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Books

Google Gives Up Fair-Use Defense, Settles Book-Scanning Lawsuit With Publishers 18

thomst writes "David Kravets of Wired's Threat Level blog reports that McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Shuster have struck a deal to end those companies' lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement over its Google Books search service. Kravets reports that Andi Sporkin, a spokesperson for the publishers, has said they've 'agreed to disagree' on Google's assertion that its scanning of books in university libraries (and making up to 20% of the scanned content available in search results) was protected by the fair use defense against copyright infringement. The terms of the deal are secret, but the result is that the companies in question have dropped their lawsuit against Google. However, the Authors Guild lawsuit against Google on the same grounds is still stuck in the appeals process, after U.S. District Judge Denny Chin rejected a proposed settlement of the suit in 2011, on the grounds that its treatment of so-called 'orphaned works' amounted to making new copyright law — a power he insisted only Congress could exercise."

Comment Re:The problem, of course, is people (Score 2) 622

There's a subset of self- absorbed, arrogant twits that believe that if a programming language is "too simple," it's just wrong and You. Just. Don't. Understand. REAL. Programming! I tend to filter them out as noise and recommend you do the same.

Yeah, you're right. I hate PHP because exceptions like "Unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM" are just too simple. Or how about this line of code: if(new stdClass() instanceof get_class(new stdClass()).... Just try it. Or how about this error message: "Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line 0". Why not just stick to the classic message: "lol error".

PHP is full of these weird errors, odd behaviours and inconsistency and you have the nerve to say that programmers are complaining about it being too simple.

Comment Re:Child pornography is not an excuse (Score 5, Insightful) 583

I just sent him an email telling him that we need to ban curtains because obviously only people that murder other people in their living rooms have any use for curtains. So if you support having curtains, you are supporting mass-murderers.

Now I'm worried that this analogy is too complex for him to grasp.

Comment Re:The only proper way to 'appeal' to these people (Score 1) 477

Agreed. besides why do the believers feel the need to handle insults for their deities?
I'd think that all powerful beings would be amply capable of smiting anyone they themselves deem to have insulted them, and find it quite revealing that so far none have done so.

For the same reason that I feel compelled to correct people if they happen to insult / mock someone close to me (such as my mother). I think that it is a human affection thing. If my mother isn't around then there is no harm done right?

I am not saying that I agree that the law needs to get involved here. It is very mean and certainly without class to mock my mother but there shouldn't be a law against it. In my opinion this is the same for mocking someone's beliefs or core figures of said beliefs. However, not understanding how that can be offensive is willful ignorance.

Programming

Visual Studio Gets Achievements, Badges, Leaderboards 353

bonch writes "Microsoft has introduced a gamification plugin for Visual Studio that lets users win achievements and badges as they compete on leaderboards by writing code. The full list of achievements includes gems like 'Go To Hell' for using goto, and 'Potty Mouth' for using five different curses in one file. This is another example of Gamification, one of the latest trends to hit social media."
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu TV unveiled (pcpro.co.uk)

Barence writes: "Canonical has unveiled the first screenshots and details of Ubuntu TV. Plans for versions of the Linux distro for tablets, smartphones and TVs were unveiled last year, and now the television is — perhaps surprisingly — the first of those to arrive. "It's a simple viewing experience for online video, both your own and routed over the internet," Jane Silber, Canonical's CEO told PC Pro. Movie streaming services will be supported as well as live television broadcasts. Ubuntu TV will be integrated into television sets, but Canoncial was unable to confirm any manufacturers. It will be released later this year."

Comment Re:Summary can't add (Score 0) 234

The iPhone version was $56,000. The Blackberry version was $40,000. Together, they were $96,000. It says this very clearly in the original scan.

Where does it say that?

The iPhone version cost $96,000, and a BlackBerry app that never got distributed cost an additional $40,000.

Comment Re:Off-Topic trolls, like yourself? (Score 0) 157

You're MORE than welcome to disprove the data in my init. post here http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2523490&cid=38045322 and GOOD LUCK (you WILL need it, along with contrary facts supporting you vs. the facts & data I posted there...).

Oh no. My wall of text comment was of two purposes. One to point out that you posted a giant wall of text. I was mocking your format not the content. I didn't bother to read it. Second point was to see if I could look more inane than you. I don't think I did.

Also, how in the world did you come up with all that text in 15 minutes?! I am astounded, alarmed and slightly impressed. I didn't read it or anything but that is a long chunk of text!

Comment Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated" (Score 1) 237

I feel along with the sentiment. I do not look forward to putting Unity on my parents' computer but in my opinion there are a few changes that can be made to make it more friendly. First, remove the global menu bar, unless your users come from a Mac OS X background, it's not worth the retraining. Second change the backlight always on option in ccsm to toggle so it is easy to see when an application is running. I have big hopes for this alternate application launcher: https://launchpad.net/unity-lens-bliss

Comment Re:Satisfied with this release (Score 2) 455

Unity's not so bad on my netbook where I mostly just run Firefox on a tiny screen, but on my 11.04 laptop the app-launcher sucks, the 'global menu' sucks and the stupid scrollbars suck.

Did they fix any of those in 11.10? Oh, they can't, because they're broken by design.

The overlay scrollbars have seen improvements in the last release. They don't bother me but I really never touch them anyway since I just scroll with my mouse. To remove them, copy and paste this into your terminal: sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0 liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0

I can understand why you would dislike the global menu on a desktop. To remove them, copy this into your terminal: sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-gtk appmenu-qt

There have been some very nice changes made to the application launcher. In my opinion, the top one of these is performance improvement but there are also other changes that make it easier to use such as seeing only applications from certain categories.

I recommend that you try it and then come back here and post about the success or failure of the latest Ubuntu release. Trying it out would lend more credibility to your stated opinion.

Comment Re:Satisfied with this release (Score 1) 455

I don't hate it either. In fact, the only thing that I don't like about it is the application launcher but it's performance has improved a lot from where it was in 11.04. I really do hope that all the people complaining about Unity have tried the version that got released today and are not just basing their opinion on an old version.

Google

Apple Claims Samsung and Motorola Patent Monopoly 381

esocid writes with a bit in Daily Tech about the ongoing spat between Apple and the rest of the mobile world. From the article: "Apple lawyers are crying foul about Samsung, and ... Motorola's allegedly 'anticompetitive,' use of patents. ... Apparently Apple is irate about these companies' countersuits, which rely largely on patents covering wireless communications, many of which are governed by the 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory' (F/RAND) principle, as they were developed as part of industry standards. ... Apple takes issue with the fact that Motorola in its countersuit declines to differentiate the 7 F/RAND patents in its 18 patent collection. ... Regardless of what Florian Mueller says, it's hard to dispute that the 'rules' of F/RAND are largely community dictated and ambiguous."

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