Kaizenlog

17 10 2007

[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-10-17

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Slashdot Daily Newsletter

In this issue:
* Racketeering Trial of MS and Best Buy Can Proceed
* Led Zeppelin Agrees To Digital Distribution
* Inside Comcast’s Surveillance Policies
* Why ISS Computers Failed
* Jammie Appeals, Citing “Excessive” Damages
* SCO Layoffs Begin
* EDGE Can Out-Perform 3G; Here’s Why
* Ubuntu On Dell After Four Months
* Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics
* iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks
* OS X Leopard Ships On October 26th
* YouTube Filtering Is On-Line
* Phone Companies Refuse to Give Congress Data on Spy Program
* Storm Worm Botnet Partitions May Be Up For Sale
* Forty Years of LOGO
* What if Google Had to Design For Google?
* Vista Runs Out of Memory While Copying Files
* Amazon EC2 Open To All
* Attacking Criminal Networks On the Internet
* “All Quiet Alert” Issued For the Sun
* Format Standards Committee “Grinds To a Halt”
* US House Votes To Renew Internet Tax Ban
* RIAA Sues Usenet.com
* OSI Approves Microsoft Ms-PL and Ms-RL

+—————————–—————————————+
| Racketeering Trial of MS and Best Buy Can Proceed |
| from the knowing-guys-who-know-guys dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Monday October 15, @20:16 (The Courts) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/15/2313225 |
+—————————–—————————————+

[0]mcgrew (sm62704) writes with news that the Supreme Court has rejected
an appeal by Microsoft and a unit of Best Buy to dismiss a lawsuit
alleging [1]violation of racketeering laws. This means the class-action
complaint can go to trial. The case was filed in civil court and the
companies, with the US Chamber of Commerce behind them, wanted the
Supreme Court to put the brakes on the expanding use of RICO laws in
civil filings. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was
designed to fight organized crime, but in recent years more than 100
times as many civil as federal RICO cases have been filed.

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/15/2313225

Links:
0. http://www.mcgrew.info/
1. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hhJ33u7bR7BgiKbZId2dgANfjp7AD8S9O7C80

[0]cphilo points out a NYTimes article on [1]Led Zeppelin’s decision to
sell its music online. The group is one of the last superstar acts to
hold out against the digital tide. There was a months-long,
trans-Atlantic bidding war for the rights to license the band’s catalog.
In the US, the only digital holdouts that outsell Led Zeppelin are the
Beatles and Garth Brooks.

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/15/2350211

Links:
0. mailto:cphilo [Email address: cphilo #AT# kc.rr.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/arts/music/15musi.html?th&emc=th

[0]Monk writes “The Federation of American Scientists has obtained a
recently disclosed [1]Comcast Handbook for Law Enforcement which details
its policies for divulging its customers’ personal information. (Here’s
[2]the handbook itself in PDF form.) All of Comcast’s policies seem to
follow the letter of the law, and seem to weigh customer privacy with law
enforcement’s requests. This is in apparent contrast to AT&T and a number
of other telecommunication companies, which have been only too happy to
give over subscriber records. According to the handbook, Comcast keeps
logs for up to 180 days on IP address allocation, and they do not keep
all of your e-mails forever (45 days at most). VoIP phone records are
stored for 2 years, and cable records can only be retrieved upon a court
order. The document even details how much it costs law enforcement to get
access to personal data (data for child exploitation cases is free of
charge).”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/011219

Links:
0. http://www.vortah.net/
1. http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2007/10/implementing_domestic_intellig.html
2. http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/docs/handbook.pdf

[0]Geoffrey.landis writes “It was only a small news item four months ago:
all three of the Russian computers that control the International Space
Station failed shortly after the Space Shuttle brought up a new solar
array. But [1]why did they fail? James Oberg, writing in IEEE Spectrum,
details the detective work that led to a diagnosis.” The article has good
insights into the role the ISS plays as a laboratory for US-Russian
technology cooperation — something that is likely to be crucial in any
manned Mars mission.

Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/0142251

Links:
0. http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis
1. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/5598

+—————————–—————————————+
| Jammie Appeals, Citing “Excessive” Damages |
| from the punative-by-any-other-name dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 16, @03:22 (The Courts) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/0034235 |
+—————————–—————————————+

Peerless writes “Capitol v. Thomas defendant Jammie Thomas [0]has
officially appealed the RIAA’s $222,000 [1]copyright infringement award.
She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA’s actual damages, arguing
that the jury’s award was ‘unconstitutionally excessive’: ‘Thomas would
like to see the record companies forced to prove their actual damages due
to downloading, a figure that Sony-BMG litigation head Jennifer Pariser
testified that her company “had not stopped to calculate.” In her motion,
Thomas argues that the labels are contending that their actual damages
are in the neighborhood of $20. Barring a new trial over the issue of
damages, Thomas would like to see the reward knocked down three
significant digits — from $222,000 to $151.20.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/0034235

Links:
0. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071015-appeal-in-riaa-case-to-focus-on-unconstitutionally-excessive-punishment.html
1. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/04/2232211&tid=123

StevisF sends us to the Salt Lake Tribune for this news: “SCO Group Inc.
says it is planning to [0]lay off 16 of its 123 employees and has asked a
federal bankruptcy court to keep their identities secret because it fears
they could be harassed.”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/221217

Links:
0. http://www.sltrib.com/technology/ci_7189028

+—————————–—————————————+
| EDGE Can Out-Perform 3G; Here’s Why |
| from the bandwidth-is-the-new-mhz dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 16, @05:44 (Communications) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/0244228 |
+—————————–—————————————+

goombah99 writes “Blackfriars’s communications has an interesting
discourse on why the [0]practical difference between 3G and EDGE
cellphone data networks is less than it appears to be based on a naive
bandwidth metric. Their argument is that the user experience of TCP/HTML
is much more impacted by latency, error rates, and processor speed than
by bandwidth — and Edge had the edge on all three. Additionally, EDGE may
consume considerably less power.”

Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/0244228

Links:
0. http://www.blackfriarsinc.com/blog/2007/10/why-edge-versus-3g-less-than-you-think

[0]mrcgran sends us to LXer for an interview with John Hull, a manager of
the Linux Engineering team at Dell, where he reports on [1]how the Ubuntu
machines have been working out for them so far. “Embracing Ubuntu Linux
on our desktops and laptops seems to have really raised Dell’s visibility
within the Linux community. We have been supporting, testing, developing
for, and selling Linux for 8+ years here at Dell, but before the Ubuntu
announcement, a lot of people didn’t know that we did any of that…
Previous to our Ubuntu product announcement… we would have a
conversations with vendors about pushing Linux support for their
hardware, but without a Linux product offering from Dell for that
hardware, it was very difficult to convince them to release Linux
drivers. That has certainly changed now… The original sales estimates
for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000
systems annually. The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers
are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with
Ubuntu, but it certainly won’t overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon.”

Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/028233

Links:
0. http://mgran.blogspot.com/
1. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/91429/index.html

+—————————–—————————————+
| Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics |
| from the wise-man-in-multiple-ways dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 16, @08:44 (The Almighty Buck) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/1230201 |
+—————————–—————————————+

doom writes “You’ve probably already heard that the Nobel Prize for
Economics was given to three gents who were working on [0]advances in
mechanism design theory. What you may not have heard is what one of those
recipients was using that theory to study: ‘One recent subject of
Professor Maskin’s wide-ranging research has been on the value of
software patents. He determined that software was a market where
innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on
the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths
to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall
that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.’ Here’s one
of Maskin’s papers on the subject: [1]Sequential Innovation, Patents,
limitation (pdf).

