litheye - Slashdot User

Comment Terrible journalism (Score 5, Informative) 642

by litheye on Sunday December 19, 2010 @12:18PM (#34607640) Attached to: UK Gov't Wants To Block Internet Porn By Default

This article is completely inaccurate and hyperbolic. It's just one MP (not a minister or anyone with any real power) calling for this and there are no signs that it is gaining traction with the actual government. In fact, the minister responsible said this: "The internet is by and large a force for good, it is central to our lives and to our economy and Government has to be wary before it regulates and passes legislation". Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jJiC8J_CirrU_ieNBO6oiEXvFlbw?docId=N0237401290546543448A

How 136 People Became 7 Million Illegal File-Sharers 313

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 04, 2009 @07:10PM from the lots-of-fertility-drugs dept.

Barence writes "The British government's official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry. The Radio 4 show named More or Less examined the government's claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure actually came from a report written about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. The report was privately commissioned by none other than the UK's music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m, gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software — in other words, only 136 people. That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% 'to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it.' The 6.7m figure was then calculated based on an estimated number of internet users that disagreed with the government's own estimate. The wholly unsubstantiated 7m figure was then released as an official statistic."

UK Plans To Link Criminal Records To ID Cards 359

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @04:41AM from the oh-sure-blame-the-children-again dept.

Death Metal writes with this excerpt from ComputerWeekly.com about the UK's national ID card scheme: "Privacy advocates have reacted angrily to reports that the government plans to link national identity records to criminal records for background checks on people who work with children and vulnerable people. Up to 11 million such workers could be affected immediately if the plan goes ahead. Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of privacy advocates NO2ID, said the move was consistent with the various forms of coercion strategy to create so-called volunteers for national ID cards. 'Biometrics are part of the search for clean, unique identifiers,' Phil Booth said. He said the idea was patently ridiculous when the Home Office was planning to allow high street shops and the Post Office to take fingerprints for the ID card."

Submission + - Murdoch Criticizes BBC for Providing 'Free News' 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Saturday August 29, 2009 @11:35AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a "dominant" BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it "incredibly difficult" for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. "It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," says Murdoch. "The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision." In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US. Former BBC director general Greg Dyke responded that Murdoch's argument that the BBC was a "threat" to independent journalism was fundamentally wrong. "Journalism is going through a very difficult time — not only in this country but every country in the world — because newspapers, radio and television in the commercial world are all having a very rough time," says Dyke. "That is nothing to do with the BBC, that is just... what's happening.""

Submission + - AT&T is dropping Usenet Netnews service

Submitted by

franknagy

on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @12:19PM

franknagy writes: "This announcement message has appeared in all the news groups on the AT&T/SBC News Server: Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be offering access to the Usenet netnews service. If you wish to continue reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party vendors. So what free or low-cost alternatives are available for Netnews and the NNTP services for clients?"

Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology 665

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 28, 2009 @09:49PM from the there's-no-pleasing-some-people dept.

El Reg writes "Showing a new-found resolve to crack down on self-serving edits, Wikipedia has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology. According to Wikipedia administrators, this marks the first time such a high-profile organization has been banished for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the 'free encyclopedia anyone can edit.'"

Adeona Warns of Instability; OpenDHT Mothballed 82

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 24, 2009 @10:50PM from the here's-to-you-my-rambling-laptop dept.

gbickford writes "Adeona, the first open source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop, was featured on Slashdot last year. I was stoked when I read about how it worked and I installed it immediately. I just went to look for updates on the site and was greeted with a giant warning message stating, 'Adeona is currently not working.' It seems that OpenDHT, the distributed hash table that stores the location information and photos, has been fairly unstable lately. The developers claim that this is "largely because the back-end OpenDHT system is not able to tolerate the load imposed by Adeona. OpenDHT removed the need for a centralized database with tracking information, which in effect prevents a 3rd party from tracking a user's whereabouts. OpenDHT was Sean Rhea's Ph.D. project back in 2005 and he has decided to officially bow out of maintaining it as of July 1st, which has left the developers of Adeona looking for another back end to store location information and photos. The source code for Adeona is available and they are actively seeking developer contributions on the developer's list. Do any developers have ideas on where to put scads of information in a free, reliable, anonymous, and secure manner?"

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