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

Beatles vs. Beethoven

[Nasarius]

Um, don't you think it would have been nice to mention that the Beethoven downloads were free, while Sgt. Pepper's on iTunes obviously isn't? The comparison is worthless.

Re:Beatles vs. Beethoven

[01000011011101000111]

Dude, Beethoven is blatantly better than the beatles - i mean, have you *SEEN* him play in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure?

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.

First Prime Factorization Post

[2*2*3*75011]

Is Area 51 a rectangle with sides 3 and 17?

FAS did the Area51 pics along time ago

[jon787]

Better Area51 pics

The real slashdot effect on downloading...

[DrHanser]

If you get bored, I wrote an analysis of the slashdot effect, seeing as how I was the person hosting those symphonies when all of a sudden I randomly got /.ed. "An analysis of the slashdot effect."

The fury of a slashdotting is truly an impressive thing.

It's not the price

[Henry V .009]

Beethoven goes better with the old Ultra Violence. You have to listen to Helter Skelter for 24 hours to get the same effect.

It's The Nevada Test Site, not Area 51. Jeez.

[uglyMood]

The craters pictured (Google Maps link is http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.108040,-116.0454 94&spn=0.146118,0.240704&t=k&hl=en ) are NOT in Area 51. It's the Nevada Test Site, where we did aboveground and underground nuclear testing for decades. There is a museum for the site in Las Vegas, where I live. It's website is here: http://www.ntshf.org/ .

By the way, the large crater at the north end of the site is from the biggest underground test ever done by the US, code-named Sedan.

Also, if you want to see an atomic cannon (only fired once, at the Nevada Site), there's one outside Junction City, Kansas. The Google Maps URL is http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Junction+City,+Kansa s&ll=39.037964,-96.763169&spn=0.004566,0.007522&t= k&hl=en . It's the small black blot in the center of the image. More on it can be found at Roadside America: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/KSJUNatomic .html .

Help out PDA and Phone Slashdot readers!

[Mr_Silver]

I appreciate that this isn't related to the Slashback articles, but I would appreciate it if people didn't mod this into oblivion.

I maintain and run AvantSlash, which is a script that allows people who are using PDA's and mobile phones to view a specially cleaned up version of Slashdot designed for the limited bandwidth and screen size that they have.

Unfortunately, however, the account with this code in was recently deleted (through no fault of my own) and I don't have a copy of the latest code.

If anyone has version 3.1 of AvantSlash (ideally the full archive, but the script and config file would be a start), I would really appreciate it if they could drop me an email to silver (at) ewtoo (dot) org.

Unfortunately I won't be able to run the site any more due to bandwidth restrictions (although I will still maintain the code) but if anyone has the ability to host it, then please get in contact with me.

Thanks!