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typodupeerror

Comment Re:Shameless sig whoring (Score 1) 853

The problem most environmentalists have isn't with nuclear power in theory. It is nuclear power in practice. They are expensive, dangerous, with long term problems to resolve. Can we do it right? Of course! Do we need to? Most likely. Do I trust a large institution that only cares about short term profits to solve these problems and not just sweep them under the rug? No. That's the problem, how can we expect for-profit entities to solve expensive long-term problems truthfully when its cheap and easy to ignore them.
The Courts

Submission + - Judge Deals Blow to RIAA

jcgam69 writes: A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. The case in question is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing on college campuses and names "Does 1-16," who allegedly engaged in copyright infringement using the University of New Mexico's network. In a ruling issued last month but disclosed today by file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia denied the RIAA's motion to engage in discovery. This means that the RIAA will not be able to easily get subpoenas to obtain identifying information from the University.
Google

Submission + - Google's new lobbying power in Washington

*SECADM writes: Learning from Microsoft's error, Google is builds a lobbying power house in Washington. "... Two years ago, Google was on the verge of making that Microsoft-like error. Davidson, then a 37-year-old former deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, was the search-engine company's sole staff lobbyist in Washington. As recently as last year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin had trouble getting meetings with members of Congress. To change that, Google went on a hiring spree and now has 12 lobbyists and lobbying-related professionals on staff here — more than double the size of the standard corporate lobbying office — and is continuing to add people."
Movies

DVD Security Group Says It Has Fixed AACS Flaws 388

SkillZ wrote to mention an article at the IBT site discussing a fix to the security breech of the HD DVD and Blu-ray media formats. "Makers of software for playing the discs on computers will offer patches containing new keys and closing the hole that allowed observant hackers to discover ways to strip high-def DVDs of their protection. On Monday, the group that developed the Advanced Access Content System said it had worked with device makers to deactivate those keys and refresh them with a new set."

Feed Firm's Personal Info Loss Just The Latest In A Proud Line Of Data Leaks (techdirt.com)

Another day, another data leak: a CD containing the personal information of 2.9 million Georgia residents has been lost by a contractor, potentially exposing them to identity theft. Even such a big leak is hardly notable these days, except for one factor -- the disk was lost by Affiliated Computer Services, a company that's been responsible for several other data leaks. An ACS computer got stolen in Denver last November, and on it was personal information of between 500,000 and 1.4 million people in Colorado. A few months earlier, a glitch on a student-loan web site run by ACS exposed the information of 21,000 students, while earlier in the year, credit-card data from seven years' worth of customers was stolen from a system run by ACS at the Denver airport. Rounding out the list -- or at least the list of ACS-related incidents that made it into the media -- is the theft of two of the company's laptops with data on tens of thousands of Motorola employees in May 2005. This company clearly has a problem with protecting personal information, but it doesn't appear that there are ever any repercussions to these losses. It just accepts whatever minimal fines, if any, it has to pay, and paying for some credit monitoring, as a cost of doing business. The fact that these problems keep happening to ACS reflect how seriously many companies take the threat of identity theft -- which is to say, not seriously at all. But perhaps more distressing is that with the company's track record, government officials don't seem to have any problem passing ACS personal information with little to no oversight.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - New Report on Municipal Wireless

PublicNet SF Coalition writes: "New Report on Municipal Wireless
Civil Defense — a weblog by Joshua Breitbart

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has just published a new report called "Localizing the Internet: Five Ways Public Ownership Solves the U.S. Broadband Problem," arguing for municipal ownership of new wireless and fiber optic networks.

The report's author is Becca Vargo Daggett, whose presentation I'll have the pleasure of moderating at the National Conference for Media Reform.

The argument is persuasive. There is clearly a need for more aggressive public involvement in broadband deployment and the affordability of wireless is a great opportunity for that. Giving this opportunity over to private corporations is double the loss."

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"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell

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