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Submission + - Professor Steve Ballmer Will Teach At Two Universities This Year (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by redletterdave
redletterdave writes: When Steve Ballmer announced he was stepping down from Microsoft’s board of directors, he cited a fall schedule that would 'be hectic between teaching a new class and the start of the NBA season.' It turns out Ballmer will teach an MBA class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in the fall, and a class at USC’s Marshall School of Business in the spring. Helen Chang, assistant director of communications at Stanford’s Business School, told Business Insider that Ballmer will be working with faculty member Susan Athey for a strategic management course called 'TRAMGT588: Leading organizations.' As for the spring semester, Ballmer will head to Los Angeles — closer to where his Clippers will be playing — and teach a course at University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. We reached out to the Marshall School, which declined to offer more details about Ballmer’s class.

Submission + - Experimental drug stops Ebola-like infection (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: An experimental treatment against an Ebola-related virus can protect monkeys even when given up to 3 days after infection, the point at which they show the first signs of disease. The virus, known as Marburg, causes severe hemorrhagic fever—vomiting, diarrhea, and internal bleeding. In one outbreak, it killed 90% of people it infected. There are no proven treatments or vaccines against it. The new results raise hopes that the treatment might be useful for human patients even if they don’t receive it until well after infection. The company that makes the compound, Tekmira, based in Burnaby, Canada, has started a human safety trial of a related drug to treat Ebola virus disease, and researchers hope that it, too, might offer protection even after a patient has started to feel ill.

Submission + - Seals infected early Americans with tuberculosis (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: We catch new flu viruses from ducks and pigs. And Ebola, the disease that's got the world worried at the moment, may have originated in bats. Now, a study of microbial DNA isolated from 1000-year-old Peruvian mummies blames seals for spreading tuberculosis (TB) to humans in South America long before European settlers arrived. "This work provides an entirely new vista on the arrival of [TB] in the New World, and also the potential role of sea mammals in the global dissemination of the TB [bacteria]," says Stephen Gordon, a microbiologist at University College Dublin who was not involved in the work. The analysis also indicates that TB as a human disease is much younger than researchers have thought.

Submission + - Operating systems still matter in a containerized world

Submitted by Jason Baker
Jason Baker writes: With the rise of Docker containers as an alternative for deploying complex server-based applications, one might wonder, does the operating system even matter anymore? Certainly the question gets asked periodically. Gordon Haff makes the argument on Opensource.com that the operating system is still very much alive and kicking, and that a hardened, tuned, reliable operating system is just as important to the success of applications as it was in the pre-container data center.

Submission + - Training Materials Leaked from Comcast

Submitted by WheezyJoe
WheezyJoe writes: Ars Technica and the Verge report how leaked training manuals from Comcast show how selling services is a required part of the job, even for employees doing tech support. The so-called "the 4S training material" explicitly states that 20 percent of a call center employee’s rating for a given call is dependent on effectively selling the customer new Comcast services.
"There are pages of materials on 'probing' customers to ferret out upsell opportunities, as well as on batting aside customer objections to being told they need to buy something. 'We can certainly look at other options, but you would lose which you mentioned was important to you,' the guide suggests clumsily saying to an angry customer who doesn’t want to buy any more Comcast services."
Images of the leaked documents are posted on the Verge, making for fun reading.

Submission + - Scientists find traces of sea plankton on ISS surface (itar-tass.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An experiment of taking samples from illuminators and the ISS surface has brought unique results, as scientists had found traces of sea plankton there, the chief of an orbital mission on Russia’s ISS segment told reporters.

Results of the scope of scientific experiments which had been conducted for a quite long time were summed up in the previous year, confirming that some organisms can live on the surface of the International Space Station (ISS) for years amid factors of a space flight, such as zero gravity, temperature conditions and hard cosmic radiation. Several surveys proved that these organisms can even develop.

He noted that it was not quite clear how these microscopic particles could have appeared on the surface of the space station.

Submission + - FarmBot: An Open Source Automated Farming Machine Aims to Create Food For All (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Farming has been stuck in a bit of a rut, when compared to other industries. Businesses across the globe have been innovating for decades, while farming has been using techniques that have been handed down from centuries ago. The FarmBot Foundation is creating a machine, similar to that of a CNC mill and/or 3d printer which is capable of being run by sophisticated software and equipped with any tools you can imagine, including seed injectors, plows, burners, robotic arms (for harvesting), cutters, shredders, tillers, discers, watering nozzles, sensors and more. The goal? To bring food to the world's hungry.

