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Comment Re:As a Wii Owner (Score 1) 258

As of lately, I've used my Wii more as a divx player than a gaming console. I can stream divx movies via WiFi directly from mi PC harddrive in the other room to the TV. No way I'm going to downgrade to 4.3.

Also, I can't understand why Nintendo does not support other uses of the Wii. It's like if Sony would actively try to prevent the PS3 from being used to play bluerays ??

Businesses

Former Soviet Republic of Georgia To Become IT Tax Haven 153

A few days ago we noted how Ukraine is driving out its software freelancers with the threat of onerous taxation. Now comes news that another former Soviet republic, Georgia, will become a tax-free zone for IT companies. It might be the Google translation, but it seems that officials there are somewhat worried about how to categorize the IT segment: "[T]he main difficulty ... is to determine which organization is the IT company, and what is not: 'While from a formal point of view it is impossible to distinguish between software developers from the oil.'"
Crime

In NJ, Higher Tech Lowers Crime 219

crimeandpunishment sends along this snip from an AP story carried on Skunkpost.com: "High tech means low crime in a New Jersey city that has used an arsenal of advanced technology to sharply lower one of the highest crime rates in the nation. And now East Orange is poised to become the first city in the country to take high tech crime fighting to a whole new level ... surveillance cameras with sensors that can be programmed to identify crimes as they unfold."
PC Games (Games)

Cloud Gaming Service OnLive Set For Launch 115

Steve Perlman's long-anticipated cloud gaming service, OnLive, officially launches today, finally ready to be put to the test by skeptical and hopeful gamers around the US. After granting some early sign-ups a free year to try out the service, OnLive also announced the list of 23 games that will available from the start, including Mass Effect 2, UT 3, Assassin's Creed 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and F.E.A.R. 2. Perlman spoke at length with Gamasutra about the beta, latency, and potential partnerships with other broadband providers. Future OnLive competitor Gaikai recently announced it's targeting 2011 for its own launch.

Comment Re:The main issue (Score 1) 495

Well, in my first job we did raid a printer and a rack. With my manager telling me "lets wait till lunch hour, there will be no one there" and then "lets go through this other corridor, there's usually no one there".

So I can believe the chairs raid :D

Back on topic, the fact that the company is not willling to hire more people does not mean they won't give a salary raise that would cost them a lot less than hiring another guy (even a junior). You're not going to double your income, but unless the company is in deep shit, you can maybe get a half-decent raise.

Comment Re:Aliens! (Score 3, Insightful) 452

Someone breaks into your house but doesn't take anything of value. You would think that's ok because the intrusion was largely harmless?

The fact is he hacked into government servers he had no business accessing. We can argue motives and harm done all we want but it doesn't change the fact a crime was committed.

If someone breaks into your house cos you left the door and windows wide open and steals nothing, any sane person would consider himself lucky and from that day on remember to close the goddam doors.

Comment Re:Ballsy (Score 1) 352

Well... in Spain we have two high courts: The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court. Judges for both of those courts are appointed by the Congress (yay, so much for separation of powers), so... while you can't just fire judges you can make sure the ones you don't like never get to any High Court.

Comment Re:But, but, but,,, (Score 5, Informative) 352

Pressure has already been applied and laws are on their way. The government tried to sneak a "close website if someone complains about P2P" law inside a packet of economic measures. But the public opinion (a ton of bloggers and webs made it sure the general public was informed) forced them to step it down a little and president Zapatero promised no webs would be closed without a court order (if we can trust him thats another matter altogether).

The new Spanish IP law can be summed up as "As we don't like the judges decision, we're making a special commission to deal with copyright claims so we can shut down websites with almost no judicial supervision or monitoring". To add insult to the injury the name of that commission is Sección Segunda (Second Section), which shortens to SS, a fact that makes Godwin's law apply really really fast :D

Now it's quite possible that they're going to pass that law anyway now that all the fuss has passed away, but they will probably have real problem to enforce it considering that:
-Webs are protected by Freedom of Speech. Most (not all) the judges will not close one unless you have a very good motivation.
-After it's first application is quite probably going straight to the (spanish) Constitutional Court, as Freedom of Speech right (unlike IP rights) is considered a "constitutional right" and has special protections in the constitution.

So... interesting times in Spain for those of us who follow P2P-related news and courts decisions.

The Courts

Spanish Judges Liken File Sharing To Lending Books 352

Dan Fuhry writes "A three-judge panel in the Provincial Court of Madrid has closed a case that has been running since 2005, ruling that the accused are not guilty of any copyright infringement on the grounds that their BitTorrent tracker did not distribute any copyrighted material, and they did not generate any profit from their site: '[t]he judges noted that all this takes places between many users all at once without any of them receiving any financial reward.' This implies that the judges are sympathetic to file sharers. The ruling essentially says that file sharing is the digital equivalent of lending or sharing books or other media. Maybe it's time for all them rowdy pirates to move to Spain."
Image

Anti-Speed Camera Activist Buys Police Department's Web Domain 680

Brian McCrary just bought a website to complain about a $90 speeding ticket he received from the Bluff City PD — the Bluff City Police Department site. The department let its domain expire and McCrary was quick to pick it up. From the article: "Brian McCrary found the perfect venue to gripe about a $90 speeding ticket when he went to the Bluff City Police Department's website, saw that its domain name was about to expire, and bought it right out from under the city's nose. Now that McCrary is the proud owner of the site, bluffcitypd.com, the Gray, Tenn., computer network designer has been using it to post links about speed cameras — like the one on US Highway 11E that caught him — and how people don't like them."
Piracy

Study Claims $41.5 Billion In Portable Game Piracy Losses Over Five Years 316

Gamasutra reports that Japan's Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association conducted a study to estimate the total amount of money lost to piracy on portable game consoles. The figure they arrived at? $41.5 billion from 2004 to 2009. Quoting: "CESA checked the download counts for the top 20 Japanese games at what it considers the top 114 piracy sites, recording those figures from 2004 to 2009. After calculating the total for handheld piracy in Japan with that method, the groups multiplied that number by four to reach the worldwide amount, presuming that Japan makes up 25 percent of the world's software market. CESA and Baba Lab did not take into account other popular distribution methods for pirated games like peer-to-peer sharing, so the groups admit that the actual figures for DS and PSP software piracy could be much higher than the ¥3.816 trillion amount the study found."

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