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Submission + - Blizzard gets judgement overturned over WoW bots (mondaq.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ninth Circuit reversed a $6.5 million judgment for Blizzard against MDY Industries saying that making bots is not copyright infringement. The bad news? They did violate the DMCA Section 1201(a)(2) which prohibits trafficking in products that circumvent technologies designed to control access to copyright protected works.
Piracy

MegaUpload Dares RIAA To Sue Them 255

Posted by timothy from the come-and-take-it dept.
Dangerous_Minds writes "Yesterday, there were reports that the RIAA and MPAA were working with Mastercard to cut off payments to so-called 'rogue-websites' like MegaUpload. Today, a spokesperson from MegaUpload issued a response to the RIAA on ZeroPaid. Bonnie Lam of MegaUpload said, 'the vast majority of our revenue is coming from advertising.' She also said, 'Megaupload is a legitimate business operating within the boundaries of the law. In five years of operation we have not been sued by a single content owner. If the RIAA or MPAA would have legal grounds they would have taken us to court by now. We suggest that they attack us within the legal system and stop labeling us until they have something to show.'"
Software

Submission + - 7 Free Software For Reviving A Beat Down PC

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Needless to say that the holiday season is a wonderful time of the year and seeing loved ones can be a great experience. But the fact is that once the reunion-high wears off, most of us would probably want to get back to entertaining ourselves, which generally means getting back online. At this point chances of encountering a PC that's in bad shape are fairly high. You know, that PC that seems to take an eternity to boot up, and when it's ready, keyboard or mouse clicks register about 30 seconds after the fact. Fortunately though reviving a beat down PC like that is simple. All it requires is having the right tools, which can actually be found online for free and better yet they can easily be stored on a USB key.
Education

Submission + - Is it just us, or are kids getting really stupid? (phillymag.com)

Submitted by krou
krou writes: A feature at phillymag.com asks whether or not our kids are getting really stupid, arguing that the large cognitive load of constant data is making it harder to process information to any depth. 'Technology was supposed to set us free, to liberate us from mundane, time-consuming tasks so we could do great things, think great thoughts, solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Instead, our kids have been liberated to perform even more mundane, time-consuming tasks'. However, Elliot Weinbaum, a professor at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, and others argue that people are worrying unduly about illiteracy, or that kids don't know the days of the week. They also argue that computer activities such as gaming are providing valuable business skills: 'Over so many hours, [gamers have] learned how to master an incredibly complex system. These multi-person games that involve intra-functional teams — "guilds," they call them — organize their entrants the way some workplaces do. These are skills that corporate employers are very interested in.' The article is fairly long (nine pages in total) and ultimately concludes with the author's concern that 'we’re not just failing to engage with one another; we’re less and less willing to engage the world at large' and, ultimately, losing opportunities to develop '"our inwardness, our self-reflectiveness, our orientation to the unknown." In other words: a soul.'

Submission + - Telecoms Competition 100 Years Ago (eugenegill.com)

Submitted by Tokolosh
Tokolosh writes: With all the discussion of net neutrality, regulation, competition and government involvement, a review of the situation 100 years ago is instructive. Read the "Twentieth Century Magazine" from 1910. This was a "progressive" and "socialist" publication, and its opinions are not always what you might expect.

The most interesting part are the roles of government and the courts — there are none at all. Barriers to entry for competitors are low: no regulations, no taxes, no licenses, no patents, no franchises, no "last mile", no court injunctions, no lobbying. Imagine what we could do in such an environment! What have we gained or lost in 100 years? How should things be different, or the same?

The same publication has a lot to say on the subject of the government involvement in healthcare. Hint: They think it is a bad idea.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Warns of Critical IE Bug (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by AndGodSed
AndGodSed writes: Microsoft is warning of a new critical browser vulnerability related to how the browser handles CSS that is affecting "all versions of Internet Explorer." The code is in the wild, but there is currently no evidence of it being used. Yet. There is a workaround, but there are no guarantees that it will work for you. It tickles me that this vulnerability affects all versions of IE, especially since it relates to how the browsers handle CSS. Does this point to old code in newer versions of IE?
Science

Submission + - The Tipping Point of Humanness (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Robert Zemeckis, take note. Using videos that morph the face of a baby or man into a doll, researchers have figured out at what point we stop considering a face human--and start considering it artificial. The ability, the researchers say, is key to our survival, enabling us to quickly determine whether the eyes we're looking at have a mind behind them. It may also explain why so many people hated The Polar Express.

