PhineusJWhoopee - Slashdot User

Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Stealing His Content 504

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 10, 2009 @08:22PM from the what-part-of-come-in-don't-you-understand? dept.

Hugh Pickens writes Weston Kosova writes in Newsweek that Rupert Murdoch gave an impassioned speech to media executives in Beijing decrying that search engines — in particular Google — are stealing from him, because Google links to his stories but doesn't pay News Corp. to do so. 'The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content,' Murdoch says. 'But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.' But if Murdoch really thinks Google is stealing from him, and if he really wants Google to stop driving all those readers to his Web sites at no charge, he can simply stop Google from linking to their news stories by going to his Web site's robot.txt file and adding 'Disallow.'"

Why Cloud Storage Is Lousy For Enterprises (and Individuals) 183

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 10, 2009 @05:53PM from the straw-for-the-ocean dept.

storagedude points to this article at Enterprise Storage Forum which argues that cloud-based storage options have fatal limitations for both businesses and individuals: "The article makes the argument that high volumes of data and bandwidth limitations make external cloud storage all but useless for enterprises because it could take months to restore the data in a disaster. It also appears to be a consumer problem — the author spent three months replicating 1TB of home data via cable modem to an online backup service." Seems like those off-site incremental storage firms could dispatch a station wagon full of tapes, for enough money. Update: Here's another reason, for Sidekick users: reader 1ini was one of several to point out an alert from T-Mobile that "...personal information stored on your device — such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos — that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger."

The Mice That Didn't Make It 202

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 06, 2009 @04:09PM from the does-anything-beat-a-logitech-marble-mouse? dept.

Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."

Comment Concept being used in VA for pseudoephedrine sales (Score 1) 514

by PhineusJWhoopee on Thursday January 10, 2008 @05:54PM (#21991042) Attached to: ID Tech May Mean an End to Anonymous Drinking

Pseudoephedrine (a.k.a. "sudafed") has recently been a target of several state and federal laws, due to the fact that bulk quantities of pseudoephedrine can be used in the manufacture of methamphetamines. As such, the amount and frequency of pseudoephedrine purchases are now limited in many location by law.

Virginia requires that one show an ID and address, so that records can be kept on sales (presumably to track compliance with the amount and frequency limits.) In a typical store (e.g. grocery store pharmacy counter), this is done in a log book, which requires the sales drone to look at your license and write down the relevant info.

However, at least drug store chain now has a scanner that reads the barcode on the back of the driver's license.

On one hand, the information must be collected by law; having a cashier write down the info is a hassle and slows down the purchase. The scanner really helps accelerate the process (and probably helps with compliance, too.)

On the other hand...I certainly hate the idea that it's becoming that easy to collect personal information. At least with a driver's license scan, I know when data is being collected. RFID on the license...the horror!

ed

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