Comment: Pfizer patent (Score 4, Funny) 60
"...can remain in a hardened state for extended periods of time using little energy."
Didn't Pfizer patent this?
Comment: Re:True #1 Feature! (Score 1) 470
Thats because its trivially easy to change desktop managers in Ubuntu, for free. But if you must know, I hate Unity. Dont particularly like Gnome 3 either. I keep trying to like KDE, but I keep having a bad experience with font sizes.
With that being said, I kind of like Metro. Maybe because I only use windows for gaming, but for a system where you only use 5 or six programs regularly, its not bad. Though I couldnt get the network to work in a VM when I tried the consumer preview, so maybe I would hate it too if I could have actually installed something on it I wanted to use.
Comment: "...Attacks will increase" (Score 1) 290
Am I the only one who thinks the headline sounds kind of like a threat?
Comment: Re:Sports Drink = Energy Drink? (Missing option) (Score 1) 209
Sports drinks are my preferred morning beverage when I am hungover. Otherwise its coffee or tea (depending on how my tummy feels), OJ or soda (depending on what I have on hand, I prefer OJ, but the acidity of soda is good for getting that morning breath taste out of my mouth before I brush my teeth too). Energy drinks would probably be better than a soda, but since you cant easily find them by the case, its annoying to try and keep stock of them.
Intel Launches Z77 Motherboards, Preparing for Ivy Bridge->
Submitted
by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes "In preparation for the arrival of their 3rd Generation Core processor products based on their Ivy Bridge microarchitecture, Intel has readied a new chipset dubbed the Z77 Express. New socket 1155 Ivy Bridge processors offer 16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 or 3.0 connectivity on-die and they feature integrated dual-channel, DDR3 memory controllers with maximum officially supported speeds of up to 1600MHz. The processors are linked to the Z77 chipset via Intel’s FDI (Flexible Display Interface) and 20Gb/s DMI 2.0 interfaces. The chipset itself is outfitted with 8 more PCIe 2.0 lanes, six ports of SATA (II and III), an integrated Gigabit MAC, and digital display outputs for up to three displays. Making its debut for the first time in an Intel chipset is also native USB 3.0 support witih four USB 3.0 and ten USB 2.0 ports built in."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Innocent or not, the NSA is watching you->
Submitted
by
Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Upcoming "6 strikes" by MPAA / RIAA/IPSs To Boost Cyberlocker and VPN Revenues->
Submitted
by
SolKeshNaranek
SolKeshNaranek writes "Summary: Upcoming "6 strikes" program between major ISPs, the MPAA, and RIAA will drive P2P traffic to VPNs (encrypted connections) or proxy servers (where your IP address is hidden from monitoring).
Article:
The MPAA and RIAA, helped by all the major Internet providers in the United States, will soon start to warn and punish copyright infringers. The entertainment industry hopes this will eliminate nearly all BitTorrent piracy. However, looking at the many options people have to escape being ‘caught’, it is doubtful whether the “six-strikes” plan will be very effective. In fact, the MPAA and RIAA may directly boost the revenues of VPN services and competing downloading platforms such as cyberlockers.
Starting this summer copyright holders will systematically hunt down ‘pirates’ and ISPs will inform account holders that their connections are being abused. It sounds scary, but in reality it’s not much different from what copyright holders are already doing.
The big change now is that there’s a formalized process under the name ‘copyright alerts‘. It basically boils down to a warning system that will notify people when their connection is suspected of being used for illegal file-sharing. After six warnings the ISP may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include disconnecting the offender’s connection temporarily.
The question remains, however, whether the plan will be effective.
While there will be significant numbers of individuals who will not even realize they are being monitored until they get their first warning, others will be more savvy from the start. Somewhere down the road the two groups are likely to converge and begin mulling some of the options available which remove the risk of receiving further warnings.
These users have plenty of options to avoid the warnings.
BitTorrent proxies and VPNs appear to be the preferred way for people to remain anonymous while downloading. As these services replace a user’s home IP-address with one provided by the proxy service, tracking companies won’t be able to identify who is doing the file-sharing meaning that no copyright alerts can be sent.
