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Google

Google To Start Punishing Pirate Sites In Search Results 294

An anonymous reader sends word of a change Google will be making to its search algorithms. Beginning next week, the company will penalize the search rankings of websites who are the target of many copyright infringement notices from rightsholders. Quoting The Verge: "Google says the move is designed to 'help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily' — meaning that it's trying to direct people who search for movies, TV shows, and music to sites like Hulu and Spotify, not torrent sites or data lockers like the infamous MegaUpload. It's a clear concession to the movie and music industries, who have long complained that Google facilitates piracy — and Google needs to curry favor with media companies as it tries to build an ecosystem around Google Play. Google says it feels confident making the change because because its existing copyright infringement reporting system generates a massive amount of data about which sites are most frequently reported — the company received and processed over 4.3 million URL removal requests in the past 30 days alone, more than all of 2009 combined. Importantly, Google says the search tweaks will not remove sites from search results entirely, just rank them lower in listings."

Comment What to buy? (Score 1) 169

Alright, I'll bite. What is a good WebOS device for sale (I know, they're all discontinued) that we could buy and install the Opened OS on? The Veer appears to be the newest phone and the HP Touchpad the newest (only) tablet. I haven't previously paid much attention to their product line so I'm curious what hardware the WebOS enthusiasts prefer.

Comment Re:Maemo and MeeGo (Score 1) 178

Quick summary on that since few people are mentioning these.

Maemo has been around for a few years and is sometimes called Debian on a phone. Most people run it on a Nokia n900.

MeeGo is the newer version of the OS that Nokia is partnering with Intel to create. The Nokia n9 should be out in a few months with other handsets to follow.

Comment Re:Yet another infomation-free summary... (Score 1) 198

You're on the other end of the spectrum, the cheap ass gamer spectrum. Like I said, this service appears to be geared towards the average PC gamer.

Then I would experience more computational lag, making RTT even less important.

Also, I bet you are experiencing plenty of system lag, whether you realize it or not. I had a friend like that, he thought his set up was fine on old hardware, absolute minimum settings possible. When I gave him my old parts to put in his box, he finally understood what I meant by his system lag

Sometimes I go to "lan houses" to play with friends, and they have computers than can sustain CoD4 in HQ & HD fine, but I find it to be pretty much the same, just more detailed. My score is about the same either.

Comment Re:maybe I'm missing something but... (Score 1) 403

If your organization used Paypal and they froze your assets once, and you "struggled for more than half a year" to resolve it, why the fuck would you STILL be using Paypal?

Because they would probably need to setup many bank accounts in many countries. It's probably also ease-of-use. Easy to press a few buttons and fill out an amount with paypal and transfer money, than to transfer using say direct bank-transfer. This means people are more likely to donate...

Another example: I use paypal but I'd rather not. However, I sell specific items worldwide, and there are no other good wide used systems to transfer money from say the USA to the Netherlands. Bank transfer is something hardly used in the US for example, and if used, the cost is often prohibitive. So if I want to sell to the US, there's no real choice.

What's then annoying is that many Europeans (in euro countries) also use paypal... In Ebay you are not allowed to say "I won't use paypal for people in counties using the EURO".

This doesn't apply to wikileaks, but just gives an idea why sometimes you don't have a choice, or the others are just too expensive (bank transfer in the US too expensive, Western union is also fairly expensive and has other problems, etc.)

Comment What about not responding to the ads? (Score 2, Interesting) 507

After all, the company behind the ads are paying for the website.

If you do not respond positively to the ad, than you make the company loose money.

So to read an article on the web, you should be buying cars, shampoo, computers, as advertised on the website you visit even if you would have prefer a Toyota than the Humvee you had to buy according to the ads on the website you just visited.

I decide not to see the ads.

You decide to see the ads but ignore them. If you click on the ads, that do not interest you, just to give money to the site, is kind of fraudulent. The company that pay for the ads displayed want people that are interested in their product to visit their own website.

