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Iphone

Steve Jobs Publishes Some "Thoughts On Flash" 944

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the what's-under-that-turtleneck dept.
teh31337one writes "Steve Jobs just posted an open letter of sorts explaining Apple's position on Flash, going back to his company's long history with Adobe and expounding upon six main points of why he thinks Flash is wrong for mobile devices. HTML5 naturally comes up, along with a few reasons you might not expect. He concludes in saying that 'Flash was created during the PC era — for PCs and mice.'" Tacky that his first point is that Flash is proprietary, when Apple restricts the apps that can be installed on the phone. Pot, meet kettle.
Media

MPEG LA Extends H.264 Royalty-Free Period 260

Posted by timothy
from the now-how-much-would-you-pay? dept.
Sir Homer writes "The MPEG LA has extended their royalty-free license (PDF) for 'Internet Video that is free to end users' until the end of 2016. This means webmasters who are registered MPEG LA licensees will not have to pay a royalty to stream H.264 video for the next six years. However the last patent in the H.264 portfolio expires in 2028, and the MPEG LA has not released what fees, if any, it will charge webmasters after this 'free trial' period is over."
Security

"No Scan, No Fly" At Heathrow and Manchester 821

Posted by kdawson
from the stand-and-deliver dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It is now compulsory for people selected for a full body scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly from Heathrow or Manchester airports. There is no optional pat down. Also, a rule which meant that people under 18 were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government. There is no mention of blurring out the genitals, however reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible."
The Almighty Buck

NY Times To Charge For Online Content 488

Posted by timothy
from the soon-we'll-be-nostalgic-for-free-registration dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "New York Magazine reports that the NY Times appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of debate inside the paper, the choice has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system. The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership. The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year's financial crisis, the argument that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper's high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight."
Privacy

Tynt Insight Is Watching You Cut and Paste 495

Posted by timothy
from the peeking-at-your-poke dept.
jerryasher writes "In recent weeks I've noticed that when I copy and paste text from Wired and other websites, the pasted text has had the URL of the original website appended to it. Cool, and utterly annoying, and how do I make that stop? Tynt Insight is a piece of Javascript that sends what you copy to Tynt's webservers and adds the backlinks. Tynt calls that a service for the site owner, many people call that a privacy invasion. Worse, there are some reports that it sends not just what you copy, but everything you select. And Tynt provides no opt outs. Not cookie-based, not IP-based, but stop-it-you-creeps-angry-phone-call-based. It ain't a pure useful service, and it ain't a pure privacy invasion. But I sure wish they'd go away or have had the decency never to start up in the first place. I block it on Firefox with Ghostery."

Comment: Re:Should be (Score 1) 572

by computersareevil (#30464862) Attached to: Angry AT&T Customers May Disrupt Service

I don't think there are centuries of relevant court rulings. At least not ones that come down on the side of the subscriber. If there were then these terms wouldn't be in the contract.

Read the Terms and practically every other sentence says "We reserve the right not to deliver any service of any kind, change your plan and terms at any time for any reason, or terminate you for even using your service in any way we don't like as strictly decided by us."

Heck, they say outright that service is entirely at their whim: "The purchase of an iPhone does not guarantee service." That seems like a 100% escape clause.

Apple

Apple Patents "Enforceable" Ad Viewing On Devices 439

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the touch-the-lizard dept.
Rexdude writes "Apple has filed a patent that forces users to interact with an ad. FTFA: 'Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn't simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.'" We've been following this story for awhile now but it seems to have broken into the mainstream.
Transportation

Toyotas Suddenly Accelerate; Owners Up In Arms 1146

Posted by kdawson
from the off-to-a-bad-start dept.
cyclocommuter writes "Some Toyota owners are up in arms as they suspect that accidents have been caused by some kind of glitch in the electronic computer system used in Toyotas that controls the throttle. Refusing to accept the explanation of Toyota and the federal government (it involves the driver's-side floor mat), hundreds of Toyota owners are in rebellion after a series of accidents caused by what they call 'runaway cars.' Four people have died." The article notes: "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has done six separate investigations of such acceleration surges in Toyotas since 2003 and found no defect in Toyota's electronics."
Communications

Attorney General Says Wiretap Lawsuit Must Be Thrown Out 493

Posted by Soulskill
from the you-can-trust-us dept.
Mr Pink Eyes writes with news about comments from US Attorney General Eric Holder, who said a San Francisco lawsuit over warrantless wiretapping should be thrown out, since going forward would compromise "ongoing intelligence activities." From the AP report: "In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate. Holder's effort to stop the lawsuit marks the first time the administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege under a new policy it launched last month designed to make such a legal argument more difficult. ... Holder said US District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, was given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court can 'conduct its own independent assessment of our claim.'"

Comment: Re:They can't ban them. (Score 1, Insightful) 560

by computersareevil (#29889007) Attached to: Laptop Fires On Airplanes

You realize that "sheeple" has been in use for more than fifty years? And by such low-brow publications as Emory University's quarterly magazine, and the Wall Street Journal? (I'll let you GTFW yourself for the citation.)

Summarily dismissing a comment because of a word you don't like is silly, I think.

Q: Why was Stonehenge abandoned? A: It wasn't IBM compatible.

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