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Comment: Re:Payment never is or was about costs. (Score 1) 517

by Froze (#38708648) Attached to: White House Responds To SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN

This is a classic argument made in favor of capitalism. However, it also ignores the skeleton in the closet, and that is that external cost are not accounted for and those costs include things like policing your property, prosecuting violators, maintaining records of ownership, etc. If you as a creator are willing to bear all those costs then you are entitled to indefinite profit from your work, but if you offload the cost burden onto the populace then at some point the value added to the economy by your creation is outweighed by the cost of protecting it and it rightfully should fall into public domain.

Piracy

Copyright lawyer accused of pirating anti-piracy m->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "It's always amusing when people who crusade against a purported evil are caught engaged in the very thing they're so adamantly against. Politicians are the usual torch-bearers for such shenanigans, but that doesn't mean others can't get in on the action. Just ask John Steele, an anti-piracy lawyer who was caught (again!) using another group's writings without permission."
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The Internet

Are Anonymous and LulzSec about to hack PayPal?->

Submitted by
deneefau
deneefau writes "In a joint statement published earlier this week, hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec urged readers to boycott e-commerce giant PayPal, claiming:

“PayPal continues to withhold funds from WikiLeaks, a beacon of truth in these dark times” and “PayPal’s willingness to fold to legislation should be proof enough that they don’t deserve the customers they get.”

Could this call for action be the start of a sustained campaign against PayPal? Could a large hack-attack be planned for PayPal in the near future?"
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Security

BlueCross Encrypts All Data After 57 Disks Stolen->

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes "After dozens of hard disk drives were stolen from a leased facility in Chattanooga, potentially exposing the personal data of more than 1 million customers, BlueCross decided to go the safe route: they spent $6 million to encrypt all stored data across their enterprise. The health insurer spent the past year encrypting nearly a petabyte of data on 1,000 Windows, AIX, SQL, VMware and Xen server hard drives; 6,000 workstations and removable media drives; as well as 136,000 tape backup volumes."
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Google

Google TV sales "Negative"->

Submitted by starglider29a
starglider29a writes "In its fiscal first-quarter earnings release, Logitech said demand for the Revue, which works with special Google TV software to allow viewers to navigate Internet content, had been disappointing. The Swiss firm said customer returns of the Revue have outpaced the device's "very modest sales.""
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Do we need pseudonymous social networking?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "While the idea of anonymous social networking sounds like an oxymoron, the use of pseudonyms to mask a user's online identity has a long history that stretches back to the earliest days of the Internet and local bulletin board systems (BBS). Such imperfect anonymity, which can often be unmasked with a few well-defined Google searches, has led to abuses like the invention of "spambots" and the persistence of forum trolls.

But, as the BBC reports pseudonyms, have their place in online communities, especially where identities are a risky commodity, under oppressive state regimes and governments where corporate interests increasingly dominate the interests of individuals: "Some users choose to hide their identity to avoid being found by people they would not like to be contacted by. Others live in countries where identification could have serious implications for those who have expressed political views or associated themselves with others who have."

Should Google+ and maybe even the notorious Facebook evolve into two-tiered sites where those who choose to remain anonymous are "identified" as such and denied access to certain site features, while being free to post, blog, or tweet their views, without summarily getting their accounts suspended or revoked?"
Power

MIT Unveils Sun-Free Photovoltaics->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT just unveiled a new solar power generator that doesn't need sunlight to function. The button-sized power generator can tap energy from heat, the sun’s rays, a hydrocarbon fuel, or a decaying radioisotope, and it can run three times longer than a lithium-ion battery of the same weight. It is hoped that the technology may one day be used to generate power for spacecraft on long-term missions where sunlight may not be available."
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Space

The Motes in God's Sky->

Submitted by kgeiger
kgeiger writes "The Sprite project is testing the feasibility of chip-sized spacecraft. The project's goal is to deploy true "smart dust" comprising 5 to 50 mg, single-sensor spacecraft capable of forming deep-space sensor arrays."
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Android

Google Killing Accounts, Leaving Androids Orphaned-> 2

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes "As we've heard in cases of pseudonym-users in Google+, or in the case of Dylan Marcheschi that went viral last week, Google can kill your account at any time — and since Google is keen on tying your account to its entire range of services, that means you could lose data stored everywhere from Gmail to Picasa. Blogger Dan Tynan examined one particular aspect of this problem — namely, the plight of someone who's been Google-executed and who uses an Android phone."
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Google

Google+ May be Losing Steam

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes "Google's social network Google+ set off to a roaring start within its first month of inception, but new data is showing that visits to the site are slowing down. The new site received more than 1.79M total visits during the week ending July 23, representing a three percent decrease from the week before, Experian Hitwise reported."

If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.