Slashdot Mirror

Phurge writes "According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, the Australia government has decided to take the controversial step of having internet service providers filter web content at the request of parents, in a crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators. 'The more efficient compulsory filtering of internet service providers (ISPs) was proposed in March last year by the then Labor leader, Kim Beazley. At the time, the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, and ISPs criticised his idea as expensive. Three months later Senator Coonan announced the Government's Net Alert policy, which promised free filtering software for every home that wanted it. She also announced an ISP filtering trial to be conducted in Tasmania. That trial was scrapped. Today Mr Howard will hail the ISP filtering measure as a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. Parents will be able to request the ISP filter option when they sign up with an ISP. It will be compulsory to provide it. The measures will come into effect by the end of this month.'"

syousef writes "An eBay sale is a sale says an Australian New South Wales State Judge in a case where a man tried to reneg on the Ebay sale of a 1946 World War II Wirraway aircraft. The seller tried to weasel out of the deal because he'd received a separate offer $100,000 greater than the Ebay sale price. The buyer who had bid the reserve price of $150,000 at the last minute took him to court. 'It follows that, in my view, a binding contract was formed between the plaintiff and the defendant and that it should be specifically enforced,' Justice Rein said in his decision." I haven't found anything like this in previous discussions; have there been similar decisions like this handed down in the US, Canada, or Europe?

Recently a study of broadband penetration rates around the world was in the news, because the US has fallen to 24th place worldwide, at 53%. Now comes word that the Australian Prime Minister has announced a $1.68 billion (US) plan to move Australia to 99% penetration within two years. If they accomplish this goal they will be the most-wired nation (South Korea currently occupies the top spot with 90%). The Prime Minister's plan was attacked by his political opponents because it would create a two-tier system with the country's vast (and almost empty) interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.

stjobe writes with the news that a group of US and Australian scientists successfully tested a supersonic scramjet engine in the Australian Outback on Friday. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a rocket carrying the engine reached mach 10, and climbed to an altitude of 330 miles before the apparatus re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. "Australia's Defense Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) said it was believed to be the first time a scramjet had been ignited within the Earth's atmosphere ... Scramjets are supersonic combustion engines that use oxygen from the atmosphere for fuel, making them lighter and faster than fuel carrying rockets. Scientists hope that one day a scramjet aircraft fired into space could cut traveling time from Sydney to London to as little as two hours."

Mister Inbetween writes "Google is rolling out a technology designed to overcome the major drawback faced by all web-based applications: the fact that they don't work without an internet connection. Google Gears is an open source technology for creating offline web applications that is being launched today at Google's annual Developer Day gatherings around the world."

DeathElk writes "New South Wales teachers are attempting to have a website based in the United States closed down due to "defamatory" content. The site in question encourages students to rate teachers at their school, which obviously results in some colorful content. Now the story has hit the media, with some insightful quotes such as "The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the Federal Government should block access to 'scurrilous American websites'."

cute-boy writes "This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on research done at The University of NSW suggests the use of Microsoft PowerPoint (and similar products) in lectures and meetings actually makes it harder to absorb facts, rather than being a reinforcement of key points."

Via Game|Life, an article in the Syndey Morning Herald discusses a new study indicating most children are unaffected by videogame violence. Though the study did indicate that children already predisposed to violence or neurotic behavior were over-stimulated by these games, most children showed no difference in behavior as a result of game play. "The study monitored the behavior of children from 10 schools in eastern and southern metropolitan Melbourne before and after playing the violent video game Quake II for 20 minutes, Swinburne's Professor Grant Devilly said. Prof Devilly said only children predisposed to aggression and more reactive to their environments changed their behavior after playing and of those only some showed more aggression."

stpk4 wrote to mention some articles discussing the launch of the PlayStation 3 in Europe; London saw Phil Harrison handing out HD sets, while Microsoft's party barge and lackluster crowds marked the Parisian launch. The Australian launch went well but also saw disappointing crowds, with media, security, and store officials outnumbering the customers for much of the event. Eurogamer has a comprehensive list of launch titles, for those of you in the new territories thinking of picking up a console.

driptray writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an Australian mining industry group has used copyright laws to close a website that parodied a coal industry ad campaign. A group known as Rising Tide created the website using the slogan "Rising sea levels: brought to you by mining" in response to the mining industry's slogan of "Life: brought to you by mining". The mining industry claimed that the "content and layout" of the parody site infringed copyright, but when Rising Tide removed the copyrighted photos and changed the layout, the mining industry still lodged a complaint. Is this a misuse of copyright law in order to stifle dissent?"

