Comment Mozilla's losing coolness (Score 1, Insightful) 112
Its lost the browser initiative to google. I can't imagine it will still be around in its current form in a decade.
Apple Outrages Users By Automatically Installing U2's Album On Their Devices 610
Zanadou writes "Apple may have succeeded at breaking two records at once with the free release of U2's latest album, titled Songs of Innocence, via iTunes. But now, it looks like it's also on track to become one of the worst music publicity stunts of all time. Users who have opted to download new purchases to their iPhones automatically have found the new U2 album sitting on their phones. But even if iTunes users hadn't chosen automatic downloads, Songs of Innocence will still be displayed as an "iTunes in the Cloud" purchase. That means it will still be shown as part of your music library, even if you delete all the tracks. The only way to make the U2 album go away is to go to your Mac or PC and hide all of your "iTunes in the Cloud" purchases, or to use iTunes to manually hide each track from your purchased items list. Other reactions include rapper Tyler, The Creator saying that having the new U2 album automatically downloaded on his iPhone was like waking up with an STD. Update: 09/16 15:06 GMT by T : Note: Apple has released a fix.
Deputy Who Fatally Struck Cyclist While Answering Email Will Face No Charges 463
Frosty P writes The LA County District Attorney's Office declined to press charges against a sheriff's deputy who was apparently distracted by his mobile digital computer when he fatally struck cyclist and former Napster COO Milton Olin Jr. in Calabasas last December. The deputy was responding to routine work email when he drifted into the bike lane and struck and killed Mr. Olin. An official with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said it is launching its own probe into the deputy’s behavior.
UPS: We've Been Hacked 62
paysonwelch writes The United Parcel Service announced that customers' credit and debit card information at 51 franchises in 24 states may have been compromised. There are 4,470 franchised center locations throughout the U.S., according to UPS. The malware began to infiltrate the system as early as January 20, but the majority of the attacks began after March 26. UPS says the threat was eliminated as of August 11 and that customers can shop safely at all locations.
UK Police Warn Sharing James Foley Killing Video Is a Crime 391
An anonymous reader points out that UK authorities have warned that sharing the video of the James Foley murder could lead to prosecution under anti-terror laws. Scotland Yard has warned internet users they could be arrested under terrorism legislation if they viewed or shared the video of James Foley's murder, as Twitter and YouTube attempted to remove all trace of the footage from the web. Twitter suspended dozens of accounts that published the graphic footage while YouTube tried to remove several copies of the video, which was first uploaded on Tuesday night. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo tweeted: "We have been and are actively suspending accounts as we discover them related to this graphic imagery. Thank you." The unprecedented social media clampdown came as the Metropolitan police warned that even viewing the video could constitute a criminal offence in the UK. The force said in a statement: "The MPS counter-terrorism command (SO15) is investigating the contents of the video that was posted online in relation to the alleged murder of James Foley. We would like to remind the public that viewing, downloading or disseminating extremist material within the UK may constitute an offence under terrorism legislation."
Microsoft Lobby Denies the State of Chile Access To Free Software 159
walterbyrd writes: Fresh on the heels of the entire Munich and Linux debacle, another story involving Microsoft and free software has popped up across the world, in Chile. A prolific magazine from the South American country says that the powerful Microsoft lobby managed to turn around a law that would allow the authorities to use free software. "An independent member of the Chilean Parliament, Vlado Mirosevic, pushed a bill that would allow the state to consider free software when the authorities needed to purchase or renew licenses. ... A while later, the same member of the Parliament, Daniel Farcas, proposed another bill that actually nullified the effects of the previous one that had just been adopted. To make things even more interesting, some of the people who voted in favor of the first law also voted in favor of the second one. ... The new bill is even more egregious, because it aggressively pushes for the adoption of proprietary software. Companies that choose to use proprietary software will receive certain tax breaks, which makes it very hard for free software to get adopted."
Comment flawed measure (Score 1) 316
No matter how little bandwidth customers use, some of them will always be in the top 5%!
Putin Government Moves To Take Control of Russia's largest space company Energia 252
schwit1 writes Vitaly Lopota, the president of Russia's largest space company Energia, was suspended Friday by the company's board of directors. From the article: "The move appears to be part of an effort by Russia's government to obtain majority control over Energia, of which it owns a 38-percent share. The directors elected Igor Komarov as its new chairman of the board. Komarov is chief of the Russian United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), the government-owned company tasked with consolidating Russia's sprawling space sector." The government is also conducting a criminal investigation of Lopota, which might be justified but appears to be a power play designed to both eliminate him from the game as well as make sure everyone else tows the line so that URSC can take complete control.
Comment Re: Laugh all the way to the bank (Score 1) 83
But the reason that say android is successful is probably not because of any specific patented technology it uses, rather it has a good enough user interface and google made it freely available for a while. The specific innovation behind android that led to its success is its open nature. None of microsoft's patents contribute to this.
Comment Re:Laugh all the way to the bank (Score 5, Insightful) 83
TBH if microsoft have continuously failed to gain traction in the mobile phone market, I don't really see why its reasonable for them to tax the companies who've made a product people want to use.
Countries Don't Own Their Internet Domains, ICANN Says 113
angry tapir writes The Internet domain name for a country doesn't belong to that country — nor to anyone, according to ICANN. Plaintiffs who successfully sued Iran, Syria and North Korea as sponsors of terrorism want to seize the three countries' ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) as part of financial judgments against them. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet, says they can't do that because ccTLDs aren't even property.
Comment Good Riddance (Score 1) 502
SB16 was great but in the end, Creative exaggerated the benefits of their cards - to the extent of deception sometimes. And the drivers for some of the later models were somewhat dodgy so in the end its better that they're irrelevant now - they drove themselves into the ground.
Comment Old AI! (Score 1) 162
This just sounds like an expert system which they've had since the 70s or 80s, combined with a bit of planning/scheduling which is something they've had since then as well!
Comment unbelievable (Score 1) 495
You can't just mess with people's stuff like this, or potentially destroy a business. Fucking unbelievable that microsoft got a judge to permit this.
Microsoft Takes Down No-IP.com Domains 495
An anonymous reader writes For some reason that escapes me, a Judge has granted Microsoft permission to hijack NoIP's DNS. This is necessary according to Microsoft to thwart a "global cybercrime epidemic" being perpetrated by infected machines running Microsoft software.
No-IP is a provider of dynamic DNS services (among other things). Many legitimate users were affected by the takedown: "This morning, Microsoft served a federal court order and seized 22 of our most commonly used domains because they claimed that some of the subdomains have been abused by creators of malware. We were very surprised by this. We have a long history of proactively working with other companies when cases of alleged malicious activity have been reported to us. Unfortunately, Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives. ... We have been in contact with Microsoft today. They claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening."
