Archive for July, 2011

Nortel Patent Sale Gets DoJ Review

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

gavron writes "The US Department of Justice will review the Nortel patent sale to the entity formed by Apple, Microsoft, and others. This is the same sale that the Canadian authorities declined to review because the $4B+ deal was valued by them at less than $328M. According to a (paywalled) ...

What’s Needed For Freedom In the Cloud?

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

jrepin writes "Georg Greve from Free Software Foundation Europe has often been asked to explain what he considers necessary prerequisites for an open, free, sustainable approach toward what is often called 'The Cloud,' or also 'Software as a Service.' He gives 7 ingredients that are necessary for freedom in the ...

29 Universities Seek High-Speed Networks

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

An anonymous reader sends this quote from USA Today: "The University of Missouri announced Wednesday it is joining an effort by some of the country's top colleges to build 'ultra' high-speed data networks in their local communities. The project is known as Gig.U: The University Community Next Generation Innovation Project. The ...

Ask Slashdot: Dealing With the Business Software Alliance?

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

Kagetsuki writes "We've just gotten a letter from an attorney representing the Business Software Alliance stating someone (we're certain it's a disgruntled former employee) submitted information we are using illegally copied software. The thing is... we're not using illegally copied software. We have licenses for all the commercial software we ...

Aircraft Made From 3D Printing

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

countertrolling tips news of a project undertaken at the University of Southampton, where engineers designed and created a functioning UAV using unusual methods. Quoting: "It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer. No fasteners ...

Why Public Email Needs a Police Force

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

jfruhlinger writes "Those of us who had email addresses in the early days of the Internet age remember sending notes to webmaster email addresses to report malicious email behavior — and actually getting a response back. But today, a huge majority of mail comes from public services like Gmail or ...

Researchers Expose Tracking Service That Can’t Be Dodged

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

Worf Maugg writes with this excerpt from Wired: "Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have discovered that some of the net's most popular sites are using a tracking service that can't be evaded — even when users block cookies, turn off storage in Flash, or use browsers' 'incognito' functions. The service, called KISSmetrics, ...

Seigniorage Hack Could Resolve Debt Limit Crisis

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

UltraOne writes "With the US Senate voting to table the Boehner debt limit bill, the US is only a few days away from running out of cash to pay for all its obligations. Slate is reporting on a fascinating legal hack that could come in handy, described by blogger 'beowulf' ...

Movie Studios Want Automated BitTorrent Warnings

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

daria42 writes "The lawsuit filed by movie and TV studios against Australian Internet service provider iiNet appears to have taken a new twist, with the studios using early judgments in the case to attempt to push other ISPs towards what it has described as a 'standardized automated processing system' for ...

Anonymous Releases 400 MB of FBI Contractor Data

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous, as they have claimed they would, finally released 400 megabytes of files (NSFW language) allegedly stolen from ManTech, a cyber security firm contracted by the FBI. Anonymous stated, 'The FBI is outsourcing cybersecurity to the tune of nearly $100 million to a Washington-area managed services ...