Reverse Gear writes "Many of the inhabitants of a lonely village in north western China seems to have distinctive western features. An old theory from the 50s suggests that a Roman legion lost in what is now Iran in the year 53BC lost their commanding officer. They traveled east, so the legend goes, working as mercenaries until they were caught by the Chinese 17 years later. The Chinese described them as using a 'fish-scale formation', which could be a reference to the well-known Roman phalanx technique called the 'tortoise'. The remainder of the legion, it is suggested, may have intermarried with the villagers in Liqian. Scientists are now trying to verify the fascinating theory by testing the DNA of the inhabitants of the Chinese village."

Regular Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton wrote in with a story about the DMCA. He starts "On January 16, a man named Guntram Graef who invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to ask YouTube to remove a video of giant penises attacking his wife's avatar/character in the virtual community "Second Life", retracted the claim and stated that he now believes the video was not a copyright violation. (He had sent similar notices to BoingBoing and the Sydney Morning Herald just for posting screen shots of the video.) His statements in a C-Net interview suggest that he didn't mean to alienate the anti-censorship community and was probably angry over what he saw as a sexually explicit attack on his wife. But the event sparked renewed debate over the DMCA and what constitutes abuse of it. I sympathize with Graef and I admire him for admitting an error, but I still think the incident shows why the DMCA is a bad law." Hit that link below to read the rest of his story.

The DMCA is known mainly for its two most controversial provisions: the ban on technology to circumvent copyright restrictions, and the procedures by which ISPs must respond to "take down" notices if a third party claims that one of the ISP's users is violating their copyright. The first of these, I am opposed to in principle; the second, I am not opposed to in principle but I think is too easy to abuse in practice -- because I think incidents like the Graef case and my own limited court experience in related areas has suggested that the protections against DMCA-type abuses are very weak.

First, I'm against the anti-circumvention provision in principle because I agree with the position espoused by the EFF that computer code is protected under the First Amendment, even if some uses of that computer code may be illegal. After all, at one point a U.S. court even ruled that a manual for carrying out murders as a hit man was protected speech! That ruling was overturned on appeal, and the case was settled out of court before a final decision was ever reached, but still -- given that a handbook for killing people was considered free speech by at least one court, it's a bit of a stretch to think that a DVD-copying program should be given less protection. Just because X is illegal does not mean that tools or instructions for doing X should also be illegal.

With regard to the second provision, I'm not against requiring ISPs to take down infringing material on receipt of a notice from the copyright holder. But in practice there are two avenues for abuse here: (a) the party sending the take down notice can make statements that are not technically false, but which have the effect of persuading the ISP to take the material down, or (b) the party sending the take down notice can simply lie -- because the truth is that in too many cases, false statements made "under penalty of perjury" are not prosecuted, or even noticed, by the courts.

The EFF has already done a good job documenting abuses under the DMCA, and I'm not going to repeat all of that here. My argument is that these are not just temporary problems with a relatively new law, but rather that the abuses are the result of realities that won't change any time soon: ISPs being too busy to look closely at every complaint, and courts being too busy to go after everyone who violates court rules to get what they want. And thus it does no good to say that the DMCA would be fine if only enforcement actually got done properly instead of the ham-handed way it's been carried out so far, because that's not going to happen.

As I said, I think that if you have a bona fide case against a party, there's nothing wrong with taking action against them that would otherwise be considered a violation of their privacy and other rights. I've never sent a DMCA take down notice myself, but I've been involved in court cases in which I asked the judge to sign an order requiring a third party to turn over information about someone that was pertinent to the case. I don't consider that an abuse of the system, if the information you're after is relevant.

I realize this may separate me from some fellow privacy advocates, and some of the things I've done may make them uncomfortable. In one case, I had invited a girl to a charity luncheon where the tickets were $100 apiece, and when she showed up she had "forgotten her checkbook" and needed to borrow the money... Now, don't get ahead of me... Later, in what will not come as a huge spoiler to my fellow male Seattle residents, she apparently decided that, being a non-overweight, non-single-Mom, non-sexually-repressed girl in a city full of rich single guys, she was under no obligation to pay me back, and said, "Go ahead and sue me". Anyone who knows about my sideline taking spammers to court would tell you, it is not a terrifically smart move to say to me, "Go ahead and sue me". So, since I was going to be at the courthouse for an upcoming case against a spammer, I figured, why not, and filled out a Small Claims form with the defendant's address listed as "to be determined", since all I had was her cell phone number. Then I asked the judge to sign an order asking T-Mobile to give me the rest of her information so I could serve the papers on her. The judge signed it, I mailed it off to T-Mobile, and three weeks later T-Mobile sent me a letter containing her address, where I had the papers served. Most people don't know it's possible to do this just in a case where someone owes you $100 and all you have is a phone number, but that's just because a lawyer would never bother with such a small case, and most non-lawyers don't know the option exists -- and of course, it also depends on the judge, who may or may not sign the order.

