Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Indy, Kaneko, Swindling
Can good money drive out bad at least sometimes? News for nerds writes "Following the earlier news about the arrest of the Winny P2P app creator, KANEKO Isamu, researcher at the U-Tokyo and well-known hacker in the 3-D physics simulation scene in Japan (His first public Winny demo by his anonymous alias '47' was the graphic simulation of the network topology), the group of software technicians separate from Kaneko's lawyers has raised over 10 million yen ($88,347) in 10 days for the lawyers. It claims "The situation of the activities that technicians usually carry out being deemed a crime all of a sudden and arrests being made is seriously shrinking software research and development.""
A minor setback to the oligarchy of lawyers. Ellis D. Tripp writes "The SCOTUS has refused to hear an appeal of a 5th circuit court decision declaring that building codes such as the National Electrical Code lose all copyright protection once they are adopted into municipal law. Under this ruling, such codes can be freely posted on the internet or otherwise distributed for free, rather than requiring contractors or other interested parties to purchase them at often exorbitant prices each time they are revised. The original defendant, Peter Veeck, was sued by Southern Building Code Congress International for making their "Intellectual Property" available on his website."
Why does it have to be snakes? ChrisHanel writes "A follow-up to a story ran on Slashdot last year: The legendary shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark is screening next month at the first ever large scale Fan Film convention in Worcester, Mass. Tons of fanfilms and filmmaking workshops, and to get past the legal snafus, the fanfilms themselves are free to the public. A rare chance to check out this gem of a film."
Speaking of unconventional media origins, koa writes "This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon. Odd Todd will be piloting his own animated series on Comedy Central sometime early 2005 based off of his hit website. Press release here. Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas from wilds the 'net?"
There is power in a union, evidently. XopherMV writes with the upshot (via Yahoo! News) of last weekend's strike at SBC: "The union wanted access to positions in SBC's emerging sectors, including Internet support and wireless data service. That work is now handled largely by lesser-paid contract workers, many of them in India and the Philippines. The tentative contract calls for SBC and the union to work together to bring the technical support jobs back to the United States when the current contract expires in two years.""
Trust me, ma'am, I was hired to fool you. Cold Drink writes "Part two of a previously Slashdotted story tells the tale of how social engineer Isreal was thwarted. When employees follow proper procedures, social engineers can be stopped dead in their tracks. Read on to find out how one person protected tens of thousands of dollars."
IWILL try to get one of these. We mentioned a few days ago a small dual-Opteron system promised from IWILL; many readers expressed skepticism about its internal configuration, memory slot allocation, power requirements, etc. An anonymous reader writes "it appears a lot of the questions have been answered in regards to the board and cooling configuration over at Hexus. They appear to have snapped some pics of this little beast."
That's awfully enterprising of Claria. gbulmash writes "Nordstrom Corporate Communications has composed an official response to complaints about L.L. Bean's allegations and is e-mailing it to customers.
I received the following letter:
'Thank you for taking the time to email Nordstrom with your concerns. We were disappointed that L.L. Bean did not contact us and allow us the opportunity to investigate this matter before they filed a lawsuit against us.
I would like to address your inquiry about Claria specifically. Nordstrom currently has no relationship with Claria and hasn't had a relationship with them since late 2001 when we tested their services for a 4-month period and concluded we and Claria were not an acceptable fit. To our knowledge, Nordstrom does not engage in the form of advertising described by L.L. Bean in the press. We have worked very hard to earn our customers' trust. We understand how important privacy is to our customers and we do not look to partner with advertisers that violate their privacy in any way.
Marketing on the Internet is a complex process and if our ads are in fact appearing on L.L. Bean's website, it is without our knowledge or consent. Please know that we are looking into this and will take appropriate action if we find the practice is in fact occurring.
Please know that we appreciate you as a customer and hope we will have the opportunity to serve you and your wife in the future.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Sincerely,
Deniz Anders
Corporate Communications
Nordstrom, Inc.'"
Meaning: Didn't do it, can't prove a thing, and it was all his fault anyway.
I notice the lawyers have no trouble understanding that a law cannot be anyone's property. Now if they'd just apply that logic to patents on software ideas, mathematical methods and aggregations of facts.
Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas from wilds the 'net?"
Yeah but the really good stuff just wont get shown by the pussy US networks. Can you imagine Trey Parker and Matt Stones "Princess" cartoon even being looked at by the tv execs? When macromedia saw it they were pretty pissed off (they had made a deal for a new cartoon). do a google for it its brilliant!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Some might argue South Park beat them to it. Sure, it wasn't originally made for the Internet, but its popularity once it hit the net surely was a big part of them getting a show.
