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Comment RTFA: Not a major victory -- not a victory at all (Score 4, Informative) 96

I saw this story covered at BoingBoing earlier and I have to say -- has anyone actually read this article?

This is not a major victory. This is a temporary set-back for the record labels who wish for overreaching legal powers to stop the unstoppable.

Here are some very meaningful excerpts from the same story covered by the Irish Times:

"...the judge said laws were not in place in Ireland to enforce disconnections over illegal downloads... this gap in legislation meant Ireland was not complying with European law."

"The judge made it very clear that an injunction would be morally justified but that the Irish legislature had failed in its obligation to confer on the courts the right to grant such injunctions, unlike other EU states."

"Irish Recorded Music Association director-general Dick Doyle said his office would pressure the Government to reform the law in favour of record labels."

RTFA

Comment Re:Who cares. (Score 2, Interesting) 204

Youtube is pretty much unwatchable now, between the annoying boxes people put on videos to the annoying ads. I may never find out about their new features, because I don't go there anymore.

When YouTube ditches Flash for Javascript and HTML5 video, we'll all be able to hack YouTube with browser add-ons like Greasemonkey to disable the annoying boxes people add to videos when/if we want, or move them so they don't obscure the video.

Comment Re:Same Thing Happened to Me (Score 1) 699

As we become more dependent on these systems, we should make sure they are at least as robust as good old-fashioned know-how.

They already are at least as robust as good old-fashioned know-how, because the system supplies advisory information to a human with a brain.

But the human brain is becoming more dependent on this system to know how to get around. A lot of people these days know one route to get between point a and point b. If humans get used to being able to ask a computer that can't be clever in an emergency, then it will be a problem when we are dependent upon it, not before.

Comment Same Thing Happened to Me (Score 1) 699

The same thing happened to me, but I turned around and found another way without Google's help.

What makes this a problem in my mind is that Google Maps doesn't offer a "detour me" feature that allows you to easily avoid specified nodes in the commute graph. My Garmin GPS had this feature and driving all over the Western half of the US for many months I can tell you it was an indispensable feature.

A good detour feature is a really necessary feature in an emergency situation. As we become more dependent on these systems, we should make sure they are at least as robust as good old-fashioned know-how. Being a firm believe in technology, I'm sure Google Maps could in fact surpass our own robustness and incorporate features to make emergencies even safer for people, but right now Google Maps seems to be focused on telling you how to go some place where you'll spend money.

Comment Re:Out of curiosity... (Score 1) 210

Are there any plans to punish companies that went along with this? Sure, they could argue they were strong-armed into it by Intel but that's no comfort for AMD and the sales they'll have lost.

AMD may even benefit from this. They may have in fact come to an agreement with Intel about how this would be done. AMD may have seen more sales, but then there would have actually been competition, and that means more product for a lower price! Yikes!!!

Comment Trojan gets to the root of the problem (Score 1) 372

Um... seriously? If they know the specific customer they wouldn't need to install the trojan.

It's not disclosed how the "trojan" is loaded onto the perpetrator's system, however getting that system to request and execute your code cuts through what is potentially a very hairy situation: who knows how many layers of abstraction the perp is using to hide from traces.

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