To "invest" is to put money where value is.

Bitcoin is a concept. It has no value. People can trade, arbitrage, wield, barter, or exchange for it.
It still has no value.

Best fortune to all those making money with Bitcoin. For every one of you someone has lost
an almost equal amount. (originally mined bitcoins loss value 0 but it grows exponentially).

And as for the holdback bitcoins created and untouched -- that's why bitcoin will NEVER be a currency.
"Oh we invented this so we kept some for ourselves." Yeah, do that. And doom the coin.

E

LOL. No, it's not sensible and it goes against dozens of years of legal precedent.
It will be overtuned.

Actors do not have rights to the final work unless they were contractually given it,
none of which ever are.

While in some eutopia it would be great if revenge porn could be stopped, that's
an outlier case.

Imagine if you went to Paris and took a video of yourself at the EIffel Tower, but
some random Parisian who happened to be in the background got your video taken
down. That's not eutopian -- that's distopian.
Best,

E

No. She didn't win a lawsuit. All she "won" was an unconstitutional prior restraint against Youtube (google)
forcing them to remove the segment of the movie she's in.

The actual Kozinski ruling suggests that actors HAVE a copyright in the final work despite decades
of copyright law to the contrary.

Google has appealed. This will be decided back the way it should be (that actors don't magically get
copyright laws).

The case -- in case you want to read the facts instead of making them up -- is Garcia v Google.

E

Oh Nos!

This will surely help blackberry survive in the market!

Good job with those patents! Now nobody can have a working keyboard, not their
nonexistent client nor the iPhone people who could have used a Typo.

E

http://linux.slashdot.org/comm...

The Slashdot summary says "safety advocates." The first link says "safety advocates" but doesn't specify who those are.

WHO IS LOBBYING FOR A CELLPHONE BAN ON THE ROADS?

Please advise. My bet is the [required mandatory] insurance lobby.

E

I beg to differ.

Please provide a source cite to a statute that indicates the act of "downloading" (feel free to
massage as appropriate; I am not splitting hairs) is unlawful.

As for the lawyer cited, he isn't a very good lawyer: "Fighting a subpoena that attempts to reveal your identity is a waste of money because you will reveal your identity by fighting it."
Lawyers that give advice on the Internet are not creme de la creme. Lawyers that give incorrect advice less so.

E

The ruling is good. Let's enjoy that.

However, this is a HORRIBLE writeup. It suggests that "...IP-address evidence can't identify the person who actually downloaded the pirated file."

Under current US law:
1. There is no copyright infringement in downloading a file.
2. Files are. They just are. They are not "pirated files."
3. MAKING INFRINGING CONTENT AVAILABLE TO OTHERS is what is considered copyright infringement/distribution. THAT is why an IP address is important... if one SHARES and MAKES AVAILABLE A FILE. It takes a court to determine whether the actions constitute an actionable behavior.

I can't believe Torrentfreak got it wrong. At least they got the headline right. And this is a good ruling.
Hopefully fightcopyrighttrolls.com and dietrolldie.com won't make that mistake.

No, it would not transmit more than the flight data recorders. Those things store everything.
If there's something they don't store, it's added so they do.

To maintain a bitstream of sufficient width and density to share what the FDRs do for an
entire flight is beyond our available satellite uplink capacity even if cost were no factor.
Which it is.

At the end of all this the expenditure would save zero lives. It would prevent zero crashes.
It would just make investigations go quicker.

E

It would be nice to know where the plane is and why. However, crashes happen so infrequently
that spending billions of dollars and not preventing a single one -- merely accelerating the speed
at which we get the "black box" data is not worth it.

Everyone involved including the airline industry has decided that it's not worth the expense
to spend $100,000 per airplane as well as untold costs to maintain that, and pass the costs
onto your relatives.

I just did.

E

You'd have to go through a lot more effort than that, but it's certainly possible.

Fortunatley meta-mod eventually ferrets out the dicks no matter how much they hide.

E

No. You have no modpoints on this thread, and your comment amounts to a threat asking
for prior restraint so EVEN IF YOU DID HAVE MOD POINTS they would be removed.

Fortunately you cannot affect this thread.

E

"Hello, thank you for calling ISRO tek-nee-kull support, this is Jim, how may I help you?"

"Jim, this is the capsule! We are stuck here! Help!"

"Yes, this is Jim from tek-nee-kull support. I am happy to help you today. I will need to ask you some questions first. Is it okay if I ask you questions?"

"We're running out of oxygen! The lift-off failed! We can't open the door!"

"Yes, I understand you are running out of oxygen. Is it okay if I ask you questions?"

"Yes, ask, ask! We're dying here!!!"

"Yes, thank you for allowing me to ask you questions. I will be glad to provide you service today. First I need to ask, what is your name?" ...

There's no need to "remember" Microsoft's anticompetitive actions.
They're still engaging in the very same behavior.

I don't hate Microsoft's behavior because of my "pappy" or because
of some judicial order from 20 years ago. I despise their current
behavior.

Microsoft continues to be worth despising. Their astroturf lobbying
and their blogs about how misunderstood they are fool nobody.

E

"That compares with the cost of a few thousand dollars an hour to rent a helicopter with pilot"

Bell LongRanger with pilot $1300/hr
Bell JetRanger with pilot $980/hr
Robinson R44 with pilot $650/hr
Robinson R22 with pilot $300/hr

A few thousand an hour? PUHLEAZE.

E (a real live helicopter pilot)