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Movies

Netflix Begins Blocking Users Who Bypass Region Locks 121

An anonymous reader writes with reports that Netflix may be shutting out international VPN users. "Netflix can only stream the videos that studios make available in a given country, which has led to a booming business in workarounds (such as proxies and virtual private networks) that let you see the company's catalogs in other nations. Heck, one New Zealand internet provider practically built a service around it. However, you might not get to count on that unofficial solution for much longer. VPN operators claim to TorrentFreak that Netflix recently started blocking some users who use these technological loopholes to watch videos that would normally be verboten. The effort isn't widespread and mostly appears to focus on connections with many simultaneous Netflix sign-ins (that is, they're obviously being used for circumvention), but it's a surprise to viewers who were used to having unfettered access."
China

What Language Will the World Speak In 2115? 578

An anonymous reader writes: Throughout human history, different languages have emerged and died, waxed and waned in relative importance, evolved, and spread to new locales. An article in the Wall Street Journal considers what languages the world will speak a hundred years from now. Quoting: "Science fiction often presents us with whole planets that speak a single language, but that fantasy seems more menacing here in real life on this planet we call home—that is, in a world where some worry that English might eradicate every other language. That humans can express themselves in several thousand languages is a delight in countless ways; few would welcome the loss of this variety.

Some may protest that it is not English but Mandarin Chinese that will eventually become the world's language, because of the size of the Chinese population and the increasing economic might of their nation. But that's unlikely. For one, English happens to have gotten there first. It is now so deeply entrenched in print, education and media that switching to anything else would entail an enormous effort. We retain the QWERTY keyboard and AC current for similar reasons. ... Yet more to the point, by 2115, it's possible that only about 600 languages will be left on the planet as opposed to today's 6,000. Japanese will be fine, but languages spoken by smaller groups will have a hard time of it."
Piracy

New Canadian Copyright Laws Require ISPs To Retain, Share Illegal Download Info 161

BarbaraHudson writes: New Year's Day brought into force new Canadian copyright laws that go after people who download copyrighted materials online. From the article: "As of January 1st Internet service providers (ISPs) are required to pass along notices of alleged copyright infringement., something which used to be voluntary. ISPs must also retain records of the notices they receive and forward to users for at least six months in case a copyright owner decides to pursue legal action. Lawsuits could seek up to $5,000 for downloading copyrighted material for personal use, and up to $20,000 for a download that led to commercial gain.

ISPs are also now be required to provide your personal info, but only if the copyright owner sues. Search engines also have to remove cached versions of allegedly infringing material that have been removed from a website. Non-compliance allows copyright owners to pursue legal action and claim damages against them as well. Finally, a review of the Copyright Act every five years is now required."
Programming

India Blocks Code Sharing Websites On Anti-Terror Advisory 78

darkstar019 writes The Indian government has banned websites under the pretext that ISIS is using them for anti-Indian purposes. The list includes code sharing websites like Pastebin, Github and Sourceforge. As of now, these websites are still up. From the article: "Officials from the department of Information Technology and the department of telecom were not available for comment. 'These are all providing very dangerous kind of cut and paste services..You can take code, cut it, paste it, remove it, delete it,' said one government official who requested anonymity."
Image

South Korean Activist To Drop "The Interview" In North Korea Using Balloons Screenshot-sm 146

Siddharth Srinivas writes Park Sang Hak, a North Korean democracy activist, said he will start dropping 100,000 DVDs and USBs with Sony's The Interview by balloon in North Korea as early as late January. He's partnering with the U.S.-based non-profit Human Rights Foundation, which is financing the making of the DVDs and USB memory sticks of the movie with Korean subtitles.
Lord of the Rings

Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy 351

An anonymous reader writes: The final chapter to Peter Jackson's series of films based on The Hobbit debuted last week, and the reviews haven't been kind. Ars Technica just posted theirs, and it highlights all the problems with Battle of the Five Armies, a two-hour and twenty-four minute film based on only 72 pages of the book. Quoting: "The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience. Suspense is attempted mostly by a series of last-minute saves and switches. ... There are other problems. Everyone in this movie takes themselves way too seriously, which makes them even harder to sympathize with. Peter Jackson leans way too hard on voice modulation to make characters seem menacing or powerful. The movie's tone is still way out of step with the book's tone. ... There's one big thing that doomed these movies from the outset — the fiscally smart but artistically bankrupt decision to make a single, shortish children's novel into three feature-length prequel films." Other review titles: "Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped," "The Phantom Menace of Middle Earth," and "Lots of Fighting, Not Much Hobbit."