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1230201

Links:
0. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/business/16nobel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print
1. http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf

+—————————–—————————————+
| iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks |
| from the that’s-called-competition dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 16, @09:22 (Music) |
| http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/1240224 |
+—————————–—————————————+

[0]jawtheshark writes “Apple has made the decision to [1]revise the
pricing of Plus songs on the iTunes Music store. Whereas previously the
DRM-less tracks were more expensive than the ‘normal’ option (at $1.29
vs. $0.99), DRM-less tracks bought via ITMS will now be priced on the
same level as DRM’d tracks. ‘Apple plans to expand iTunes Plus to include
certain indie music labels starting Wednesday, October 17 (or sometime
this week, at least) … This expansion won’t include all independent
music labels just yet, although we’re optimistic that more will be
included in the future. While we have no information on whether the
iTunes Plus songs are selling well, we assume that the decision to drop
the price is a response to the Amazon MP3 store. Amazon sells individual
tracks for between 89 and 99 apiece, all without any DRM restrictions.
With that in mind, it’s kind of hard for Apple to compete at $1.29.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1240224

Links:
0. mailto:slashdot@ [Email address: slashdot #AT# - replace #AT# with @ ]@@jawtheshark…com
1. http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/10/15/itunes-plus-drm-free-tracks-expanding-dropping-to-99-cents

David in AZ writes “According to the Apple website, Mac OS X [0]Leopard
will start shipping on October 26! From their blurb: ‘Packed with more
than 300 new features, Mac OS X Leopard goes on sale Friday, October 26,
at 6:00 p.m. at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers,
Apple announced today. And, beginning today, customers can place
pre-orders on Apple’s online store. “Leopard, the sixth major release of
Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released,” said Steve Jobs,
Apple’s CEO. “And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all
the new innovative features, for just $129.”"

Discuss this story at:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1358210

Links:
0. http://www.apple.com/macosx/?sr=hotnews

ghostcorps writes “After months of promises to IP-holders, the
long-awaited [0]filters system for YouTube has gone online. The new
system will make it easier, the company claims, for [1]copyrighted clips
to be removed. ‘YouTube now needs the cooperation of copyright owners for
its filtering system to work, because the technology requires copyright
holders to provide copies of the video they want to protect so YouTube
can compare those digital files to material being uploaded to its
website. This means that movie and TV studios will have to provide
decades of copyright material if they don’t want it to appear on YouTube,
or spend even more time scanning the site for violations.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1340201

Links:
0. http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/No-more-copyrighted-clips-on-YouTube/2007/10/16/1192300732429.html
1. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/youtubes-video-identification.html

+—————————–—————————————+
| Phone Companies Refuse to Give Congress Data on Spy Program |
| from the would-be-unamerican dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 16, @11:22 (Privacy) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/1313233 |
+—————————–—————————————+

JohNNy1+4 writes “Several US telephone communications firms are
[0]refusing to answer the questions of a congressional panel about spying
on American citizens. The panel is making an inquiry into Bush
administration tactics in the years since 2001, but has been stymied by
the administration’s claim that releasing that information would be
illegal. As a result Verizon, AT&T, and Qwest have declined to answer the
panel’s queries. ‘”Our company essentially finds itself caught in the
middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive
relating to government surveillance activities,” AT&T Inc. General
Counsel Wayne Watts said in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce
Committee that was released today by the panel.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1313233

Links:
0. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aayJQwEy8Xw4&refer=politics

+—————————–—————————————+
| Storm Worm Botnet Partitions May Be Up For Sale |
| from the if-only-they’d-use-their-powers-for-good dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 16, @12:00 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/155209 |
+—————————–—————————————+

