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Communications

Twitter Sued By British Soccer Player 264

Posted by timothy from the ooh-right-footballer dept.
norriefc writes "Here in the UK super injunctions are all the rage. These are injunctions that bar the press from even mentioning that the injunctions exist. Recently a Twitter account exposed several of these super injunctions and named several people involved and what their alleged indiscretions were. Now one 'famous' soccer player is trying to sue Twitter and the yet to be named tweeters for invasion of privacy, apparently in ignorance of the Streisand effect. I'm doubtful of an American company paying much attention to UK anti-free-speech laws"
Privacy

British Court Rules Against Blogger Anonymity 238

Posted by Soulskill from the reasonable-expectations-often-aren't dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a dangerous judgment for British bloggers and whistleblowers, a British court has ruled (absurdly) that because blogging itself is a public activity, bloggers have 'no reasonable expectation of privacy' regarding their identities, and newspapers are allowed to publish their identities if they can find them by fair or foul means. A British police detective who recently won the Orwell Prize for his excellent political writing used his blog to write highly critical accounts of police activities and unethical behavior, making very powerful enemies in the process. A well-funded newspaper with powerful connections quickly heard of his blog and decided it was absolutely vital to expose his identity using an investigative journalist. Like any good newspaper, the blogger anonymized the people and the locations in all the cases he discussed on his blog, but the newspaper alleges these were not sufficiently anonymized and complains that they could work out the identities, though British newspapers don't complain that they are allowed to publish the identities of men who are falsely accused of rape and cleared in court. The newspaper also helpfully contacted the blogger's employer, and his job is now threatened."
It's funny. Laugh.

Banned Words List Carries Its First Emoticon 333

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bet-they-have-power-in-the-upper-penninsula dept.
DynaSoar writes "Lake Superior State University in Michigan's Upper Peninsula ('The land of four seasons: June, July, August and Winter') has just published its 34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. Besides such unsurprising inclusions such as 'green' corporations being 'game changing' due to concern with their 'carbon foot print,' this year's list contains an emoticon for the first time — not a smiley face or variant, but the 'heart' symbol made from the characters 'less than' and 'three.' It's perhaps a sign of the evolution of language, or at least of this volunteer linguistic watchdog group, that a symbol compounded of two characters, neither of them a letter, is considered not only a word, but a particularly egregious one."
Media

Warner Music Pulls Videos Off YouTube 237

Posted by Soulskill from the taking-their-toys-and-going-home dept.
iammani writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Warner Music Group ordered YouTube on Saturday to remove all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after contract negotiations broke down. ... The talks fell apart early on Saturday because Warner wants a bigger share of the huge revenue potential of YouTube's massive visitor traffic. There were no reports on what Warner was seeking. 'We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide,' Warner said in a statement." Warner's deal with YouTube to make those videos available came just prior to YouTube's acquisition by Google.
NASA

Astronaut Loses Tools While Performing an EVA 445

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-human dept.
tpheiska writes "NASA press release states that 'At approx. 3:33 p.m. EST, Piper reported that one of the Braycote lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag. As she was cleaning the bag and wiping the tools and equipment inside, the bag floated away. Another bag carrying identical equipment is now being shared by Piper and Bowen.' Luckily they had a spare."
The Courts

Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches? 272

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-trust-us dept.
Wired is running a story about a case the Supreme Court will be hearing on Tuesday that relates to searches based on erroneous information in government databases. In the case of Herring vs. US 07-513, the defendant was followed and pulled over based on a records indicating he had a warrant out for his arrest. Upon further review, the local county clerk found the records were in error, and the warrant notification should have been removed months prior. Unfortunately for Herring, he had already been arrested and his car searched. Police found a small amount of drugs and a firearm, for which Herring was subsequently prosecuted. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed to argue this case, some calling for "an accuracy obligation on law enforcement agents [PDF] who rely on criminal justice information systems," and others defending such searches as good-faith exceptions [PDF].
Medicine

Computer Detection Effective In Spotting Cancer 89

Posted by kdawson from the mechanical-helper dept.
Anti-Globalism notes a large study out of the UK indicating that computer-aided detection can be as effective at spotting breast cancer as two experts reading the x-rays. Mammograms in Britain are routinely checked by two radiologists or technicians, which is thought to be better than a single review (in the US only a single radiologist reads each mammogram). In a randomized study of 31,000 women, researchers found that a single expert aided by a computer does as well as two pairs of eyes. CAD spotted nearly the same number of cancers, 198 out of 227, compared to 199 for the two readers. "In places like the United States, 'Where single reading is standard practice, computer-aided detection has the potential to improve cancer-detection rates to the level achieved by double reading,' the researchers said."
Government