(In that vein, people always ask me, is that sort of thing really worth the time? In this case, since I was going to be at the courthouse anyway, the extra time to write the motion, get it signed, and mail it off, was less than 30 minutes. But I was mainly curious about whether or not it could be done, and how much privacy protection there really is under the law, and knowing that was worth more to me than the $100 anyway.)

So I don't think it's unethical to request such information if you have a genuine case against a party. But while I don't think that what I did constitutes abuse of the system, I think it clearly shows how the system could be abused. Nobody checked my ID when I filed the case or asked the judge to sign the subpoena; I could have been anybody, and I could have disappeared once I had the information. (I had T-Mobile mail it to my address, but I could have just as easily had them mail it to the court, and then gone down and asked to look at the court file.) DMCA opponents should be aware that even without the DMCA, privacy protections are not as great as most people probably think they are.

As a result, I'm especially nervous about laws that enable abuse based on copyright assertions, because almost all of the legal threats we've ever received at Peacefire were based on what I considered to be bogus "copyright" claims. In 1997 we published a program that you could run on any computer with CYBERsitter blocking software installed, and it would decrypt the file that stored CYBERsitter's "secret" blocked-site list, and print it out in plain text. The CEO of CYBERsitter claimed that we were "violating every intellectual property law ever written" and sent threatening notices to our ISP demanding that they remove the program. I argued that every byte of the decryption program was our original work, so it didn't violate their copyright. In fact, it didn't even enable violations of their copyright, because it didn't make it any easier for someone to distribute illegal copies of their program, and I also said the decryption program served a worthwhile purpose by allowing customers or potential customers to see what the program really blocked. (Although to me, the enabling issue and the "worthwhile purpose" issue were secondary to the primary point, that original works of computer code should be protected by the First Amendment.) Fortunately our ISP stood their ground, but if the DMCA had existed back then, CYBERsitter could have invoked it, and possibly the extra pressure might have caused our ISP to back down. (Blocked-site-decryption programs were originally exempt from the DMCA as a result of the decision of the Copyright Office, but that exemption was revoked in 2006 because nobody had written a new decryption program in three years.)

So that was an example of how a company could intimidate an ISP into taking down material, without technically lying about the situation, but tacking on the words "copyright violation" and hoping the ISP would capitulate. What about cases where the sender of a DMCA take down notice just lies?

The Dutch activist group Bits Of Freedom conducted an experiment in 2004, in which they signed up with 10 different ISPs and posted a copy of a work that was clearly labeled with a notice that the author had died 100 years ago and the copyright had expired. Then they sent fake "complaints" to all 10 ISPs from an anonymous Hotmail address. 7 of the 10 ISPs removed the content immediately, and one even replied to give the personal details of the account holder, without being asked to do so. So completely fictitious complaints do apparently work. The DMCA does more protection than that because it requires the complainer to make a copyright claim "under penalty of perjury". But how much assurance does that really provide?

No one has yet tried to get our site shut down with a copyright claim or other accusation that was simply made up out of whole cloth. But my experiences in other areas have left me without much confidence in statements that are made "under penalty of perjury". The times I've been to court against spammers, I usually get to watch a few other Small Claims cases being tried. Probably at least once every time that I've been there, it's come to light that some party in a case said something that they almost certainly knew was not true, and I've never seen a judge do anything about it -- and court employees who have been there much longer have said they've never seen it happen either. (Judges are far more likely to get upset about people speaking out of turn. It's OK to lie, as long as you do it while the judge isn't talking!) It's true that Small Claims court is for resolving small matters, but lying under oath in Small Claims court is still a felony, punishable at least in theory by up to 10 years in jail. (And in any case, lawyers have told me that even in higher-level courtrooms, most false statements don't get anyone in big trouble. High-profile cases like Martha Stewart are the exception.) I don't think that everyone who lies under oath should go to the big house for 10 years. But I have no faith in the DMCA just because it requires accusatory statements to be made "under penalty of perjury", when judges usually let false statements under oath go completely unnoticed.

