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The Media

German Publishers Capitulate, Let Google Post News Snippets 95

Posted by timothy from the ja-ja-gut dept.
itwbennett writes German publishers said they are bowing to Google's market power, and will allow the search engine to show news snippets in search results free of charge — at least for the time being. The decision is a step in an ongoing legal dispute between the publishers and Google in which, predictably, publishers are trying to get compensation from the search engine for republishing parts of their content and Google isn't interested in sharing revenue. The move follows a Google decision earlier this month — and which was to go into effect today — to stop using news snippets and thumbnails for some well-known German news sites.

Submission + - Detritus from cancer cells may infect healthy cells (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter
bmahersciwriter writes: Tiny bubbles of cell membrane — called exosomes — are shed by most cells. Long thought to be mere trash, researchers had recently noticed that they often contain short, regulatory RNA molecules, suggesting that exosomes may be one way that cells communicate with one another. Now, it appears that RNA in the exosomes shed by tumor cells can get into healthy cells and 'transform' them, putting them on the path to becoming cancerous themselves.

Submission + - German Publishers Capitulate, Let Google Post News Snippets (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: German publishers said they are bowing to Google's market power, and will allow the search engine to show news snippets in search results free of charge — at least for the time being. The decision is a step in an ongoing legal dispute between the publishers and Google in which, predictably, publishers are trying to get compensation from the search engine for republishing parts of their content and Google isn't interested in sharing revenue. The move follows a Google decision earlier this month — and which was to go into effect today — to stop using news snippets and thumbnails for some well-known German news sites.
Facebook

We Need Distributed Social Networks More Than Ello 269

Posted by timothy from the pick-your-battles dept.
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: Facebook threatened to banish drag queen pseudonyms, and (some) users revolted by flocking to Ello, a social network which promised not to enforce real names and also to remain ad-free. Critics said that the idealistic model would buckle under pressure from venture capitalists. But both gave scant mention to the fact that a distributed social networking protocol, backed by a player large enough to get people using it, would achieve all of the goals that Ello aspired to achieve, and more. Read on for the rest.

Comment Re:Not just women (Score 2) 571

by lgw (#48214615) Attached to: The Inevitable Death of the Internet Troll

If you're not going in harm's way, you shouldn't call yourself a "warrior" of any kind. Malala Yousafzai got shot for daring to advocate that girls should be taught to read. The Canadian parliament attracted a shooter for giving her Canadian citizenship (or so it's presumed -the timing suggests it strongly).

Internet death threats from pathetic losers just aren't the same thing as taking on the Taliban. The risk may be non-0, but iit's problebly lower than the risk of driving to the event.

Submission + - Ubuntu 14.10 Released (ubuntu.com)

Submitted by linuxscreenshot
linuxscreenshot writes: Ubuntu 14.10, the latest desktop release is today available for download from Canonical. This release focuses on the developer experience, overall quality, and brings a number of important features and security enhancements. The Ubuntu desktop continues to be intuitive, easy to use and reliable for users all over the world.

Screenshots: http://www.linuxscreenshots.or...

Comment Re:A bit???? (Score 0) 168

by smooth wombat (#48214265) Attached to: Austin Airport Tracks Cell Phones To Measure Security Line Wait

But this involves TECHNOLOGY so it must be evil because without TECHNOLOGY there would be other possible way for the folks at the airport to calculate how long you might be waiting in line.

No siree, no way at all. You standing there, in full view of every person, in a public space. No way to check. None at all.
Data Storage

Ask Slashdot: Smarter Disk Space Monitoring In the Age of Cheap Storage? 170

Posted by timothy from the percentages-matter-too-though dept.
relliker writes In the olden days, when monitoring a file system of a few 100 MB, we would be alerted when it topped 90% or more, with 95% a lot of times considered quite critical. Today, however, with a lot of file systems in the Terabyte range, a 90-95% full file system can still have a considerable amount of free space but we still mostly get bugged by the same alerts as in the days of yore when there really isn't a cause for immediate concern. Apart from increasing thresholds and/or starting to monitor actual free space left instead of a percentage, should it be time for monitoring systems to become a bit more intelligent by taking space usage trends and heuristics into account too and only warn about critical usage when projected thresholds are exceeded? I'd like my system to warn me with something like, 'Hey!, you'll be running out of space in a couple of months if you go on like this!' Or is this already the norm and I'm still living in a digital cave? What do you use, on what operating system?

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1) 21

by pudge (#48213933) Attached to: Way to go, Republican loser

The GOP isn't any more pro capitalist than the Dems. They just like a different set of cronies.

Yes, the GOP -- as a whole -- does pay off its cronies. But there are a significant number of prominent Republicans in office who oppose these practices (e.g., Scott Walker). There is not a significant number of Dems who oppose these practices. Further, the Republicans' policies are generally much more pro-capitalist (against raising the minimum wage, against collective bargaining with govt employees, and so on).

So ... no, the GOP is significantly more pro-capitalist than the Dems. Very clearly and easily. They are not, however, as pro-capitalist as I am, or Scott Walker is, etc.

Submission + - Contact between Native Americans and Easter Islanders before 1500 C.E (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Polynesians from Easter Island and natives of South America met and mingled long before Europeans voyaged the Pacific, according to a new genetic study of living Easter Islanders. In this week’s issue of Current Biology, researchers argue that the genes point to contact between Native Americans and Easter Islanders before 1500 C.E., 3 centuries after Polynesians settled the island also known as Rapa Nui, famous for its massive stone statues. Although circumstantial evidence had hinted at such contact, this is the first direct human genetic evidence for it.
Privacy

Austin Airport Tracks Cell Phones To Measure Security Line Wait 168

Posted by timothy from the making-a-list-checking-it-twice dept.
jfruh writes If you get into the TSA security line at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, you'll see monitors telling you how long your wait will be — and if you have a phone with Wi-Fi enabled, you're helping the airport come up with that number. A system implemented by Cisco tracks the MAC addresses of phones searching for Wi-Fi networks and sees how long it takes those phones to traverse the line, giving a sense of how quickly things are moving. While this is useful information to have, the privacy implications are a bit unsettling.

Comment Re:it's corruption (Score 1) 21

by Bill Dog (#48213511) Attached to: Way to go, Republican loser

p.s. And I don't mean to imply anything like I think it's like Lefties' stupid idea of a "hate crime", where somehow the crime is worse if there's something more sinister going on behind it. The damage is the damage, so the crime is the crime. Being primarily motivated by trashing the system versus primarily by empowering oneself doesn't make the crime any worse. It just means there's something additional the voters ought to be watching out for from that "representative".

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