States Throw Out Electronic Voting Machines 238

Posted by kdawson from the returning-to-paper dept.
Davide Marney passes along an AP story about the thousands of voting machines gathering dust in warehouses across the country after states such as California, Ohio, and Florida have banned their use. Many of these machines cost $3.5K to $5K each. Local election boards are struggling to find ways to recover any of the cost of the machines, or even to recycle them. The picture in Ohio is the most confusing, as multiple court cases limit the state's options and result in a situation in which the discredited machines will nevertheless be used in the presidential election coming up in November. The state's new (Democratic) attorney general has just issued a rule banning the practice of election workers taking the machines home with them the night before elections.
Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail 489

Posted by samzenpus from the read-what-we-read dept.
I am responsible for reading most of the help requests sent to Slashdot. Most of the mail I get in a day is what you would expect, comments and concerns about postings, user accounts and Slashdot itself. There are a very special group however that get passed around the office due to the inordinate level of anger, lack of understanding and just plain weirdness they possess. Through the years I've collected many and still get such gems on a regular basis. We thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite rants, ramblings and ruminations with the rest of you. I give to you the first of many installments of Slashdot's disagree mail. The names have been changed to protect the idiot — hit the link below to drink it in.
Sony

Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software 266

Posted by kdawson from the turnabout-is-sweet dept.
An anonymous reader sends us to ZeroPaid, which seems to be the only site in English to have picked up a story out of France involving Sony and piracy. Except this time the shoe is on the other foot. The small software company PointDev learned that Sony BMG was using a pirated license for one of its system administration tools. PointDev got bailiffs to raid a Sony property and they found pirated software on four servers. The source article (link is to a Google translation of French original) quotes PointDev's spokesman claiming that the BSA believes 47% of software used in corporations to be illegal — whether he is referring to Sony in particular is not clear in the translation.

Comment Re:He's an idiot (Score 5, Informative) 330

by Tristanjh (#22608342) Attached to: Customer Loses Xbox 360 Artwork During Repair
I found this comment on another sie reportingthe same story: All repairs and maint are done through a third party company, Jabil, in Renoysa, Mexico. They have a specific set of instructions that they follow assembly-line style, and one of the first steps in that is they scrub the unit down with rubbing alcohol and remove all stickers and so forth that are on it. Any letter with the console would have been disregarded since the workers don't speak English, and are much more concerned with keeping up with the mass amount of work to be done, because they can be fired very easily if they don't. Even in an unusual case like artwork and signatures, the workers have better job security just pushing it through like usual than stopping to ask.
Music

EU Commissioner Proposes 95 year Copyright 591

Posted by Zonk from the infinity-plus-a-kabillion dept.
Albanach writes "The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for 'legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car ... People are living longer and 50 years of copyright protection no longer give lifetime income to artists who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties, he said.'"
XBox (Games)

Xbox DRM and the Red Ring of Death 147

Posted by Zonk from the bum-bum-bum dept.
manekineko2 writes "In the latest case warning of the perils of investing in DRM'd media, an owner of an Xbox 360 reports that after his Xbox suffered the infamous Red Ring of Death, it was replaced by a new system with a different serial number. Upon receiving his replacement, he found that he could only access the media he had purchased from a specific account. He also received the run-around for months from customer service before his case was escalated, only to be informed that there is no ETA for a resolution, there is no way to receive status updates on the process, and there is no compensation that will be granted. Given claims that the Xbox 360 defect rate is as high as 1 in 3, has anyone on Slashdot gone through this as well after getting their system exchanged?" Update: 02/14 17:11 GMT by Z : An emailing user noted that the original summary was not very accurate; rephrased to be more in-line with the situation.
Space

Why Space Exploration Is Worth the Cost 276

Posted by kdawson from the it's-all-spent-right-here-on-earth dept.
mlimber writes "The Freakonomics blog has a post in which they asked six knowledgeable people, Is space exploration is worth the public cost? Their answers are generally in the affirmative and illuminating. For example David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, said: 'Businesses were started and are now meeting payrolls, paying taxes, and sustaining economic growth because the founder was inspired by the early days of the manned space program, often decades after the program ended! This type of inspiration and motivation seems unique to the manned space program and, of late, to some of our robotic space missions.'"

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