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Will W3C Accept DRM For Webfonts? 315

Posted by timothy from the magic-8-ball-time dept.
dotne writes "Microsoft has submitted Embedded OpenType (EOT) to W3C and a slimy campaign for EOT has been launched. EOT is a DRM layer on top of normal TrueType/Opentype files; EOT ties a font file to a certain web page or site and prevents reuse by other pages/sites. Microsoft's IE has supported EOT for years, but it has largely been ignored due to the clumsiness of having to regenerate font files when a page changes. Now that other browsers are moving to support normal TrueType and OpenType on the web (Safari, Opera, Mozilla, Prince), W3C is faced with a question: should they bless Microsoft's EOT for use on the web? Or, should they encourage normal font files on the web and help break Microsoft's forgotten monopoly?"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Copyright advocacy group violates copyright (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by
word munger
word munger writes: "Commercial scholarly publishers are beginning to get afraid of the open access movement. They've hired a high-priced consultant to help them sway public opinion in favor of copyright restrictions on taxpayer-funded research. Funny thing is, their own website contains several copyright violations. It seems they pulled their images directly from the Getty Images website — watermark and all — without paying for their use! Clearly their agenda is simply to make using copyrighted materials inconvenient and expensive for everyone but THEMSELVES."
United States

Submission + - Torrentspy.com disables searching for U.S. IPs

Submitted by dr_strang
dr_strang writes: Torrent indexing site Torrentspy.com appears to have disabled torrent searches for IPs that originate in the United States. Instead of a results page, users are directed to this page, which states:
Torrentspy Acts to Protect Privacy
Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website.Torrentspy's decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws.
Data Storage

Submission + - Laptop/Server data synchronization 1

Submitted by gbr
gbr writes: I've been trying to automatically synchronize data between a laptop and a server. When the laptop is connected to the network, I want all writes to automatically propagate across to the server. When the laptop is disconnected I want the laptop user to continue working with the local data. When the laptop is reconnected, I want the data to automatically re-sync.

The issue is, the data on the server may have changed as well, which needs to propagate back to the laptop. The data doesn't contain anything too special, no database tables etc. It does contain binary data such as executables and word processing documents. I've looked at ChironFS, Unison file sync, and drbd. ChironFS needs a manual rebuild if a connection fails, and the user needs to know which machine contains the correct data. Unison requires the user to initiate the synchronization process manually every time, and drbd is just not meant for the job at hand.

How do you automatically, and invisibly to the user (except in the case of conflicts), synchronize between a laptop and a server?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Teen hacks $84 million porn filter in 30 minutes

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government's $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software's icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use.
Windows

Submission + - Vista poor network performance caused by MP3s (2cpu.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past months since Vista's release, there has been no doubt about the reduced level of network performance offered compared to Windows XP. However, some users over at the 2CPU forums have apparently discovered an unexplained connection with audio resulting in an approximate 10% cap of total network throughput. Whenever any audio is being sent to a sound card, network performance is drastically reduced instantly. As soon as the audio is stopped, the throughput begins to climb to its expected speed. It's a tough one for users — what do you pick? Sound or speed? So much for multi-tasking.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - DMCA means you cannot delete files on your own PC (wired.com)

Submitted by
DragonHawk
DragonHawk writes: "According to Wired, John Stottlemire found a way to print duplicate coupons from Coupons.com by deleting some files and registry entires on his PC. Now he's being sued for a DMCA violation. He says, "All I did was erase files or registry keys." Says a lawyer: "It may cover this. I think it does give companies a lot of leverage and a lot of power." So now the copyright cartels are saying that not only can we not copy things on our computers, but we cannot delete things on our computers. Time to buy stock in Seagate."
Communications

