schabot - Slashdot User

Comment Law not sufficient (Score 5, Insightful) 247

by schabot on Thursday July 12, 2007 @08:01AM (#19836315) Attached to: Bogus Company Obtains Nuclear License

The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people.

When are people going to get this. The laws existing before (insert grand public hysteria event here) were sufficient. There is a difference between needing to increase the strength of the laws, thereby weakening civil liberties, and properly and thoroughly enforcing the laws which are already in place.

Supreme Court Sides With Microsoft Over AT&T 122

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday April 30, 2007 @04:41PM from the fluent-in-loopholeanese dept.

The Supreme Court today sided with Microsoft in another important patent case filed by AT&T. The case centered around whether selling Windows overseas infringed on AT&T's patents that are in Windows. Microsoft argued [PDF] that the copies being sold in Asia were "...not technically supplied from the United States because overseas manufacturers of its computers made copies of the software from a master disk and installed those copies into the operating system. Microsoft said it could not be considered a supplier since the copies, not the original software, were in the computers built abroad." Now, while I support the weakening of software patents in general, by this logic, would that mean that MS's patents don't apply to those that use pirated copies of Windows?

Google Shareholder Proposal to Resist Censorship 100

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 30, 2007 @09:47AM from the vote-if-you-got-em dept.

buxton2k writes "Slashdot has had plenty of stories about technology companies like Google kowtowing to repressive political regimes such as China's. I'm an (extremely) small shareholder in Google, and I looked at their proxy statement today. Most of the time, shareholders' meetings don't deal with anything other than rubber-stamping the board of directors, but Google's upcoming meeting has a interesting shareholder proposal dealing with free speech and censorship to be voted on at the May 10 meeting."

Iran to Filter 'Immoral' Mobile Messages 273

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 30, 2007 @08:32AM from the go-go-govt dept.

jb.cancer noted an article running on eweek about plans in Iran to censor phone messages sent within the country. At least it's not quite that bad here yet. But give it a few years!

Court Rules Playlist Customization Is Not Interactive 54

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 30, 2007 @07:08AM from the licensing-makes-so-much-sense dept.

prostoalex writes "Is music played via customized playlist delivered interactively (i.e., via user participation) or non-interactive (i.e., decisions are made on the server side)? The question does seem metaphysical, but it took Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Yahoo! six years to figure it out via a protracted legal battle. User-driven playlists are bucketed with on-demand music services, while server-driven playlists are equaled to broadcasts, thereby causing different licensing mechanisms to take place. Yahoo! inherited the legal wrangle when it purchased a music startup Launch, which built a music recommendation feature. The court decision determined that recommendation algorithms that rely on usage data to build playlists server-side are still eligible for broadcast license, thereby substantially lowering the costs of operating a music recommendation site."

Preparing for the Worst in IT 172

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 14, 2007 @02:46PM from the in-a-post-blah-blah-blah dept.

mplex writes "How vulnerable is the internet to terrorist attack? Is it robust enough to handle an outage on a massive scale? Should the commercial infrastructure that powers the internet be kept secret? These are the sorts of questions raised by Mark Gibbs in his latest column in Network World. 'There is an alternate route available for nearly all services through Las Vegas or Northern California serving all facilities-based carriers in Los Angeles -- all interconnected at numerous L.A. and L.A.-area fiber-optic terminals supporting both metro and long-distance cable.' Given that the internet thrives on open networks, it's hard to imagine keeping them a secret. At best, we must be prepared to deal with the worst."

Privacy Threat in New RFID Travel Cards? 265

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday April 19, 2006 @01:02PM from the new-and-improved-tin-foil-wallets dept.

DemolitionX9 writes to tell us ZDNet has an interesting article rehashing the problems with privacy in future RFID-equipped travel documents and ID. The piece focuses on a recent speech given by Jim Williams, director of the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program. From the article: "Many of the privacy worries center on whether RFID tags--typically minuscule chips with an antenna a few inches long that can transmit a unique ID number--can be read from afar. If the range is a few inches, the privacy concerns are reduced. But at ranges of 30 feet, the tags could theoretically be read by hidden sensors alongside the road, in the mall or in the hands of criminals hoping to identify someone on the street by his or her ID number."

Slashdot Top Deals