Virgil Tibbs - Slashdot User

Comment Re:No better patron and spokesman (Score 0, Troll) 282

by Virgil Tibbs on Thursday September 04, 2008 @12:58PM (#24875883) Attached to: Stephen Fry Helps GNU Celebrate 25th Birthday

The Podcast, Freedom Socks, has released an interview with Matt Lee, FSF campaigns manager, on the subject of the Stephen Fry video.
It's interesting, the hosts put some interesting questions to him about the video.

Submission + - Why is the iPlayer a multi million pound disaster? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by AnotherDaveB on Friday November 23, 2007 @04:22AM

AnotherDaveB writes: The story of the BBC's iPlayer is of a multi-million pound failure that took years to complete, and was designed for a world that never arrived. More was spent on the project than many Silicon Valley startups ever burn through, but only now can we begin to piece together how this disaster unfolded.

Submission + - FSF Releases New License for Web Services (fsf.org) 1

Submitted by

mako

on Monday November 19, 2007 @05:05PM

mako writes: "The Free Software Foundation has released the Affero General Public license version 3. The license is essentially the GPLv3 with an added clause that requires that source code be distributed to users that interact with the application over a network. The license effectively extends copyright to web applications. The new AGPL will have important effects for companies that, under the GPL, have no obligation to distribute changes to users on the web. This release makes adds the license to the stable of official FSF licenses and is compatible with the GPLv3."

Submission + - BBC trust to listen to OSC about iPlayer (digital-lifestyles.info)

Submitted by

Virgil Tibbs

on Friday July 13, 2007 @09:44PM

Virgil Tibbs writes: "With the Launch of the BBC's iPlayer imminent, the BBC trust has agreed to hear the Open Source Consortium concerns regarding the BBC iPlayer's tie in with Microsoft's software. The move by the BBC to use Windows Media DRM & their apparent lack of commitment towards other platforms has caused outrage in many circles and prompted several online petitions."

Submission + - RIMM use LEGO Machines to Test Blackberry

Submitted by LEGO - my - Crackberry on Thursday April 12, 2007 @07:16PM

LEGO - my - Crackberry writes: Matthias Wandel is an engineer at Research in Motion (RIMM), the company that makes the Blackberry. What did RIMM turn to for testing the antenna reception of one of its 900MHz devices? LEGO machines. Specifically a device made of LEGO that could rotate a Blackberry about its horizontal & vertical axis in a pre-defined pattern. See for yourself.

Submission + - AACS cracked, again

Submitted by EmTeedee on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @05:20AM

EmTeedee writes: From a blog post on DLTV:

This time the target was the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on. Geremia on Doom9 forums has started a thread on how he has obtained the Volume ID without AACS authentication. With the aid of others like Arnezami they have managed to patch the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on.
and later in the same article:

It appears that XT5 has released a application that allows the Volume ID to be read without the need to rewrite the firmware. This would mean that anyone could simply plug in the HD DVD drive and obtain the Volume ID from any HD DVD without the hassle of flashing it.

Submission + - How to allow multiple physical console users

Submitted by

_Sharp'r_

on Saturday April 07, 2007 @05:41PM

_Sharp'r_ writes: "I'm trying to design the least expensive way to make OpenOffice, email, and a web browser available to students in a new charter elementary school. In my past experience working with charitable computer donations, I can usually get three to four working computers out of five donated "broken" computer systems, usually with plenty of monitors, keyboards and mice left over. I'd like to use one computer for multiple students by attaching multiple monitors, usb keyboards and mice.

The infrastructure is FreeBSD, with only a few MS Windows systems for certain staff. We're planning to use either FreeBSD or Linux with remotely stored home directories for the donated student desktops. These are multi-user operating systems in terms of physical resources required and operation, but only one physical console per machine. What drivers/OS versions support multiple local input devices and monitors that can be attached to a specific login session? Will this require virtualization? Is there a config I haven't found that you can use to assign these devices to specific ttys? Have you done this before?"

Journal Journal: MediaMaster: Access Your Music Library Online

Journal by rtenalio on Saturday April 07, 2007 @02:10PM

MediaMaster is a new web service that, like Faces and Oboe, let's users upload music from their hard drive and listen to it online.

Submission + - Steve Jobs announces DRM-free iTunes

Submitted by Fjan11 on Monday April 02, 2007 @08:47AM

Fjan11 writes: Steve jobs just announced that starting next month on you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs for $1.29. Upgrades to songs you've already bought will be available at the $0.30 price difference. Currently EMI is the only publisher participating, accounting for about 20% of the songs available.

Submission + - MPAA Fires Back at AACS Decryption Utility

Submitted by RulerOf on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @03:23PM

RulerOf writes: The AACS Decryption utility released this past December known as BackupHDDVD originally authored by Muslix64 of the Doom9 forums has received its first official DMCA Takedown Notice. It has been widely speculated that the utility itself was not an infringing piece of software due to the fact that it is merely "a textbook implementation of AACS," written with the help of documents publicly available at the AACS LA's website, and that the AACS Volume Unique Keys that the end user isn't supposed to have access to are in fact the infringing content, but it appears that such is not the case. From the thread:

"...you must input keys and then it will decrypt the encrypted content. If this is the case, than according to the language of the DMCA it does sound like it is infringing. Section 1201(a) says that it is an infringement to "circumvent a technological measure." The phrase, "circumvent a technological measure" is defined as "descramb(ling) a scrambled work or decrypt(ing) an encrypted work, ... without the authority of the copyright owner." If BackupHDDVD does in fact decrypt encrypted content than per the DMCA it needs a license to do that.

BitTorrent Video Download Store Falls Flat 195

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @02:58PM from the working-as-intended dept.

seriously writes "We've all heard about BitTorrent going legit this week with legal movie and TV show downloads. Ars Technica took a look at the service to see how usable it was and ran into a few snags, including not being able to download or even open the video files on some computers. However, the ones that they did manage to open varied a lot in quality. Overall, they blame DRM: 'Without knowing whether browser compatibility and dysfunctional video files are a rare occurrence or not, it's hard to say whether BitTorrent's service is a good one overall. Our initial experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, and guess what the culprit is once again? DRM. Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.'"

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