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Super Bowl Bust: Feds Grab 307 NFL Websites; $4.8M 198

Posted by timothy
from the first-they-came-for-the-pirated-sports-gewgaws dept.
coondoggie writes "Speaking at a National Football League press conference ahead of this weekend's Super Bowl, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said special agents this week seized a total of 307 websites and snatched up 42,692 items of phony Super Bowl-related memorabilia along with other counterfeit items for a total take of more than $4.8 million – up from $3.72 million last year."

Comment: Re:Detection = failure (Score 1) 320

by Bobosan (#34532690) Attached to: Vuvuzelas Blare On Pirated Copies of Music Game
Yes, Paradox Interactive doesn't use DRM. But they do release damn buggy games to get money, then correct the flaws with patches. Look at Hearts of Iron III for example, I don't know how pissed off I got over the game crashing every 20 minutes. Or the eventual slowdown from the memory leaks in their initial builds. Yes, with Semper Fi, it's a lot better than it used to be, but PI is way,way,way,way worse than Morrowwind or Oblivion was before their patches. So with other games that might have bugs due to cracks, you have game changing bugs that result from not enough time to debug and program effectively.
Book Reviews

Drools JBoss Rules 5.0 55

Posted by samzenpus
from the read-all-about-it dept.
RickJWagner writes "Drools (sometimes called 'JBoss Rules') is a Business Rules Engine and supporting ecosystem. Drools, like other BREs, promises to lower the barriers to entry for application programming. Armed with this book, can a Business Analyst be used to write application logic? I don't believe so, and I'll tell you why." Keep reading for the rest of RickJWagner's review.
Earth

A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow 1136

Posted by kdawson
from the black-ice-and-white dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. 'The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there's about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was... in the 1970s,' says Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist. 'So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming.' Increased snowfall also fits a pattern suggested by many climate models, in which rising temperatures increase the amount of atmospheric moisture, bringing more rain in warmer conditions and more snow in freezing temperatures."

New Super-sized Customer Database for Amazon? 131

Posted by CowboyNeal
from the watching-the-watchmen dept.
dtjohnson writes "Amazon.com has applied for a patent to create an online customer database which would allegedly contain 'massive amounts of intimate information about its millions of shoppers, including their religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity and income.' From the article: "The database, which would combine information disclosed voluntarily by customers with facts gleaned from public databases, conceivably would give Amazon a larger or more detailed profile of its customers than any other retailer. Does this cross the privacy line or is it just reasonable data gathering to make retail sales more responsive to customer needs?"

Stallman Selling Autographs 335

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the happy-hacking-should-be-trademarked dept.
UltimaGuy writes "Sports stars, musicians, and other celebrities have been charging for autographs for years, but who would have thought Richard Stallman would be doing the same? Is this just for fun, or a clever, highly effective protest? Hackers, geeks and nerds gathered together at the 7th FISL - Internacional Free Software Forum, in Porto Alegre (Brazil) last week, were astounded when they got word that Richard Stallman, the founding father of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GPL, was charging R$ 10 (about US$ 3) for an autograph and R$ 5 (less than US$ 2) to get his picture taken by free software enthusiasts at the event floor."

CUTEST WEB SITE EVER DISCOVERED!!! 341

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the danger-cute-alert-omg-lol dept.
ToeSocks06 writes "The cutest site i've ever or youve ever seen is this one CLICK IT NOW LOL!!! because they have the cutest pictures you will ever see :) :) :) Like hamsters wearing SO CUTE hats and so many kittens zomg i love kitties especially that brown one i hope they show him with hats to LOLOLOLOLOL!!! Ok I gottta go now bye!!!"

Teutonic: Not enough gin.