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Piracy

MPAA Agent Poses As Homebuyer To Catch Pirates 289

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the as-seen-on-tv dept.
bonch writes "The MPAA used an undercover agent posing as a potential homebuyer to gain access to the home of a British couple charged with running a streaming links site. UK authorities decided not to pursue the case, but the MPAA continued, focusing on a Boston programmer who worked on the site, leading to an unprecedented legal maneuver whereby U.S. charges were dropped in exchange for testimony in a UK fraud case."
Businesses

Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over With Facebook IPO 222

Posted by timothy
from the what's-your-favorite-gravedancing-music? dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Blank, a professor at Berkeley and Stanford and serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, says that the the Facebook IPO is the beginning of the end for Silicon Valley as we know it. "Silicon Valley historically would invest in science, and technology, and, you know, actual silicon," says Blank. "If you were a good venture capitalist you could make $100 million." But there's a new pattern emerging created by two big ideas that will lead to the demise of Silicon Valley as we know it. The first is putting computer devices, mobile and tablet especially, in the hands of billions of people and the second is that we are moving all the social needs that we used to do face-to-face onto the computer and this trend has just begun. "If you think Facebook is the end, ask MySpace. Art, entertainment, everything you can imagine in life is moving to computers. Companies like Facebook for the first time can get total markets approaching the entire population." That's great for Facebook but it means Silicon Valley is screwed as a place for investing in advanced science. "If I have a choice of investing in a blockbuster cancer drug that will pay me nothing for ten years, at best, whereas social media will go big in two years, what do you think I'm going to pick?" concludes Blank. "The headline for me here is that Facebook's success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world. The golden age of Silicon valley is over and we're dancing on its grave.""

Comment: Re:What the fuck is this shit? (Score 4, Funny) 275

by GIL_Dude (#40015419) Attached to: When I need a robust business solution, I prefer it ...
I believe you have to pick from one of the sub-optimal choices. For example, I'd generally choose:

"Synergize our cloudification efforts with our web 3.0 design goals and monetize the white space while capitalizing on the resources ability to execute our vision with excellence in virtualization and power our CEO's stock options in internet time."

Comment: Recycle it wasn't an option (Score 1) 309

by GIL_Dude (#39970521) Attached to: What do you usually do with old hardware?
I had to pick "Trash It" because there was no recycle it. In my area there are fairly frequent (maybe four times a year, sometimes more) events where you can take your old electronics to a parking lot (at places like Orchard Supply, etc.) and drop them off for recycling. There is usually no fee. If you go to one sponsored by a local school there is typically a small "donation". Most are just free. Usually twice a year some company will send out flyers that they are coming by on a certain day and if you leave electronics in your driveway with the flyer taped to it they will take it away for free. I've done both. Last month I dropped off two old Dell XPS P4 machines at one.

Comment: Re:This is a stupid article (Score 5, Informative) 402

by GIL_Dude (#39936605) Attached to: Why You Can't Dump Java (Even Though You Want To)
Well, in the enterprise space you have a huge catch-22. I deal with this at work all the time. Since Oracle / Sun Java doesn't actually do patches (they just do full versions that introduce new features, break existing code, and deprecate other features), you can't deploy it. You have this trade off of known security vulnerabilities vs. enterprise software that won't work with the new versions. You have banks that require you to run Java versions that are a year old in order to move money. You have vendors whose code won't work with the current version of Java - ever (since they take longer to get their code working on new versions that it takes Oracle to release the next new version). We try as hard as we can to get app owners to test - but every last time we ship a new Java versions apps come out of the woodwork with emergency requests to "stop the push". You can't win. Bust people's critical apps and you lose. Allow machines to get owned by insecure versions of Java? Yeah, you lose there too. Oracle needs to figure out how to do security patches that just fix the vulnerabilities and don't introduce (and remove) features. Until they can do that - yes, it is their fault.
Earth

Methane Producing Dinosaurs May Have Changed Climate 264

Posted by samzenpus
from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that huge plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods may have produced enough greenhouse gas by breaking wind to alter the Earth's climate. Scientists believe that, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food. 'A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,' says study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson. 'Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources — both natural and man-made — put together.' The key factor is the total mass of the animals which included some of the largest animals to walk the Earth, such as Diplodocus, which measured 150 feet and weighed up to 45 tons. Medium-sized sauropods weighed about 20 tons and lived in herds of up to a few tens of individuals per square kilometer so global methane emissions from the animals would have amounted to around 472 million tons per year, the scientists calculated. Sauropods alone may have been responsible for an atmospheric methane concentration of one to two parts per million (ppm), say the scientists and studies have suggested that the Earth was up to 10C (18F) warmer in the Mesozoic Era. ''The Mesozoic trend to sauropod gigantism led to the evolution of immense microbial vats unequaled in modern land animals. Methane was probably important in Mesozoic greenhouse warming. Our simple proof-of-concept model suggests greenhouse warming by sauropod megaherbivores could have been significant in sustaining warm climates.'"
GUI

Ask Slashdot: All-In-One PC For Kitchen? 156

Posted by timothy
from the wake-me-when-it's-got-a-robot dept.
New submitter brabq writes "Now that I have a couple of CableCard tuner devices in the house (including the network-based HDHomeRun Prime), I'm thinking of buying one of those all-in-one touchscreen PCs for our kitchen (yeah, something I've always sworn against for future repair reasons). The idea is that it would be used primarily for (1) watching TV, via the aforementioned Prime and WMC, and (2) light web surfing (recipes, some sort of video chat possibly). Does anyone have any experience with these types of devices in a kitchen-like setting (where I'd like to use a touchscreen over having a keyboard/mouse on a kitchen counter)? I keep hearing that Windows 8 is going to have some added benefits to this type of setup — is it worth waiting for its release? My end goal is it has to have a high WAF ... if my wife doesn't like its appearance on the counter or finds it useless, then the whole thing will be a waste."
Canada

Database and IP records tie election fraud to Canada's ruling Conservatives->

Submitted by choongiri
choongiri writes "Canada's election fraud scandal continues to unfold. Elections Canada just matched the IP address used to set up thousands of voter suppression robocalls to one used by a Conservative Party operative, and a comparison of call records found a perfect match between the illegal calls, and records of non-supporters in the Conservative Party's CIMS voter tracking database, as well as evidence access logs may have been tampered with. Meanwhile, legal challenges to election results are underway in seven ridings, and an online petition calling for an independent public inquiry into the crisis has amassed over 44,000 signatures. The Conservative Party still maintains their innocence, calling it a baseless smear campaign."
Link to Original Source
Iphone

Why Verizon Doesn't Want You to Buy an iPhone

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Sascha Segan writes that although Verizon adamantly denies steering customers away from Apple's iPhones in favor of 4G LTE-enabled Android devices, he is convinced that Verizon has a strong reason to push buyers away from the iPhone. "Here's the problem," writes Segan. "Verizon has spent millions of dollars rolling out its massive LTE network" but the carrier can't easily add capacity on its old 3G network. Since the iPhone isn't a 4G phone sales of Verizon iPhones just crowd up their already busy 3G network while their 4G network has plenty of space. "The iPhone is a great device. But it's making a crowded network more crowded. Until the LTE iPhone comes along, to rebalance its network, Verizon may quietly push Android phones.""

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner. -- Calvin Keegan