I doubt that a lawyer would risk their career and even their freedom to make up a completely fraudulent DMCA claim against us, such as claiming a page on our site was a ripoff of something originally produced by their client. But I don't think it's out of the realm if possibility that a lawyer would claim that, for example, a parody of one of their logos that appeared on our site, was a "copyright violation" -- even though the company would almost certainly be advised by their lawyer that such parodies are protected speech, which means their statement would constitute perjury, but it would probably never be punished.

The low point of my own confidence in the enforcement of anti-perjury laws, came when I sued a spammer who appeared in court and claimed that he had absolutely no knowledge of the spam being sent, and had never accepted any orders for spamming of any kind, while the judge, who appeared to hate anti-spam cases even more than most judges did, kept haranguing me for suing a clearly "innocent" person. I then played a recording of a conversation that I had with the spammer over the phone, pretending to be an interested customer (with a disclaimer played at the beginning of the call saying that it could be recorded, in order to make the taping legal), in which he said, among other things:

"I mean, we have all their information to back up any email we send them. If we have their ISP information, we can prove that they've given it out, because you can't get someone's ISP unless they've given it to somebody." [sic -- he meant "get someone's e-mail address", although the statement is still wrong]

"Do you already have your creatives and everything? So I've just got to upload what you have and just blast it out?" [note: "creatives" are copies of ads that sent out for you by advertisers and spammers]

"It's a United-States-based company but they pump everything through China and then it comes back to the United States."

The judge appeared very flustered at that point and started accusing me of "entrapment" (which was backwards -- I'd never heard of the spammer until he spammed me first, and then I called him afterwards, just to get evidence that he was in the spamming business in case he showed up in court and denied it). Since she claimed it was entrapment, I still lost and the spammer walked out home-free, without the judge ever even commenting on the questionable veracity of the statements he had made at the beginning. And that is all the protection that exists in the real world against people making false statements "under penalty of perjury".

The point is that when reading the wording of a proposed law, there's a temptation to think that the scenario described is exactly how the law will play out when it's enforced (see the "Alice, Bob and Charlie" scenario in the Wikipedia entry on the relevant section of the DMCA), and that anyone who deviates from the rules will be punished. But my narrow experience in court, in an area unrelated to the DMCA, taught me some things that several lawyers, with sad smiles, have confirmed to be true throughout the law: (a) judges will do what they want; (b) even if judges do sincerely want to follow the law, they're unlikely to agree on what it says; and (c) courts don't have the will or the time to chase down every person who violates the rules.

Don't judge a law by what it says will happen. Judge it by how it will play out if more than half of the steps in the process get screwed up. Guntram Graef apparently wasn't even trying to do anything dishonest when he got a video removed from YouTube on the basis of copyright claims that turned out not to be valid. Imagine how much abuse is possible when you're gaming the system on purpose.

slashmojo writes that while some islands are sinking, last August another rose from the ocean, formed by volcanic activity and caught in the act by a passing yacht. From the article: "What looked like a brown stain on the South Pacific turned out to be a spectacular drift of floating pumice stones stretching more than 16 km — and an indication an island was being born nearby... 'We are getting emails from volcanologists saying this is so rare.'" Here is the blog post of the yachtsman who photographed the nascent island.

odie_q writes "It has long been known that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite alters its host's behavior, but now it seems the way it alters it depends on the sex of the host. From the article: 'A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says ... Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women. On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A recent ruling in Federal court upheld the ruling that the operator and ISP that hosted the site 'mp3s4free.net' were guilty of copyright infringement violations because they provided access to the copyright material. From the article: 'Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organization Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."'"

nickd writes "Having recently being passed in the Senate by only 2 votes, an Australian bill to overturn the ban on 'theraputic cloning' has now been passed in the House of Representatives by 82-62. The amendment that was seeking to prevent stem cells being extracted from the eggs of aborted late term female fetuses has also been voted down. The changes will allow scientists to create and use embryos up to 14 days old for research."

AcidAUS writes "The widely-publicized reforms to Australian copyright — which would turn iPod, camera phone and DVD recorder owners into criminals — have been significantly amended. The amendment bill was passed this past Friday, after the changes were put into place. The Labor and Green parties still have problems with the bill as it exists, but the Labor party (at least) wants to let it go based on the fact that it is 'a million times' better than the original proposed legislation." From the article: "Following an outcry by industry bodies and the public, [Attorney-General Philip] Ruddock amended the bill. 'The Government has listened to the Senate Committee and stakeholders and has improved the effectiveness of the reforms,' Mr Ruddock said in a statement. 'The amended reforms make it clear consumers can transfer the music they own onto devices such as iPods and enable the next wave of technology by allowing people to record a TV or radio program on mobile devices to watch it at a more convenient time.' The amendments also removed on-the-spot fines for some copyright offenses, to ensure they didn't 'unintentionally capture harmless activities of ordinary Australians'."