Bowling for cents writes “There is evidence that the massive [0]Storm
Worm botnet is being broken up into smaller networks, and a ZDNet post
thinks that’s a surefire sign that the CPU power is up for sale to
spammers and denial-of-service attackers. The latest variants of Storm
are now using a 40-byte key to encrypt their Overnet/eDonkey peer-to-peer
traffic, meaning that each node will only be able to communicate with
nodes that use the same key. This effectively allows the Storm author to
segment the Storm botnet into smaller networks. This could be a precursor
to selling Storm to other spammers, as an end-to-end spam botnet system,
complete with fast-flux DNS and hosting capabilities.”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/155209

Links:
0. http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=592

SoyChemist writes “Forty years ago, LOGO, a derivative of LISP, was born.
Several years later, it [0]became the cornerstone of educational software
that simultaneously taught geometry and how to think like a coder. With a
plethora of high-end educational software packages to choose from, each
with flashy multimedia and trademarked characters, parents and teachers
may find the humble turtle a bit outdated. Thankfully, several [1]LOGO
programs are available for free through a variety of websites, but
perhaps 3D programming environments like [2]Alice will be the wave of the
future.”

Discuss this story at:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1512239

Links:
0. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/forward-40-wher.html
1. http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/products/software.html
2. http://www.alice.org/

An anonymous reader writes “Web developers increasingly grow weary of
having to put so much effort into designing their sites according to the
whims of the Google search engine. When the most important thing is
‘getting indexed’ it is increasingly difficult for web site designers to
offer the simple, uncluttered user experience they’d like to. Reminiscent
of the famed [0]what if Microsoft designed the iPod box here is a
humorous look at what would happen to that famed, clean, uncluttered look
[1]if Google had to design for the Google Search Engine.”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/135209

Links:
0. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298
1. http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html

ta bu shi da yu writes “It appears that, incredibly, Vista can [0]run out
of memory while copying files. ZDNet is reporting that not only does it
run out of memory after copying 16,400+ files, but that ‘often there is
little indication that file copy operations haven’t completed correctly.’
Apparently a fix was scheduled for SP1 but didn’t make it; there is a
[1]hotfix that you must request.”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1658230

Links:
0. http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=829
1. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942435/en-us

An anonymous reader writes “Amazon just announced that the beta program
for their EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) service is [0]now open to all
developers. They have also added new instance types. It appears that you
can now get the equivalent of an 8-core machine. Is cloud computing for
the masses finally here?”

Discuss this story at:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1719242

Links:
0. http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=241

[0]Hugh Pickens writes “Computer Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University
are developing techniques to [1]analyze and disrupt black markets on the
internet, where criminals sell viruses, stolen data, and attack services
estimated to total more than $37 million for the seven-month period they
studied. To stem the flow of stolen credit cards and identity data,
researchers have proposed two technical approaches to reducing the number
of successful market transactions. One approach to disrupting the network
is a slander attack where an attacker eliminates the verified status of a
buyer or seller through false defamation. Another approach undercuts the
cyber-crooks’ network by creating a deceptive sales environment. ‘Just
like you need to verify that individuals are honest on E-bay, online
criminals need to verify that they are dealing with “honest” criminals,’
says Jason Franklin, one of the researchers.”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/176255

Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/October/oct15_internetblackmarkets.shtml

[0]radioweather writes “The phrase sounds like an oxymoron, and maybe it
is, but the sun is [1] extremely quiet right now, so much in fact that
the [2] Solar Influences Data Center in Belgium issued an unusual ‘[3]All
quiet alert’ on October 5th. Since then the sunspot number has remained
at zero — solar cycle 24 has not yet started. There are signs that the
sun’s activity is slowing. The [4] solar wind has been decreasing in
speed, and this is yet another indicator of a slowing in the sun’s
magnetic dynamo. There is talk of an extended solar minimum occurring.
There are a number of theories and a couple of dozen predictions about
the intensity solar cycle 24 which has yet to start. One paper by [5]
Penn & Livingstonin in 2006 concludes: ‘If [trends] continue to decrease
at the current rate then the number of sunspots in the next solar cycle
(cycle 24) would be reduced by roughly half, and there would be very few
sunspots visible on the disk during cycle 25.’ We’ll know more in about
six months what the sun decides to do for cycle 24.”

Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1735258

Links:
0. http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/
1. http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
2. http://sidc.oma.be/index.php3
3. http://sidc.oma.be/products/quieta/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind
5. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/penn_apjl-649-l45-48_2006.pdf

[0]Andy Updegrove writes “Microsoft’s OOXML did not get enough votes to
be approved the first time around in ISO/IEC — notwithstanding the fact
that many countries joined the Document Format and Languages committee in
the months before voting closed, almost all of them voting to approve
OOXML. Unfortunately, many of these countries also traded up to ‘P’ level
membership at the last minute to gain more influence. Now [1]the
collateral damage is setting in. At least 50% of P members must vote (up,
down, or abstain) on every standard at each ballot — and none of the new
members are bothering to vote, despite repeated pleas from the committee
chair. Not a single ballot has passed since the OOXML vote closed. In the
chairman’s words, the committee has ‘ground to a halt.’ Sad to say,
there’s no end in sight for this (formerly) very busy and influential
standards committee.”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/207205

Links:
0. http://www.gesmer.com/attorneys/updegrove.php
1. http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20071016092352827

+—————————–—————————————+
| US House Votes To Renew Internet Tax Ban |
| from the partisan-as-ever dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 16, @17:21 (The Almighty Buc|
| http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/2025250 |
+—————————–—————————————+

Talen317 writes with news that the US House of Representatives has voted
overwhelmingly to [0]renew the ban on taxing Internet access — but only
for 4 years, not permanently. A majority of House members (238) co-signed
the bill to make the moratorium permanent. Republicans blamed the House
leadership for refusing to bring this latter bill to a vote, charging
that the Democrats wanted to leave the door open for future taxation. Not
so, countered Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), one of the sponsors of the 4-year
bill. The Senate must act on the moratorium before Nov. 1 if taxation is
to be avoided, and Watt claimed that a permanent ban would be dead on
arrival in the Senate.

Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/2025250

Links:
0. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hCUqSs-yXjCses53YM8D_cIHMQsgD8SAFR700

Several readers pointed us to Torrentfreak’s coverage of the RIAA’s
latest move: the major record labels have launched a [0]copyright
infringement lawsuit against Usenet.com. The complaint, filed in the
federal District Court in New York, accuses Usenet.com of providing
access to millions of copyright-infringing files and slams it for touting
its service as a “haven for those seeking pirated content.” Usenet.com
has been refusing the labels’ requests to block access to alleged
“copyright infringing groups.”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1918204

Links:
0. http://torrentfreak.com/the-riaa-attacks-usenet-071016/

[0]Russ Nelson writes “In a board meeting held October 10th and
[1]announced today, the Open Source Initiative approved two of
Microsoft’s software licenses: the [2]Microsoft Reciprocal License and
the [3]Microsoft Public License. These licenses are refreshingly short
and clean, compared to, say, the GPLv3 and the Sun CDDL. They share a
patent peace clause, a no-trademark-license clause, and they differ only
in the essential clause of reciprocation. Of course, Microsoft is not
widely trusted in the Open Source world, and their motives have been
called into question during the approval discussions. How can they be
attacking Open Source projects on one hand, and seeking not only to use
open source methods, but even to use the OSI Approved Open Source
trademark? Nobody knows for sure except Microsoft. But if you are
confident that Open Source is the best way to develop software (as we at
the Open Source Initiative are), then you can see why Microsoft would
both attack Open Source and seek to use it. It is both their enemy and
their salvation.”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/16/1812248

Links:
0. mailto:nelson [Email address: nelson #AT# crynwr.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://opensource.org/node/207
2. http://opensource.org/licenses/ms-rl.html
3. http://opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html

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[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-10-17

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