dwdyer - Slashdot User

Submission + - If You Live by Free, You Will Die by Free

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday July 05, 2009 @11:32PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban writes that the problem with companies who have built their business around free is that the more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top. "They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo," writes Cuban. "Someone out there with a better idea will raise a bunch of money, give it away for free, build scale and charge less to reach the audience." Cuban says that even Google, who lives and dies by free, knows that "at some point your Black Swan competitor will appear and they will kick your ass" and that is exactly why Google invests in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future searching for the "next big Google thing." Cuban says that for any company that lives by Free, their best choice is to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank. "When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free. Your best bet is to recognize where you are in your company's lifecycle and maximize your profits rather than try to extend your stay at the top," writes Cuban. "Like every company in the free space, your lifecycle has come to its conclusion. Don't fight it. Admit it. Profit from it.""

Submission + - The Untold Story of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (allthingsstemcell.com)

Submitted by

ParadoxDruid

on Sunday July 05, 2009 @04:56PM

ParadoxDruid writes: "Induced pluripotent stem cells are a hot new stem cell type that is able to become any kind of tissue, offering great potential for treating diseases and injuries. Although they look and act just like human embryonic stem cells, these induced stem cells can be made from adult cells that are reprogrammed to an earlier state and consequently can be patient-specific. What is interesting is that while induced stem cells were created from human tissue only in 2007, they have a decades' old history of theories and experiments that is not often reported."

Submission + - Germany forbids "violent" games lanparties (83.142.83.171)

Submitted by on Sunday July 05, 2009 @04:16PM

An anonymous reader writes: 'OMG! Think of the children(tm)' reaches all time high in Germany.
Since the recent school shooting in Germany last March, the German government has put "violent video games" as a major point on their agenda. Most recently, one of the oldest gamer gatherings Convention-X-Treme (german site) has been forbidden by the city to have their upcoming lanparty cause of "violent" video games. According to this dutch (!=german) community site, the games mentioned are Counter Strike And Warcraft3. At least 3 other lanparty events were canceled earlier this year. And Germany also has real shooting events and competitions, in which children younger than 14 participate.

Ok, it is becoming very clear that, worldwide, some people (children) have a hard time coping with their surroundings, and at first just seem like your average quiet type, and later commit atrocities. It is a social problem, and spotting these types before they go haywire would impose privacy and vigilante issues. It's a very difficult social matter that would be endlessly debated.
So meanwhile imho the logical conclusion would seem for the government to focus on the actual weapons, not the video game industry. After all, even TV represents a far bigger share of violence.
It seems to me that the government is seeking the easy scapegoat and the least represented group out of the possible targets, being TV industry, gaming enthusiasts, and the weapon lobby. So they set the people that want action at ease by taking away the freedom of gathering from another group (probably most of them under voting age), while this actually doesn't help the problem at all.
I seem to recall a Charlton Heston quote that might seem appropriate here.

Submission + - World's first self watering plant discovered. (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by squiggly12 on Sunday July 05, 2009 @03:08PM

squiggly12 writes: Researchers from the Department of Science Education-Biology at the University of Haifa-Oranim have managed to make out the "self-irrigating" mechanism of the desert rhubarb, which enables it to harvest 16 times the amount of water than otherwise expected for a plant in this region based on the quantities of rain in the desert. This is the first example of a self-irrigating plant worldwide.

It's interesting as to how this plant evolved in the desert.

Link To Original Source

Estimating the Time-To-Own of an Unpatched Windows PC 424

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 15, 2008 @02:46AM from the 5-minutes-16-hours-whatever dept.

An anonymous reader notes a recent post on the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center site estimating the time to infection of an unpatched Windows machine on the Internet — currently about 4 minutes. The researcher stipulated that the sub-5-minute estimate was valid for an unpatched machine in an ISP netblock with no NAT or firewall. The researcher, Lorna Hutcheson, called for others to post data on time-to-infection, and honeypot researchers in Germany did so the same day. They found longer times to infection, an average of 16 hours. Concludes the ISC's Hutchinson: "While the survival time varies quite a bit across methods used, pretty much all agree that placing an unpatched Windows computer directly onto the Internet in the hope that it downloads the patches faster than it gets exploited are odds that you wouldn't bet on in Vegas."

eBay Beats Tiffany In Net Trademark Case 61

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 14, 2008 @07:13PM from the it's-your-darn-brand dept.

sm62704 notes a Reuters story reporting that eBay has beat Tiffany in court in a "knockout" decision. If this had gone the other way, not only would eBay be in trouble (especially after the loss of a similar case in France), but so would Net commerce as a whole. Tiffany seems certain to appeal. "All of Tiffany's trademark infringement claims against eBay were rejected — a knockout blow to the four-year-old lawsuit that had been closely watched by Internet companies as well as luxury goods makers seeking to stop the sale of counterfeit products online. Tiffany & Co. had alleged that eBay turned a blind eye to the sale of fake Tiffany silver jewelry on its site. EBay had countered that it was not in a position to determine which goods were knock-offs... and had said the jeweler did not adequately participate in eBay's programs that help brand owners prevent fraud. The judge... said he was 'not unsympathetic' to Tiffany and others who have invested in building their brands only to see them exploited on the Web. But he said the law was clearly on eBay's side."

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