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Comment Re:Thin edge of the wedge! (Score 3, Interesting) 266

Even more interesting is how this will play out with caches of sites. By that I mean, site A has the eraser button in place, and everything works fine and dandy. Site B keeps caches, but doesn't let minors/users from California access it. Site B caches site A and maintains the "un-ersaed" data from the original site.

Both sites therefore work within the letter of the law, yet the information is still online.

Comment Re:You know what curbs piracy? (Score 4, Insightful) 133

However, you can quite easily get a family of four on a modest income to pay $10 a month for Netflix. Why this makes Hollywood brains explode I'll never know.

Hollywood brains explode because they cannot understand why you would give away so much content for so little! I mean, movies for a whole month for $10? Are you crazy!?! They sell a single DVD for like three times that! Lets say two movies are watched per night, that's a rate of $1,800 per month for goodness sake, not this measly $10...

Comment Re:Forget ratings, measure ROI. (Score 5, Interesting) 302

What I simply don't understand is why US universities are so expensive. It's gotten to the point where it seems that any sort of education can only be gotten my pretty much taking on so much debt that you will be lucky to pay it back - which then forces the government to start putting in copious amounts of scholarships/funding to keep students there.

Degree Costs in Australia

Over here, a degree (not counting the really expensive ones like medicine) costs $15-30k and a masters $20-37k.

The average cost (excluding the notoriously expensive universities) in the US is $28k per year.

Seriously, why?

Comment The most amusing thing that I see in this: (Score 4, Insightful) 128

I find it so ironic that it's cute and I just want to give it a big cuddle...

That alarms privacy advocates, who say that now is the time for the government to establish oversight rules and limits on how it will someday be used.

Are these privacy advocates aware that the folks who want this most are the government that they are going to ask to curtail the ability to do it? It's like asking the playground bully to ask for permission to steal your lunch money...

Comment Smart Criminals (Score 5, Insightful) 179

I like stories like this. If something is done really well and in a clever way (whether it was really being naughty or not) the effort, cleverness and ingenuity should indeed have its merits praised. Slashdot should have more stories like this: Hey, they did a bad thing, but look at just how WELL they did it.

Comment Re:Idiots (Score 4, Interesting) 350

They must have thought Christmas had come early - he was foreign, gay *and* a being labelled as a potential terrorist.

That's not going to help the feds/governments in the long term though. The more they rough up the journalists, treat them like enemies and make their lives generally more difficult - the more they are likely to be treated in the same manner. Why go to all the trouble of being polite, redacting sensetive bits and playing by the book when you know that the next time you go through an airport, your pants are coming down and you better hope you got some lube in...

When one team starts playing hardball, the other team often starts doing the same - and the journalists will probably see these sorts of infractions nothing short of a badge of honour - but on the flipside, the potential trouble/egg-on-face for the governments just went up and up.

Comment Re:Embrace? check. Extend? Ah, there's the problem (Score 1) 629

Wrong it doesn't block ads.

The original app did. That's when Google stepped in and dropped the hammer. They gave MS a list of things to do. Even from reading the article, the chap says that they haven't done all of these. Google wanted the app in HTML5 - the app isn't. They wanted other features implemented (which aren't for whatever reason, blame MS or Google - it sort of doesn't matter - they are not implemented) so Google has pulled the plug.

While I am not totally convinced that at least part of this isn't Google playing tough and messing with MS, it doesn't sound like MS has a huge platform to stand on. Do what google asks so that Google will serve you THEIR content.

From TFA:

There was one sticking point in the collaboration. Google asked us to transition our app to a new coding language – HTML5. This was an odd request since neither YouTube’s iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility. At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps.

I am personally not a fan of "Do as I say, not as I do..." but when you are giving your market competitor access to your content like this, it doesn't seem a totally unreasonable request, does it?

Comment Re:No notice, no reference (Score 4, Informative) 892

Yeah, but when people are laid off, they might get walked out the door, but they are still paid the next two weeks wages. At least that is the case in Australia. Yeah, it's certainly not unheard of that folks walk into the office one morning and get told that they have been let go - but they are always paid their two weeks + entitlements that same morning.

Comment Re:Ugggh. (Score 5, Insightful) 650

These clowns don't have anything more important to work on?

Yeah, they do, that's why they are doing this. Classic misdirection 101. Can't fix the economy? Can't do your job properly? Do something loud, big that gets noticed and likely eaten right up by the average Joe-Shmo living in Nowheresville, Mediocrity. Get into the news for being the "Good guys" after the "dangerous treason-ous US-hating, communist/socialist/terrorist". Then when (and in the unlikely case of IF) people ask why you didn't do what you were supposed to do, you can cheerfully say that you were too busy keeping the US safe.

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