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Slashback: Kororaa GPL, ICANN .XXX, BellSouth NSA
Kororaa denies GPL violations. AlanS2002 writes "Chris Smart, of the Kororaa Project, has written an update about the accusation that the Kororaa XGL LiveCD is in violation of the GPL. According to Chris, he has been shown no evidence that the nVidia/ATI drivers are derived from any code in the Linux Kernel or that the drivers link to the Kernel. From the best information he has it appears that the drivers make system calls to public interfaces of the Kernel, in the same way that a web browser makes calls to public interfaces of a web server but are not considered to be linked to the web server (they do not link to private functions of the web server). However the Kororaa project has decided to let end users download and install the drivers themselves if need be, which defeats the purpose of continuing to develop their Live CD. As such their will be no Kororaa XGL LiveCD 0.3, however they will continue to make Kororaa XGL LiveCD 0.2 available."
BellSouth demands retraction to NSA story. An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that BellSouth has moved from strongly denying participation in providing the NSA with calling records to requesting a retraction of the article from USA Today." From the article: "The telecommunications giant sent a letter to USA Today on Thursday asking it to retract last week's story that BellSouth and two other companies helped the NSA compile a massive database of records on domestic phone calls."
South Korea rejects Microsft antitrust appeal. mikesd81 writes "According to MSNBC, the Korean Fair Trade Commission has turned down Microsoft's appeal to separate it's Window's OS and it's media service. The February ruling also included a 34 million dollar fine. Apparently, The commission began investigating Microsoft after a local Internet portal, Daum Communications Corp., filed a complaint with the commission in 2001."
Tim Berners Lee continues net neutrality fight. Kortec writes "As reported by The BCC, Sir Tim Berners Lee has spoken out against the current US bias towards the destruction of network neutrality at the Edinburgh WWW2006 conference. The man behind it all is quoted as saying the two tier system proposed recently on the floor of Congress is not 'part of the internet model,' and that 'the web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it in to different services.'"
ICANN possibly pressured to nix .XXX domain. mobiux writes "Fox News reporting that the US Government allegedly pressured ICANN into denying the .XXX domain, despite orders not to do so. ICM Registry says the e-mails show how the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, was subjected to intense pressure to intervene on behalf of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two socially conservative lobbying organizations."
Another side to Vista Beta2 reviews. lordgreg writes to tell us that while Slashdot already talked about Vista Beta 2 Major Problems, which Gary Krakow addressed in his review. DotProject claims to have the other side of Vista Beta2's Major Problems, the users themselves.
Vonage IPO shaping up to be the worst tech IPO in 2 years. fistfullast33l writes "Vonage went public to great fanfare and poor results today, with it's stock price falling 11% by closing time. Analysts have cited the fact that Vonage has yet to post a profit and increasing competition for the lack of interest. 'It's a wildly unprofitable company still selling at a very high valuation,' said Tom Taulli of Newport Coast, California, an IPO analyst. BusinessWeek also discusses growth barriers listed in Vonage's filings, including 'finding enough customer-support staffers and long delays in getting traditional phone companies to let customers take their existing phone numbers [to Vonage].'"
"Intense pressure?" Big guys named Guido and Luigi showed up at the reception desk and asked politely that they pressure ICANN? Concerned mothers sent them very sternly worded letters with comments like "I would send you to bed without dinner"?
The US Government does whatever the hell it wants to, generally. Especially branches nobody's ever heard about, unless someone threatens their budget. We generally term that "extortion", and that's certainly not very family-friendly. Nevermind that it seems absurd that some goofy little branch of the department of Commerce holds -any- sway over ICANN whatsoever; they're also fantastically good at ignoring people and doing whatever the hell they please.
Please help metamoderate.
Leave the legal arguments to the lawyers already. If someone doesn't like you linking X component with Y component, the very first thing you should ask them is: are you the copyright holder of X component or Y component? If the answer is "no" then kindly ask them to go away. Only the copyright holder can sue you so why should you pay any attention to them. If you are so worried about someone suing you, just call up the only people who can sue you, the copyright holders, and ask them if what you are doing is ok. If they say yes, put that on your web site and tell the distractors to piss off.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has wondered why we haven't seen wider circulation of this story and why immigration laws are suddenly the thing to discuss. As one slashdotter pointed out a couple weeks ago, the NSA makes Nixon look like an amateur.
There was a protest today outside the SBC building on Folsom Street here in San Francisco, but it drew hardly any attention and there was no media around.
The building itself is pretty scary looking. It's a huge brown rectangle with tinted windows that also somehow look brown. Compared with the nice architecture of the nearby buildings, it sure is an eyesore.
Anyhow, someone want to offer me any conspiracy theories on why nobody cares?
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Should a similar exemption not apply to device drivers compiled as kernel modules?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Actually that is old news to the Tolkien folk. If you search around you will find that His works have always been well recieved by the greater christian community, Compare that to any Harry Potter book, universally reviled as witchcraft, satanist, and evil. Good or bad the original Tolkien books were loved by the christian orthodoxy. It has been said that the acceptance of them has been due to JRR's conversion to Catholocism. I dont know. The Triolgy has been given many meanings through the years - the Ring as Nuclear power, as Race relations, as a simple life vs the worldly one. For me, it only showed how different the original Artist's product is different than how the original Artist meant it to be. For me, they are the best stories ever told.
Sera
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