Dr. Stavros - Slashdot User

Submission + - BT ordered to block links to Newzbin 2 website (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28, 2011 @08:49AM

An anonymous reader writes: A UK High Court judge has ruled that BT must block access to a website which provides links to pirated movies. Justice Arnold ruled that BT must use its blocking technology CleanFeed — which is currently used to prevent access to websites featuring child sexual abuse — to block Newzbin 2.

"Currently CleanFeed is dealing with a small, rural road in Scotland," ISPA council member James Blessing told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. "Trying to put Newzbin and other sites into the same blocking technology would be a bit like shutting down the M1. It is not designed to do that."

Digital rights organisation the Open Rights Group said the result could set a "dangerous" precedent. "Website blocking is pointless and dangerous. These judgements won't work to stop infringement or boost creative industries. And there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown. If the goal is boosting creators' ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand," said ORG campaigner Peter Bradwell.

Comment Let me just say that... (Score 2) 70

by Dr. Stavros on Tuesday April 12, 2011 @08:17AM (#35791634) Attached to: Grammy Awards Finally Giving Games Some Respect

This is a triumph.

South Park To Be Available Online Free and Legal 277

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 27, 2008 @02:41PM from the i-like-the-crazy-future dept.

garnetlion writes "South Park is coming online, free and legal. My brief research has not indicated if it will use DRM, require some silly Windows-only software or be otherwise substandard. According to a Wired blog article, 'Parker and Stone said they were inspired to start the site when they got 'really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.'" In this regard South Park joins fellow Comedy Central notable The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, whose archive was made freely available online late last year.

Comment Re:4 points, in which any two vertices are connect (Score 1) 302

by Dr. Stavros on Monday January 07, 2008 @06:10AM (#21940324) Attached to: Mathematician Theorizes a Crystal As Beautiful As A Diamond

Indeed, at room temperature and pressure, diamond is not thermodynamically stable with respect to graphite. So yes, under standard conditions, a diamond will turn into graphite, just incredibly slowly.

Submission + - Devs admit: WordPress 2.3 Secretly Spying on Users 1

Submitted by Marilyn Miller on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:47AM

Marilyn Miller writes: Popular open-source blogging engine WordPress has been upgraded to 2.3 — with some unexpected nasties in the mix. As of version 2.3, WordPress now periodically (every 12 hours) sends personally-identifying information (blog name & URI) to the mothership, along with an alarming amount of information including $_SERVER dumps, a list of installed plugins, and your current PHP/MySQL settings. Most unfortunately, it does not provide _any_ way of disabling this functionality, and WordPress does not have any privacy policy protecting this information. In a 100-message thread about the issue, lead developer Matt Mullenweg defends his actions and staunchly refuses to add an opt-in interface, telling users to "fork WordPress" if they aren't willing to put up with this behavior.

Feed How to Get Off a Government Watch List (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Monday April 16, 2007 @12:32AM

If you aren't a Senator who can call up the head of Homeland Security, or a high-powered nun whose boss who can ring up Karl Rove, working free from government watch lists will be a tedious and not-very transparent process.

Journal Journal: amerika uber alles

Journal by ssintercept on Sunday April 15, 2007 @03:00AM

The Bush administration asked Congress on Friday to allow monitoring of more foreigners in the United States during intelligence investigations. The plan is among several proposed changes, which have been in the works for more than a year, that go to the heart of a major U.S. surveillance law.
The administration says the changes are intended to help the government deal with national security threats better by updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to bring it into line with rap

Feed Smallest Organic Light-emitters Created (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @04:13PM

Scientists have produced microscopic "nanolamps" -- light-emitting nanofibers about the size of a virus or the tiniest of bacteria. The potential applications are in flexible electronic products, which are being made increasingly smaller.

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