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Submission + - Verizon Demands Netflix Take Down the Message Calling Its Internet Slow (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Courtesy of FCC's decision in scrapping Net Neutrality, we have the following story to share —

A little story background — Tuesday night, Vox Media's Yuri Victor tweeted a screenshot from his Mac that shows an error message from Netflix claiming that Verizon's clogged internet is responsible for poor streaming quality

A Netlfix spokesperson later confirmed on Twitter that the company is testing new ways to alert users why streams may be slogging

Verizon fired back by sending Netflix a cease and desist Thursday afternoon telling the streaming service to take down a notice Netflix sent to its users
"The Verizon network is crowded right now
Adjusting video for smoother playback"

Verizon claimed that it's actually Netflix's clogged servers causing the problem, but as Netflix has recently agreed to start paying Verizon for "direct access" to Verizon's customers, in theory, should result in faster streams

Netflix also has a similar deal with Comcast that has already proven to result in faster speeds

In the cease and desist letter to Netflix, Verizon's general counsel Randal Milch writes:"Netflix's false accusations have the potential to harm the Verizon brand in the marketplace. This potential harm is broader than only the experience of a customer viewing Netflix content. The impression that Netflix is falsey giving our customers is that the Verizon network is generally "crowded" and troublesome. This could cause a customer to think that any attempted viewing of video, whether it be Hulu, YouTube, or other sites, would yield a similarly "crowded" experience, and he or she may then choose to alter or cease their use of the Verizon network"

Milch's letter gives Netflix five days to comply with its request or face legal action. He also asks for evidence that Verizon's network is indeed the culprit for poor streaming on Netflix

In a statement to Business Insider, a Netflix spokesperson intimated that the company won't stop:"This is about consumers not getting what they paid for from their broadband provider. We are trying to provide more transparency, just like we do with the Netflix ISP Speed Index, and Verizon is trying to shut down that discussion"

Submission + - Musk hints at Technology Giveaways (bbc.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Tesla boss Elon Musk was in London the other day, just as Tesla was about to deliver the first five of its Model S cars to the UK

When asked by the BBC's Theo Leggett if he was considering giving technology away, Mr Musk said "you're on the right track"

Mr Musk told the BBC: "We don't want to cut a path through the jungle and then lay a bunch of landmines behind us"

Earlier this week, Mr Musk told Tesla shareholders that in order to speed up the pace of adoption of electric cars, Tesla was "playing with doing something fairly significant on this front which would be kind of controversial with respect to Tesla's patents"

Another of Mr Musk's business venture, Space X, on the other hand, does not patent its technology for fear that they could be stolen by competitors ( see http://www.wired.com/2012/10/f... )

Submission + - Uber is now worth nearly as much as Hertz and Avis combined (slate.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: The San Francisco startup Uber, which bills itself in offering " everyone's private driver " is now worth, according to venture capitals which has invested in the startup (which includes but not limited to Fidelity, BlackRock, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Google Ventures) as much as $17 billion

Astonishingly, Uber’s valuation is also more than the market capitalization of rental-car giants Hertz Global Holdings ($12.5 billion) or Avis Budget Group ($6.32 billion). It’s closer to the market cap of those two companies combined

Submission + - Would government-led initiative for Chip Industry ever panned out ? (eetimes.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: China is reportedly about to inject at least $10 Billion a year on the domestic Chip industry with the combined investments over the next 10 years range from $20 billions to $200 billions

However, critics have argued that the plan would mostly failed — much like the ill-fated European Commission led initiative that was started last year ( http://www.eetimes.com/documen... )

"It was the spring of 2013 when the European Commission launched a campaign of public investment in micro- and nano-electronics with the aim of doubling chip production on the continent to around 20 percent of global production. The plan was to channel more than €5 billion (about $6.4 billion) of public authority money into research, development, and innovation over the next seven years to match a similar amount of investment from companies supported by the plan"

When asked whatever happened to the €5 billion plan, Joep van Beurden, CEO of CSR in Cambridge, UK, said, "I was one of those people in Europe much excited about the European Commission's renewed interest in semiconductors." However, the plan morphed into something that was spread out and shared among various IT sectors in Europe. "In the end, there was little focus left for the semiconductor business"

Hence, two questions that need serious answers are -

1. What should government-led initiatives for Chip Industry do to become successful?

2. Is there any pre-condition that must be met prior to the commence of the government-led initiatives to grant it a chance of being successful ?

Submission + - Lyme bacterium's possible ancestor found in ancient tick (nature.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A few ancient ticks, some 15-million to 20-million old, were trapped inside a piece of amber

That piece of amber was bought by a researcher some 25 years ago, in Dominican Republic

Only recently that researcher took a closer look with a powerful compound microscope — magnifying the specimen up to 1,000 times — that he noticed the tiny ticks within

Upon examination, that researcher turns up some ancient bacterium in one of the ticks. The bacterium appears to be spirochetes, a group of rotini-shaped bacteria responsible for many human diseases

Although Lyme disease did not exist back then, the spirochetes in the fossil tick probably contributed to the genetic diversity of the 12 or more species of Borrelia that cause Lyme and similar diseases today, says the researcher

Like modern ticks, the ancient ones likely picked up spirochetes when they took blood meals from infected vertebrates. Which of those hosts served as a natural reservoir for the spirochetes found in the juvenile tick, however, remains unknown. Ancestors of modern-day jaguars, ancient woodpeckers and shrewlike solenodons are a few potential spirochete-harboring hosts that lived in the same hot, balmy forest as the tick. The researcher, however, thinks it is more likely that the tick inherited its spirochetes from its mother (a process called vertical transmission), rather than from an animal reservoir. He found no evidence that the young arachnid had feasted on blood prior to its fatal encounter with the amber-forming tree resin

