zanyterp - Slashdot User

Comment government owned, operated, and destroyed (Score 1) 873

by zanyterp on Friday December 19, 2008 @10:30AM (#26172279) Attached to: The US economy is heading toward ...

the government will own all of industry (bye-bye capitalism & innovation) and then it will own all of us. funeral dirges ready for playing for the next 4-8 years beginning 20 Jan 09.

Submission + - SPAM: Identity crooks have 50-50 chance of going to jail 1

Submitted by alphadogg on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @09:01AM

alphadogg writes: If you're a convicted identity thief, you've got about a 50% chance of avoiding jail time. That's one of the findings of a new study of closed U.S. Secret Service case files, released by Utica College's Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. This is the first time researchers have been allowed to sift through the Secret Service's data. The study's authors based their findings on an analysis of 500 closed Secret Service cases.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - WARNING: driver updates causing Vista deactivation (apcmag.com)

Submitted by

KrispySausage

on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @08:48AM

KrispySausage writes: "After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.

Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.

How can this ridiculous situation occur, and what is Microsoft's response... read on."

Google Video Store Shutting Down 155

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday August 11, 2007 @11:31AM from the calling-it-quits dept.

babbling writes "Google is going to close the Google Video Store, leaving users who bought videos that used Digital Restrictions Management without their purchases. The users of Google Video Store will be compensated with Google Checkout credit, but it seems they will be out of luck if they don't happen to be Google Checkout users."

Submission + - SCO Fiasco Over for Linux, Starting For Solaris? (desktoplinux.com) 1

Submitted by

kripkenstein

on Saturday August 11, 2007 @03:46AM

kripkenstein writes: "We have just heard that the SCO fiasco is finally going to end for Linux. But Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at DesktopLinux.com points out that the favorable result for Linux may cause unpleasant consequences for rival open-source operating system OpenSolaris:

At one time, Sun was an SCO supporter. [...] Sun's Jonathan Schwartz — then Sun VP of software and today Sun's president and CEO — said in 2003 that Sun had bought "rights equivalent to ownership" to Unix.

SCO agreed. In 2005, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that SCO had no problem with Sun open-sourcing Unix code in what would become OpenSolaris. "We have seen what Sun plans to do with OpenSolaris and we have no problem with it," McBride said. "What they're doing protects our Unix intellectual property rights."

Sun now has a little problem, which might become a giant one: SCO never had any Unix IP to sell. Therefore, it seems likely that Solaris and OpenSolaris contains Novell's Unix IP.
It should be noted that we have no idea if Sun doesn't already have an appropriate license from Novell (if they even need one at all). But, if not, we may see some messy business between Sun and Novell, and correspondingly OpenSolaris and Linux."

Groklaw Explains Microsoft and the GPLv3 349

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 09, 2007 @11:21PM from the those-pesky-vouchers dept.

A Groklaw Reader writes "After all the questions about how the GPLv3 will or won't apply to Microsoft following Microsoft's declaration that they weren't bound by it, PJ of Groklaw wrote this story about how and why the GPLv3 will apply to Microsoft. Specifically, it covers in what ways Microsoft would convey GPLv3 software under the Novell agreement, and how Microsoft's refusal to allow previously sold vouchers to be redeemed for GPLv3 software would impact that agreement. Given that Novell has said that they will distribute GPLv3 software, Microsoft may have had the tables turned on them already."

Analyst Says Blu-ray DRM Safe For 10 Years 493

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 09, 2007 @08:42PM from the words-ripe-for-the-eating dept.

Mike writes to let us know that a poster on the AVS forum says that the latest issue of HMM magazine (no link given) contains a quote from Richard Doherty, a media analyst with Envisioneering Group, extolling the strength of the DRM in Blu-ray discs, called BD+. Doherty reportedly said, "BD+, unlike AACS, which suffered a partial hack last year, won't likely be breached for 10 years." He added that if it were broken, "the damage would affect one film and one player." As one comment on AVS noted, I'll wait for the Doom9 guys to weigh in.

Samba Adopts GPLv3 For Future Releases 219

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 09, 2007 @07:20PM from the first-trickle-in-the-flood dept.

Jeremy Allison - Sam writes with news that the Samba Team has decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licenses for all future releases of Samba. Follow the link for a FAQ addressed to Samba developers and contributors. "To allow people to distinguish which Samba version is released with the new GPLv3 license, we are updating our next version release number. The next planned version release was to be 3.0.26, this will now be renumbered so the GPLv3 version release will be 3.2.0. To be clear, all versions of Samba numbered 3.2 and later will be under the GPLv3, all versions of Samba numbered 3.0.x and before remain under the GPLv2."

Are In-Depth Articles Better Than Blog Postings? 157

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday July 09, 2007 @05:59PM from the think-before-you-speak dept.

athloi writes to tell us usability expert Jakob Nielsen is stressing the importance of well-thought-out articles as opposed to off-the-cuff blog postings. "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."

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