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Stories · 3,636
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Patriot Act to be Expanded
m4dm4n writes "It seems that the patriot act is being expanded rather than scaled back after a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee. The FBI has gained new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, as well as the ability to designate subpoenas as secret and punish disclosure of their existence with up to one year in prison."
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MS Worried About Meeting 360 Demand
GamesIndustry.biz has an article up right now indicating that, at least in the UK, Microsoft is worried about meeting demand for the 360 because they think so many people are going to want to buy the console. From the article: "We feel as a company we've done the groundwork to get to a point where we can do the global release; we feel we're going to deliver and have a great Xmas...Will we execute well so retail will have good volume? Yes. But I don't think we're going to meet demand as people are going to come into this platform in a big way."
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Whose Burden is it to Recycle Computers?
bostons asks: "California places the financial burden of dealing with the electronic waste on consumers, charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling their computers or televisions and pick up a share of the recycling tab for products of unknown origin. Starting next year, Maryland will require manufacturers to offer free computer take-back programs or pay the state a fee. Which do you think is the most effective and appropriate option?"
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Virus Hold Computer Files 'Hostage' for $200
dwayner79 sent in a story about a new virus making the rounds- this one is unique because it locks your files and then demands a $200 ransom to get them back. It seems to me that this might leave some sort of tracable money trail. They don't have much information on any particular transmission mechanism, they just talk about web pages giving it up.
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Lycos Germany to No Longer Store IP Data
quaker5567 writes "The Register is carrying the story that Lycos Germany says it will no longer store dynamic IP addresses of its customers. According to the German Tele Services Data Protection and Telecommunications Act, ISPs are only allowed to store communications data for accounting purposes. Apparently, there is no requirement for German ISPs to keep a record of IP addresses. A decision by German ISPs not to keep logs on IP addresses would be extremely controversial as the entertainment industry is increasingly demanding that ISPs disclose the names of suspected file sharers."
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Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years
Juzzam writes "The Herald Sun reports that IBM and university officals are worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals and the decreasing supply of computer science students. From the article: 'The slope shows an unbelievable decline in computer science majors,' Astrachan said. 'There are smart people no longer even signing up to take our introductory courses. We need to fix it, or there's not going to be a U.S. work force in computer sciences.'"
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U.S. Firms Take on Australia's CSIRO Over Patents
dingram17 writes "ABC News is reporting that six U.S. computer companies (Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Netgear) are taking legal action to try to break a U.S. patent that the CSIRO holds on wireless networking. The CSIRO has patents on OFDM technology, as used in 802.11a and 802.11g. It has been alleged that the CSIRO demands $4 per chipset for the use of this technology. It appears that the patent in question is U.S. Patent 5,487,069 'Wireless LAN.' From a quick look, this appears to be a wide ranging patent."
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Hardware or Software Major?
fa1uzure asks: "Recently, there have been many articles on Slashdot about the lack of people enrolling in IT courses in post-secondary, as well as the need for more people in these areas. Being a Computer Science student, this is great news for me, meaning I may be in demand in the future. But CS at WLU is essentially a software-only course, as it is in many other universities around the world. In most of these articles, it generally says that the IT industry is loosing the new graduates, but it does not specify which area of IT is most at risk. As I move into my second year, I would like to know, are hardware people going to be far more in demand than the software people, or would software still be a better choice than a hardware-centred degree? I could easily transfer to a hardware oriented program but would like to know in which direction the future is moving before I make any choices."
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What UNIX Shell Config Settings Work for Newbies?
Human_Diastrophism asks: "I'm involved in the roll-out of a new *x-based computing service in my previously Windows-centric organization. I want things set up so that newcomers will understand and like what they see. They should feel encouraged to behave appropriately, i.e. explore and extend the environment for themselves. We're talking about technically literate folk who are simply new to the demands and freedoms of the command line. No shell advocacy, please; it's going to be ksh or bash. What would you put in a .profile or .rc to make things work smoothly and give the user the capabilities and feedback they need? I'm thinking about stuff like 'stty erase ^H' and 'set -o emacs' so the edit keys work, and a compact but informative prompt. But what else would you put in? What would you leave out?"
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Microsoft Demands Removal Of Longhorn Images
bonch writes "After the previously reported release of the Longhorn beta at this year's WinHEC, Neowin and other Windows sites are reporting that Microsoft is going around sending legal letters demanding removal of Longhorn Build 5048 screenshots. Paul Thurrott discusses it on his site, stating that Microsoft never told anyone beforehand not to post screenshots of the publicly available beta, and links to the new galleries he has up now. 'Enjoy it while it lasts.'"
