gordette - Slashdot User

Submission + - Federal Anti-Obscenity Program Comes Up Limp

Submitted by kotj.mf on Friday August 10, 2007 @12:04PM

kotj.mf writes: The New York Times reports that the Federally funded anti-Web pornography campaign run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group, has yet to result a single prosecution for obscenity, despite having generated more than 67,000 citizen complaints. The group, better known for its campaign to have Cosmopolitan removed from supermarket checkout stands, is pushing the Justic Department to more agressively pursue cases against what it sees as 'a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.'

Comment Re:Ents (Score 1) 296

by gordette on Thursday August 09, 2007 @09:56PM (#20177905) Attached to: RIAA Campaign Against Students Hits Stormier Seas

TPTB underestimate the power of the Internet as an organizing tool. Many of them really don't use the internet all that much (for instance, they know about myspace because they've read about it in the news but many have never heard of livejournal) and networking is just a concept. Speaking of bullies. After reading similar stories about ASCAP extortion in Florida - fleecing a restaurant owner for having the televison on while Hank Williams Jr. "Are You Ready for Some Football?" played because the song was carried on the "Monday Night Football" telecast - this warms the cockles of my heart. Go gen-y. Anyway - here's a link to the Florida story. http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20070708/NEWS01/707080343/1006

NASA Tests Hydrogen-Fueled BMW 420

Posted by kdawson on Thursday August 09, 2007 @11:54AM from the hold-the-lox dept.

Rio sends us word that NASA has completed an 8-week test of a fleet of BMW luxury sedans powered by liquid hydrogen at Kennedy Space Center. The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, according to a news release. Its engine can burn gasoline or liquid hydrogen and can switch seamlessly between the two. From the article: "One hundred BMW Hydrogen 7s have been built, and 25 are used in test programs in the US. The cars have already covered more than 1.3 million miles in test programs around the globe."

Rare Meteor Event to Inform on Dangerous Comets 64

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @06:03PM from the lucifer's-nails-before-his-hammer dept.

David Shiga writes "September 1, 2007 may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a rare meteor shower called the alpha Aurigids, New Scientist reports. Unlike better-known displays like the Perseids that occur every year on the same date, the alpha Aurigids have only been spotted three times before, in 1935, 1986, and 1994. NASA's Peter Jenniskens predicts they will return again this year, only to disappear again for the next 50 years. Meteor showers are caused by debris shed from comets, and the rarity of the alpha Aurigids is due to the exceptionally infrequent passes of its parent comet through the inner solar system, just once every 2000 years. Studying the alpha Aurigids could help astronomers turn these rare showers into an advance warning system for long period comets with potentially dangerous orbits, which would be hard to spot ahead of a collision with Earth."

Bank Run in Second Life 336

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @10:48AM from the just-like-in-the-first-one dept.

Jamie found an interesting bit about a bank run in Second Life. The recent ban on gambling combined with a $12k theft from the 2L stock market has caused people to try to get their money back. The article mentions that this could supposedly affect 8.5M players even tho most estimates of actual hard core players in the system are in the 5 to low 6 figure range.

Submission + - You know it's bad when the trades blast Comcast (multichannel.com)

Submitted by

gordette

on Monday June 18, 2007 @06:36PM

gordette writes: "I'm reposting this with some trepidation. I'm only doing so because the I noticed the Multichannel site was down for hours today but it appears to be back up. And also because Comcast did the same thing to me described by this journalist — held my HD channels hostage by insisting that I shell out for an expensive cable package. Anyway — here's the rap — this journalist is blasting Comcast for their 'shakedown' of consumers, in full view of industry insiders. She also links to an earlier blog post describing Comcast's Motorola DVR problems."

Submission + - New Web Exploit at 1,000 Machines and Growing (trendmicro.com)

Submitted by JoergVader on Monday June 18, 2007 @06:13PM

JoergVader writes: Trend Micro has been receiving several reports of a new batch of hacked Italian Web sites that trigger a series of malware downloads once a user visits them. These infection series begin with a malicious IFRAME tag. Trend Micro detects Web pages hosting the said malicious tag as HTML_IFRAME.CU. All the compromised sites are hosted in Italy and, to date, Trend Micro identifies 1,174 affected Web sites.

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