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Comment Re:The entire industry is built on piracy (Score 1) 361

Although brilliant and evocative, so far i don't think Amazon or Barnes and Nobles have ever even heard of the Gutemberg Project. I do agree there is a problem with limiting "old" content to circulate freely but i don't think it's part of an agenda by media moguls.

Serving the amount of content we are talking about is a massive feat. At this time there might just not be enough push for it. And yes, we _are_ going to lose very invaluable things. In the history of this civilization, the 20 years around 2010 will be a huge black hole in the records of the information age.

We have no widespread, easily replicable, established way of preserving data and we're generating more and more every day, without knowing how to practice safekeeping on the important stuff.

Comment Re:This won't fly... (Score 1) 87

A sound footprint in the audible band is relevant only in extremely close range. Have you ever sat close to an F-117 "Stealth" Fighter in full thrust? It's silent only after it has blown your ear drums. What you want is Radar stealth. On top of that, Quadcopters of this size _also_ have optical stealth due to their small size.

Comment Re:TrueCrypt (Score 2) 482

This. Just create a truecrypt image on Dropbox and the privacy issues are solved. If there are other problems, like unsupported clients and whatnot like someone mentioned in a comment, then it might be wise to look elsewhere.

Comment Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score 4, Insightful) 848

You all are completely missing a key part of the picture. Regardless of the environmental issues around nuclear waste disposal and all the arguments against coal power generation, Italy has one crucial difference with the rest of the world: Mafia. Mafia is in every aspect of the public life, especially public investment programmes and subsidies.

We have buildings crumbling and killing dozen of people, chemical plants exploding, all because of negligence tied to assigning public funds to mafia-owned companies that drain public money knowingly saving on safety measures because they are above the law and they will never pay if someone dies because of it.

Can you imagine what would happen in a power plant built using mafia contractors in the south of italy, close to rivers and farming fields? No thanks. We have far more pressing issues to solve before we can venture in something so volatile and risky.

We have a chemical chernobyl in the countryside region outside naples, lymphatic and bone cancers skyrocketing because of the widespread, systematic illegal disposal of wastes from the whole europe. Endemic corruption.

Even if i was in favor of nuclear power (which i am not, except for research), i cannot see how this technology can even be remotely safe in Italy. Italian scientists, traditionally supporting nuclear power, agree with me (cfr: Margherita Hack's claims about the vote).

This vote is not against nuclear power per se. It's against nuclear power *in Italy*, because we know we don't have the social, economical stability to tackle such a venture. The same reasons led to very harsh protests against building a massive bridge between mainland Italy and sicily. We can't really face modernization unless we get rid of this plague, and a lot of Italian people know this and voted accordingly.

Privacy

Pandora Subpoenaed In Probe of Mobile-App Privacy 50

ideaz writes "Pandora Media Inc., the largest Internet radio company, said it's been asked for information as part of a federal grand-jury probe into the way smartphone software developers handle personal data. Pandora isn't a specific target of the investigation and similar subpoenas have been issued to other publishers of apps that run on Apple's iPhone and Google's Android operating system, the company said in a securities filing today."
The Internet

UK Police To Get Major New Powers To Seize Domains 161

Stoobalou writes "British Police forces could soon have the power to seize any domain associated with criminal activity, under new proposals published today by UK domain registrar Nominet. At present, Nominet has no clear legal obligation to ensure that .uk domains are not used for criminal activities. That situation may soon change, if proposals from the Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) are accepted."
Censorship

GoDaddy Follows Google's Lead; No More Registrations In China 243

phantomfive writes "GoDaddy has announced it will no longer register domain names in China, in response to new requirements that each registrant be photographed, and their business ID number be submitted. GoDaddy's representative said, 'The intent of the procedures appeared, to us, to be based on a desire by the Chinese authorities to exercise increased control over the subject matter of domain name registrations by Chinese nationals.'"

Comment Re:Riding the back of nostalgia. (Score 1) 330

Gief me that redundant now because i will make sure i deserve it. it's a FLUKE. A Hoax. A Fake. Hocus Pocus. Groundless MumboJumbo. This computer is not an actual product. It's someone with a particularly slow day at the office in need of some attention (that doesn't involve a pay cut) that pulled you a good joke. And for the record a design like that wouldn't be a flop only if it was twice as portable as the eeepc with none of the downsides. That clunky sad excuse for a k10 science project ripoff could have been made by a bored 16 dude that visited a pc modding forum for the first time yesterday by buying parts at his local Walmart. The pictures on that site have not been concocted by anyone with an even pale idea of what the words "design" (and not the fashiony meaning of the word, here i'm talking even about the bare minimum functional design issues) or "engineering" means.

Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1) 330

And those most likely completely correct legal statements of yours (and the fact i've had national healthcare since the day i was born) are what still makes me proud of living in the old Europe no matter how shit, completely illegal, corrupt and misled my government can be. (and please note that as a citizen i'm doing whatever i can to change that)

Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1) 330

Since when it's legal or illegal to run your own software on whatever hardware you want? As long as it's not child pornography (and you bought it if it's proprietary software), in the privacy of your home you can run osx or beos or Xenix on whatever hardware you manage to make it run on (if you have legal rights of some kinds on the hardware that is). The situation you're referring to as illegal is probably the one of Psystar. A System Integrator that started *selling* system with OSX pre-installed. That's a whole different beast :)

Comment Clear Hoax (Score 5, Insightful) 330

Look. at. the. site. It's a chinese 3rd rate gadget imitator wet dream. There is a pseudo-configuration page vaguely mimicking Dell's one with no functionality. No logo. No design. and GOD that heinous thing in the pictures looks CLUNKY and CHEAP. This is a hoax. /. have seen several in the past years tied to the good old C64. I'm very surprised it made the front page :(

Comment Re:Contact the company? (Score 1) 170

Standard behaviour on current and somewhat current hardware is to get those infos through EDID. If that doesn't work, just get the user manual for the display and supply the settings by hand in xorg.conf from there. I think i'm pretty sure that *any* kind of plain computer display with standard interface connections (vga, dvi, hdmi) will work. Might be fun to know of exceptions. But i don't think there are.

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