AcidAUS writes "Australia's Sydney Airport is investigating high-tech tagging methods for baggage handling, which could greatly reduce the number of bags that go missing each year. Industry experts say that baggage mishandling costs the industry globally $US1.7 billion each year, and that much of this cost is due to failures in the barcode-based tagging system."

RidcullyTheBrown writes "A story from the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that ICANN is under pressure to introduce non-Latin characters into DNS names sooner rather than later. The effort is being spearheaded by nations in the Middle East and Asia. Currently there are only 37 characters usable in DNS entries, out of an estimated 50,000 that would be usable if ICANN changed naming restrictions. Given that some bind implementations still barf on an underscore, is this really premature?" From the article: "Plans to fast-track the introduction of non-English characters in website domain names could 'break the whole internet', warns ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey ... Twomey refuses to rush the process, and is currently conducting 'laboratory testing' to ensure that nothing can go wrong. 'The internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement,' he said. 'If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS ... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work.'" Given that some societies have used non-Latin characters for thousands of years, is this a bit late in coming?

Salvance writes "Palo Alto-based Loopt Inc. has announced an agreement with Sprint Nextel to immediately begin offering their cell phone mapping service to all 3.8 Million Sprint Boost subscribers (Sprint Boost is a service specifically targeting the under-25 market). This service will notify users when another subscriber in their contact list is within 25 miles, providing a real-time map displaying their contacts' locations. According to the article, the only apparent privacy safeguard is to provide users the option to 'temporarily cut out from being spotted by their friends.' Given a retailer's propensity to package together extra services, and the average user's lack of knowledge regarding their phone's capabilities, this new service seems ripe for abuse."

onco_p53 writes "Australian scientists have invented a T-shirt that allows air guitarists to play actual music as they strum the air. The shirt has sensors in each elbow and sleeves to detect and interpret the air guitarist's arm movements — one arm chooses chords and the other strums imaginary strings. The gestures are then connected wirelessly to guitar audio samples to generate the music. Check out the video!"

An anonymous reader writes, "PC manufacturer Acer is complaining that Microsoft has jacked up the price of Vista, and that the basic versions are so basic no one will ship them. Since the collapse of the Microsoft anti-trust case under the Bush administration in 2001, manufacturers have no choice but to accede, adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of each PC. With Gates now proclaiming victory over European regulators, Microsoft once again seems unstoppable. But Microsoft had drawn itself close to the Republican Party. With the Republicans now evicted from the House and Senate, is it time to look at the Microsoft anti-trust suit? Could Microsoft be compelled to lower its inflating Vista prices, or to open their tech or even supply funding to Linux-flavored Windows such as Wine? What do Slashdot readers think about the likelihood of another go at breaking up the Windows monopoly?"

jaunty writes "A private members bill has passed the Australian senate which paves the way for the cloning of embryos to gather stem cells. While it only passed by a narrow margin it is expected to gain support in the House. From the article: 'The final shape of the bill is now subject to further debate on amendments including measures to toughen penalties for breaches of cloning regulations, and possibly a move to stop the use of animal tissue in the cloning process.'"

Spo22a writes "Daniel Brandt found the examples of suspected plagiarism at Wikipedia using a program he created to run a few sentences from about 12,000 articles against Google Inc.'s search engine. He removed matches in which another site appeared to be copying from Wikipedia, rather than the other way around, and examples in which material is in the public domain and was properly attributed. Brandt ended with a list of 142 articles, which he brought to Wikipedia's attention.... 'They present it as an encyclopedia," Brandt said Friday. "They go around claiming it's almost as good as Britannica. They are trying to be mainstream respectable.'"

AcidAUS writes "Google is being accused of refusing to remove racist blogs targeting minority groups in Australia. Google, whose corporate motto is "don't be evil", says it will take the blogs in question offline only if ordered to do so by a court."

paxmaniac writes, "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Federal Government will soon introduce laws making it illegal to circumvent copy control 'technological prevention measures' (or TPMs). The laws will make it illegal to modchip a console, to hack a DVD player to make it multi-region, to install DVD decoders on your PC, or to circumvent DRM in any other way. From the article: 'Anyone found to have used technology to circumvent copy control TPMs will face fines of up to $6600, while those guilty of distributing enabling devices and services to others through a variety of means face imprisonment for up to five years and possible fines of $60,500.' Australia is obliged to introduce these laws as part of it's Free Trade Agreement with the USA. Gee thanks, George!"

