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Slashback: Facebook Un-Ban, Exploding Laptop, FFXI II

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories including, Kent State Facebook ban reversed, exploding laptop old news to Dell, XM moves to dismiss RIAA suit, J2EE death greatly exaggerated, and Square's next MMOG not FFXI II -- Read on for details.

Kent State Facebook ban reversed. Corvaith writes "Just a few days after it was originally noted that Kent State University had banned athletes from posting on Facebook, the Kent Stater announced that the ban was reversed. From the article: 'The athletic department had previously expressed concern about athletes' personal information being available to the public, allowing for possible stalking situations. They were also concerned about athletes displaying inappropriate information on their profiles.' But, in the end, they 'had a change of heart after reviewing the privacy measures available on Facebook.' Athletes must now lock their profiles to friends only."

Exploding laptop old news to Dell? Anonymous writes "CRN is reporting that Dell had about a dozen reports of burned laptops before they announced last year's battery recall. The recall was launched in response to a exploding laptop caught on film at a Japanese conference. Dozens more cases popped up with apparently severe overheating, melted cases, etc., according to the report."

XM moves to dismiss RIAA suit. mikesd81 writes "Apparently, XM is asking a judge to dismiss a a copy right law suit brought by the recording industry. The law suit is over the ipod-like device that can store up to 50 hours of music. XM Satellite said the 1992 Home Recording Audio act protects it from being sued over its $400 handheld device. From the article: 'In a court filing, XM Satellite said the 1992 protections represent Congress' efforts to insure that the powerful recording industry would not be able to restrict the right of consumers to record songs that are broadcast over the radio or stifle innovation by chilling the development and use of the latest recording technologies.'"

J2EE death greatly exaggerated. Peter writes "A recent Burton Group report has stated that the Java Enterprise Edition platform is 'dying due to its complexity and lack of suitability for SOA.' Major vendors supporting JEE have responded with rebuttals, stating that the complexity has arisen due to customer needs and that it is well positioned for companies to build SOA solutions on."

Square's next MMOG not FFXI II. Despite some of the rumblings around the net, it appears that the next MMOG to come out of Square will not be a sequel to the popular FFXI. While Square may have shot down this rumor, the question still remains, what MMO are they working on?

11 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Athletes are representatives... by a_greer2005 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and as such they have a responsibility not to embarass the program or school; if the average student posts trash talk about the arch-rival's star player on FB, it is no problem, if an athelete does it, it could blow up into an NCAA investigation, and worse, loads of bad publicity on Spotscenter.

    when you choose to be an athelete and get your schooling comped for the trouble, you take the public persona that comes with it.

    1. Re:Athletes are representatives... by Detritus · · Score: 2, Insightful
      when you choose to be an athelete and get your schooling comped for the trouble, you take the public persona that comes with it.

      How many student athletes receive full or partial athletic scholarships? You don't give up your rights when you become a student athlete.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
    2. Re:Athletes are representatives... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thats patently false. I don't know where folk such as yourself come off just saying random inaccurate things just because you want to believe something to be true to actually be the case.

      Public institutions (government, states, colleges, and anything in between) don't get to abridge the Bill of Rights by virtue of making functions optional or by invitation. The Supreme Court has placed the line with the "compelling interests" test. It is very unlikely that even a somewhat conservative court would agree that a college can ban its students from posting to Facebook. Compelling interest ? I don't see it. At the same time, I believe most courts (and I would concur) that a public school's athletic program can, for example, require its athletes to wear uniforms (over any sort of "free speech" objections that a player wants to wear a pink t-shirt instead).

      Please don't say random arbitary things that are false.

    3. Re:Athletes are representatives... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Student athletes are more than representatives. They're celebrities and commodities. College sports bring a lot of income to schools-- from the games, which rake in the cash from tickets and concessions (and are often even broadcast nationally), from donations from fans (college football or basketball team tend to give copious amounts of cash) and corporate sponsors (donations from large corporations like Nike, for example, that will be quashed if the school's team has a bad reputation.) And then there are prospective students-- ridiculous as it might seem there are a lot, and I mean a LOT of 18 year olds (and parents of the same) who base their decision of which college to attend on which one has the best team.

      A student athelete involved in any sort of scandal is potentially national news and the damage is to a lot more than one person's reputation. Colleges will do whatever they can to keep their teams and players from being seen in a negative light, including limiting their freedom. Not saying this is right, but it's the way it is.

