Comment Re:DuckDuckGo (Score 1) 274
Thanks for showing me this. Apparently my filter bubble filtered this out of my reality until now.
Comment Re:ISPs policing the internet (Score 1) 218
Sounds right. Both the act of policing piracy and receiving spam are extremely invasive on a very personal level, that is why people seem to take that stance.
Comment Re:Not just Canada (Score 1) 961
I'm sure you have wonderful first hand experience, evidence and documentation to back your claims up, and that you are totally qualified to make these statements.
Comment Re:Fail (Score 1) 452
What is wrong with the awesomebar?
Comment Does EasyPrivacy Thwart this? (Score 1) 352
I run Adblock Plus/Adblock with the EasyList and EasyPrivacy list subscriptions on all of my browsers (Firefox and Webkit based browsers). Does anyone know if this will effectively thwart these tracking cookies?
Comment "beautiful" but not practical (Score 1) 208
Apple time capsules seem like a good idea until you actually think about what its function is, and how it was implemented. Any backup device that does not allow physical access to the storage medium is a mean, practical joke. Add in a faulty power supply that routinely dies in 18 months, its a cruel joke at that, and its exactly what a time capsule is! Networked storage devices are awesome, and a great thing to have around, but to call a backup solution that routinely dies, overheats, and prevents the end user access to the storage medium when the wrapper breaks does not count as a beautiful device.
Comment I'd use it if it was 8 bucks (Score 1) 1
If on-live could stream every game for a flat rate of $8/mo I'd use it.
Comment Hydrogen isn't a fuel, its a battery. (Score 1) 1
We don't need future fuel, we need clean batteries that can store clean, renewable energy. Hydrogen is one possible battery, or something that works similarly to a battery. Petroleum is not clean or renewable. I thought that is what we need to get away from.
Submission + - UBB limits hit Canadian ISPs (arstechnica.com)
Japong writes: ARS Technica covers a big change in Canadian ISP services, where the CRTC's new UBB caps have dropped monthly usage allowances from 200GB and Unlimited accounts down to a mere 25GB.
"The ostensible, theoretical reason behind UBB is to conserve capacity, but that issue is very questionable," noted the ISP's CEO Rocky Gaudrault on TekSavvy's news page. "One certain result though, is that Bell will make much more profit on its Internet service, and discourage Canadians from watching TV and movies on the internet instead of CTV, which Bell now owns."
Submission + - Dancing in the datacentre (prank) (delimiter.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes: What if you walked into your datacentre on a normal day, and disco music started playing, neon lights turned on, and a mirror ball started rotating? That's exactly what happened to Simon Hackett, the managing director of Australian internet service provider Internode. Looks like he made some comments about such a situation at some point and his network engineering team took them a little seriously. Classic. Video attached — his reaction is priceless.
The Ambiguity of "Open" and VP8 Vs. H.264 493
An anonymous reader writes "With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add 'plugins' for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free."
Is Mark Zuckerberg the Next Steve Case? 470
theodp writes "With all signs for Facebook pointing up, author Douglas Rushkoff goes contra, arguing that Facebook hype will fade. 'Appearances can be deceiving,' says Rushkoff. 'In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren't the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.' Rushkoff, who made a similar argument about AOL eleven years ago in a quashed NY Times op-ed, reminds us that AOL was also once considered ubiquitous and invincible, and former AOL CEO Steve Case was deemed no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg. 'So it's not that MySpace lost and Facebook won,' concludes Rushkoff. 'It's that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They'll go down in the same order.'"
The French Government Can Now Censor the Internet 419
Psychophrenes writes "A new episode in French internet legislation — French ministers have passed a bill (original in French) allowing the government to add any website to a black list, which access providers will have to enforce. This black list will be defined by the government only, without requiring the intervention of the legal system. Although originally intended against pedo-pornographic websites, this bill is already outdated, as was Hadopi in its time, and instead paves the way for a global censorship of the 'French internet.'"
The Year In Robot News 38
itwbennett writes "Who loves robots? You may love them more or less after seeing what 2010 gave us, robot-wise. It's not the rise of the machines yet, but that teddy bear creeped us out."
Analyzing Game Journalism 98
SSDNINJA writes "Joseph Jackmovich of gamrFeed analyzes 161 articles from Kotaku, Joystiq, and Destructoid to discover how well they report gaming news. He looks to find out if the stereotypes of game journalism being poorly sourced and sexist are anecdotal or based in fact."