DeathElk writes, "The Sydney Morning Herald recently featured an article espousing the virtues of desktop Linux. From the article: 'Linux is shedding its hard-core techie image in a bid to woo ordinary human beings seeking an easy-to-use operating system that can be downloaded for free.' Is this a step forward for widespread GNU/Linux desktop adoption? Too bad the article doesn't mention the large range of live CD/DVD distributions available for try-before-you-fly, or the range of Windows applications tested and working under Wine." Also, the article is slightly unclear on the concept of open source, defining it as an arrangement "where the source code can be modified upon the request of users or other developers."

Game Politics, as always, has some meaty thoughts on offer. Today they're revisiting the perpetual question, 'Can videogames be considered art?'. They touch on the words of Roger Ebert, and discuss a recent piece on the subject in the Sydney Herald. From the article: "Brendan McNamara, game director for Team Bondi, makers of the upcoming film noir PS3 game L.A. Noire, has no doubt his team is creating art. With a project plan that includes 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events, the game has a Hollywood-like budget of more than $30 million. 'We control the delivery of the information ... We give players a setting and a framework, we control what they see and do. So how are we not authors?' McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture. At the same time, he believes that being driven by sales is a good thing." What is the Slashdot opinion? Are games too different from other form of expression to be considered art? Is Shadow of the Colossus comparable to Leaves of Grass or Citizen Kane?

BBCWatcher writes "Tom Foremski (a.k.a. Silicon Valley Watcher) claims that IBM is doing some guerilla marketing for the mainframe. The three videos, now on YouTube, show how IBM allegedly trains new mainframe salespeople, in the style of the BBC's "The Office." IBM's videos arrive in the midst of a Microsoft "Office" controversy. Microsoft was not amused when somebody leaked internal training videos from 2004 that feature Ricky Gervais, The Office man himself. Gervais wasn't happy either."

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories including: some direct answers to Slashdot questions on the KillerNIC, recap in stolen laptop identity theft problems, a victory for one PayPal user, missing moon footage surfaces, Dell laptops unwelcome on Quantas flights, and more ZFS news from the Leopard front Read on for details.

Direct answers to Slashdot KillerNIC questions. Emptynest writes "A bit over a week ago, Slashdot linked a story on GDHardware.com and it was filled with a bunch of 'hard questions from the Slashdot Community" regarding Bigfoot Network's pending 'killer' Network card that promises to reduce in-game lag. It looks as if Bigfoot isn't backing down and has hand-picked several of the questions from the Slashdot Community and answered them in a new article."

Recap of stolen laptop identity theft. Kn10 writes to tell us Technibble has a brief recap of some of the major laptop thefts resulting in personal information being leaked from major organizations. From the article: "According to the FBI, laptop theft is the second most common computer crime and less than 2 percent of those stolen laptops are ever recovered. Four in five (81%) of US firms have had at least one laptop stolen containing sensitive information according to a recent study."

A victory for on PayPal user. Not-So-Anonymous Coward writes "According to his site, 'silic0nsilence', who was featured in the Summer 2006 issue of 2600, has won his long battle with PayPal Fraud. On August 15th, 2006 in Small Claims court, he was awarded $671.12 after almost a year-long war with PayPal and a user. He also successfully won a small claims suit against PayPal to commence in his case with the user."

Missing moon footage surfaces. denis-The-menace writes "Film producer and rock video director Peter Clifton was sitting watching television when he saw NASA was searching for original Apollo 11 footage. He had forgotten that in 1979 he ordered footage from The Smithsonian for use in The Dark Side of The Moon demo film. He had all but forgotten a pristine 16-millimeter film of the moon landing was part of his vast personal film catalogue"

Dell laptops unwelcome on Quatas flights. Thomas Henden writes "The Australian airline company Quantas, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, banned the in-flight use of Dell laptops on battery power. The security personnel even went so far as taping over the contacts in the batteries according to an agreement between Dell and Qantas. However the security is now somewhat relaxed — all you need to do now, is to get in touch with the personal aboard, and tell you want to use your Dell laptop, and then you will be 'advised individually.'"

More ZFS new from the Leopard front. nezmar writes "From the AppleInsider forum comes an interesting discovery about Sun's ZFS and Apple. A user who has the Leopard developer preview searched the system with Spotlight and found a mention of ZFS. He says: 'There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h.' Looks like the story back in May might have some truth after all."

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories including: some direct answers to Slashdot questions on the KillerNIC, recap in stolen laptop identity theft problems, a victory for one PayPal user, missing moon footage surfaces, Dell laptops unwelcome on Quantas flights, and more ZFS news from the Leopard front Read on for details.

