Ok, Police are one thing but Copyright cops? This is just getting way out of control. People should not be able to copyright software and yet it still happens. Article from Slashdot.org:

Congress Creates Copyright Cops

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 07, @07:44AM
from the story-you-are-about-to-see-is-a-fib-but-its-short dept.

 

I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the “‘PRO IP’ Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, ‘films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,’ though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion.”

Wow a cool discovery. article from slashdot.org:

Saturn’s Moons Built From Ring Material

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday December 07, @09:04AM
from the lookit-all-them-moons-up-there dept.

LiquidCoooled writes “Two of Saturn’s small moons look eerily like flying saucers, new observations by the Cassini spacecraft reveal. The moons, which lie within the giant planet’s rings, may have come by their strange shape by gradually accumulating ring particles in a ridge around their equators.”

Not good for People applying for passports in Canada. Article from Slashdot.org:

Privacy Breach In Canadian Passport Application Site

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 05, @05:26AM
from the didn’t-need-that-old-identity-anyhow dept.

Joanna Karczmarek sends us news of a massive privacy breach in the Government of Canada passport website. “A security flaw in Passport Canada’s website has allowed easy access to the personal information — including social insurance numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers — of people applying for new passports. … The breach was discovered last week by an Ontario man completing his own passport application. He found he could easily view the applications of others by altering one character in the Internet address displayed by his Web browser.”

Wow a live debate going on at 10:00 AM PST. (article from Slashdot.org)

Weigh In On the OOXML Issue During Live Debate

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday December 05, @07:52AM
from the better-than-daytime-television dept.

lisah writes “Linux.com’s Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller will moderate a live debate today, Wednesday, December 5 at 1pm US EST (GMT -5), between the GNOME Foundation’s press officer Jeff Waugh and fair competition advocate Roy Schestowitz. Both have strong — and opposing — points of view regarding GNOME’s involvement with Microsoft’s OOXML standard and vehemently defend their positions, so getting them together in the same virtual room ought to prove quite interesting. Although the broadcast will be archived as a podcast and available for free download, you can listen live as it’s recorded and also call in to participate and ask questions.”

This is sad and getting sadder by the moment. article from Slashdot.org:

Microsoft Fueling HD Wars For Own Benefit?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 05, @09:23AM
from the well-they-ain’t-running-a-charity-over-there dept.

DaveyJJ writes “According to Transformers’ director Michael Bay, in a story over on Electronista, Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, he says in a response to a question posed through his official forums. The producer contends that Microsoft is writing “$100 million dollar checks” to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format’s actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand.”

Wow American congress does not want to fund people to go to Mars. Article from slashdot.org:

How To Beat Congress’s Ban Of Humans On Mars

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 05, @11:00AM
from the or-just-stop-spending-on-wars dept.

An anonymous reader writes “Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban humans on Mars at NASA: “Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.” The bill is held up in Congress and the anti-Mars language may be taken out. But in case the Mars ban becomes law, the Space Review has a handy guide on how NASA can beat the ban and continue its research and development without breaking the law.”

Microsoft will be withdrawing its anti-piracy tool, named “kill switch”, which disables Vista if it is believed to be an illegal copy. This decision was a result from an outcry of complainants. The tool has suffered from glitches since it was introduced with some users claiming that their legal copies of Vista had been disabled.

Microsoft says its efforts have seen a drop in piracy of its software.

In a statement released by the company, Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert, said: “Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit will be presented with clear and recurring notices about the status of their system and how to get genuine copies.”

‘Take action’

“They won’t lose access to functionality or features, but it will be very clear to them that their copy of Window Vista is not genuine and they need to take action.”

Microsoft has described the new approach as a “change of tactics”. It said efforts to tackle piracy had seen numbers of fake copies of Vista at half the level of XP, the previous Windows operating system.

news source:bbc

I will be reviewing Windows Vista either this week or next week.