  2. Re:XM?? by Durrok · · Score: 4, Insightful

    RIAA will die out, no doubt about that. They are aging dinosaurs in a changing climate with no will to change. The RIAA has an advantage the dinosaurs didn't however. The dinosaurs were helpless to change their environment and died out, letting new creatures evolve and prosper in their absence. The RIAA has the ability to forcibly change the "climate" thus killing off everything else while leaving them to prosper.

    Only time will tell...

    P.S: Sorry for all the analogies, won't happen again. ;)

    --
    I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
  3. Re:Square and MMOs by jouvart · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I can't agree more. I've been very disappointed at their recent releases (I've fallen back to replaying Chrono Trigger...). Even FFXII, their latest single player game, lacks the fun gameplay that the old releases in the franchise had. OTOH, FFXII had some great dialogue (Balthier FTW) and cutscenes, but that doesn't make a game great as opposed to merely good.

  4. Re:J2EE by zerocool^ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also, I dropped this: . Can you pick it up for me?

    ----

    Yeah, exactly. You've hit on all the major points.

    I will look into that redhat thing. THAT would save a lot of headaches. I don't particularly like redhat, and they do some things a bit wonky, but at least it's relatively consistant. Also, the suggestion about $JAVA_HOME is brilliant, I can't believe I haven't thought of it. I'm probably going to do that tomorrow.

    If you go back and read:

    JDK/Java SDK is for development. Comes with Javac. You need this for J2EE and for development. JRE is included in the JDK or is available as a standalone download. The JRE is the runtime env, it only includes the VM. J2EE is a specification, you almost never want the J2EE install from Sun since, by itself, it doesn't give you anything. You need an application server, such as Websphere, Geronimo, JBoss, Weblogic, etc. The application server includes the J2EE libraries. It does not always include a JDK.

    I mean... I know you know what you're talking about, but wow. That's really confusing, and that's better than I've ever seen it explained anywhere. Basically, I install JDK. The way I decided (call me wierd) what contained the most stuff was by looking at the filesizes of the downloads - i.e. JRE is only a few megs, JDK is bigger, and J2EE is really big. It's odd that the big one doesn't include anything, though. Must be the graphical installer. But, yeah, my standard ritual is to install the JDK package. After that, some people want J2EE.

    And, you also hit it on the head with your last bit. I *KNEW* that if I developed in Java, this would all make sense (or, if it doesn't make sense, it would be self evident as to what did what, skipping the why). Ugh.

    Thanks a million, seriously!

    ~Wx

    ------

    //grumble preview grumble

    --
    sig?
  5. Oh, really... by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    CRN is reporting that Dell had about a dozen reports of burned laptops before they announced last year's battery recall.

    I'm not surprised, since there is a good chance that out of the thousands and thousands of laptops they sell, a couple bad batteries could be a fluke, and you need a bigger sample to see a trend... It's hard to fault them for this unless you make money off page impressions...

    On the other hand, if this were an Apple story it would have made the front page as it's own story, and would be parroted across the web. Funny how that stuff goes.

  6. PMG DELL KNEW!! by StikyPad · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So a company waited for problems to show up more than once before issuing a complete product recall. Why is this news? One or two could be a quirk, and "dozens," vague as it is, sounds about right.

  7. Re:Say NO to RMS by Millenniumman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wanted to suggest everybody to stop using the term "GNU/Linux" and using "Linux"

    I think everyone else is way ahead of you.

    Is there another operating system for the Linux kernel?

    --
    Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
  8. It depends by okwiater · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I read a little bit about the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), and came up with the following relevant bits (from answers.com).

    (1) It requires digital recorders to use the Serial Copy Management System (SCMS), which prevents digital dubbing beyond one generation (section 1002(a))
    (2) Imposes a "royalty" on digital recorders (section 1004(a))

    I don't know what the SCMS is, but I suppose if XM can show that it implemented some sort of SCMS system (or if it can demonstrate that the device is not able to transfer recorded information to another device -- preventing "beyond one generation" digital dubbing) AND that it tried to pay a "royalty" for each recorder sold, then it would have a case.

    But if XM just marketed the recorder without any regard for the required "royalty", then sadly, the RIAA will probably win. I hope that is not the case, otherwise it could prove fatal to XM's existence.

    As an aside, I haven't stolen music in years. Apple's iTunes, my XM subscription, and other listen-before-you-buy, instant-gratification, digital distribution mediums have caused me to buy more music in the last year or two than in all the other prior years combined. Unfortunately, until consumers care enough to actually boycott the industry, the RIAA can do whatever it wants. This is a capitalist society after all, we DO have the power. Do we choose to use it?