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Submission + - Western Digital 'MyCloud' Is Down 5 Days & Counting

Submitted by Nemo the Magnificent
Nemo the Magnificent writes: A friend of mine bought a Western Digital 'MyCloud' NAS server (non-RAID) a couple of weeks ago. WD implements the cloud service through its wd2go.com site. He reports that that site is down and has been since last Wednesday. No word on when it'll be back up. The only official announcements are daily repeats of this canned posting:

'Our My Cloud and My Book Live users are experiencing intermittent issues with WD servers that enable remote access when using these products. These issues include poor transfer speeds and/or inability to connect remotely. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we are working very hard to resolve these issues and resume normal service as soon as possible. We thank you for your patience and will provide updates as they are available.'

Submission + - Dropbox's new policy of scanning files for DMCA issues (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: This weekend, though, a small corner of the Internet exploded with concern that Dropbox was going too far, actually scanning users' private and directly peer-shared files for potential copyright issues. What's actually going on is a little more complicated than that, but shows that sharing a file on Dropbox isn't always the same as sharing that file directly from your hard drive over something like e-mail or instant messenger. The whole kerfuffle started yesterday evening, when one Darrell Whitelaw tweeted a picture of an error he received when trying to share a link to a Dropbox file with a friend via IM. The Dropbox web page warned him and his friend that "certain files in this folder can't be shared due to a takedown request in accordance with the DMCA."

Submission + - Google Sacrificed Innovation to Avoid Pissing Off Steve Jobs

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In addition to affecting one million employees, reports PandoDaily's Mark Ames, Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel also sacrificed innovation so as not to anger Steve Jobs. "One the most interesting misconceptions I've heard about the 'Techtopus' conspiracy," writes Ames, "is that, while these secret deals to fix recruiting were bad (and illegal), they were also needed to protect innovation by keeping teams together while avoiding spiraling costs." Not so, argues Ames, who describes how Google cancelled plans to have former Apple employee Jean-Marie Hullot run a small engineering center in Paris after Jobs expressed his disapproval. A promise from Google Sr. VP of Knowledge Alan Eustace that "Jean-Marie will not be working on anything to do with cell phone handsets" wasn't good enough for Jobs, who told Eustace, "We’d strongly prefer that you not hire these guys [Hullot and his team]." Breaking the news to Hullot, Eustace wrote, "Steve is opposed to Google hiring these engineers. He didn't say why, and I don't think it is appropriate for me to go back for clarification. I can’t risk our relationship with Apple to make this happen over his objections." In a follow-up e-mail to Jobs, Eustace wrote, "Based on your strong preference that we not hire the ex-Apple engineers, Jean-Marie and I decided not to open a Google Paris engineering center. I appreciate your input into this decision, and your continued support of the Google/Apple partnership." Ames notes, "It's worth taking a moment to reflect, again, on what was happening here: in a field as critical and competitive as smartphones, Google's R&D strategy was being dictated, not by the company's board, or by its shareholders, but by a desire not to anger the CEO of a rival company." Jobs, who reportedly took glee in Google's only-too-eager termination of an employee who crossed his path, was apparently viewed as one not to be trifled with. Asked by lawyers last year to describe Steve Jobs' view on hiring in Silicon Valley, Google co-founder Sergey Brin responded, "I think Mr. Jobs' view was that people shouldn't piss him off. And I think that things that pissed him off were — would be hiring, you know — whatever."

Comment D pad (Score 1) 84

by Merls the Sneaky (#46495953) Attached to: Steam Controller Drops Touchscreen

Why the seperate up down left right buttons? Put a decent D pad on there. The seperate buttons instead of a good D pad is why I hate the all Sony controllers. Xbox can't make a decent D pad. Can anyone make a decent D pad anymore.

Submission + - Monster Rare Yellow Hypergiant Star Discovered (discovery.com) 2

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: A gargantuan star, measuring 1,300 times the size of our sun, has been uncovered 12,000 light-years from Earth — it is one of the ten biggest stars known to exist in our galaxy. The yellow hypergiant even dwarfs the famous stellar heavyweight Betelgeuse by 50 percent. While its hulking mass may be impressive, astronomers have also realized that HR 5171 is a double star with a smaller stellar sibling physically touching the surface of the larger star as they orbit one another. “The new observations also showed that this star has a very close binary partner, which was a real surprise,” said Olivier Chesneau, of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “The two stars are so close that they touch and the whole system resembles a gigantic peanut.

Submission + - How the NSA Plans to Infect 'Millions' of Computers with Malware (firstlook.org)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process. The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.

Submission + - Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple and Samsung couldn't agree on a patent cross-license even though their CEOs met recently. What could be the reason (or one of the reasons) is that Apple is asking for obscenely high patent royalties. At the March 31 trial an Apple-hired expert will present to a California jury (already the third jury trial in this dispute) a damages claim of $40 per device (phone or tablet) for just a handful of software patents. The patents are related to, but don't cover all aspects and elements of, functionalities like slide-to-unlock, autocorrect, data synchronization, unified search and the famous tap-on-phone-number-to-dial feature. Google says there are 250,000 patentable inventions in a smartphone. On average, Apple wants $8 per patent per device. That would add a patent licensing bill of $2 million to each gadget. So Apple and Samsung will be back to court again later this month.

