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Comment: Enough with the "sour grapes" posts.. (Score 1) 239

by deego (#43598165) Attached to: One Bitcoin By the Numbers: Is There Still Profit To Be Made?

How can people in one breath call investors "suckers taking crazy risk with a nerdy fantasy currency" and in the same breath call them "unfair beneficiaries of an early adopter scheme" when their risk actually pays off?

No one stopped you from investing in or buying in bitcoins or getting in early. You didn't do it because you were averse to the risk. So, stop complaining about how it's unfair. (And, no one is stopping you now either.)

This is like a bailout in reverse: Take the risk that goes with speculation, but Lose you lose, and win you get accused of unfairness.

+ - Megaupload says US trying to change rules to allow prosecution-> 1

Submitted by SternisheFan
SternisheFan writes "From ArsTechnica:

The shuttered file-sharing site Megaupload has accused the United States government of trying to change criminal court procedures to make it easier to prosecute the firm for copyright infringement. In addition to naming CEO Kim Dotcom as a defendant in the criminal case, the US government also named Megaupload, a corporation based in Hong Kong, as a separate defendant.

Megaupload has argued that US law doesn't allow criminal prosecution of corporations based entirely overseas. Federal rules require notice of an indictment to be sent to a corporation's last known US address. But Megaupload has never had a US address, the firm argues, so it can't be prosecuted.

Judge Liam O'Grady rejected that argument in October, reasoning that the government may be able to satisfy the notice requirement by serving papers on Kim Dotcom after he has been extradited to the United States.

On Thursday, Megaupload pressed its case again by pointing to a letter that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer wrote to the chair of the Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules, which is part of the judicial branch. The government's attempts to change the criminal rules are an implicit admission that Megaupload is actually correct on the law, the company argues."
Link to Original Source

+ - Teen stunned at portrayal as Mass. bombing suspect->

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes "The 4chan crowd, poring over images of the Boston marathon, identified two dark-skinned and bag-carrying suspects (among others). This was then picked up by The New York Post, who ran the image on Thursday's front page with the headline "Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon". And now, a completely innocent teen now finds himself scared to leave his home."
Link to Original Source

+ - DoJ Answers FOIA Request After Six Years With No Real Information->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In response to a Freedom of Information Act request about Google's 2007 complaint against Windows Vista search interference, the Department of Justice has after six years released 114 partially redacted pages and 60 full pages of material. Yet these "responsive documents" consist of public news articles and email boilerplate. All the substantive information has been blacked out."
Link to Original Source

+ - LulzSec hacker Ryan Ackroyd faces up to 10 years in jail following guilty plea->

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes "Having pleaded guilty to carrying out an unauthorised act to impair the operation of a computer, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977 LulzSec hacker Ryan Ackroyd now faces the possibility of 10 years in jail for his part in a series of attacks on websites belonging to Sony, NHS, Serious Organised Crima Agency int he UK and the CIA in the US."
Link to Original Source

+ - Teachers know if you've been e-reading->

Submitted by RougeFemme
RougeFemme writes "Teachers at 9 colleges are testing technology from a Silicon Valley start-up that lets them know if you're skipping pages, highlighting text, taking notes — or, of course, not opening the book at all. "“It’s Big Brother, sort of, but with a good intent,” said Tracy Hurley, the dean of the school of business" at Texas A&M."

"Major publishers in higher education have already been collecting data from millions of students who use their digital materials. But CourseSmart goes further by individually packaging for each professor information on all the students in a class — a bold effort that is already beginning to affect how teachers present material and how students respond to it, even as critics question how well it measures learning.""
Link to Original Source

+ - Bitcoin Bubble: Should Fans Be Celebrating?

Submitted by F9rDT3ZE
F9rDT3ZE writes "Due to its unique features, the economics of Bitcoin are difficult to grasp even for those with advanced degrees in economics. Following generally-accepted economic thought, though, a number of commentators have started to point out that Bitcoin's rise in value relative to other currencies means that it is experiencing deflation (its value relative to what 1 BTC purchases is going down, just as if a Big Mac cost $2 instead of $3), and that most experts believe deflation is unwelcome for currencies because it incentivizes hoarding (often followed by massive inflation when hoarders sell off, sometimes in waves produced by crashing prices). Does the price bubble in BTC indicate not its strong future as a virtual currency (as promoters like Falkvinge suggest), but instead mark the end of its usefulness as the medium of exchange for which it was designed? And are you spending your bitcoins now, or holding them?"

+ - Bitcoin: The Future of Global Currency?->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "As hard currencies the world over rise and fall with abandon reckless as the governments that print them and the banks that tender them, people are turning in ever larger numbers to decentralized electronic currency like bitcoin. "So is bitcoin going to save the global economy, or is it today’s answer to seventeenth-century tulip mania?" The New Yorker weighs in ..."
Link to Original Source

+ - Build a secret compartment, go to jail->

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes "Alfred Anaya was a custom stereo installer who branched out to making secret compartments for valuables, who the DEA sent to prison as a co-conspirator when a drug dealer used his creation to smuggle drugs.

But Wired points out the bigger question: 'The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when they should turn their back on paying customers. Take a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally?'"
Link to Original Source

+ - Judge rules that resale of MP3s violates copyright law 1

Submitted by Pikoro
Pikoro writes "A judge has sided with Capitol Records in the lawsuit between the record company and ReDigi — ruling that MP3s can only be resold if granted permission by copyright owners.
"The Order is surprising in light of last month's United States Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons, which reaffirmed the importance and applicability of the First Sale Doctrine in the United States of America.""
The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus
from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

DOJ Often Used Cell Tower Impersonating Devices Without Explicit Warrants 146

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the bending-the-rules dept.
Via the EFF comes news that, during a case involving the use of a Stingray device, the DOJ revealed that it was standard practice to use the devices without explicitly requesting permission in warrants. "When Rigmaiden filed a motion to suppress the Stingray evidence as a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the government responded that this order was a search warrant that authorized the government to use the Stingray. Together with the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in support of Rigmaiden, noting that this 'order' wasn't a search warrant because it was directed towards Verizon, made no mention of an IMSI catcher or Stingray and didn't authorize the government — rather than Verizon — to do anything. Plus to the extent it captured loads of information from other people not suspected of criminal activity it was a 'general warrant,' the precise evil the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. ... The emails make clear that U.S. Attorneys in the Northern California were using Stingrays but not informing magistrates of what exactly they were doing. And once the judges got wind of what was actually going on, they were none too pleased:"
Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the now-and-forever dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.
Patents

+ - Texas judge tosses out patent claim against Linux->

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes "A federal judge in Texas, presiding over a district notorious for favoring patent trolls, has summarily dismissed all claims relating to a case brought by Uniloc USA against Rackspace for allegedly infringing upon Linux patents. Red Hat defended Rackspace in the matter and issued a press release saying: “In dismissing the case, Chief Judge Leonard Davis found that Uniloc’s claim was unpatentable under Supreme Court case law that prohibits the patenting of mathematical algorithms. This is the first reported instance in which the Eastern District of Texas has granted an early motion to dismiss finding a patent invalid because it claimed unpatentable subject matter.”"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Pizza Analogy (Score 1) 124

by deego (#43128629) Attached to: How the First Bitcoin Hedge Fund Approaches Security

>> But if they stole any part of the pizza, could you eat the rest?

You've got to remember it's a digital pizza. Where stealing "merely" duplicates; it doesn't deprive /you/ of your pizza. That is, unless, in addition to snooping, they also /erase/ your keys and all your backup copies, /you/ don't lose that key.

 

Abstainer, n.: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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