Comment Re:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score 1) 161

The problem was that they proposed patented ideas to JEDEC without disclosing that they were patented. People started implementing DDR and then got letters from Rambus demanding money. It would have been fine if they hadn't been part of JEDEC (and someone else had proposed their designs) or if they had disclosed that they owned the patents and worked out royalty rates before the standard was finalised (in which case people could have chosen whether or not to adopt it knowing exactly what it would cost), but instead they deliberately got them added to the standard, waited until people started using it, and then fired off the lawsuits.

Comment Re:Headache? (Score 1) 273

Actually, paracetamol seems to be less toxic if taken while drunk, but more so if taken the day after. The enzyme (a cytochrome P450 oxidase) that transforms paracetamol to the toxic substance (N-acetyl-iminoquinone) can also oxidize alcohol. If there is alcohol present, the transformation of paracetamol goes slower and/or by other routes, so taking it while drunk leads to lower blood concentrations of N-acetyl-iminoquinone*. However, when there is alcohol present, the liver produces more cytochrome P450 to detoxify it quicker, and that surplus is still there the day after, so the degradation of paracetamol to N-acetyliminioquinone is faster, making paracetamol more toxic. So don't use it to combat hangovers.

*This have been investigated in a double-blind experiment, where people either got a alcohol-contaning og non-alcoholcontaining intravenous drop (IIRC). When I first read this article, I was rather amused about the idea that people should be unable to tell the difference, but placebo intoxication seems to be rather powerful.

Comment When I Retire... (Score 2, Insightful) 888

and have the extra TIME to travel, I'll be driving more places, for sure. So what if it takes me 3 1/2 days to get to LA from Virginia? They'll at least be pleasant, I'll get to see a lotta scenery, maybe take a few pictures, and bypass the BS. If they ever get the high speed rail working, I might take that... if there's no security BS to put up with (pointless in a train - the terrorists just blow up the tracks..)

Space

Initial Tests Fail To Find Gravitational Waves 553

eldavojohn writes that though gravitational waves are "predicted to exist by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the initial tests run by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration (LIGO) failed to find anything. It doesn't disprove their existence although it does rule out a subset of string theory. From the article, 'For example, some models predict the existence of cosmic strings, which are loops in space-time that may have formed in the early universe and gotten stretched to large scales along with the expansion of the universe. These objects are thought to produce bursts of gravitational waves as they oscillate. Since no large-amplitude gravitational waves were found, cosmic strings, if they exist at all, must be smaller than some models predict.' The scientists working in Washington and Louisiana (in tandem to rule out flukes) will now move on to Advanced LIGO which will analyze a volume of space 1,000 times larger. If they don't find any gravitational waves in that experiment, the results will be more than unsettling to many theorists."
Programming

Alan Cox Quits As Linux TTY Maintainer — "I've Had Enough" 909

The Slashdolt writes "After a stern criticism from Linus, the long-time kernel hacker Alan Cox has decided to walk away as the maintainer of the TTY subsystem of the Linux Kernel, stating '...I've had enough. If you think that problem is easy to fix you fix it. Have fun. I've zapped the tty merge queue so anyone with patches for the tty layer can send them to the new maintainer.'" A response to a subsequent post on the list makes it quite clear that he is serious.
Privacy

Submission + - Skype owns your chats & recordings of your cal (skype.com)

SemperCogito writes: "The latest Skype EULA includes this attempted theft:

3.2.4 Licence: You hereby grant to Skype a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable licence to Use the Content in any media in connection with the Skype Software, the Products and the Skype Website.

That is the software license equivalent of, "Bwaaah haa haaa, it's mine, ALLL MINE!!!!"

(Well, as a license, it leaves the user with the same rights, but Skype effectively becomes co-owner and can do whatever they please.)

Reading the rest of the EULA, Content is broadly defined as "anything you transmit through Skype." That would include your chats, recordings of your calls, and recordings of your video calls. Nowhere in their privacy agreement or elsewhere do they commit themselves to protecting this Content. In fact, they explicitly say it will be treated as an asset for sale.

This makes me sufficiently uncomfortable that I am seriously considering trying to get my company to switch to an open platform like Pidgin, despite the pain and suffering that will ensue with our users. We'd like chat and audio/video in one Lin/Mac/Win client. Any other Slashdotters concerned by this — and might even have a good alternative?

P.S. IANAL, TINLA"

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