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Comment Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency (Score 1) 642

by Mr2001 (#36498564) Attached to: Bitcoin Price Crashes

the history and current events are showing that the economy is benefiting in tandem with currency increasing in value, not losing.

Economic benefits in tandem with deflationary currency? Cite, please. I think quite a few Japanese people (not to mention the world's economists!) would be surprised to hear that.

Comment Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency (Score 1) 642

by Mr2001 (#36497250) Attached to: Bitcoin Price Crashes

> Inflation also encourages lending and investing.
- no it does not. Not in people who understand economics and accounting for real. Inflation discourages any desire to deal in that currency. Why would I want to move my wealth into a depreciating currency?

That's the point! Inflation discourages keeping your wealth in the form of cash, and encourages converting it to something else: lending it to a bank, buying stocks, real estate, or consumer goods, etc. Economic growth depends on people being willing to exchange their cash.
United States

British Student Faces Extradition To US Over Copyright 340

Posted by timothy from the hey-free-trip dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A 23-year-old British computer student faces possible extradition to the U.S. for linking to copyrighted content on his website. The student, Richard O'Dwyer, was accused of copyright infringement after setting up the website TV Shack, which had links to thousands of films and tv shows, but did not directly host them."
Government

Russian President: Time To Reform Copyright 293

Posted by timothy from the kalashnikov-mashup dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While most of the rest of the world keeps ratcheting up copyright laws by increasing enforcement and terms, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appears to be going in the other direction. He's now proposing that Russia build Creative Commons-style open and free licenses directly into Russian copyright law. This comes just a few days after he also chided other G8 leaders for their antiquated views on copyright."
Wireless Networking

Global Warming To Hinder Wi-Fi Signals, Claims UK Gov't 280

Posted by Soulskill from the stock-up-on-tinfoil dept.
radioweather writes with news of a government report from the UK's Dept. for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which warns of global warming's harmful effect on Wi-Fi and other communication protocols. Quoting the Guardian: "Presenting the report, the secretary of state for the environment, Caroline Spelman, said that higher temperatures can reduce the range of wireless communications, rainstorms can impact the reliability of the signal, and drier summers and wetter winters may cause greater subsidence, damaging masts and underground cables. The threat posed by climate change to internet and telephone access is a rare example of when the developed world would be hit harder than developing countries, which are in general more at risk from increased floods, droughts and rising sea levels. 'If climate change threatens the quality of your signal, or you can't get it because of extreme fluctuations in temperature, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question,' said Spelman, 'and just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.'"
Android

Apple Delays Release of LGPL WebKit Code 209

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-now-wait-a-minute dept.
jfruhlinger writes "Ever since Apple forked the KHTML project to create WebKit, the rendering engine at the core of Safari, the company has been a good open source citizen, releasing the code back to the community after updates. But that suddenly stopped in March, with no code releases for the last two updates to the iOS version of the browser, for reasons unknown. This might remind you of Google's failure to release the Honeycomb source code. But at least Google announced that it was holding the code back, and Android is under a license that allows for a delay; the LGPL'd WebKit isn't." Update: 05/09 21:21 GMT by S : Reader Shin-LaC points out that Apple has now released the relevant source code.
The Internet

Drudge Generates More News Traffic Than Social Media 216

Posted by samzenpus from the nobody-cares-about-your-day dept.
tcd004 writes "A report released today by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that the Drudge Report is a far more important driver of online news traffic than Facebook or Twitter. In fact, for the top 25 news websites, Twitter barely registers as a source of traffic. The report hits on several other interesting findings about news behavior."
Piracy

CNET Sued Over LimeWire Client Downloads 206

Posted by Soulskill from the seeing-what-sticks dept.
suraj.sun writes with this quote from Ars Technica: "Alki David, the wealthy film producer and entrepreneur behind sites like FilmOn, has sued CNET and its owner, CBS, for providing hundreds of millions of downloads of LimeWire P2P software over the last decade. He argues that CNET had 'direct participation in massive copyright infringement on peer-to-peer systems, such as LimeWire, that are used to copy and distribute songs, films and other artistic works,' and that CNET's Download.com was the 'main distributor' of the software. P2P software isn't illegal, though companies that use it to induce or encourage copyright infringement can be held liable. The principle, most famously articulated by the US Supreme Court in the Grokster shutdown, was extended to LimeWire last year when a federal judge shut down most of the company's activity."

Comment Re:Here's a really brilliant theory... (Score 1) 451

by Mr2001 (#35981642) Attached to: Figuring Out Why Android Wins On Phones, But Not Tablets

The Xoom fails in epic fashion on price - it has similar hardware specs as my $300 G Tablet for twice the price. I would never buy it because I'd feel like a huge sucker.

Maybe, but the Xoom is still comparable to the iPad in specs and price, so how do you explain the fact that people buy those?
Transportation

Lasers To Replace Sparkplugs In Engines? 351

Posted by samzenpus from the lift-the-hood-and-avert-your-eyes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For more than 150 years, spark plugs have powered internal combustion engines. Automakers are now getting close to being able to replace this long-standing technology with laser igniters, which should enable cleaner, more efficient, and more economical vehicles. Price and size have been issues holding up such an advance, but a Japanese team is set to announce they've overcome those hurdles."
The Internet

European Court of Justice To Outlaw Net Filtering 171

Posted by timothy from the soon-only-outlaws-will-have-filters dept.
jrepin writes "Today, the European Court of Justice gave a preliminary opinion that will have far-reaching implications in the fight against overaggressive copyright monopoly abusers. It is not a final verdict, but the advocate general's position; the Court generally follows this. The Advocate Generals says that no ISP can be required to filter the Internet, and particularly not to enforce the copyright monopoly."
Encryption

Apple AirPlay Private Key Exposed 306

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-see-what-you-did-there dept.
An anonymous reader writes "James Laird has reverse engineered the Airport Express private key and published an open source AirPort Express emulator. 'My girlfriend moved house, and her Airport Express no longer made it with her wireless access point. I figured it'd be easy to find an ApEx emulator — there are several open source apps out there to play to them. However, I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there's a private key hiding inside the ApEx. So I took it apart (I still have scars from opening the glued case!), dumped the ROM, and reverse engineered the keys out of it.'"

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