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Comment Re:EULAs seem at odds with... (Score 1) 785

by Purple Screws (#25004085) Attached to: Mozilla Demanding Firefox Display EULA In Ubuntu

Wrong. USC title 17, section 117(a):

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.--Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

In other words, regardless of what commercial software companies might like you to believe, using a program does not require a copyright license.
Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail 264

Posted by samzenpus from the keep-your-cool dept.
In this week's Disagree Mail, I try to show the range of messages I get. It's not all angry or insane, sometimes it's sent to us for no apparent reason. We start off a little mad, slip into a whole bunch of crazy and finish with someone who has a complaint about racism at his favorite restaurant. Read below to get started.
The Courts

RIAA Gets Nervous, Brings In Big Gun 423

Posted by Soulskill from the headlines-that-would-be-better-if-they-were-literal dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I guess the RIAA is getting nervous about the ability of its 'national law firm' (in charge of bringing 'ex parte' motions, securing default judgments, and beating up grandmothers and children) to handle the oral argument scheduled to be heard on Monday, August 4th in Duluth, in Capitol v. Thomas. So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C., a lawyer who argues United States Supreme Court cases like MGM v. Grokster to handle the argument. This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs, but the judge ultimately realized that he had been misled by the RIAA in issuing his jury instructions, and indicated he's probably going to order a new trial. But, not to worry. A group of 10 copyright law professors from 10 different law schools and several other amici curiae (friends of the court) have filed briefs now, so it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday."
The Military

New Rifle Tech Offers Variable Muzzle Speed 443

Posted by kdawson from the set-phasers-to-stun dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "A gun that fires variable-speed bullets that can be set to kill, wound, or just inflict a bruise is being built by a Lund and Company Invention, a toy design studio that makes toy rockets powered by burning hydrogen obtained by electrolyzing water. The company is being funded by the US Army to adapt the technology to fire bullets instead. The new weapon, called the Variable Velocity Weapon System or VWS, lets the soldier use the same rifle for crowd control and combat, by altering the muzzle velocity. It could be loaded with 'rubber bullets' designed only to deliver blunt impacts on a person, full-speed lethal rounds, or projectiles somewhere between the two. Bruce Lund, the company's CEO, says the gun works by mixing a liquid or gaseous fuel with air in a combustion chamber behind the bullet. This determines the explosive capability of the propellant and consequently the velocity of the bullet. 'Projectile velocity varies from non-lethal at 10 meters, to lethal at 100 meters or more, as desired,' says Lund. The existing VWS design is a .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifle weapon, but Lund says the technology can be scaled to any size, 'handgun to Howitzer.'"
Programming

Best and Worst Coding Standards? 956

Posted by Soulskill from the buffer-overrun dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you've been hired by a serious software development house, chances are one of your early familiarization tasks was to read company guidelines on coding standards and practices. You've probably been given some basic guidelines, such as gotos being off limits except in specific circumstances, or that code should be indented with tabs rather than spaces, or vice versa. Perhaps you've had some more exotic or less intuitive practices as well; maybe continue or multiple return statements were off-limits. What standards have you found worked well in practice, increasing code readability and maintainability? Which only looked good on paper?"
The Courts

Hans Reiser Leads Police To Nina's Body 1523

Posted by kdawson from the removing-all-doubt dept.
jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has led police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.
Government

UK Can Now Hold People Without Charge For 42 Days 650

Posted by samzenpus from the the-terrorists-have-won dept.
the_leander writes "Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days. There is talk of compensation packages available for the falsely accused. The chances of you getting that money however are slim to none, lets not forget, this is the same country that charges prisoners who have been falsely accused for bed and boarding costs."
Power

Focused Microwaves Could Enable Wireless Power Transfer 180

Posted by Soulskill from the pushing-pinpoint-power-production dept.
esocid alerts us to news out of the University of Michigan, where physics researchers have found a way to focus microwaves to a point 20 times smaller than their wavelength using a new 'superlens'. Such resolution was thought to be impossible until recent years, and it could bring about the capability to transfer power wirelessly. "No matter how powerful a conventional lens, it cannot focus light down to more than about half its wavelength, the 'diffraction limit'. This limits the amount of data that can be stored on a CD, and the size of features on computer chips. The new lens is a 127-micrometer-thick plate of teflon and ceramic with a copper topping. 'The beauty of these is that they're planar,' Grbic says, 'they're easy to fabricate.' The lenses can be made through a single step of photolithography, the process used to etch computer chips."
Linux