A recent survey in France, where Internet users can actually lose their connection after three strikes, revealed that only 4% of the polled file-sharers said they stopped pirating. Instead, many users signed up with proxies and VPNs to avoid detection.
TorrentFreak spoke to several owners of VPN services who all report a huge increase in clients in recent years, some of which can be directly linked to news about copyright enforcement efforts. It would therefore come as little surprise if their revenues grew even more after the “six-strikes” system is rolled out in the US.
And there is another type of business that will benefit from the MPAA/ RIAA anti-piracy plan. Since the alerts system only targets P2P file-sharing, which is pretty much limited to BitTorrent in the US, it means that people who use direct download sites won’t be affected.
Over the past several years one-click download sites, or cyberlockers as some call these services, have outgrown even the largest torrent sites by number of daily visitors. As with BitTorrent sites, sites like 4Shared, RapidShare and Hotfile are also used to share copyrighted material.
But despite their ever-increasing user bases, sharing on these sites can’t be tracked by third parties. This means that their users wont receive any strikes, ever. This also means that if BitTorrent users make the switch to using cyberlocker sites to avoid receiving warnings, revenues for these companies will go up.
Similar to one-click download sites, streaming portals are becoming more and more popular. Several streaming portals are indexing links to copyrighted movies and TV-shows and millions of people use these on a daily basis. Again, outsiders can’t legally spy on the users of these sites so they don’t have to be afraid of receiving a copyright alert.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are a range of other options for ‘pirates’ to get their daily fix and bypass the six-strikes system.
We’re not saying that the copyright alert system will have no effect whatsoever, in fact, it may be quite effective in deterring a small percentage of casual ‘pirates’. However, we expect that the overwhelming majority of copyright infringers will simply take measures to avoid being caught, while continuing their downloading habits.
Related articles on this subject:
Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing is Booming: http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-decentralized-and-uncensored-file-sharing-is-booming-120302/
15 Percent of US File-Sharers Hide Their IP-Address, More to Folllow: http://torrentfreak.com/15-percent-of-us-file-sharers-hide-their-ip-address-111229/
What’s The Best VPN / Proxy for BitTorrent?: http://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-proxy-bittorrent-110618/"
Link to Original Source
Article:
The MPAA and RIAA, helped by all the major Internet providers in the United States, will soon start to warn and punish copyright infringers. The entertainment industry hopes this will eliminate nearly all BitTorrent piracy. However, looking at the many options people have to escape being ‘caught’, it is doubtful whether the “six-strikes” plan will be very effective. In fact, the MPAA and RIAA may directly boost the revenues of VPN services and competing downloading platforms such as cyberlockers.
Starting this summer copyright holders will systematically hunt down ‘pirates’ and ISPs will inform account holders that their connections are being abused. It sounds scary, but in reality it’s not much different from what copyright holders are already doing.
The big change now is that there’s a formalized process under the name ‘copyright alerts‘. It basically boils down to a warning system that will notify people when their connection is suspected of being used for illegal file-sharing. After six warnings the ISP may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include disconnecting the offender’s connection temporarily.
The question remains, however, whether the plan will be effective.
While there will be significant numbers of individuals who will not even realize they are being monitored until they get their first warning, others will be more savvy from the start. Somewhere down the road the two groups are likely to converge and begin mulling some of the options available which remove the risk of receiving further warnings.
These users have plenty of options to avoid the warnings.
BitTorrent proxies and VPNs appear to be the preferred way for people to remain anonymous while downloading. As these services replace a user’s home IP-address with one provided by the proxy service, tracking companies won’t be able to identify who is doing the file-sharing meaning that no copyright alerts can be sent.
A recent survey in France, where Internet users can actually lose their connection after three strikes, revealed that only 4% of the polled file-sharers said they stopped pirating. Instead, many users signed up with proxies and VPNs to avoid detection.
TorrentFreak spoke to several owners of VPN services who all report a huge increase in clients in recent years, some of which can be directly linked to news about copyright enforcement efforts. It would therefore come as little surprise if their revenues grew even more after the “six-strikes” system is rolled out in the US.
