CentOS, Linux and Operating Systems

Canadian Government Says DRM Circumvention Not Related To Copyright

An anonymous reader writes “Michael Geist has followed up a recent
release of internal government talking points on copyright with the full, internal clause-by-clause analysis of Bill C-32. A new copyright bill is
expected as soon as this week and the government document confirms there is no defense to violations of the digital lock rules, noting ‘a contravention of this prohibition is not an infringement of copyright and the defenses to
infringement of copyright are not defenses to these prohibitions.’ The government’s own words on the digital lock provisions confirm that they may be unconstitutional since they fall outside the boundaries of copyright.”
Basically, if you break DRM even without violating copyright in the process you can still be held liable, and from this any defense based on copyright law (fair use, etc.) is not valid in such cases. On the flipside, several legal experts think that makes those provisions of the law less likely to stand up in court.

More news in category News |

Social Media Bubble Pops Before It Fully Inflates

bdking writes “Groupon’s IPO plans are melting down. Facebook has pushed back its IPO to next September. And now Zynga reports a 95% reduction in sequential quarterly profits. So much for the social media IPO bubble.”

At least everyone is getting let down before a lot of people lose a lot of money this time around.

More news in category News |

Mozilla Foundation Releases Firefox 7

An anonymous reader writes “Mozilla has released Firefox 7.0. It hasn’t actually reduced my memory footprint at first glance, but let’s hope that the memory usage doesn’t keep growing like it used to. We’ll also see if it crashes less often than once every three days or so.”

The initial memory use of Firefox should remain similar to previous releases, but at least the heap shouldn’t grow infinitely as it does in previous releases.

More news in category News |

MRI Magnets Cause Nystagmus

Hitting the main page for the first time, tibit writes “In an interesting twist on ‘it’s so old it’s new again,’ Johns Hopkins researchers led by Dale Roberts found what must have been causing much confusion for doctors the world over: strong external magnetic fields can stimulate the semicircular canals, causing vertigo and nystagmus (pendular eye motion). It’s a textbook case of the Lorentz force in action: our angular rate gyros, the semicircular canals in the middle ear, filled with endolymph, have a ionic current flowing across. In a magnetic field, the current produces a force that pushes the lymph along the channel, causing stimulation of the cupula — a pressure sensor at the end of the channel. This is interpreted by the brain as rotation of the head in space, and causes a nystagmus that’s supposed to stabilize the image on the retina. Of course, the subject is laying down and not spinning in space, and the mismatch between inertial measurements coming from the ear and the real situation causes vertigo.”

More news in category News |

OnStar Reverses ToS Changes

First time accepted submitter BlackWind writes “It seems that even Government Motors is smart enough to figure out when they’ve gone too far. GM announced that the OnStar service will revert to their previous Terms of Service in the wake of the firestorm of criticism that their plan to sell GPS data created.”

More news in category News |

Microsoft Disables Kelihos Botnet

Trailrunner7 writes with an excerpt from an article in Threatpost: “Continuing its legal assault on botnet operators and the hosting companies that the criminals use for their activities, Microsoft has announced new actions against a group of people it contends are responsible for the operation of the Kelihos botnet. The company has also helped to take down the botnet itself and says that Kelihos’s operators were using it not only to send out spam and steal personal information but also for some more nefarious purposes.”

More news in category News |

Conflict Between Occupy Wall Street Protestors and NYPD Escalating

phx_zs writes “Today marks the tenth consecutive day that thousands of protesters have flooded the streets of Manhattan, specifically the financial district. … Sunday marked a change of events as high-ranking NYPD officers exhibited brutal, unprovoked aggression on the peaceful group, reportedly arresting at least 80 people. Many photos and videos have surfaced of NYPD officers slamming protesters on the ground or into parked cars, and in one well-covered incident a NYPD officer (with pending police brutality charges from 2004) maced innocent female protesters point blank for no apparent reason. Many eyewitnesses and several news articles report that the NYPD specifically targeted photographers and media teams streaming the event live on the internet.”

Do any Slashdotters have eyewitness reports to share? There seems to be a lot of misinformation originating from all parties involved making it difficult to know how large the protest actually is at this point and whether or not the police are being quite as universally violent as the protestors imply.

More news in category News |

Drunken Parrot Season Starts in Australia

bazzalunatic writes “Each wet season in northern Australia dozens of colorful lorikeets have to be rescued because they appear drunk, fall out of trees and even get a hangover-like sickness. No one knows quite what’s going on, but the best explanation is they get smashed from fermented fruit. From the story: ‘Experts say they are not sure if the lorikeets are actually drunk, but they do have tell-tale symptoms. “They exhibit odd behavior like falling over or difficulty flying [and] they keep running into things,” says Darwin vet Dr Stephen Cutter from The Ark Animal Hospital.’”

More news in category News |

Apple Says Samsung 3G Patents Violate RAND Requirements

judgecorp writes “The patent dispute between Samsung and Apple has finally boiled down to clear understandable terms. Samsung says Apple has not been paying it royalties for use of patented 3G technology. Apple says Samsung smuggled that technology into the 3G standards, disclosing its IP demands later. The Dutch court will rule on 14 October.”

The issue at hand now seems to be whether Apple already has a license to the patents under the 3G “Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” requirements for patented technology used in the standard. If Samsung really believes Apple needs a separate license, when can we expect them to sue everyone else?

More news in category News |

Facebook Fixes Post Log-Out Cookie Behavior

An anonymous reader writes “Over the weekend, self-proclaimed hacker Nik Cubrilovic accused Facebook of tracking its users even if they log out of the social network. The company responded by denying the claims and offering an explanation as to why its cookies behave the way they do. Now, Cubrilovic says Facebook has made changes to the logout process, and detailed what each cookie is responsible for.”

More news in category News |