Submission + - Paypal Limited (goarticles.com)

Submitted by paypal
paypal writes: For a long time Paypal was like my best friend. It was always there for me with all of my online endevours like ebay and amazon. Then one day it turned on me. Paypal limited access to my account. I was absolutely devastated and heartbroken. Worst of all I was confused. I did nothing to Paypal to deserve this. I was always honest and had an excellent score of 91! I was totally blindsided.

For days I was confused. I contacted customer service about how Paypal limited access to my account. Not only did they not help me, they wouldn’t even tell me what I did wrong! The lady told me that hundreds of people every day call her with this exact same problem, and that I was not special and not going to receive any special treatment just because I claimed that I did nothing wrong. I almost cried!

The more I looked into why Paypal limited access to my account, the more I found out that I was not alone. Thousands of people around the world have this exact same problem. I also found out even worse news, that Paypal had the legal right to freeze my funds for a full 180 days, without even letting me know why! This blew my mind.

Submission + - BYTE is coming back (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: More than a dozen years after its death, BYTE magazine is still the most beloved computer magazine of all time--the one that employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with. And now it's being revived, in the form of a new BYTE.com. The new version isn't replicating the focus of the old BYTE--it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment--and I'm pretty positive it won't feature Robert Tinney's art or epic Jerry Pournelle columns. But I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo.
Science

Submission + - 50,000 year-old finger bone connect to present man (sciguru.com)

Submitted by RogerRoast
RogerRoast writes: Gene sequencing of a 50,000 year old bone found in Siberia shows that the cave dwellers were neither Neandertals nor modern humans, but the individual is from a group that shares a common origin with Neanderthals. The bone belonged to a female lived at that time.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft dealing with second 0-Day vulnerability (thetechherald.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just hours after confirming a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, Microsoft has another problem on their hands. Late Wednesday, Microsoft confirmed that they are investigating a Denial-of-Service (DoS) vulnerability that resides in the FTP component of IIS.

Submission + - Discovery of new molecule for rocket fuel (eurekalert.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Trinitramid — A new molecule composed of nitrogen and oxygen could be 30% more efficient than the best rocket fuel today. For each 10% increase in rocket fuel efficiency, payload weight doubles. Further studies to scale production quantity and determine stability are in progress.

Submission + - DivX to be bought by Macrovision (investors.com)

Submitted by 575
575 writes: The one-time controversial company DivX (and its new owner Sonic) is slated to be purchased by Macrovision; a copy protection company with such an awful consumer reputation that it changed its name to Rovi. DivX made its reputation by enabling piracy though codec that made it feasible to share large videos over the internet, and flipping the bird to the system though endeavors like Stage6. Now that it has literally sold out to "the man", what does it mean (if anything) for the media on the internet?
Businesses

Submission + - Skype Outage Hits Users Worldwide

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The LA Times reports that millions of Skype phone users worldwide couldn't make calls or were dropped in mid-conversation, because of a network connection failure that began about 9 a.m. Wednesday PST. "For a communications system this large to go down, it's almost unheard of," says Charles S. Golvin, a Forrester Research analyst. "Usually when phone lines are disrupted, the blackout is confined to a specific geographical area. This is worldwide." In theory, Skype, which is based on peer-to-peer networking technology shouldn't see an outage but that is not really the case — the company has a massive infrastructure that it uses for purposes such as authentication and linking to the traditional phone networks. "The outage comes at a time when Skype is starting to ask larger corporations for their business," writes Om Malik. "If I am a big business, I would be extremely cautious about adopting Skype for business, especially in the light of this current outage.""

Submission + - Skype creating new mega-supernodes (skype.com)

Submitted by jbrax
jbrax writes: Peer-to-peer VoIP provider Skype is having problems staying online, and their engineers are now working hard on "creating new mega-supernodes as fast as they can." I wonder how much they possibly can remotely adjust their software to get more resources from their clients?

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