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Patents

Nero Files Antitrust Complaint Against MPEG-LA 247

Posted by Soulskill from the hot-topics-getting-hotter dept.
hkmwbz writes "German technology company Nero AG has filed an antitrust complaint against the MPEG-LA, the company that manages the H.264 patent pool. Nero claims that the MPEG-LA has violated the law and achieved and abused 100% market share, by, among other things, using 'independent experts' that weren't independent after all, not weeding out non-essential patents from the pool (in fact, it has grown from the original 53 to more than 1,000), and retroactively changing previously-agreed-on license terms."

Comment Re:Look at Firefox as well (Score 1) 234

by Looce (#32255022) Attached to: Chrome Private Mode Not Quite Private

I think that the clearing of private data in Firefox is a bit counter-productive, because deleting from SQLite databases merely marks the rows' storage space as being reclaimable within the file.

I once cleared private data for a day when my places.sqlite was around 70 MiB, then checked the file size and saw that it hadn't even changed by one byte. It wouldn't surprise me if the URLs were still in there -- all of them, intact, until you visit other pages to make Firefox overwrite the reclaimable pages in places.sqlite.

Even if Firefox truncated places.sqlite when the user clicked "delete everything", the URLs would still be readable on the underlying storage device. Firefox would have to shred(1) or zero out the file. I doubt that's going to happen.
Privacy

Facebook Throws Privacy Advocates a Bone 126

Posted by Soulskill from the a-very-small-bone dept.
sarysa writes "In response to a week-long assault by privacy advocates, and following a well publicized all-hands meeting, Facebook has introduced two new security features in response to privacy concerns. One feature allows users to whitelist devices associated with a Facebook account, and the other allows users who verify their identity to view previous logins. While both are useful features, they do nothing to address the recent privacy complaints."

Comment Baselines (Score 3, Insightful) 1138

by Looce (#32209390) Attached to: Too Many College Graduates?

Education and money are very much alike in one aspect: if everyone has at least the same amount, then that amount becomes the baseline, below which it is worthless.

College degrees being required for plumbing jobs and the like are only the symptom of this problem.

Whereas before education was made mandatory in most countries of the world, the baseline was no education at all, now the United States have college as a baseline. And it's rather difficult to get out of this, because you ask someone in college why they're in college and they'll say, "I must, because I can't afford to not keep up with my peers." So people go to college because people go to college, and it's a recursive clusterfuck.
Power

Re-Purposing the Netherlands' Dike System For Power Generation 132

Posted by timothy from the let's-go-dutch dept.
vikingpower writes "Built in reaction to a major flood that killed 1,800 in the '50s, the Dutch system of dikes, sluices, surge barriers, and dams has been dubbed 'one of the seven wonders of the modern world' by the American Society of Engineers. Now there are proposals to use the system differently, e.g. as tidal power plants, by punching holes in them. Any civil engineer's mouth will probably be watering when thinking of the mega-projects this could give rise to."
Canada

Climate Researchers Fight Back 641

Posted by Soulskill from the best-defense-is-a-good-offense dept.
tomduck writes "The Guardian reports that climate researcher Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post newspaper in Canada in a libel action for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods.' The Post claimed he cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and tried to blame the 'evil fossil fuel' industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from mistakes in the 2007 IPCC report. This comes fast on the heels of another Guardian article describing lessons learned from the exoneration of UEA scientists involved in the so-called Climategate affair. Are climate scientists finally fighting back against their critics, who they were previously more inclined to ignore?"
Censorship

EFF Assails YouTube For Removing "Downfall" Parodies 294

Posted by kdawson from the end-is-near dept.
Locke2005 writes "In what promises to be one of the quickest threads to become Godwin'ed, YouTube has pulled scores of parodies of the 'Hitler Finds Out' scene from the movie The Downfall. Ironically, I had never heard of this movie before this — and now I want to watch it." Here is the EFF complaint. David Weinberger has posted some details on Google's Content Identification tool, which is being used in the shotgun takedowns.
Censorship

Scientology Tries To Block German Documentary 565

Posted by timothy from the piece-of-blue-sky dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Guardian is reporting on the strained relationship that Scientology is having with the German government and the airing of a pesky documentary on Southwest Broadcasting. Until Nothing Remains, a $2.3 million documentary, is slotted to air on German television at the end of this month. It recounts the true story of Heiner von Rönn and his family's suffering when he tried to leave the Church of Scientology. A Scientology spokesperson called the film false and intolerant and also said they are investigating legal means to stop the film from being aired. More details on the film can be gleaned here."
Patents

Dr. NakaMats Is the World's Most Prolific Inventor 194

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the patent-troll-slayer dept.
MMBK writes to share an interesting look at Dr. "NakaMats" Nakamatsu, mastermind behind a world-record 3,000 patents. The 81-year-old scientist has inventions like the "PyonPyon" spring shoes, the karaoke machine, and others. He's also at least partly to blame for things like the digital watch, the floppy disk, and CDs. "Dr. Nakamatsu harbors other ambitions too: in 2007, he took his penchant for political campaigning to a new level, becoming a candidate in the gubernatorial election in Tokyo, and the election for the Upper House. Although he failed to get a seat, Dr. NakaMats has other tricks up his sleeve. In 2005 he was awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Nutrition, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). By the time he dies at the age of 144 (a goal he maintains with an elaborate daily ritual that rejuvenates his body and triggers his creative process), he intends to patent 6,000 inventions."

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