Comment It worked in the old Soviet bloc (Score 1) 132
Except that instead on Internet porn there was always an abundance of alcohol. Even at times when there was no food or other basic necessities.
Comment Re:Admitting it now (Score 1) 201
Same here, but mail to verizon.net keeps bouncing.
US Group Wants Canada Blacklisted Over Piracy 585
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on an earlier story, the IIAA wants to add Canada to a blacklist of the worst intellectual property offenders. A powerful coalition of U.S. software, movie and music producers is urging the Bush administration to put Canada on an infamous blacklist of intellectual property villains, alongside China, Russia and Belize. 'Canada's chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections', the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government."
NASA World Wind 1.4 Released With Trailer 117
Bull_UK writes "As many of you probably already know NASA had to shift it's priorities to the upcoming Java version of World Wind, leaving 1.4 effectively orphaned, but the Open Source community came together and with a lot of hard work we were able to finish what Chris Maxwell started. Some of the new things which differentiate the new World Wind from the competition are the amazing new visual effects, including HDR, check out the video for some examples. Remember this virtual globe has never had the same goals as Google Earth, if you just want to see your house stick with GE, although many areas have high resolution as good and sometimes better than GE. World Wind is aimed at education and science, all the default imagery is copyright free, you don't need to purchase a license to redistribute the imagery and there are no pro or expert versions to buy, you can happily use World Wind at work or school without fear of any lawyers confiscating your research."
Database Bigwigs Lead Stealthy Open Source Startup 187
BobB writes "Michael Stonebraker, who cooked up the Ingres and Postgres database management systems, is back with a stealthy startup called Vertica. And not just him, he has recruited former Oracle bigwigs Ray Lane and Jerry Held to give the company a boost before its software leaves beta testing. The promise — a Linux-based system that handles queries 100 times faster than traditional relational database management systems."
YouTube Hands Over User Info To Fox 396
An anonymous reader writes "Tech Crunch has an article about YouTube identifying and handing over a user's information after a request from Fox. 'Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, according to a report on InternetNews.com.'"
Windows Vista: the Missing Manual 220
John Suda writes "It's been over five years in the making and its nearly perfect. No,
Im not referring to Microsoft's vast new operating system named Windows
Vista, but to the reference book Windows Vista: the Missing Manual,
by author David Pogue. The book is the latest, and perhaps best, in the Missing
Manual series published by Pogue Press / O'Reilly Media, Inc. The Missing
Manual series is the benchmark of quality for computer manuals. Unless youre
a system administrator, programmer, or uber-geek, this is probably the only reference
source you'll need to learn Microsofts Vista." Read below for the rest of John's review.
Submission + - Is there any reason to report spammers to ISP's?
marko_ramius writes: For years I've been a good netizen and reported spam that I get to the appropriate contacts at ISP's. In the entire time that I've done this I've gotten (maybe) 5 or 6 responses from those ISP's informing me that they have taken action against the spammer.
In recent years, however, I haven't gotten any responses.
Are the ISP's so overwhelmed with abuse reports to respond to ANYBODY that reports spam? Do they even bother acting on the reports?
Is there any real reason to report spammers?
In recent years, however, I haven't gotten any responses.
Are the ISP's so overwhelmed with abuse reports to respond to ANYBODY that reports spam? Do they even bother acting on the reports?
Is there any real reason to report spammers?
Journal Journal: Google Misspells Own Name on Valentine's Logo 1
As is tradition, on any significant holiday, major or minor, Google produces a special version of its logo. However, its Valentine's Day logo this year seems to be missing the "L". But it's the thought that counts--so Happy Valentine's Day from Googe!
Could Open Source Lead to a Meritocratic Search Engine? 148
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "When Jimmy Wales recently announced the
Search Wikia
project,
an attempt to build an open-source search engine around the user-driven
model
that gave birth to Wikipedia, he said
his goal was to create
"the search engine that changes everything", as he underscored in a
February
5 talk
at New York University. I think it could, although not for the same main
reasons that
Wales has put forth -- I think that for a search engine to be truly
meritocratic would be more of
a revolution than for a search engine to be open-source, although both
would be large steps
forward. Indeed, if a search engine
could be built that really returned results in order of average
desirability
to users, and resisted efforts by companies to "game" the system (even if
everyone knew precisely how the
ranking algorithm worked),
it's hard to overstate how much that would change things both for
businesses and consumers. The key question is whether such an algorithm
could
be created that wouldn't be vulnerable to non-merit-based manipulation.
Regardless of what algorithms may be currently under consideration by
thinkers within
the Wikia company, I want to argue logically for some necessary
properties that such an algorithm should have in order to be effective.
Because if their search engine becomes popular, they will face such huge
efforts
from companies trying to manipulate the search results, that it will make
Wikipedia
vandalism look like a cakewalk." The rest of his essay follows.
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