rod.chamberlin - Slashdot User

Submission + - SPAM: Countries ranked in terms of internet freedom

Submitted by msum on Sunday April 24, 2011 @08:32AM

msum writes: Freedom House has just published a report that ranks 37 nations around the would in terms of their internet freedom. Estonia was ranked as the most free. See who else is listed.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Tolkien Estate Censors the Word "Tolkien" (boingboing.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26, 2011 @02:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: Following their recent attempt to censor a work of historical fiction containing Tolkien as a character, the estate have now issued a takedown notice to someone making buttons with the words "While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion" on them, claiming "intellectual property right infringement". Predictably, this has led to widespread blog coverage, a new store has appeared offering a range of 'censored' Tolkien items, and the 'offending' product has had vastly increased exposure as a direct result of the removal.

Navy Tests Mach 8 Electromagnetic Railgun 440

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 11, 2010 @06:02AM from the do-not-look-at-with-remaining-eye dept.

hargrand writes "Wired magazine has a story and publicly released video of the Navy test firing of a 32 megajoule electromagnetic railgun: 'Reporters were invited to watch the test at the Dalghren Naval Surface Warfare Center. A tangle of two-inch thick coaxial cables hooked up to stacks of refrigerator-sized capacitors took five minutes to power juice into a gun the size of a schoolbus built in a warehouse. With a 1.5-million-ampere spark of light and a boom audible in a room 50 feet away, the bullet left the gun at a speed of Mach 8.'"

Submission + - Mob-sourcing: the prejudice of crowds (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08, 2010 @10:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: A look at how crowd-moderation can capture and reflect the prejudice of individuals. As more web content is crowd sourced and crowd moderated, are we seeing only the wisdom of crowds? No, we're also seeing their prejudice. The Internet reflects both the good and ugly in human nature.

Submission + - Malicious Websites Can Initiate iPhone Calls (sans.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08, 2010 @06:12PM

An anonymous reader writes: In this article, security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani shows how iOS insecurely launches 3rd party apps via registered URL handlers. Malicious websites can abuse this to launch arbitrary applications, such as getting the Skype.app to make arbitrary phone calls without asking the user. Dhanjani lists what developers of iOS apps can do to design their software securely and what Apple can do to help out. Great read!

Submission + - The placebo effect not just on drugs

Submitted by dvdme on Sunday November 07, 2010 @09:03PM

dvdme writes: It seams like the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross on http://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/11/04/placebo-buttons/ says, and I quote:
"In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.

Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. “You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat,” said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. “Guess what? They quit calling you.”

In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 “walk” buttons in New York intersections do nothing. “The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on.”

Submission + - Net pioneers: Open Internet should be separate (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Sunday November 07, 2010 @08:30PM

angry tapir writes: "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission should allow for an open Internet separate from specialized services that may prioritize IP traffic, a group of Internet and technology pioneers has recommended. The document, filed in response to an FCC request for public comments on proposed network neutrality rules, steers clear of recommending what rules should apply to the open Internet. Among the tech experts signing the document are Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple; Bruce Perens, founder of the open-source software movement; Clay Shirky, an author and lecturer at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program; and David Reed, a contributor to the development of TCP/IP and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab."

Wikileaks Donations Account Shut Down 725

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 14, 2010 @06:51PM from the sucker-punch dept.

Scrameustache writes "The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government. Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist. The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan."

Mexican Senate Votes To Drop Out of ACTA 96

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @10:01PM from the outta-acta dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Mexican Senate has voted unanimously to drop out of ACTA negotiations, saying that the process has been way too secretive, left out many stakeholders and appears to deny access to knowledge and information. Of course, it's not clear if this 'non-binding resolution' actually means much, as the negotiators are not under the Senate's control. At the very least, though, it appears the Mexican Senate is going to fight to keep the country from agreeing to ACTA."

Submission + - Plane Finder iPhone app - aid to terrorist ? (ndtv.com) 1

Submitted by ProgramErgoSum on Sunday October 03, 2010 @01:55PM

ProgramErgoSum writes: The Plane Finder AR application, developed by a British firm for the Apple iPhone and Google's Android, allows users to point their phone at the sky and see the position, height and speed of nearby aircraft. It also shows the airline, flight number, departure point, destination and even the likely course-the features which could be used to target an aircraft with a surface-to-air missile, or to direct another plane on to a collision course, the 'Daily Mail' reported. The programme, sold for just 1.79 pounds in the online Apple store, has now been labelled an 'aid to terrorists' by security experts and the US Department of Homeland Security is also examining how to protect airliners.

The new application works by intercepting the so-called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B) transmitted by most passenger aircraft to a new satellite tracking system that supplements or, in some countries, replaces radar.

Submission + - Army DNS ROOT server down for 4+ hours (ripe.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 02, 2010 @07:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: The H-Root server, operated by the U.S Army Research Lab spent over 4 hours in the last 48 hours being a void. Both the RIPE's DNSMON (http://dnsmon.ripe.net) and the h.root-servers.org (http://h.root-servers.org/) site show this. Why is it that in this day and age of network engineering we can even entertain one of the thirteen root servers being unavailable for so long? I mean the US army don't even seem to make the effort to deploy more sites. Look at the other root operators (http://root-servers.org/) who don't have the backing of the US government money machine. Many of them seem to be able to deploy redundant instances. Even the much maligned ICANN seems to manage to deploy 11 sites. All these root operators that have only 1 site need a good swift kick, or maybe they should pass the responsibility to others who are more committed to ensuring the Internet's stability.

Submission + - Graphic Artists Condemn UK Ban on Erotic Comics

Submitted by mdwh2 on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:43PM

mdwh2 writes: Graphic artists, publishers and MPs have condemned the UK's Coroners and Justice Bill, which will criminalise possession of sexual depictions that appear to show someone under 18 (the age of consent is 16 in the UK), as well as adults where the "predominant impression conveyed" is of someone under 18, and even if they are merely drawn as being present whilst sexual activity took place between adults. The definitions could include Lost Girls, Watchmen, and South Park. The Comic Book Alliance has launched a Petition against the law.

Comment Re:My kind of democracy (Score 1) 412

by rod.chamberlin on Sunday March 01, 2009 @05:38PM (#27033073) Attached to: Volt Asks Temps To 'Vote" For Microsoft Pay Cut

You can vote anyway you want, the only catch is that there is only one choice.

Strictly there are two choices:

"My way or the Highway"

The implication is that if you don't accept by the deadline you will be terminated.

The accept button is simplifying their paperwork.

I'm sure the way they have done it a number of people will refuse on principle meaning they can also reduce staff numbers - a double win!

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