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$6 Trillion in Fake US Treasury Bonds Siezed in Switzerland->

Submitted by ackthpt
ackthpt writes "If you're going to steal, steal big, right? Italian anti-mafia prosecutors announce seizure of $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that's almost half of the U.S.'s public debt. The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce."
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EU

EU court rules social networks cannot police downloads->

Submitted by arnodf
arnodf writes ""The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has struck the latest blow in the debate over internet policing, ruling on Thursday (16 February) that online social network sites cannot be forced to construct measures to prevent users from downloading songs illegally.

The court, which is the highest judicial authority in the EU, stated that installing general filters would infringe on the freedom to conduct business and on data privacy."

"The case was brought before the ECJ by Sabam, the Belgian national music royalty collecting society, against social network site Netlog. In 2009, Sabam went to the Belgian Court of First Instance to demand that Netlog take action to prevent site-users from illegally downloading songs from its portfolio. It also insisted that Netlog pay a €1,000 fine for every day of delaying in compliance. Netlog legal submission argued that granting Sabam’s injunction would be imposing a general obligation to monitor on Netlog, which is prohibited by the e-commerce directive."

In other new: Sabam is going to be prosecuted (google translation, dutch original) for "forging accounts, abuse of trust, bribery, money laundering and forgery" which took place from the early 90's till 2007"
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Engineering for Change: making a better solar cooker->

Submitted by jank1887
jank1887 writes "Back in 2010, the aid organization Climate Healers gave a number of solar powered cookstoves to rural Indian villages. They were rejected by the communities, mainly because they were useless when they were wanted most: for the evening meal sometimes after the sun goes down, and for breakfast before the sun has risen. Following this, the group issued a challenge to EngineeringForChange. Details of the challenge include the need to provide 1kW of heat at about 200C for two hours in both early morning and late evening, and they should be able to cook indoors, while sitting. A number of groups, mainly at U.S. and Indian engineering institutions, accepted the challenge, and developed potential solutions.

Now, almost a year later, the ten finalist designs have been selected. The actual papers have been posted to the E4C challenge workspace.

The goals of most of the designs are to keep the technology simple, although there are a few exceptions, and many include sand, oil, and salt based concentrated thermal storage. Many reports include some level of discussion on the social and economic considerations, barriers to acceptance and sustainability, and how to overcome initial resistance to adoption."
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Education

High-tech bad parenting: Giving your kids a tablet->

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Better living (or parenting) through technology? That is the question posed by Nielsen in a recent study looking at the use of tablets in families with children. The firm finds that in households owning a tablet computer and with children under 12, 70% of children use the tablet. What these children are doing with tablets is interesting, too: 77% of these children are playing games, while 57% use the tablet for educational purposes. The rest of the most common responses read like how to keep children occupied without actually parenting: 55% use the tablet for entertainment purposes (less “Are we there yet?”, more peace and quiet); 43% to watch television and/or movies; and 41% to keep the child occupied while at a restaurant or event. Is the tablet a special case, or is it simply following in the TV's footsteps as an ideal way to pacify and/or entertain children?"
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Microsoft

Microsoft Creates A Mini Internet To Test IE

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft is taking big steps to improve Internet Explorer and to ensure that the data is reliable and repeatable, Microsoft has built a mini version of the Internet in the lab. The mini Internet, which contains over 140 machines, reproduces the most popular sites and replicates third-party ads. The team is running over 20,000 tests, focusing on loading content, synthetic platform benchmarks, IE's behavior as an application, and interactive Web apps."
Censorship

Jotform Returns - Government Refuses to Explain

Submitted by someWebGeek
someWebGeek writes "From Techdirt, US Returns Jotform.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened.

The scary bit is that, when Jotform asked GoDaddy (GD) why the site was down, GD sent them the Secret Service (SS), who claimed to be "too busy" to talk to the Jotform folks.

Still no explanation by GD or the SS, even though Jotform is back

Hmm, "GD" and "SS" indeed."
Advertising

Don't be evil? Google hacks mobile and desktop Safari to override cookie setting->

Submitted by noh8rz2
noh8rz2 writes "9to5mac article says: Internet giant Google has found itself in a middle of a potential PR nightmare following aWall Street Journalarticlethis morning. The article asserts that“Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers”in order to follow iPhone users even after they explicitly set Safari’s privacy controls to disable such tracking.

Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer found out that although mobile Safari’s default setting blockscookies from third parties and advertisers, Google and advertising companies Media Innovation Group,Vibrant Media and Gannett PointRollfooled mobile Safari into thinking“a person was submitting an invisible form to Google”, letting them in turn install a tracking cookie on users’ iPhones and PCs without their consent.

Google apparently disabled the problematic code afterbeing contacted by the paper."
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Comment: Re:I borrowed a newspaper today (Score 1) 335

by jank1887 (#39061975) Attached to: Library.nu and Ifile.it Shut Down

I read them, and I "paid" by giving some books to my friends in return.

I'm missing the part where you made a copy of them. Hence violating copyright and artificially increasing supply thereby diluting demand. Hence violating legal copyright. Lending is just fine. They sold one book to be read, and it is read one person at a time. It is not reproduced and read by multiple people at the same time in different locations. Copyright is about artificially maintaining scarcity. you did nothing to decrease scarcity.

So, your comparison is off.

Comment: Re:I propose an end to book sharing as well! (Score 1) 335

by jank1887 (#39061859) Attached to: Library.nu and Ifile.it Shut Down

I'm not donating a photocopy of my book to the library. I'm giving the actual legally purchased book to them. At that point they can lend it as they please, or sell it to make money to buy in-demand books.

the original ebook was (likely) paid for. however, it was copied to the library. Maybe the original owner deleted the copy, maybe not. no way to know or prove. And short of mailing them the harddrive or flashdrive with the ebook, no way to transfer without doing it via copying. That's just how digital computers work. sure, you may set up a lending site that imposes some strange way of verifying deletion, but that's just a lame attempt at deflection. it's still 'copy then delete' which unfortunately started with un-permitted 'copy'.

PURGE COMPLETE.