The researcher placed the newly discovered bacterium within its own genus, naming it Palaeoborrelia dominicana. He could not attempt to analyze the ancient DNA to confirm whether or not the bacterium is related to modern Borrelia because those tests would destroy the specimen. So it is impossible to know how closely — if at all — the ancient spirochetes are related to contemporary Borrelia. But the bacteria’s morphology and its location within the tick’s alimentary tract indicate that it probably has ties to those notorious pathogens

While on a related article on Nature — @ http://www.nature.com/news/lym... — it has been shown that Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, shows that the capacity to evolve can itself be the target of natural selection

The oldest evidence of Lyme disease dates back 5,300 years, to an ice mummy discovered to contain Borrelia’s genetic material, but the condition’s evolutionary origins are unknown. Lyme disease is only one of a number of human afflictions caused by spirochetes, however, so even if that condition arose more recently, our problems with spirochetes likely date back much further. When Homo sapiens arrived on the scene around 200,000 years ago, the researcher thinks, the ticks — and their spirochetes — were probably waiting “As long as humans have been around,” he says, “I’m sure that they suffered from ailments caused by spirochetes carried by ticks”

Submission + - Electrical control of nuclear spin qubits: Important step towards quantum comput (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Using a spin cascade in single-molecule magnet, the scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and their French partners has demonstrated that a single nuclear spin can be realized in a purely electric manner, rather than through the use of magnetic fields, in which to provide the much needed Qubits are the most basic computation units of the quantum computers, which is a computer based on quantum mechanics principles is to solve tasks much more efficiently than a classical computer

For their experiments, the researchers used a nuclear spin-qubit transistor that consists of a single-molecule magnet connected to three electrodes (source, drain, and gate). The single-molecule magnet is a TbPc2 molecule — a single metal ion of terbium that is enclosed by organic phthalocyanine molecules of carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen atoms. The gap between the electric field and the spin is bridged by the so-called hyperfine-Stark effect that transforms the electric field into a local magnetic field. This quantum mechanics process can be transferred to all nuclear spin systems and, hence, opens up entirely novel perspectives for integrating quantum effects in nuclear spins into electronic circuits

Comment How far can the Magnetic Pulses propagate ? (Score 1) 72

by Taco Cowboy (#47169763) Attached to: Geophysicists Discover How Rocks Produce Magnetic Pulses

Let's say it's a huge earthquake, something along the line of the 8.something earthquake that shook Fukushima, causing tsunami and untimately got that nuke plant to melt ...

In a big quake like that, how _far_ can the magnetic pulse propagate ?

10 miles ? 100 ? 1000 ?

Has anyone got any info ?

Comment Government of the people ? (Score 5, Insightful) 347

When I first came to America I was very impressed with the idea that America has a government of the people, by the people and for the people

For a kid from a Communist country, I can't tell you how much awe I had for the notion that a government is actually on the side of the people !

But then ... I was naive

It turns out that the government of the United States is not what I imagined to be

The government of China is definitely NOT on the side of the people - and they do not have to be, because they never say that they are a democracy

But in the United States of America, we are supposed to be a Democracy, which means that the government has to rely on the VOTES of the people in order to be formed

So, what the fuck has gone wrong ???

Comment The dog has eaten the Constitution (Score 3, Interesting) 269

If that dog only ate your homework the consequence is limited between that dog and you

But in the reality is that the dog, aka, the Government of the United States of America, has eaten the Constitution

The Constitution of the United States of America used to be the HIGHEST LAW OF THE LAND, used to be , no longer, because the way that motherfucking dog is behaving, it not only ignores the Constitution, it goes directly AGAINST what the United States of America is all about !

We call ourselves a "democracy", we call ourselves "the land of the free, home of the braves" ?

Well ... the only FREE thing is the freedom of that fucking dog in destroying the country, and the BRAVERY of the government to LIE UNDER OATH !!

It's not that I like to swear, it's not that I enjoy using vulgar words, but as an American, I simply can't stand any longer what is going on !!

Submission + - Top 5 tips for NSA apologists (eff.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: In order to help the NSA apologists to sound a little bit more legit, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has kindly provided 5 tips for them:

1. The NSA has Stopped 54 Terrorist Attacks with Mass Spying

2. Just collecting call detail records isn’t a big deal

3. There Have Been No Abuses of Power

4. Invading Privacy is Okay Because It’s Done to Prevent Terrorist Attacks

5. There’s Plenty of Oversight From Congress, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and Agency Watchdogs

Submission + - Kerry calls Snowden a *coward* and a *traitor* (thewire.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Jim Kerry, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, publicly escalated his criticism of Edward Snowden, calling him a *** COWARD *** and a *** TRAITOR *** and saying that the NSA document leaker should return to the United States from Russia and “make his case.”

“ Edward Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor and he has betrayed his country,” Kerry said in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” with Chuck Todd.

Submission + - Official MPG figures unrealistic (www.rte.ie)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A research carried out by UK consumer magazine What Car? which concluded that official manufacturers’ MPG figures are unrealistic.

Based on the research new car buyers in the UK who trust official, government-sanctioned fuel economy figures will pay an average of £1,000 (€1,216) more than they expect on fuel over a three-year period.

Since launching True MPG two years ago, What Car? has tested almost 400 cars in real-world conditions, using cutting-edge test equipment and achieving economy figures that are on average 19% lower than the government figures.

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