Submission + - How patent trolls destroy innovation (vox.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: A new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas provides some insight on this question. Drawing from data on litigation, R&D spending, and patent citations, the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll.

"After losing to NPEs, firms significantly reduce R&D spending — both projects inside the firm and acquiring innovative R&D outside the firm," the authors write. "Our evidence suggests that it really is the NPE litigation event that causes this decrease in innovation.

Comment Re:Unconstitutinal (Score 4, Insightful) 376

by sixoh1 (#47700003) Attached to: Rightscorp's New Plan: Hijack Browsers Until Infingers Pay Up

While its nice to think that the Constitution prevents this kind of thing, it is generally ONLY applicable to criminal defense. You can still be indicted, arrested and jailed awaiting trial, and until you enter the courtroom this presumption of innocence doesn't event matter. You only get the benefit from this Constitutional right _AFTER_ you have been through all of the previous steps, so don't expect to pull out your laminated copy of the Bill of Rights as a shield.

In a civil matters, particularly a trial, you are not entitled to automatic presumption of innocence as a defense, and not even a tiny amount of deference is due to you in the exercise and enforcement of a contract you might have with your ISP.

About the only legal protection an individual might have is a class-action lawsuit alleging fraud against the ISP, and that's something that takes years to work its way up to the pain threshold of settlement or trial.

Comment Re:"Hard redirect" (Score 4, Interesting) 376

by sixoh1 (#47699973) Attached to: Rightscorp's New Plan: Hijack Browsers Until Infingers Pay Up

IANAL but this definitely seems to fall within Tortious Interference or similar acts which would serve to break the contract between you and your ISP. Then again there is probably a clause in your ToS which they will attempt to use to allow this based on their "need" to charge Netflix extra for network peering.

Don't forget to read your contract and notifications of change!

Comment Re:Looks like some editorializing by the submitter (Score 1) 89

by sixoh1 (#47699939) Attached to: Blackberry Moves Non-Handset Divisions Into New Business Unit

Ehh, a bit adhomenim for my tastes. TFA makes a bit point about how important "IP" is to the new outfit. In the CEO's own words "...people don't give us credit..." which is code for - we're not making enough money from selling hardware, and lookie here at all these wonderful patents we can use to generate licenses fees or sell as an asset.

Comment RIM is dead, long live RIM's patents (Score 1, Flamebait) 89

by sixoh1 (#47699843) Attached to: Blackberry Moves Non-Handset Divisions Into New Business Unit

Let the race to purchase their Patent portfolio begin!

Who might have enough cash to purchase the biggest stick in the phone wars? Apple or Samsung. Like the highlander it seems there can be only one... then again the Highlander kept having sequels so we might see this fight again and again (yuck).

Submission + - When Reporting On Piracy Becomes Ethically Irresponsible, If Not Illegal (celluloidjunkie.com)

Submitted by sperlingreich
sperlingreich writes: The leak of "Expendables 3" more than three weeks before its theatrical release made me question whether reporting on the news was the right thing to do.

Freedom of the press laws may "allow" media outlets and journalists to report on pirated titles without becoming financially culpable for a producer's losses, though doesn't such activity actually publicize the availability of specific content, thus increasing illegal downloading and ultimately the economic damage it causes?

Submission + - Rightscorp's new plan: Pay our copyright fees, or we take your browser (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Online copyright cop charging $20 per song explains 2014 strategy to investors.

Internet copyright enforcer Rightscorp has told investors some revelatory details about its strategy in its second-quarter earnings call, as reported by TorrentFreak.

Rightscorp was founded to be a kind of RIAA-lite, getting online pirates to pay record companies and other rights-holders without the need to resort to high-stakes litigation. Instead, it creates e-mail notices demanding $20 per song from users it deems "repeat infringers" and insists that ISPs forward those notices.

The company is growing fast, but is still way, way in the red. Last year it earned $324,000 in revenue, while spending more than $2.1 million to run its operations. This year it's earning more revenue: $440,414 in the first six months of the year. However, operating costs during the same period have already hit $1.8 million.

Rightscorp's two marquee clients are BMG and Warner Music. Together, those two clients account for around one-third of Rightscorp's income.

The company is now working with more than 140 Internet service providers, although they provide differing levels of cooperation. Rightscorp's pitch to these ISPs is that since it has ironclad evidence of which users are "repeat infringers," they're obligated under copyright law to forward the notices; otherwise the ISPs become liable to a high-stakes copyright suit.

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