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The Internet

Social Network Fatigue Coming? 196

mrspin offers the opinion of ZDNet blogger Steve O'Hear that users may soon tire of social networks — if they don't open up and embrace standards allowing greater interoperability among the different networks. O'Hear writes: "Unless the time required to sign-in, post to, and maintain profiles across each network is reduced, it will be impossible for most users to participate in multiple sites for very long." In an earlier post he went into more detail on the same subject, with extensive opinions from four creators of social networks. A contrary data point comes from the Apophenia blog, in a post noting the tendency among young users to create ephemeral profiles, and not to mind at all if they have to re-enter data. "Teens are not looking for universal anything; that's far too much of a burden if losing track of things is the norm." What does Slashdot think — is data portability among social networking sites a big deal or not?
Music

RIAA Goes for the Max Against AllofMP3 777

Spad writes "Zeropaid is reporting that as part of its ongoing lawsuit, the RIAA will be seeking the maximum of $150,000 per song for each of the 11 million MP3s downloaded from the Russian AllofMP3.com between June and October last year. This amounts to roughly $1.65 trillion, probably a tad more than AllofMP3 has made in its lifetime. A representative of AllofMP3 stated: 'AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.'"

The Dark Side of the PlayStation 3 Launch 505

An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.

Comment Re:Open Voting System (Score 1) 514

I've noticed lot of people suggest the lookup reciept but it wouldn't work, nor be allowed. One of the important aspects of the voting procedure it that the vote itself is entirely anonomous. You might not understand that, but in the same way that your religious beliefs (or lack thereof) could affect your standing in society, so can your political affiliation. If you get a receipt that ties you to your vote, then an outsider could see your ticket and your vote would be known, thus those who are worried, would simply not vote, bad for democracy!

You're quite right about an electronic vote not being inherently bad--The problem I see with the current crop of electronic voting machines is that they are far to complex, why on earth do they need to be? Surely it can be a custom chip running, the complexity of it should match a toddlers toy. All it needs are buttons with pictures on them (analog or digital) for each of the candidates, a big okay button.

To record it you just need a simple tally and a receipt being printed on a paper spool behind a glass cover, so the voter can be sure that it's been recorded. The spool can be run through a OCR machine, or looked at manually to verify the vote.

Throw a development team together and give them a couple of million, and you'll have a cheap, working solution that will work anywhere around the country or world.

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