiction books would you recommend for high school readers?"
Windows

Submission + - Windows Vista worse for user efficiency than XP

erikvlie writes: "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse in those areas than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarised the most important findings."
Unix

Submission + - Getting out of tech support

An anonymous reader writes: For the last year or so I've been working in 1st line tech support at a small call centre that's part of a much larger outsourcing company and to be honest it's sucking the life out of me, I want change but I don't know what direction to take in order to get out and I really need some advice from others who have made the jump.

I'm in my mid-twenties and I've taken a number of college-level courses, a couple of those being computer engineering courses, some math and a few others that I found interesting, in the process I also managed to procure a fairly large amount of debt in the form of student loans, nothing I can't handle but I don't really want more debt although going back to get a degree is one possibility. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do except that I want to do something a bit more "real", to actually fix problems instead of just talking to customer after customer and then submitting tickets for someone else to fix the problem. From what I've understood from older acquaintances moving from tech support to other positions was actually a good way to go back when a lot of companies handled their own tech support, but for me there isn't much of a career path at this company as we only handle 1st line support, 2nd line and all above is done by the client companies themselves.

I'd really like to get more into sysadmin type work, or at least something where you spend more time solving problems and managing systems than you do arguing with irrate customers over how they have to call customer service for billing questions as technical support can't handle those problems. I suppose what I'd like to know is what kind of jobs one should be looking for coming from technical support with decent knowledge of UNIX, networking, scripting and "light coding". Is there any hope for me or will I have to go back to school in order to even have employers look at my resume?

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