Slashdot Mirror
Domain: apcmag.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to apcmag.com.
Stories · 61
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Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card
krispy78 writes "If you're looking forward to the day your laptop has WiMax built in and can access wireless broadband as easily as WiFi, you're not alone. But the 802.16e mobile WiMax standard is yet to be finalized on paper, and we'll be lucky to see it the first products this side of 2007. In Australia, a wireless PCMCIA card has been released that comes close to the "WiMax ideal". It appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card (no heinous login clients to run) but can pick up wide-area wireless broadband signals. The network that runs the cards ("Navini Ripwave") is apparently being rolled out in USA and other countries too." -
Kazaa Outed Over 'Trust Fund' for Red Cross
danwarne writes "In one of the most bizarre twists in the court action against Kazaa yet, documents have been tendered in Australian Federal Court court that showed that Kazaa claimed to have set up a trust fund for donations to the Red Cross (at about the time the tsunami hit), but the Red Cross has confirmed in writing it has never heard from them about it. The music industry alleged in court that it was a tactic by Kazaa parent company Sharman Networks to park money out of the reach of the music industry if it loses the case and is left with a huge damages bill. This in the same week that it came out in court that top Sharman/BDE execs offloaded their multi-million dollar homes. Sounds like Kazaa's lawyers might be telling them to prepare for the worst..." -
Court Docs Reveal Kazaa Logging User Downloads
Dan Warne writes "The most explosive documents in the ongoing Kazaa court case have emerged today, including logs of discussions between parent company Sharman and the Estonian developer of the Kazaa Media Desktop. They include extraordinary admissions like: "Reporting will make Kazaa look like spyware, as soon as it becomes evident we record downloads and playbacks, users will flee to competitive networks" and then "One can argue that we have knowledge of copyrighted material being downloaded in our network and have to install filters. If we are reporting [gold] files, then technically we could do the same for every file." Finally, "RIAA [could] collect the IP addresses for everyone who has searched for or downloaded that file." Despite the Kazaa developer's concerns over these issues, Kazaa went ahead with the logging." (More below.)Warne continues "APC Magazine journalist Garth Montgomery, who has covered every day of the trial in the Australian Federal Court, says: "In a nutshell, this has got to rate as the most explosive document revealed. It makes it damn near impossible to maintain the separation theory that Sharman and Altnet rely on in terms of business independence and technical infrastructure. The control they exercise over the system is complete." Montgomery has also scanned in all the documents and made them available in PDF format, including the confidential Kazaa purchase contract and technical specifications for the Kazaa Media Desktop."
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Court Docs Reveal Kazaa Logging User Downloads
Dan Warne writes "The most explosive documents in the ongoing Kazaa court case have emerged today, including logs of discussions between parent company Sharman and the Estonian developer of the Kazaa Media Desktop. They include extraordinary admissions like: "Reporting will make Kazaa look like spyware, as soon as it becomes evident we record downloads and playbacks, users will flee to competitive networks" and then "One can argue that we have knowledge of copyrighted material being downloaded in our network and have to install filters. If we are reporting [gold] files, then technically we could do the same for every file." Finally, "RIAA [could] collect the IP addresses for everyone who has searched for or downloaded that file." Despite the Kazaa developer's concerns over these issues, Kazaa went ahead with the logging." (More below.)Warne continues "APC Magazine journalist Garth Montgomery, who has covered every day of the trial in the Australian Federal Court, says: "In a nutshell, this has got to rate as the most explosive document revealed. It makes it damn near impossible to maintain the separation theory that Sharman and Altnet rely on in terms of business independence and technical infrastructure. The control they exercise over the system is complete." Montgomery has also scanned in all the documents and made them available in PDF format, including the confidential Kazaa purchase contract and technical specifications for the Kazaa Media Desktop."
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Secret Kazaa Documents Revealed in Court
Dan Warne writes "A fascinating range of Kazaa's internal documents were revealed in Federal Court in the ongoing court case against the Australian-based company today. One extraordinary philosophical manifesto by the company's chief technical officer showed that he was aware that Kazaa's activities were a huge legal risk. He also feared being 'out-innovated' by other P2P programs that didn't come bundled with adware. "if consumers can connect to FT (as well as Gnutella 2, eDonkey and Bittorrent) and it has no ads or adware then it would seem a good choice," Philip Morle says in the his manifesto. The documents are full of all sorts of other admissions-that-you'd-be-crazy-to-put-on-paper like how Kazaa employees "hate" installing the Kazaa Media Desktop on their machines because all the bundled adware slows your machine down and can hijack your web browser." -
Kazaa Betamax Defense, Reports From The Courtroom
The Hobo writes "CBC is reporting that Kazaa, mentioned in a previous Slashdot story has mounted the 'Betamax defence.' The prosecution claims Sharman Networks does not enforce their agreement which stipulates users cannot share copyrighted material." Also following the case, Dan Warne writes "Australia's APC magazine is publishing a daily blog from the Kazaa trial proceedings in Sydney's Federal Court. It has some details not reported elsewhere, like the music industry piracy investigation chief apparently losing a $100 bet on the first day of the trial. More seriously, blogging journalist Garth Montgomery says the court heard evidence that Kazaa's software already had the ability to block copyrighted tracks built in, despite Sharman's protestations to the contrary." -
Gimp and Red Hat Linux win awards
Con Zymaris wrote in to tell us that APC (Australian Personal Computer Magazine) has Given some awards to a few familiar faces: Productivity Sofware of 1998 to The Gimp and their Just Plain Cool Award 1998 to Red Hat Linux 5.1 -
Red Hat recieves award from Australian magazine
Red Hat Software has won another award. This time RedHat Linux 5.1 receives the Editor's Choice award from the Australian Computer Magazine. Check out the press release for further details. -
Comparison of Linux Distributions
Politas writes "Australian Personal Computer Magazine has run a comparison of linux distribs as one of their reviews this month. " They rank Red Hat as Editors Choice (no surprise) and call Debian the "Most Promising". Lots of stuff over there, but the best part is a clear discussion fo what a distribution is. This link is one for the FAQ files. -
Comparison of Linux Distributions
Politas writes "Australian Personal Computer Magazine has run a comparison of linux distribs as one of their reviews this month. " They rank Red Hat as Editors Choice (no surprise) and call Debian the "Most Promising". Lots of stuff over there, but the best part is a clear discussion fo what a distribution is. This link is one for the FAQ files. -
Window Managers and More
Frank Ranner writes "A good writeup on free desktop environments can be found at this link with a brief history of X and XFree and an overview of 3 Window Managers and 3 Desktop Environments. "