Slashback: Google, China, Network Neutrality

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion, more fodder for the Chinese censorship fire, one of last weeks "first computers" brought to life, the New York Times backs network neutrality, hard drive death dance tracks, Serenity enters the black, and the USPTO issues a final rejection in RIM patent case -- Read on for details.

Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion. xandroid writes "Google's blog has an explanation of their response to the DoJ motion." They have also provided a link to the entire 25 page response [PDF] sent to the DoJ.

Chinese censorship continues to be a hot topic. Mercury News is running an interesting article about the recent scolding top tech companies received from Washington with regards to assisting in censoring the internet in China. However, the Washington Post also has an interesting article regarding a senior editor at the China Youth Daily who posted a 'blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.' And finally, Wikipedia remains blocked in China despite the continued efforts of fans to correct the problem.

1960's Digicomp toy computer back in production. Larry Groebe writes "With all the talk last week about "first computers" on Slashdot and around the net, I was surprised to see only one mention of the Digicomp. A group of us keep the memories alive on Yahoo's 'Friends of Digicomp' group, and one enterprising member has managed to reconstruct the computer and is now selling them again for the first time in three decades. Its' a nostalgia trip for some of us; an eye opener for people who never experienced it; and still carries more than a bit of educational value. After all, even in these days of MAKE magazine, how many other true build-it-from-scratch computer kits are there?"

New York Times backs network neutrality. joshdick writes "In a recent editorial, The New York Times voices strong support for legislation requiring network neutrality. From the article: 'Some I.S.P.'s are phone and cable companies that make large campaign contributions, and are used to getting their way in Washington. But Americans feel strongly about an open and free Internet. Net neutrality is an issue where the public interest can and should trump the special interests.'"

Hard drive death dance tracks. daithedragon writes "A while back Gizmodo awarded the prizes in a competition to make a dance tracks out of the recorded noises of hard drives dying."

Serenity enters the black. stuart1310 writes "According to sliceofscifi.com the DVD sales of Joss Whedon's Serenity have recently climbed out of the red and started making profit for Universal. Beware, these numbers are estimates and even if accurate we've still a sight to go before seeing Serenity on TV or in the theaters again. Here is to hoping we do."

USPTO issue final rejection in RIM patent case. tsalaroth writes "ABC News is reporting that the USPTO has officially rejected at least one of the patents in the Blackberry infringement case. From the article: 'The U.S. patent office on Wednesday issued its first of several anticipated final rejections of patents held by NTP Inc. related to Research in Motion's BlackBerry device, two days before a judge will hear arguments on an injunction on the wireless e-mail service.'"

Comments

Re:Network Neutrality won't work

[peragrin]

when was the last time you heard of a ISP going out of business?

Idiots like you need to stay in school and learn something. In the beginning there were bbs and closed networks. prodigy compuserve, Aol, Each service provided everything on their own content in a tiered system. Most allowed limited connections with the outside As the Internet began to take off, and people realized what a neutral and open platform could do they flocked to it. prodigy is gone, compuserve is a shadow of it's former self. MSFT was creating their own AOL, and decided to simplify things by providing dedicated content to internet users. AOL is forcing people off of slow dial-up connections to encourage broadband use.

Tiered Internet services failed before. Why would they succeed now? I pay the Cable or DSL provider a fee to provide me with unlimited bandwidth to all sites. Not just their sites. How would you like to pay $.99 to apple for a song off itunes and $1.99 more on your ISP bill because you connect to the net through AOL and AOL is a MSFT partner? Or how much more would you pay to see news from CNN because your ISP is only a Fox news supporter.

that is what your supporting. Just a way to rip off customers while actually degrading overall service.

Oh and your ISP got slashdotted a couple of times, so if you want to post to and read slashdot from now on you have to pay $.99 a meg you download from slashdot.org Since you now have to use your ISP's branded browser it doesn't store cache files for slashdot so you have to pay a buck a visit on average.

Whenever a politician or a company proposes an idea. imagine the way they can profit from it the most while doing the least work. That is the likely end result. Look at what Sony did with rootkits. of course you probably helped sony out of that one as well.