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arstechnica.com rss archive / October-04-2007
"White spaces" war heats up at FCC
In FCC meetings, broadcasters call white spaces devices "germs" that could "infect" TVs in hospital and hotel rooms. Microsoft asks everyone to just slow down the FUD train and says that the devices are 100 percent accurate.Read More...
NBCU's CEO: Piracy is the new face of economic crime, and we're losing
The big boss at NBCU knows that the war on piracy is a disaster, but his solution isn't to try a new tactic. Rather, Jeff Zucker wants to see all ISPs and the government put piracy at the top of their agendas.Read More...
China's Great Firewall turns its attention to RSS feeds
The "Great Firewall of China" is an organic, constantly-changing "filter" that blocks and unblocks access to certain resources seemingly as often as the tides change. One recent blocking effort targets RSS, and reports indicate the problem is getting worse. There are ways around it, fortunately.Read More...
419ers busted, $2.1 billion in fraudulent checks snatched
77 people have been arrested in connection with running fake check scams like the infamous "Nigerian scam," which led authorities to seize billions of dollars in fraudulent checks.Read More...
Seeking market share, Microsoft removes WGA anti-piracy check from IE7
Microsoft has announced that its latest update to Internet Explorer 7 removes the built-in Windows Genuine Advantage check when installing the browser.Read More...
RIAA trial verdict is in: jury finds Thomas liable for infringement
After less than four hours of deliberations, a federal jury in Duluth, Minnesota, handed the RIAA a victory in the first file-sharing case to go to trial, finding that Jammie Thomas willfully infringed on the record labels' copyrights, awarding them $222,000 in damages.Read More...
Amazon reveals its distributed storage "Dynamo"
Amazon researchers are set to present a formal paper describing Dynamo, its distributed storage system at an Operating Systems Principles conference this month. We'll take a quick look at the impressive technology behind Dynamo.Read More...
AT&T U-Verse sidesteps town politics, coming to Illinois in 2008
Under a new statewide franchise law, AT&T can offer video service in Illinois without having to negotiate with every town and village. Such a law could be coming soon to a state near you; 18 states already have them on the books.Read More...
House Committee begins NSA wiretap investigation, taps EFF and ACLU for aid
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has started its investigation into the involvement of the telecommunications companies in the NSA wiretap program.Read More...
UC Berkeley puts hundreds of academic lectures on YouTube
Ever felt like learning about physics from a professor at UC Berkeley? You may have been able to listen to those lectures before, but now you can watch them through the university's new public channel on YouTube. Read More...
Google attacks Verizon's attempt to water down 700MHz "open access" rules
The fight over 700MHz "open access" goes public as the gloves come off and Google attacks Verizon over the company's attempts to limit the proposed "open access" rules.Read More...
Lack of media diversity ownership slammed on the eve of more consolidation
A media watchdog says that ownership of US media resources is overwhelmingly homogenous, and it objects to further consolidation which it sees as only exacerbating the problem. Read More...