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Interest in CS as a Major Drops
Dasein writes "The Computer Research Association says that the popularity of CS as a major among freshman has dropped in the last four years. Why is obvious to anybody working in the field. They conclude by saying 'With a fall in degree production looming, it is difficult to see how CS can match expected future demand for IT workers without raising women's participation at the undergraduate level.'"
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Hibernation on Demand
Mr. Christmas Lights writes "Dr. Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has successfully induced a state of reversible metabolic hibernation in mice which (no surprise) is getting quite a bit of publicity. Attempts in the past have used cooling techniques, but Dr. Roth uses hydrogen sulfide (80 parts/million) to basically put the warm-blooded mice into an advanced hibernated state, with a drop from the normal 120 breaths/minute to less than 10. Core body temperature also drops as low as 11C (50F) to match the ambient room temperature. The mice recover in about two hours once normal air/temperatures are applied, with no apparent ill effects - apparently there is a mice IQ/motor-skills test. In addition to the obligatory reference to Woody Allen's Sleeper movie, this has applicability for emergency rooms as it would be beneficial to in ER medicine as a way of "buying time" while diagnosis is performed."
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OSS Developers Provide A Glimmer of Hope
sebFlyte writes "In a recent speech at the ACCU conference in Oxford, software design guru James Coplein said that unless consumers start demanding more and putting up with less crap from software firms, the quality of proprietary software would keep spiralling down. He was full of praise for open source though, saying 'The complementary, independent, selfless acts of thousands of individuals can address system problems -- there are thousands of people making the system stronger.'"
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We're Open enough, Says Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Australia has come under fire from rival vendors and open-source advocates for keeping its Office document standards proprietary. Greg Stone, Microsoft's national technology officer for Australia and New Zealand, faced criticism during his presentation at the Australian Unix User Group conference in Canberra yesterday. However, he stood firm on the company's policy of making the XML schemas for its Office 2003 document standard publicly available provided interested parties sign an agreement with the software heavyweight. "Why should I have to sign an agreement?" one audience member demanded to know."
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Canadians May Face 25% Download Tariff
C-Yo writes "While Canadians have battled against an iPod tariff for more than a year, now comes news that Canada's copyright collectives are seeking a tariff on iTunes as well. Professor Michael Geist (who last week dismantled music industry claims about peer-to-peer) reports that one collective is demanding an incredible 25% of the gross revenue of music download services as well as 15% of webcasters' gross revenue and 10% of gamers gross revenue (free version of report or Toronto Star reg. version). When combined with other tariff proposals, it would appear that Canada's collectives want to the kill the download industry, demanding at least 40% of everything iTunes, Napster, and other new services earn."
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Gaming As Image Statement
In an editorial entitled Will Anybody Care That You Liked Gaming Before It Was Cool?, GameGirlAdvance editor ClockworkGrue discusses aspects of PSP Glamour, and what it means when gaming devices become sex symbols. From the article: "It's great that gaming can be trendy, and that the 300 pound guy on the train the other day and Paris Hilton are both PSP owners. Maybe now there'll be some demand for game-related clothing that breaks the basement-casual standard?" Update: 04/15 11:13 GMT by Z : To fix broken link.
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IBM to Hire Firefox Developers
ta bu shi da yu writes "According to news.com, IBM has placed an employment ad for a developer who would be responsible for 'enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM's On Demand middleware stack.' IBM might possibly be interested in FireFox integration with their Workplace software. The job is not for just anyone, however, as those who wish to apply for the job should have some cred with the Mozilla development community."
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Music Industry Drafts Code of Conduct for ISPs
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is running a story about how the music industry is trying to get ISPs to sign 'code of conduct' agreements to cut people off for excessive bandwidth usage, to turn over details of users on demand, and to block certain 'illegal' websites." From the article: "According to the draft, the duo want ISPs and network operators to 'enforce terms of service that prohibit a subscriber from operating a server, or from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities.'"
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Microsoft Accepts Most EU Demands, But Not Over Source
JoeGi writes "Microsoft sent a letter to EU regulators Monday accepting 20 out of the Commission's 26 demands. According to BetaNews, 'The remaining stumbling block to full compliance is source code licensing' as Microsoft is refusing access to open source projects. Microsoft officials told BetaNews they are trying 'to find a way that companies can implement these technologies in code that would get distributed with open source products, but the source code wouldn't be published itself.'"
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FBI Demands Logs From Radical Website
sunbird writes "The details are as yet unclear due to a gag order, but apparently the FBI is once again demanding IP logs from dissident webservers. The sysadmin for flag.blackened.net, best known for hosting infoshop.org and the Anarchist FAQ has responded to an FBI request for server logs. Although he cannot reveal the details of the request due to the gag order, the sysadmin has issued an informal press release discussing his reasons for turning over the information. Slashdot articles on similar topics: (1) (2) (3)"