Direct answers to Slashdot KillerNIC questions. Emptynest writes "A bit over a week ago, Slashdot linked a story on GDHardware.com and it was filled with a bunch of 'hard questions from the Slashdot Community" regarding Bigfoot Network's pending 'killer' Network card that promises to reduce in-game lag. It looks as if Bigfoot isn't backing down and has hand-picked several of the questions from the Slashdot Community and answered them in a new article."

Recap of stolen laptop identity theft. Kn10 writes to tell us Technibble has a brief recap of some of the major laptop thefts resulting in personal information being leaked from major organizations. From the article: "According to the FBI, laptop theft is the second most common computer crime and less than 2 percent of those stolen laptops are ever recovered. Four in five (81%) of US firms have had at least one laptop stolen containing sensitive information according to a recent study."

A victory for on PayPal user. Not-So-Anonymous Coward writes "According to his site, 'silic0nsilence', who was featured in the Summer 2006 issue of 2600, has won his long battle with PayPal Fraud. On August 15th, 2006 in Small Claims court, he was awarded $671.12 after almost a year-long war with PayPal and a user. He also successfully won a small claims suit against PayPal to commence in his case with the user."

Missing moon footage surfaces. denis-The-menace writes "Film producer and rock video director Peter Clifton was sitting watching television when he saw NASA was searching for original Apollo 11 footage. He had forgotten that in 1979 he ordered footage from The Smithsonian for use in The Dark Side of The Moon demo film. He had all but forgotten a pristine 16-millimeter film of the moon landing was part of his vast personal film catalogue"

Dell laptops unwelcome on Quatas flights. Thomas Henden writes "The Australian airline company Quantas, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, banned the in-flight use of Dell laptops on battery power. The security personnel even went so far as taping over the contacts in the batteries according to an agreement between Dell and Qantas. However the security is now somewhat relaxed — all you need to do now, is to get in touch with the personal aboard, and tell you want to use your Dell laptop, and then you will be 'advised individually.'"

More ZFS new from the Leopard front. nezmar writes "From the AppleInsider forum comes an interesting discovery about Sun's ZFS and Apple. A user who has the Leopard developer preview searched the system with Spotlight and found a mention of ZFS. He says: 'There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h.' Looks like the story back in May might have some truth after all."

NASA has received a lot of bad press in the last few years. Now in a stunning move to prove how much they have learned from past mistakes, it appears they have lost the magnetic tapes that recorded the first moon walk. They also seem to have misplaced the original recordings of the other five Apollo moon landings. Hopefully nobody has taped an episode of "The OC" over them yet.

Paul writes "After an incident that occurred on a popular television show's internet stream, the Australian government has once again demonstrated that it simply does not understand the internet by indicating that they intend to regulate streaming video. I wonder what these geniuses plan on doing with porn streamed from Europe?"

An anonymous reader writes "Australian scientists have discovered, after a decade of tests, a new way to enrich uranium for use in power plants." From the article: "There are at present only two methods for sifting uranium atoms, or isotopes, to create the right mix. One, called diffusion, involves forcing uranium through filters. Being lighter, U-235 passes through more easily and is thus separated from its heavier counterpart. The second method, widely adopted in the 1970s, uses centrifuges to spin the heavier and lighter atoms apart. Both, said Dr Goldsworthy, are 'very crude. You have to repeat the process over and over,' consuming enormous amounts of electricity. The spinning method requires 'thousands and thousands of centrifuges'."

An anonymous reader writes "After approving the sale of IBM's PC Division to the Chinese Corporation Lenovo, the US Government has realized China could bug Lenovo PCs destined for US Government customers. Would the US have done the same to China? With American businesses so eager for business in China no matter what, where are we headed?"

Dracophile asks: "The Sydney Morning Herald recently ran a front-page article about a 'smart card' to access government services and that it would double as a national identity card. The article points out that the current Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, who fiercely opposed from opposition the Australia Card idea in 1985, is now a supporter. The article goes on to say that about 100 nations have some form of ID card. Is your country one of them? What concerns were raised? How were they addressed? Have welfare fraud and other identity-related crimes decreased? Have National ID cards improved or deteriorated conditions where you live?"

threeofnine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article written by a copyright and technology lawyer asking if we are paying too much for digital downloads. From the article: 'Parallel imports are unavailable in the Australian digital market, however. Australian consumers cannot purchase downloads from iTunes or Wal-Mart in the US, which are often cheaper than downloads available here, without a US-issued credit card. And restrictive licensing conditions imposed by copyright owners also limit the sale of digital downloads across international borders. For both reasons Australian consumers miss out. And retailers cannot buy downloads from overseas and resell them here, even if it is worthwhile for them to do so. In a recent analysis, the prices of Australian-made CDs of artists such as Bon Jovi, REM and Robbie Williams were compared to those of legal parallel imports. It was found that the local product was as much as 300 per cent more expensive.'"