Hardy Heron Making Linux Ready for the Masses? 1100

Posted by Zonk from the it-is-a-very-robust-bird dept.
desmondhaynes writes "Is Linux ready for the masses? Is Linux really being targeted towards the 'casual computer user'? Computerworld thinks we're getting there, talking of Linux 'going mainstream 'with Ubuntu. 'If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it's that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can't ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue. Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days, but Ubuntu, the user-friendly distribution sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth's Canonical Ltd., has made a mission out of dispelling such complaints entirely.'"
Google

Google Crawls The Deep Web 197

Posted by Zonk from the delved-too-deeply dept.
mikkl666 writes "In their official blog, Google announces that they are experimenting with technologies to index the Deep Web, i.e. the sites hidden behind forms, in order to be 'the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines'. For that purpose, the engine tries to automatically get past the forms: 'For text boxes, our computers automatically choose words from the site that has the form; for select menus, check boxes, and radio buttons on the form, we choose from among the values of the HTML'. Nevertheless, directions like 'nofollow' and 'noindex' are still respected, so sites can still be excluded from this type of search.'"
Software

Folding@home GPU2 Beta Released, Examined 149

Posted by Zonk from the nice-to-give-my-console-a-hobby dept.
ThinSkin writes "Stanford has recently released an update to their Folding@home GPU-accelerated client, which includes notable upgrades such as support for more current Radeon graphics cards and even a visualizer to see what's going on. ExtremeTech takes a good look at the new Folding@home GPU2 client and interviews Director Dr. Vijay Pande about the project. To the uninitiated, Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which hundreds of thousands of PCs and PS3s devote a portion of their computing power to crunch chunks of biological data. The goal is 'to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.'"
Businesses

Consumer Groups Advocate for 'Do Not Track' Registry 146

Posted by Zonk from the it's-nice-to-dream dept.
eldavojohn writes "Consumer groups are asking for a 'do not track' registry to be implemented, similar to the successful and popular 'do not call' registry. Tracking companies are asking for examples where tracking has caused harm, and would rather the industry stay self-regulated. 'In December, the FTC approved Google's purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick over the objections of some privacy groups. At the same time, the agency urged advertisers to let computer users bar advertisers from collecting information on them, to provide "reasonable security" for any data and to collect data on health conditions or other sensitive issues only with the consumer's express consent.'"
Google

How Social Networks May Kill Search as We Know It 209

Posted by Zonk from the we're-here-not-to-mourn-search-but-to-honor-him dept.
mattnyc99 writes "Recently we discussed a startup that's blending social networking with traditional Web search. But now high geek Glenn Derene takes it one step further, pronouncing that our increasingly traceable online footprints will transform Google's dominant algorithm and open up the world of Web search for the 21st century. Speaking to a tuned-in VC guy and scoring a rare interview with Google's VP of search, Derene may have some meat behind his newly-coined term: 'faceboogle.' From the article: 'As we each carve out our individual niche on the Web, the logic of search may well flip inside out. Since we are essentially meta-tagging ourselves through our social networking memberships, shopping habits and surfing addictions, it's conceivable that the information could attempt to find us — the old concept of push media, but in a far more refined way.'"
Space

Schoolboy Corrects NASA's Math On Killer Asteroid 637

Posted by kdawson from the little-child-shall-lead-them dept.
spiracle writes "A German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has revised NASA's figures for the chances that the Apophis asteroid will hit earth. Apparently if the asteroid hits a satellite in 2029, its path could be diverted enough to cause it to collide with Earth on the next orbit, in 2036. NASA had calculated the chances as 1 in 45,000 but the 13-year-old, in his science project, made it 1 in 450. NASA agreed." Update: 04/16 16:47 GMT by Z : This is not entirely accurate, it turns out — more details.
The Internet

Comcast Makes Nice with BitTorrent 161

Posted by Zonk from the friendly-dogs-and-cats dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"

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