ethericalzen - Slashdot User

Submission + - LA Times Analyzes File Sharing (latimes.com)

Submitted by

ethericalzen

on Wednesday February 20, 2008 @02:36PM

ethericalzen writes: "The LA Times has published an opinion article about file sharing. The views outlined in the article should be familiar to the Slashdot crowd. The article is pretty balanced, and includes arguments from those who believe file sharing is theft and those who strongly disagree. As commentary to the article points out a couple of the analogies are not quite perfect. Despite the analogies, the author seems to be aware that the arguments being discussed are not quite as simple as some make them out to be. He comes across as recognizing that it is not a trivial concept and that there is much clamoring from both camps that will dictate how businesses and users function in the future."

Submission + - Early Stars Possibly Powered by Dark Matter? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

ethericalzen

on Tuesday February 19, 2008 @12:49PM

ethericalzen writes: "An article at the BBC News online has highlighted a theory that the first stars may have been powered by dark matter. A group of US scientists, Douglas Spolyar, Katherine Freese, and Paolo Gondolo published a paper in the physics journal Physical Review Letters, February 4th 2008. The paper explains that unlike the stars of today, which are powered by nuclear fusion, early stars would have been powered by the abundant dark matter after the Big Bang. The theory suggests that these stars would have fused together and destroyed one another before nuclear fusion had a chance to start. There are no details yet about what the dark matter stars may have looked like; however, in five years that may change with the launching of the Hubble successor, the James Webb Space Telescope."

Submission + - White House Decides P2P Isn't All Bad? (news.com)

Submitted by

ethericalzen

on Friday February 15, 2008 @10:58PM

ethericalzen writes: "An article posted yesterday (14FEB2008) on CNET News has revealed that the White House doesn't necessarily hate everything about P2P. The Bush Administration apparently has called into question a law, known as the Federal Agency Data Protection Act, that would force all federal agencies to have plans guarding against the risks of P2P file sharing. Last year after it was said that P2P networks could pose a national security risk a Congressional hearing began. In that hearing the LimeWire founder was questioned about how his service warned users about the files and folders they are sharing. Karen Evans, the chief information officer for the federal government, stated that she was against singling out a particular technology when issuing computer security requirements. As it is the government already has a law which requires federal agencies to report on information security plans and risk assessments known as FISMA."

Submission + - UK ISPs Resistant to Monitoring Users (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

ethericalzen

on Friday February 15, 2008 @01:29PM

ethericalzen writes: "An article from BBC News online states that ISPs in the UK are resistant to the government's desires for monitoring their users' data. The government seeks to have ISPs turn off the access of users who are "persistent pirates". The ISPs are citing technical and legal reasons for why they do not wish to do this. Legals reasons include surveillance laws which prohibit ISPs from monitoring a user's data unless compelled by a warrant. Technical reasons include an inability to accurately identify copyrighted material that is legally being transferred over p2p clients and copyrighted material that is being transferred illegally over p2p clients."

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