Comment In some countries download caps are the norm (Score 1) 259
Download caps are the norm for many ISPs in Australia.
Comment Just move to Australia (Score 1) 678
Just move to Australia and let Senator Conroy do it for you as he tries to go one better than the Great Internet Wall of China!
Comment Harmonisation (Score 1) 122
Just wait - the other states and the Feds will all move to harmonise their laws with NSW.
Comment statute of limitations (Score 5, Interesting) 299
They should provide access as long as one might reasonably need it which is at least as long as the statute of limitations give one to take legal action.
Comment It is very similar to closed source development (Score 1) 285
1. Get formal approval for the project, stating which license(s) will be used for the code, libraries and documentation.
2. Establish your governance including project management framework etc (same as closed source, except all tools will need to be accessible to anyone involved in the project). Find a lawyer who understand FOSS licensing and ensure he/she reviews the contracts you will be using.
3. Define your requirements. Make the high level design as modular as possible. Decide on the development environment.
4. Search for similar projects to see if you can leverage them or entice the developers to work on your project.
5. Setup a project environment - either on your infrastructure or somewhere like sourceforge. As a minimum this needs a code repository, wiki for documentation, mailing lists and a bug/ feature request tracking application.
6. Ensure that you know who wrote every line of code and that you have the right to include it in your application. Where code is reused you need to ensure that the license is compatible and appropriate attribution is retained. (You do this with closed source applications anyway, don't you!).
There are two models for paying the programmers - by the hour (which means you may want them working in your office at least part of the time) and by delivery of an agreed output with suitable quality. For the former, simply follow your normal recruitment practices for a contractor but advertise through your local Linux or other FOSS groups as well as the normal channels. If you are paying by the completed module you can either follow the normal quotation process or simply offer bounties of a set amount for a module. Bounties are likely to appeal to a different group of programmers including folk in developing countries and are a low risk way of tapping this resource.
You will also need to decide whether to run the entire project openly or just open source it when you release version 1.0 - I recommend you start publishing code as soon as you can since that will maximise the benefits of open source flowing to your project.
Good luck.
TurboLinux to Sell Wizpy Media Player Worldwide 158
MsManhattan writes "TurboLinux will attempt to lure Windows users over to the Linux operating system in baby steps this June when it starts selling its Wizpy media player worldwide. The pocket-sized device, which plays audio and video files, is really a Linux carrot of sorts, in that it also allows users to store a complete Linux desktop in its memory. You can plug the Wizpy into a PC's USB port and boot up the Linux system with all its user settings, passwords, bookmarks, etc. It originally launched in Japan, where TurboLinux marketed it to 'early adopters who are curious about using Linux but either don't want to or can't install the operating system.' The company will now target the same crowd around the globe, starting in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, India and Singapore."
Journal Journal: Pull or Push from 1000 devices in the network
"I'm designing a system where 1000 devices have to interact with my server periodically and on demand. A requirement is that devices are spread geographically. My manager would like to push data from devices to server. But a lot of them are behind firewalls, so a socket-based solution won't always work. I personally feel that if server polls the devices every 2 mins (a req) using HTTP, that's 1000 requests spread over 2 mins. Does anyone know a which way is a better choice? Then there is an issu
Submission + - New AACS "fix" hacked in a day
VincenzoRomano writes: "ArsTechnica has just published an update to the neverending story about copy protection used in HD DVD and Blu-ray discs and hacker hefforts against it. Quoting the original article:
It seems it'll be a long way to an effective solution ... if any.
One could also argue whether all those money spent by the industry in this reace will be worth the results and how long it would take for a return on investment."
The article proposes a simple description of the protection schema and a brief look back at how the cracks have slowly chipped away at its effectiveness.The ongoing war between content producers and hackers over the AACS copy protection used in HD DVD and Blu-ray discs produced yet another skirmish last week, and as has been the case as of late, the hackers came out on top.
The hacker "BtCB" posted the new decryption key for AACS on the Freedom to Tinker web site, just one day after the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA) issued the key.
It seems it'll be a long way to an effective solution
One could also argue whether all those money spent by the industry in this reace will be worth the results and how long it would take for a return on investment."
Feed Forensics Losing Relevance? New Tools Let Even Hobbyists Thwart Experts (techdirt.com)
Chris Lindquist writes "Scott Berinato has written an article about how the declining complexity and increased effectiveness of antiforensic tools is making life difficult for data experts looking to snag the bad guys. "Five years ago, you could count on one hand the number of people who could do a lot of these things," says one investigator. "Now it's hobby level." The result of all this antiforensic activity, Berinato concludes, is that someday soon the TJX case could be considered ordinary, a quaint precursor to an age of rampant electronic crime, run by well-organized syndicates and driven by easy-to-use, widely available antiforensic tools." It's an interesting article, but it seems to overplay the woe-is-me factor for investigators. This is always a back and forth game, where the tools used by scammers and criminals gets more advanced -- but so should the tools and tricks (note that it need not all be technology) used by those charged with tracking down the criminals.
Microsoft Softens Up On Competition 150
shaneFalco writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft, prompted in part by their recently legal woes in the European Union will allow vendors to set non-Microsoft applications as the default on Windows computers. This initiative is part of a dozen 'tenets to promote competition' that the company is adopting in the face of stiff criticism of business tactics in Europe. Other tents include not retaliating against businesses that promote non-MS software, and a relaxing of restrictions on licensing Windows-related patents." From the article: "The principles might mean that some manufacturers will promote search engines other than Microsoft's own, Mr Smith said - an apparent reference to Google, which has looked to be on a collision course with Microsoft over search engines. 'There are certain steps we can't take that would have been permitted a decade ago,' the executive added." We touched on this announcement yesterday, but details on the '12 tenets' were less clear at that point.
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