Slashback: Lapses, Maps, Ludwig Van

Slashback tonight brings you a larger-than-usual assortment of updates, clarifications and followups to previous and ongoing Slashdot stories. Read on below for more details on the Canadian Harry Potter injunction, CardSystem's customer data mishap, the popularity of Beethoven vs. the Beatles, and what the recent MySpace acquisition might mean.

Beethoven rules the downloads charts! jd writes "At 1.4 million downloads, Beethoven has beaten the Beatles in online downloads, according to The Guardian. iTunes sales of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' comes in at a mere 20,000. The BBC, who put the symphonies on their download site, are delighted. The music industry, which thought classical music was all but dead, is in shock. About the only question remaining is how much did the Slashdot Effect contribute?"

And if the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus," this Beethoven guy must be really popular!

Now you can think of it as Rupert'sSpace. applextrent writes with a few thoughts on the recent acquisition of MySpace by Fox: "MySpace's privacy policy and company filings including all users' information lists, databases, text, files and documents are explicitly documented as an asset of MySpace. The agreement also states MySpace can sell the site and all user information to a third party that might not necessarily follow the same privacy policy as MySpace. To put it simply, MySpace owns everything a user provides them with. This is not entirely an uncommon thing for many free services such as AOL's Instant Messenger have similar privacy policies. Now all of this user information is in the hands of News Corp. and they can pretty much do whatever they want with it.

Not to say anything bad will come of this, in fact this could mean better protection for users privacy, or it may not. This is possible reason for concern especially considering MySpace's blog population for a MySpace run blog is technically owned by the same people who bring you Fox News."

This is much worse than losing the car keys, son. An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the large-scale credit card compromise of Card Systems, the NYTimes is reporting that Visa has decided to stop allowing transactions from the processor. Visa says 'CardSystems has not corrected, and cannot at this point correct, the failure to provide proper data security for those accounts.' Visa has informed member banks that they have until Oct. 31 to switch from using CardSystems to process card transactions. The decision sends a strong message to the industry about Visa's stance on cardholder security with respect to enforcing the PCI Data Security Standard. We'll see how MasterCard and American Express react. Also the long term viability of CardSystems itself is now in question."

Another visit to the Abandonware Orphanage. chill writes "Aladdin 4D, the venerable Amiga 3D design and rendering program, is yearning to be free. If the owners, Nova Designs, can raise $37,579.83 to pay off old debts they will release the trademarks, source code, tutorials, rights, and all as LGPL. So, if having this tool available to the FOSS pool of code is something that interests you, donate!"

This approach worked for Blender; it would be great to see it happen more.

Google keeps stealing my best ideas before I have them. Chmarr writes "Right on the heels of Google Moon, Google Maps now includes very detailed maps of our favorite animation source Japan. Here's hoping you can read Japanese."

But you only need to read Alien for this one: Oreo 51 writes "It was only a matter of time before someone did this. Barry Snyder used Google Maps to take shots of the infamous high-security Area 51 in the Nevada desert. I can't wait to see what /.ers think of all the craters and interesting sand geometry there."

Now taking donations of one nickel per cool use of Google Maps, to go toward the James Ellroy Crime Scene Map Project Fund.

Now with more nutritious Darkness! Simian Farmer writes "For the tens of thousands of Star Wars fans who visited The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster on a daily basis just before the release of Sith, the same author has begun penning his own blog-novel called Simon of Space.

The style of writing that lured so many to read Darth Side so avidly this past April/May is present in spades in his new fiction, updated almost daily. According to the author, it has, '...romance, action, humour and all the whiz-bang special effects you can get without actually making a movie.'"

Blue Frog Claims to be Legit justy writes "I noticed that Blue Security, the company behind the Blue Frog anti-spam initiative, have issued a statement on their blog as a result of "feedback we have received from the community". They say that "the total number of complaints posted by the community is exactly equal to the number of spam messages received", which seems more fair in my opinion. Perhaps this development is a result of the heated discussion here on Slashdot."

Well that's not Orwellian or anything, Nooo .... An anonymous reader writes "The fallout from the recent Canadian Harry Potter court order continues [Harry Potter and the Right to Read] as a national newspaper was threatened with a lawsuit if they published a book review based on an 'unlawful reading.' The case, along with similar copyright abuses, has Canadians wondering what became of a kinder, gentler legal approach."

Well, keep looking then. According to this NY Times story, the recently described spotting of an ivory-billed woodpecker may be based on evidence too weak to rely on; this is the same bird that Cornell researches have been looking for with automated means to detect its distinctive voice.

Comments

cardsystems failure

[SgtXaos]

I have to replace the card I have had for 15 years, thanks to this SNAFU, and update all services that automatically charge it, not to mention memorizing the new account number. I hope something good comes of this, like serious protection of user accounts in the future, but I doubt it.

FAS did the Area51 pics along time ago

[jon787]

Better Area51 pics

American Express has already reacted

[200_success]

Like Visa, American Express has also announced that it will stop working with CardSystems.

Re:Beatles vs. Beethoven

[wmelnick]

It's not even one album. It is the Macca/U2 version from Live8. Put the entire Beatles catalog up and watch the sales soar! Why not put up Led Zeppelin while you are at it? Those are the two biggest missing bands from legal downloads in the Classic Rock genre.

Re:Beatles vs. Beethoven

[kalidasa]

RTFA. The new single of Sgt. Pepper's the song (the opening song on the album) by McCartney with U2 is the comparandum. They're comparing a single point download (of the Beethoven symphonies from BBC) to a single point download (of Sgt Pepper's from iTunes). Of course, they're also comparing several hours at $0.00 to three minutes at $0.79, so I'm not sure how useful the comparison really is (as they admit themselves), except that it surprised them how many people would listen to classical music if it was free. They also point out that iTunes sales are actually better than brick and mortar sales for many classical albums.

Area 51

[captain_craptacular]

Hate to bring a voice of reason to the area 51 "debate" but those "Black Crop Circles" are nothing more than a wastewater treatment facility. Standard civilian grade stuff there...

Japanese Google maps more detailed

[ashitaka]

Compare the area around my parents in law's place or where I used to live in Tokyo with where I live now.

Showing where the buildings are is nice. Wow! They opened a Macdonalds in Sakura Shin-machi!!!

Craters?

[RiffRafff]

You mean like these?

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.113061,-116.0544 20&spn=0.029803,0.040199&t=k&hl=en

Those are depressions from underground atomic/nuclear tests.

Re:Unlawful reading

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pay a doctor to give life saving care, and no, they won't be fined for accepting payment or providing such care. Many people get privately funded care for a variety of reasons and it's perfectly legal. Btw the fact is, the hospital which allowed you to queue hop, probably did so because you were being aggressive about demanding treatment. They get paid regardless if comes out of your personal pocket or not, and service priority has nothing to do with the source of the money.

Thanks for calling us Commie bastards. It clears a lot up!

It's reeeaaalllly not the price.

[LaminatorX]

Over 150 years after he wrote it, Beethoven's 9th symphony defined the length of the Red Book audio CD. 72 minutes was not just a number Phillips pulled out of thin air. It's the length of the 9th.

Beethoven's allways been bigger than the Beatles.

Area 51 query to Google Maps

[soboroff]

Hey, if you just query "Area 51" on Google Maps, you get right there, plus a link to the Best Western!

Re:Beatles vs. Beethoven

[Bjimba]

Michael Jackson owns the songs (the publishing catalog), not the recordings. He would make money on it, but it's not his decision whether to place the recordings on iTunes.