But if you don't think that counts, Tripping the Rift definately should.
First off, if the first theft of merchandise had been an actual theft, and not a test. They would have not known about for at least a couple of hours, if ever. Leaving plenty of time for him to complete a second or third attempt.
The thing to look at here is that without that phonecall (which in all likelyhood would not have occured if this wasn't a test) the second attempt would have likely succeed. Also another point to know is not all stores have loss prevention people working at them all the time. In fact i could name several stores in my area that do not have them present at all.
Anybody with enough brain power and the ability to think on their feet can accomplish feats like this. In most stores the incompentence of the employees makes me laugh. There have been many instances where i have stopped attempts like this in my previous jobs, and unfortunately some where procedure prevented me from doing so.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon.
Nope. The popularity of the short film "The Spirit of Christmas" once it spread across the Internet was what led to Comedy Central asking the creators to make South Park. Without the Internet, they'd be languishing in obscurity.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Being a former Worcester resident, I found this odd for three reasons:
Oh, and before you ask, it's pronounced "Wuss-tah" not "Whore-sesster".
That being said, please come! It'll be a hoot if lots of /. readers show up!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
If you get a chance to see the Raiders of the Lost Ark remake, you must do it. I saw it earlier this year at a film festival in Mississippi. Everyone in it is between around 12 and 16. Not just everyone in it, but everyone involved with it! These kids were resourceful in a way only kids can be and dangerously so. They literally set their parents' basement on fire and dragged each other behind a truck, all for love of a movie. The movie itself came out great, but there's this excellent metatheater aspect to it, where you set away and think "how the hell did 13 year olds DO that?!" They also (slightly) visibly age through the movie, which is funny when you notice it. This was one of the most fun movies I've ever seen, don't miss it!
Also, they revealed that Paramount bought their story and plans to make a movie about the kids making this movie!
Princess
http://www.legalbits.com/thornton-CITATION-comment s.htm
Can anyone shed any light as to how this might perform?
Either way it's a cool achievement, and the little "fin" on top is a wifi antenna, which is cool.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Actually Lucas's plan is to replace the ROTL cast with Gungans, not Ewoks. Replacing them with Ewoks would be silly.
Mesesa see aspses - muy danger! Yousa go first, Indy-Indy.
What,
The world needs is a DMCA compliant method to copyright something that lawyers/politicians need real bad. Or maybe a patent...
Access to prescriptions or something similar would work.
Then they would see the craziness that IP law is evolving into and want to do something about it.
Hopefully they would do something that would prove to be discriminatory against the general populace and the whole blooming IP mess could be stricken down by the Supreme Court.
Any ideas?
Caution: Contents under pressure
"This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon"
I don't know how much it takes to be a "phenomenon", but Tripping the Rift certainly had a large number of people see the "FCC-Unfriendly" first episode (the one with the actual bared breasts, not just all the references to them).
Unfortunately, at least one attorney at Thelen Reid & Priest hasn't completely figured this out, yet. Mr. Patry lays out both sides of the argument, but IMO fails to draw the logical conclusion. As Patry sees it, the facts are these:
Governments are outsourcing to cut costs.
Rather than charge government huge flat fee to write boilerplate regs, private authors are opting to charge citizens for copies, asserting their copyright.
If government asserts the power to punish those who do not obey the law, ready and free access to that law is essential.
Governments can't seize copyright except in bankruptcy (ed: or national security).
Mr. Patry concludes copyright holders shouldn't get screwed by the quaint 19th century notion that "the law is free", and should be allowed compesation, thereby making the crafting of laws cheaper for the tax payer.
My conclusion would be that public access to it's own laws trumps other interests, and the consequenses should flow from there. If it's expensive to write a boat load of regs, then either 1) a government should pay the going rate to rate 'em, 2) governments can go in together to buy rights to the regs they need, or 3) if it's that fscking expensive, maybe they're introducing too many regs... do without!
Luke, help me take this mask off
As someone who -uses- it, I'll note that it refers to itself as "Winny" and not "WinNY".
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
It is fscking incredible that anyone would think it reasonable to be governed by laws that you have to pay to see. It's bad enough to have that idiotic phrase floating around, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" when there are so many convoluted twisted laws added every day that you have little hope of understanding without a paying a lawyer, and even then it's a crapshoot who wins, but to add to that the idea that you have to pay even to see the law at all, that is just beyond belief.
Infuriate left and right