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US Spying Costs Boeing Military Jet Deal With Brazil 439

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report shedding light on one consequence of increasing knowledge of the extent of U.S. government spying: "Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal. ... The timing of the announcement, after more than a decade of off-and-on negotiations, appeared to catch the companies involved by surprise. Even Juniti Saito, Brazil's top air force commander, said on Wednesday that he only heard of the decision a day earlier in a meeting with President Dilma Rousseff. Until earlier this year, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet had been considered the front runner. But revelations of spying by the U.S. National Security Agency in Brazil, including personal communication by Rousseff, led Brazil to believe it could not trust a U.S. company."

Comment Their real motives will be revealed (Score 2) 712

I think that the real motives of the NRA has more to do with the liberty of companies to sell guns than with the liberty of people to own them.

If it ever come to the point were guns sales plummet 50% because people are 3D Printing them for a few dollars instead of purchasing them from gun manufacturers for a few 100s... I would be curious to see the NRA's reaction.

Just sayin...

Comment They did that in Québec last year (Score 1) 172

It is worth noting that It's not the first time that Voltage Pictures tries to fuck with Canadians. Last year they had a run at a few dozen Quebecers over the Hurt Locker that time:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5999/125/

I never new if they ended up with some settlements or not. What I do know by experience is that when I rented the Hurt Locker I ended up not watching it because the DVD was only in French. French is my native language but I hate translations, they are simply un-watchable. The Hurt Locker was distributed here by Maple Pictures and contrary to 99.9% of DVDs and BDs, they made two different versions for Canada, one in French and one in English. The English version was nowhere to be found in Québec. Talk about under using technology...

I can only imagine the poor bastard that actually bought the movie only in French (without knowing it) and ended up downloading a proper original English version and getting a 'pre-settlement' letter in the mail 2 years later...

Comment Re:I've never seen camera serial # in EXIF (Score 1) 272

Most decent DSLR do that. My Nikon D800 does it. My Nikons D700, D300, D300S and D7000 did it before and my friend's Canon 5DMKIII and 5DMKII do it too. I see it just by looking at my library in Lightroom.

I have a smaller Fuji X10 and a Nikon P7000 abd they do not insert their serial number in the EXIF data.

Comment Re:Maple Syrup Strategic Reserve? (Score 2) 399

That is completely true in theory and slashdot is not the place to debate the UPA practices. However, there are small details about the implementation and politics that make it often unfair. For example, the stolen inventory discussed in this story was supported by the producers since the UPA pays us only when the syrup is sold which can be a year or so later.

Over the years, I became mostly self sufficient and I sell the major part of my production in meals and products sold at my establishment. I did that to have as little to do with them as possible.

Comment Re:Maple Syrup Strategic Reserve? (Score 4, Interesting) 399

I do mainly 2 things in my life:

1- I'm an IT consultant 9 months/year
2- I produce maple syrup on my maple farm 3 month/year

I've been doing that for years and let me tell you that it is true that is a monopoly benefiting mainly the big producers and the small one are kinda left behind. But then again, It is similar to most farming in most countries.

Comment Re:What's next? (Score 1) 189

They have a history of double dipping so why the hell not?

Surely, at some point, it will become inconceivable that they earn more money from AWS or other cloud users patent fees than from their own cloud clients. They're extracting money from Android manufacturers. They know all too well how and where to piggy back themselves onto others along the food chain... Parasites...

Comment Re:Coldfusion (Score 1) 409

Indeed but the core of ColdFusion comes from Allaire and after that MacroMedia. Railo is independent from Adobe and also Open Source. It run under Tomcat (ColdFusion also runs on tomcat as of version 10). Open Blue Dragon is also a good Open Source alternative. I've found that Railo requires the least (if any) amount of modification from ColdFusion code.

Comment Re:Coldfusion (Score 2) 409

I agree with you and I frequently use Railo on AWS/EC2 images. I really don't know why people are so judgmental on ColdFusion. Many of them never tried it. It's fast, mature, easy to deploy and plays well with others (java, .net, etc). I first used ColdFusion in 1995. I was bundled FREE with Oreilly 'website pro' web server software back in the days when they were making software.

Comment Failled expectations (Score 1) 451

I kindda expect this overreaction from the US authorities. They have proven quite effective at that over the last 10 years.

Without really knowing how it all went down, my expectations falls really short when I see my provincial police force being tools to the US.

The patriot act is a US law this can be interpreted to permit all kind of stupid action by law enforcement IT DOES NOT automatically extend to the rest of the world and their law enforcement. Too often, other countries overstep their own boundaries under the pretense of helping the US government. I feel a little ashamed to be a french guy from Québec...

Comment I'm alright with that... (Score 1) 461

As the world changes, it's perfectly normal that people/company/organisation/language/laws/product/... will become irrelevant. The real crime is not adapting and artificially insisting on remaining relevant. The record companies have been doing that for years, the book publishers as well and at a later time, the movie studios will to. The only reason it hasn't happened yet to the movie studios is the relatively high budget of movies as opposed to the one of books and music.

That being said, the internet is providing a direct pathway from the authors to the reader. Amazon is a publisher in this picture but it is selling directly to the reader so there one (or more) person to feed down the line. Everybody wins except the superfluous people who are not relevant and became greedy to compensate for a loss of revenues instead of adapting. Apple and Google will probably do the same and some artist/writers will try to sell directly to listeners/readers. It's all good and I'm alright with that.

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