Submission + - Google/Samsung changes to SD card behaviour in KitKat (4.4.2) breaks apps. (androidpolice.com)

Submitted by TeddyR
TeddyR writes: With the widespread release of Androif 4.4.2 (kitkat) to many Samsung devices worldwide and specifically now with the US rollout by major providers in the US it seems that Samsung has decided to implement Googles latest API regulations for SD Card storage. This breaks MANY third party applications since only the Google/System/OEM/Carrier signed apps can now write to the external SD Card thus making MANY paid applications useless.

Confirmed affected: TMobile and Sprint Samsung Note 3 and potentially the Galaxy S4 and upcoming Galaxy S5. This change affects ALL Samsung KitKat 4.4.2 devices, including the Note 2, S3 once KitKat is released to those devices.

Time to call your carrier and lodge a complaint to ask that they request that this "feature" be returned to the original behavior.

References:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

http://lifehacker.com/android-...

Submission + - Apple Refuses to Unlock Bequeathed iPad

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: BBC reports: A man whose mother bequeathed her iPad to her family in her will says Apple's security rules are too restrictive. Since her death, they have been unable to unlock the device, despite providing Apple with copies of her will, death certificate and solicitor's letter. After her death, they discovered they did not know her Apple ID and password, but were asked to provide written consent for the device to be unlocked. Mr Grant said: "We obviously couldn't get written permission because mum had died. So my brother has been back and forth with Apple, they're asking for some kind of proof that he can have the iPad. "We've provided the death certificate, will and solicitor's letter but it wasn't enough. They've now asked for a court order to prove that mum was the owner of the iPad and the iTunes account.

Submission + - The Mammoth Cometh: Revive & Restore Tackles De-Extinction

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Slashdot's been following de-extinction efforts for a good 15 years. Now, in The Mammoth Cometh, this week's NY Times Magazine cover story, Nathaniel Rich writes that "bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad." Among the "genetic rescues" being pursued by The Long Now Foundation's Revive & Restore project is The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback. And returning a flock of passenger pigeons to the planet is just the tip of the iceberg. "We're bringing back the mammoth to restore the steppe in the Arctic," says Stewart Brand. "One or two mammoths is not a success. 100,000 mammoths is a success." De-extinction, while no doubt thrilling ("It would certainly be cool to see a living saber-toothed cat,” Stanford's Hank Greely and Jacob Sherkow argued in Science), is disturbing to many conservation biologists who question the logic of bringing back an animal whose native habitat has disappeared, worry about disease, and are concerned that money may be diverted from other conservation efforts.

Submission + - Unlock Your Cell Phone? Forget First Use Doctrine, Go Directly to Jail (bloombergview.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: CTIA, the Wireless Cell Phone Association http://www.ctia.org/about-us, has members who want to extend copyright law beyond the first use doctrine. The LG vs. Quanta case was the third time patent infringement lost to "first use" or "right to repair" precedent in the USA. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... Rather than continue to lose technology patent court cases against reuse or "market cannibalization" gray markets, CTIA wants to take this to Congress. Bloomberg reports on a bill to make it illegal to tinker with your cell phone and move it to another carrier.

Since the Supreme Court rulings on first use are based on precedent rather than law or constitutional rights to ownership (an 1860s cotton baling wire case), passing an explicit law to ban repair seems like a more direct approach to making patents and copyrights apply to the multi-billion-dollar secondary market.

Submission + - RSA security attack demo deep-fries Apple Mac components (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: How bad can cyberattacks get? How about burning the internal components of a machine, whether PC or Mac, to a crisp so there's no thought of it being recoverable? That's what security vendor CrowdStrike showed could be done to an Apple Mac OS X today at the RSA Conference. “We can actually set the machine on fire,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer at CrowdStrike....

Submission + - Farscape movie in the works? (if.com.au)

Submitted by Hamsterdan
Hamsterdan writes: Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage is in talks to star in the pilot for an HBO series scripted by Sydney-based Justin Monjo and produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films.

The prolific Monjo is also writing the screenplay for Farscape, a movie spin-off of the sci-fi series that ran on the Nine Network and the Sci-Fi Channel in the US, for Jim Henson Productions, to be directed by Brian Henson.

Dinklage would play a dwarf detective in The Beasts of Valhalla, based on a series of novels by the late George C. Chesbro. Monjo read the books years ago but could not think of an actor who was right for the role of the sleuth named Mongo until he saw Dinklage in Game of Thrones.

“It’s a grounded sci-fi series,” says Monjo, who flies to New York next month to discuss the project with Dinklage, with whom he has corresponded. “HBO and Red Hour think he’s the perfect guy for the part and are very excited about the project.” The intention would be to shoot the one-hour series in 2016 after Dinklage finishes Game of Thrones.

Monjo was one of the writers on Farscape, which ran from 1998-2002, followed by the 2004 miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, co-produced by Jim Henson Productions and RHI Entertainment.

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