syousef writes "The Sydney morning herald reports that a new national ID card will be issued in Australia."From 2010 people will not be able to receive government health and welfare payments without a card. People may choose to have other information stored on the card, such as health and emergency contact details which, for example, ambulance officers could use.". Your papers please."

rcbutcher writes to tell us the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Google has just acquired the rights to a brand new text search algorithm invented by a University of NSW student. From the article: "Orion works as an add-on to existing search engines to improve the relevance of search and won praise from Microsoft founder Bill Gates last year. [...] Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word. It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant."

brindafella writes "The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, reporting on a legislative change last week, says 'the [Australian] Government will have 12 months to access communications not only between the B-party and the suspect, but also between the B-party and anyone else. If you have unwittingly communicated with a suspect (and thereby become a B-party), the Government may be able to monitor all your conversations with family members, friends, work colleagues, your lawyer and your doctor.' The Australian Parliament's major parties combined to pass an amendment to the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Act 1979."

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Labor Party (much the same as the Democrats in the US) are claiming they will force ISPs to block violent and pornographic content if elected. From the article: 'Mr Beazley said all households would be included in the policy unless there was a specific request for access to such material. It was "too hard" for many parents to install internet blockers on their computers to prevent offensive material being downloaded.'"

babbling writes "The Australian Government has shut down a parody website that mocked Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The website featured a satirical speech that 'apologised' for the Iraq war. The site was down for two days before a phone call from Melbourne IT advised the owner that it had been shut down 'on the advice from the Australian Government'. A mirrored PDF copy of the "apology speech" is available."

tintinaujapon writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that NCR staff with key responsibility (among other things) for fast food & supermarket chains, banking ATMs, schools and baggage handling at Sydney airport are preparing to walk off the job next week, in industrial action aimed at resolving a pay dispute. NCR's general manager thinks few people in the general community will care about the plight of the palest workforce, but the union claims potential disruption and financial losses could be huge. The strike could last up to a week and is the most significant action yet taken in Australia by the techie workforce."

afaik_ianal writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that 'Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure' has been banned in Australia. The game involves battling the authorities to overthrow corrupt officials using only street fighting skills and graffiti. From the article, "The decision was endorsed last night by the Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, who had asked the board to review of the game's MA15+ classification after local councils and state governments voiced concerns that the game would promote graffiti.""

Anonymous Coward writes to tell us The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that new laws being presented to parliament this week would allow police and spy agencies additional power to monitor communications of people not suspected of any crime. From the article: "Under the changes, police will be able to tap the phone calls and trace the emails and text messages of third parties to suspected crimes. Police will have 45 days to monitor a person not under suspicion in the hope it will lead them to the person or people they do suspect."

wombatmobile writes "Hiroshi Tanaka, president of Innovative Design and Technology, claims to have perfected a machine that can transform a bottle of just-fermented Beaujolais Nouveau into a fine, mellow wine in seconds. From the article: 'The road, however, won't be an easy one: the company has brought the machine around to Japanese wine producers, restaurants and even sake rice wine and "shochu" sweet potato spirit distillers, but so far only a small shochu maker in southern Japan has agreed to get involved.'

Philoneist.com writes to tell us the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that US doctors have developed a process to induce hypothermia in trauma patients, shutting down their bodily functions for up to three hours. The process has been proven about 90% effective in trials with pigs and now the doctors would like the go ahead to test it on humans who would "probably die" under normal care.

motivator_bob writes to tell us the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the latest craze of interactive computer software is actually hurting the education level rather than helping it. From the article: "Parents have also bought into the enthusiasm for technology, spending millions on educational computer games for their young. However, research published in the journal Education 3 to 13 has found that pupils who use interactive programs cannot remember stories they have just read because they are distracted by cartoons and sound effects."

An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story about Paul Allen, "the accidental zillionaire". Allen is the owner of the world's biggest private yacht and a huge landowner in the Seattle area in addition to his traditional accolades of helping to found Microsoft along with several other companies and foundations."

Nomad37 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has a great wrap-up of the great moments in 2005 for science. The story covers everything from evolution to space exploration, the role of genetics in brain disorder to nuclear fusion. The story provides a neat overview for those of us who haven't been checking Slashdot regularly enough!"