Comment Re: 503 (Score 1) 396

Google has a dominant position (among other places) in the browser market so site owners can't disregard their imposition. Saying that you can install other browsers would have been just like saying "you can install another OS" when Microsoft played leverage games with their near monopoly on the desktop back in the times. Plus, Chrome tends to end up installed on the PCs of many unexperienced users because of their policy of aggressive bundling. So one can expect that a relevant portion of his site's visitors will be using Chrome in the foreseeable future no matter what.
Open Source

OpenMotics Offers Open Source (and Open Hardware) Home Automation 36

Home automation is a recurring topic around here; we've had stories about X-10-based home-brewed systems, a protocol designed for automation, and more than a few Ask Slashdots. Now, an anonymous reader writes OpenMotics is an open source home automation hardware and software system that offers features like switching lights and outputs, multi-zone heating and cooling, power measurements, and automated actions. The system encompasses both open source software and hardware. For interoperability with other systems, the OpenMotics Gateway provides an API through which various actions can be executed. The project was open sourced 2 years ago and was started about 10 years. The choice to open source the project was very conscious: we want to offer a system where users are in full control over their home automation system.

Comment Re: Standard FBI followup (Score 1) 388

That's because the law doesn't say "you can own guns full stop", it will say something like "you can own guns as specified by law", so lower-level laws can be passed to regulate the ownership of guns without violating the constitution. But no person or government agency can decide that you can't own a gun without having a law that backs their decision.

You are right in the fact that most constitutions, and probably that of the USA too, comprise some kind of exceptional procedures allowing the government to override the rule of law in the case of an emergency. I think that they're required in order to deal with those cases such as angry people with pitchforks burning down cities etc, something that still happened once in a while in the past century, but I don't expect those procedures to have been applied often nowadays.

Comment Re: Standard FBI followup (Score 1) 388

You can't waive your right to state provided legal counsel: you can decline to accept one when you're offered, but you can't sign a piece of paper saying that from that moment on you won't be offered any if you get into a trial.

And I don't think people have the *right* to lie: having a right to something doesn't mean having the permission to do that thing, it means that there's some law stating explicitly that that something must be given to those who haven't got it.

Anyway, I was wrong in my post above: there appears to be no explicit law against entrapment, if I understand correctly it's just a matter of interpretation by the courts, which has oscillated over the course of years.

Comment Re: Standard FBI followup (Score 3, Insightful) 388

In countries under the rule of law, rights can not be given up. Just like a law cannot override the constitution, any piece of paper you might sign or be forced to sign cannot override the law. Not even in the case of the most obvious scum of mankind. That's because once you set up the principle that the government can selectively take away your rights, then the citizens can by the same principle selectively ignore the laws they don't like. Including those that define and give authority to the government.
Sony

The Sony Pictures Hack Was Even Worse Than Everyone Thought 528

An anonymous reader writes with today's installment of Sony hack news. "It's time to take a moment of silence for Sony Pictures, because more startling revelations about leaked information just came out and employees are starting to panic. BuzzFeed raked through some 40 gigabytes of data and found everything from medical records to unreleased scripts. This is probably the worst corporate hack in history. Meanwhile, Fusion's Kevin Roose is reporting on what exactly happened at Sony Pictures when the hack went down. The hack was evidently so extensive that even the company gym had to shut down. And once the hackers started releasing the data, people started 'freaking out,' one employee said. That saddest part about all of this is that the very worst is probably still to come. Hackers say they stole 100 terabytes of data in total. If only 40 gigabytes contained all of this damning information, just imagine what 100 terabytes contains."

Comment Re:Deliberate (Score 1) 652

The cost of building *everything* in China is at least 1/3, with well-known results, such as extreme pollution.

That the trade union of nuclear professionals advocates for nuclear power is unsurprising, grant me this consideration.

The wikipedia link that you pointed me to says that China has intentions to bring nuclear power usage to 6% in 2020 up from its current 2% whereas the regulated US were at 19% last year, and the hyper-regulated France was at 75%.

Conclusion: nuclear blossoms in social-democratic countries with a strong central government that invests large amounts of taxpayers' money as subsidies to the industry (or owns it directly).

And thorium reactors are nice, except that they have problems too, the biggest one being of course that they currently do not exist in a profitable form, while nuclear power fundamentalists regularly mention them as the obvious, current solution for every woe of nuclear power.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a nuclear power proponent myself, especially after I've seen the damages done by supposedly green energy sources and their governmental subsidy policies. I just don't like echo chambers.

Comment Re:Deliberate (Score 1) 652

The high costs of nuclear are driven by non technical issues.

If that were true, we'd be seeing nuclear power plants flowering under authoritarian regimes, whose leaders need not worry about public opinion. Or, we'd see them abund in turbo-capitalist countries, where rich people, or associations thereof, can buy legislation and will do so on every occasion when there's money to be made.

If the effective cost of nuclear power isn't limited to the bill of materials of the power plant and the cost of the finished, ready to employ fuel, it's because of reality, not because of tree-huggers.

Power

What Would Have Happened If Philae Were Nuclear Powered? 523

StartsWithABang writes After successfully landing on a comet with all 10 instruments intact, but failing to deploy its thrusters and harpoons to anchor onto the surface, Philae bounced, coming to rest in an area with woefully insufficient sunlight to keep it alive. After exhausting its primary battery, it went into hibernation, most likely never to wake again. We'll always be left to wonder what might have been if it had functioned optimally, and given us years of data rather than just 60 hours worth. The thing is, it wouldn't have needed to function optimally to give us years of data, if only it were better designed in one particular aspect: powered by Plutonium-238 instead of by solar panels.

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