Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Legislation, Samplification, Knaves
Wouldn't be be nice if this didn't need to be a surprise? dklon writes: "I just got off the phone with Senate Warner's Office (R-VA). Senator Warner, and his compadre, Senator George Allen, both sit on the High Tech Committee, of which Senator Allen is the chairman. After sending them a strongly-worded letter yesterday, Mr. Warner's office was kind enough to call me back and let me know that the likelihood of Coble-Berman becoming law is slim-to-none. It is committee at the moment, and has only 1 sponsor at the moment in the Senate."
Make a joyful noise, and keep repeating it.
mrspin writes "stage4 has an interview with Daniel Gomez-Ibanez a graduate from Stanford University who has designed and produced a 'Digital Turntable' that allows DJs to mix and scratch digital music using what looks like a conventional record player.
Daniel recently posted a short piece on Slashdot about his 'Digital Turntable'. In an email interview with stage4 he talks about what makes it different from other such products and the inspiration behind this hardware hack.
stage4 is a community site dedicated to creative uses of technology and features a weekly music webcast via PirateTV"
Daniel also says (by email) that if "anyone would want a very unique sampling turntable I would sell more of them for around the cost of the parts because it would be fun to get them out there and get people playing with them." Even those parts aren't cheap (totaling around a thousand dollars) but handcrafted audio tools rarely are. Check his site for email address ;)
Please keep your Gator away from my eyeballs. EyesWideOpen writes "The New York Times is reporting that a preliminary injunction will be issued against Gator Corporation as a result of the company being sued by 10 web site publishers last month because they felt that the company's use of online pop-up ads violated copyright and trademark laws. 'In court Friday, Judge Hilton said that he found enough evidence to support the plaintiffs' claim that Gator's advertisements violated trademark laws in particular...he indicated that one issue was the proximity of Gator's pop-up ads to the publishers' trademarks.'"
You may already have won! We've had to run a number of pieces on unsavory renewal practices among the various registrars competing for your name-claiming business, but domain name scamming is sadly not confined to the U.S. kungfuftr writes: "I'm currently registering all my domains names through a company in the uk called 123reg who are very reasonable and run a good company. Today i got a letter from a company called "Domain Registry of Europe" saying that my domain name "kungfuftr.com" must be renewed. The form they sent looks like a bill and for someone who doesn't know too much about the DNS process it looks like something that should be filled in if they want to keep their domain. Of course if they do this their control of their domain will be transferred to a new registrar. Giving the company an official name as if they are the 'only' registrar in europe is pretty shady. Are companies reaching a new low?"
For when I get a larger hard drive ... TheRedHorse writes "The Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 ISO's have been released . Slashdot did a story about it YDL 2.3 before. Please remember to use the mirrors. Have fun."
You knew this would happen, right? JUSTONEMORELATTE writes "LightReading is reporting today that the EBone portion of KPNQwest's network has been bought for pennies on the dollar (or is that cents on the Euro?) by U.K.-based service provider Interoute Telecommunications. EBone had been valued at EU645 million back in March, today's deal is rumoured to be at about EU15 million, or about a 98% loss of value. Slashdot has covered the heroic efforts to keep the network alive, and talked about the shutdown of the same."
Genetics is never having to say "Am I your type, baby?" Teluial writes "Slashdot's previous story about ColonelPanic's genetic keyboard layout is taking an interesting development. *cue Spidey music* When we last left PMK he was trying his latest layout. Having found it "usable," he is now collecting Dvorak keystroke data and requesting volunteers of the QWERTY breed to also collect data to compare interesting findings against. Details near bottom of project page."
I was wondering what the hell we were talking about here until I found this discussion of the Coble-Berman bill that would restrict fair use...
A similar thing happened in Canada. A while back I got a renewal notice from "The domain registry of Canada". It was printed on letterhead deviously designed to look like stationery of the federal government. I'm sure many people got sucked in by the presentation alone.
I got a notice similar to this one from my registrar. I'm sure a lot of those had to go out.
Sending targeted junk mail is one thing; trying to appear to be a government service is another. I find the practice repugnant.
dlek.
Anybody with a bit of sense will contact their registrar, and try to pay next period with time. That's what means to me, a reminder, but the funny part is that a third party paid the paper. Did I commented my current registrar reminds me with time each time? OK, this year I get two reminders. :) Maybe they should have tried if I had not already renewed in the past, but I know my current registrar is fine, because they are demostrating it, and because I got it because friends told me it was fine.
I just hope not to see a Michellin guy telling me to go buy new tires, because my Firestone'll be old soon. Yeah! Get a double price Michellin set, instead of going for the already planned Firestone change, great idea!
...Senate Warner's Office (R-VA). Senator Warner, and his compadre, Senator George Allen, both sit on the High Tech Committee, of which Senator Allen is the chairman...
Short answer: Um, no.
Long answer: Senate Republicans have a para-legislative policy committee, which recommends "The Republican" positions on issues in the Senate. George Allen chairs a subunit of that organization, the high-tech task force. The Democrats have a comparable organization, but they don't publicize it right now because they hold a majority in the Senate.
In fairness, Allen is labelled the ranking member of the Science, Technology, and Space subcommittee. This, however, is misleading because Allen is only a freshman Senator, and all the other Republicans on that subcommittee are actually more senior than he.
The issue is that it pops up ads *without* the permission of either the owner of the site's content or the person browsing (unless you consider that really really fine print when it's installed to be permission). If you go to a site that puts popups over another window, it's *your* fault for those popups since you went to that site and explicitly caused it.