Skype Blames Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Outage 286

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ddos-ing-yourself dept.
brajesh writes to tell us that Skype has blamed its outage over the last week on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. Apparently the huge numbers of computers rebooting (and the resulting flood of login requests) revealed a problem with the network allocation algorithm resulting in a couple days of downtime. Skype further stressed that there was no malicious activity and user security was never in any danger.
The Internet

Submission + - How much are ad servers slowing down the internet? 2

Submitted by vipermac
vipermac writes: Most the times I have a problem with a web page loading slow (or freezing temporarily), I look down at the status bar and see that it is waiting on an ad server, google analytics, or the like. It seems to me on popular web sites the bottle neck is overwhelmingly on the ad servers now and not on the servers of the main web site itself. In my opinion it seems we need a better model for serving ads or else these services need to add more servers/bandwidth. Are there any studies on the delay that 3rd party ad servers are creating, or any new models that are being introduced to serve ads?
Editorial

Journal Journal: Employee and customer problems come up, some of us are both?

Journal by rzrzedg

I am an employee for one of the largest banks in the country, recently when calling as a customer I had a chance to butt heads with customer service. When I returned to work the next day my manager and unit manager had received details about the conversation, and a screen shot of my account details. Most of us support our companies by using the service we help to provide, but what do you all do when those situations come into conflict. I am moving my accounts away but what legal options are t
Security

Submission + - Ubuntu Servers HACKED! (ubuntu.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Ubuntu had to shutdown 5 of 8 production servers that are sponsored by Canonical, when they started attacking other systems. Canonical blames the community, saying they were community hosted, and were poorly maintained. However, kernel upgrades couldn't be done because of poor backwards compatibility with the very hardware that Canonical had sponsored! While people point fingers at each other it is pretty clear that both sides are equally to blame, the community administrators for practicing bad security practices, such as using unencrypted FTP transfers with accounts, not properly maintaining the system. However Canonical should have been well aware of what they are hosting. The question remains, if any of the files distributed to users have been compromised. A major blow for Canonical though who are attempting to enter the business market with Ubuntu Server."
Displays

Submission + - 3D Animations in Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese boffins are now making animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. They could be used as street signs, advertising or to create giant plasma monsters to destroy entire cities. Maybe.
The Courts

Submission + - Fair Use for YouTube & MySpace Users

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A few years back, documentary filmmakers didn't know what copyrighted clips they could safely include in their films as a "fair use". Now there's a well-accepted set of "best practices" that establishes rational, predictable rules. Well the same folks who brought rationality to the world of documentary filmmaking are about to work their magic in the user-generated online content space, including user-created videos on YouTube and user-created music on My Space. They said : "Nonprofessional, online video now accounts for a sizeable portion of all broadband traffic, with much of the work weaving in copyrighted material....A new culture is emerging — remix culture, an unpredictable mix of the witty, the vulgar, the politically and culturally critical, and the just plain improbable..... What's fair in online-video use of copyrighted material? The healthy growth of this new mode of expression is at risk of becoming a casualty of the efforts of copyright owners to limit wholesale redistribution of their content on sites like YouTube, and of videomakers' own uncertainties about the law.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Linux Foundation Calls for 'Respect for Microsoft' (vnu.co.uk)

Submitted by
kripkenstein
kripkenstein writes: "Jim Zemlin (executive director for the Linux Foundation) has said at LinuxWorld that the open source community should stop poking fun at Microsoft:

Open source vendors have to recognise that Windows is here to stay and that together with Microsoft it will form a duopoly in the market for operating systems. This also requires that the Linux community respects Microsoft rather than ridicule it.

"There are some things that Windows does pretty well," Zemlin said. Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition.
An interesting perspective, but saying Microsoft has "a good track record in fending off competition" is like saying Muhammad Ali was "good at hitting his opponents in the ring"."
Handhelds

Submission + - China copies iPhone; makes it even better (popsci.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: China duplicates a lot of well know products; now they are duplicating the iPhone. Yet apparently they are making it better. From the article "The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers." The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. "The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.) "

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