And there is another type of business that will benefit from the MPAA/ RIAA anti-piracy plan. Since the alerts system only targets P2P file-sharing, which is pretty much limited to BitTorrent in the US, it means that people who use direct download sites won’t be affected.
Over the past several years one-click download sites, or cyberlockers as some call these services, have outgrown even the largest torrent sites by number of daily visitors. As with BitTorrent sites, sites like 4Shared, RapidShare and Hotfile are also used to share copyrighted material.
But despite their ever-increasing user bases, sharing on these sites can’t be tracked by third parties. This means that their users wont receive any strikes, ever. This also means that if BitTorrent users make the switch to using cyberlocker sites to avoid receiving warnings, revenues for these companies will go up.
Similar to one-click download sites, streaming portals are becoming more and more popular. Several streaming portals are indexing links to copyrighted movies and TV-shows and millions of people use these on a daily basis. Again, outsiders can’t legally spy on the users of these sites so they don’t have to be afraid of receiving a copyright alert.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are a range of other options for ‘pirates’ to get their daily fix and bypass the six-strikes system.
We’re not saying that the copyright alert system will have no effect whatsoever, in fact, it may be quite effective in deterring a small percentage of casual ‘pirates’. However, we expect that the overwhelming majority of copyright infringers will simply take measures to avoid being caught, while continuing their downloading habits.
Related articles on this subject:
Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing is Booming: http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-decentralized-and-uncensored-file-sharing-is-booming-120302/
15 Percent of US File-Sharers Hide Their IP-Address, More to Folllow: http://torrentfreak.com/15-percent-of-us-file-sharers-hide-their-ip-address-111229/
What’s The Best VPN / Proxy for BitTorrent?: http://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-proxy-bittorrent-110618/"
Link to Original Source
Researchers Use Game to Change How Scientists Study Disease Outbreaks->
Submitted
by
fishmike
fishmike writes "It may seem like a game of tag, but it's an innovative tool for teaching the fundamentals of epidemiology, the science of how infectious diseases move through a population.
An international team of scientists--including researchers who teach an annual clinic at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, South Africa--is helping epidemiologists improve the mathematical models they use to study outbreaks of diseases like cholera, AIDS and malaria."
Link to Original Source
An international team of scientists--including researchers who teach an annual clinic at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, South Africa--is helping epidemiologists improve the mathematical models they use to study outbreaks of diseases like cholera, AIDS and malaria."
Link to Original Source
Chinese teenager reportedly sells kidney to buy iPhone, iPad-> 1
Submitted
by
jobiwankanobi
jobiwankanobi writes "It sounds like the stuff of urban legends, but the official Chinese Xinhua News Agency is reporting that five people have been arrested for alleged involvement in the removal and selling of a teenager’s kidney for transplant, according to The Associated Press."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Goldman Sachs' Sex-Trafficking Web Site 1
Submitted
by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Nicholas Kristof writes in the NY Times that Goldman Sachs in one of the owners of Backpage.com America’s leading web site for prostitution ads and the biggest forum for sex trafficking of girls, some under age or forced into prostitution, holding a 16 percent stake in the company. “We had no influence over operations,” responded Goldman Sach spokeswoman Andrea Raphael when Kristoff began inquiring about its stake as Goldman began working frantically to unload its shares. Although there's no doubt that many escort ads on Backpage are placed by consenting adults, it’s equally clear that Backpage, with 70 percent of the market for prostitution ads, plays a major role in the trafficking of minors or women who are coerced into prostitution. "In one recent case in New York City," writes Kristof, "prosecutors say that a 15-year-old girl was drugged, tied up, raped and sold to johns through Backpage and other sites." In Washington State, the governor recently signed a bill into law that could expose Backpage to criminal sanctions if it advertises under-age girls for sex without verifying their ages and 19 US. senators have written the company asking it to stop abetting traffickers. "For more than six years Goldman has held a significant stake in a company notorious for ties to sex trafficking, and it sat on the company’s board for four of those years," writes Kristof. "After so many years of girls being trafficked on this site, it’s time to hold owners accountable.""