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Comment: Re:I when wonder... (Score 1) 45

It will explode from using low quality components.

Many of the quality product you associate with "american-made" or "european-made" are in fact made in China, part or whole.

If you still think China churns out shite copies of good products like in the 70s and 80s, you need a reality check. Many, MANY China products are brilliant, quality made and innovative. Granted, many are still shite and copies too, but that's changing fast.

+ - Court: Open Source Project Liable For 3rd Party DRM-Busting Coding->

Submitted by Diamonddavej
Diamonddavej writes "TorrentFreak reports a potentially troubling court decision in Germany. The company Appwork has been threatened with a 250,000 Euro fine fine for functionality committed to its open-source downloader (JDownloader2) repository by a volunteer coder without Appwork's knowledge. The infringing code enables downloading of RTMPE video streams (an encrypted streaming video format developed by Adobe). Since the code decrypted the video streams, the Hamburg Regional Court decided it represented circumvention of an “effective technological measure” under Section 95a of Germany’s Copyright Act and it threatened Appwork with a fine for "production, distribution and possession" of an 'illegal' piece of software."
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+ - This Whole Bitcoin Thing Could Be Big, Says Bank of America->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "Bank of America has issued a research report suggesting that the crypto-currency Bitcoin could become “a major means of payment for e-commerce” on its way to emerging as “a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers.” The bank attaches a “maximum market capitalization” of Bitcoin at roughly $1,300, based on its position as a “major player in both e-commerce and money transfer” as well as “a significant store of value with a reputation close to silver.” Bitcoin has come close to exceeding that theoretical ceiling in recent weeks, although its valuation dove today after the People’s Bank of China decided to declare it a volatile “currency” without real legal status; that financial institution is also concerned about its use in money laundering and black markets. Bank of America sees Bitcoins’ advantages as low transaction costs, its finite supply (which will protect its value), and its increasing attractiveness as an alternative to “traditional” cash. As with the People’s Bank of China, however, the bank sees the currency’s extreme volatility and lack of legal backing as a bad thing, and frowns at the possibility that regulators could step in and increase transaction costs. “A 50 minute wait before payment receipt confirmation is received will prohibit wider use,” the report adds. “This is less of an issue for two parties that know each other because they trust the other will not double spend, but when dealing with an anonymous counterparty this creates a high level of unhedgeable risk.” Without a “central counterparty” to verify transactions and thus mitigate that risk, Bitcoin could fail to break into wider use."
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+ - Ubuntu to include torrent search in Dash search-> 1

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes "It's just hard to believe if there are really sensible people at Canonical. A developer has created a torrent lens which would allow Ubuntu users to search for torrents right from Unity Dash. Though the developer had apprehension about it being made default due to Unity's opt-out policy for dash search, Mark Shuttleworth jumped in and told the developer to go ahead and also approved it to be included in Ubuntu as default. The lens uses The Pirate Bay. What it means is that when a user will search for a torrent (in most cases it will be pirated content), Canonical will know about it and it won't be hard for authorities to get that info from Canonical. It's surprising that Mark is willing to put user's at risk."
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+ - Two supermassive black holes about to embrace->

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes "NASA's WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) satellite was looking at a distant galaxy, some 3.8 billion light-years away, and saw something rather unusual.

At first they thought that they saw a galaxy was forming new stars at a furious rate, but upon closer checking, they found that they were seeing two super-massive black holes spiraling closer and closer to each others.

The dance of these black hole duos starts out slowly, with the objects circling each other at a distance of about a few thousand light-years.

As the black holes continue to spiral in toward each other, they get closer, separated by just a few light-years.

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies typically shoot out pencil-straight jets, but, in this case, the jet showed a zigzag pattern. According to the scientists, a second massive black hole could, in essence, be pushing its weight around to change the shape of the other black hole’s jet.

Visible-light spectral data from the Gemini South telescope in Chile showed similar signs of abnormalities, thought to be the result of one black hole causing disk material surrounding the other black hole to clump. Together, these and other signs point to what is probably a fairly close-knit set of circling black holes, though the scientists can’t say for sure how much distance separates them.

For merging black holes, please see http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news/pulsar20131106.html

Article at http://earthsky.org/science-wire/two-supermassive-black-holes-in-death-spiral

"
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+ - Patent Troll Bill Clears House With Huge Majority

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes "The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Innovation Act, dealing trolls a severe blow despite opposition from universities looking to protect patents, InfoWorld's Simon Phipps reports. The act cleared the House of Representatives with an overwhelming majority of 325 to 91 despite opposition from the organizations most likely to feed new patents to the trolls. 'So bravo to the Innovation Act. It's far from perfect, as the EFF documents and as I commented before the holiday. But it's a step in the right direction, and the tidal surge of support it's seeing suggests legislators' appetite for proper patent reform is finally growing strong enough for them to contemplate substantial change.'"

+ - Google Now Lets You Download Gmail And Google Calendar Data

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Google today rolled out a long-requested feature: being able to download a copy of your Gmail and Google Calendar data. The new feature means you can now back up your emails and calendars, or just export them temporarily so you can import them to another service. Today’s additions let you download all of your email and calendars (the data is downloaded in the MBOX format), or choose a subset of labels and calendars. The ability to customize what you’re exporting makes it easier to control what you are backing up or want to import elsewhere."

+ - Why engineers must consider the ethical implications of their work->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "An article by Abbas El-Zein at The Guardian explores the ethical responsibilities for engineers who create and maintain 'technologies of violence.' He says, 'Engineers who see themselves as builders of the shelter and infrastructure for human needs also use their expertise in order to destroy and kill more efficiently. When doctors or nurses use their knowledge of anatomy in order to torture or conduct medical experiments on helpless subjects, we are rightly outraged. Why doesn't society seem to apply the same standards to engineers? There is more than one answer to the question of course, but two points are especially pertinent: the common good we engineers see ourselves serving and our relationship to authority. ... Our ethics have become mostly technical: how to design properly, how to not cut corners, how to serve our clients well. We work hard to prevent failure of the systems we build, but only in relation to what these systems are meant to do, rather than the way they might actually be utilised, or whether they should have been built at all. We are not amoral, far from it; it's just that we have steered ourselves into a place where our morality has a smaller scope.'"
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+ - New Groklaw site being developed->

Submitted by ShawnX
ShawnX writes "A new Groklaw site is being formulated and several of the original people from Groklaw are building this community again. Just as Slashdot helped spawn the first Groklaw with word-of-mouth, we can do it again with the 2nd reincarnation."
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+ - NASA Sunjammer Solar Sail Prepares to Shoot the Breeze->

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes "The team of NASA, L’Guarde, and Space Services Inc. are preparing for the Sunjammer space mission that in 2015 will see the first deep space deployment of a solar sail. On September 30, the Sunjammer team completed a milestone when they successfully deployed a quarter panel of the spacecraft’s solar sail."
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+ - NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show-> 1

Submitted by tramp
tramp writes "The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

Of course it is "only metadata" and absolutely not invading privacy if you ask our "beloved" NSA."
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When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder. -- James H. Boren

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