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+ - Police placing anti-piracy warning ads on illegal sites

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers. The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising. Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic. "When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu). "This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits. "Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative.""

+ - NVIDIA found a way to quadruple display performance in low-res LCDs

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "Problem: how do they manufacture low-cost products with high-resolution screens? NVIDIA researchers have one solution — stack two low-resolution panels on top of each other to increase pixel density on the cheap. The solution is so simple it sounds ridiculous, but apparently, it works. Researchers disassembled two 1,280 x 800 LCD panels and rebuilt them into a single display with slightly offset pixels, a filter to weed out polarization conflicts and a bit of customized software to force the display components to work in tandem. NVIDIA calls the resulting prototype a "cascaded display," and in tests it has quadrupled the spatial resolution of the original panels (thanks, in part, to how the pixel offset crams an additional four pixels behind every one of the first panel's visible pixel)."

+ - Sony agrees to $15m settlement for 2011 PSN attack

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "The Anonymous-sponsored attacks lead to a loss of names, passwords, identity theft, and possibly even stolen credit card information. As such, a class action lawsuit was filed against the company. Due to this, Sony has finally agreed to a preliminary settlement of $15m, which may be able to appease most of the customers that suffered from this attack. The PlayStation Network users that did not partake in the "Welcome Back" program that Sony unveiled shortly after their online services were brought back will be able to choose from two of the following benefit options: One PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable game selected from a list of 14 games; three PlayStation 3 themes selected from a list of six themes; or a three-month subscription to PlayStation Plus free of charge. Claiming these benefits will be done on a first come, first serve basis, according to the Washington Examiner's report, and are subject to a $6m cap. The settlement isn't just about free games or services. Customers with documented identity theft charges are eligible for up to $2,500 per claim."

+ - Overwhelming majority of UK broadband users opting out of porn filters

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "By all accounts, the UK's national porn filters have been a disaster. The network-level filters were introduced at the insistence of the government, which said that companies could either implement them voluntarily, or face legislation to force them to do so. After their introduction, more tech savvy users were able to avoid the filters entirely by simply using a browser extension. But 'ordinary' users found that many entirely innocent and non-pornographic sites being blocked due to the over-zealous nature of the filtering. Internet service providers (ISPs) didn't want them, many government ministers didn't want them, and now it is clear that the overwhelming majority of users don't want them either, according to the findings of an official study by the UK's telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. On three of the UK's top four ISPs, over 92% of users opted out of the porn filters. Just 5% of users on BT chose to keep the filters in place."

+ - The Time The US Blew Up A Passenger Plane — And Tried To Cover It Up

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "Fury and frustration still mount over the downing of Malaysia Air Flight 17, and justly so. But before accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of war crimes or dismissing the entire episode as a tragic fluke, it’s worth looking back at another doomed passenger plane—Iran Air Flight 655—shot down on July 3, 1988, not by some scruffy rebel on contested soil but by a U.S. Navy captain in command of an Aegis-class cruiser called the Vincennes. A quarter-century later, the Vincennes is almost completely forgotten, but it still ranks as the world’s seventh deadliest air disaster (Malaysia Air Flight 17 is the sixth) and one of the Pentagon’s most inexcusable disgraces. In several ways, the two calamities are similar. The Malaysian Boeing 777 wandered into a messy civil war in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border; the Iranian Airbus A300 wandered into a naval skirmish—one of many clashes in the ongoing “Tanker War” (another forgotten conflict)—in the Strait of Hormuz. In 1992, four years after the event (and shortly after I moved on to a different beat), Adm. Crowe admitted on ABC’s Nightline that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time it shot down the plane. Back in 1988, he and others had said that the ship was in international waters. Not long after the shoot-down, Iran asked the United Nations Security Council to censure the United States for its “criminal act” against Iran Air Flight 655. Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was running to succeed Ronald Reagan as president, said on the campaign trail, “I will never apologize for the United States—I don’t care what the facts are.”"

+ - Arizona execution takes two hours

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "US death row inmate Joseph Wood has died after an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours to kill him. Wood, a double murderer, was executed by lethal injection. His lawyers filed an appeal for an emergency stay of execution, after he had been "gasping and snorting for more than an hour" in the death chamber. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she has ordered a full review of the execution, although she said that Wood "died in a lawful manner". Wood's lawyers argued the extended execution process violated his right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment."

+ - Researchers fully 'delete' HIV from human cells for the first time

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "So far, HIV has eluded a cure because it installs its genome into human DNA so insidiously that it's impossible for our immune system to clear it out. While current treatments are effective, a lifetime of toxic drugs are required to prevent its recurrence. But researchers from Temple University may have figured out a way to permanently excise it using a highly-engineered HIV "editor." Here's how it works: the team analyzed a part of our immune system that fights infection and built a "guide RNA" strand consisting of 20 nucleotides (RNA building blocks). Those strands were then injected into cells typically infected with HIV, like T-cells. There, they targeted the end parts of the virus's gene and snipped out all 9,709 nucleotides that made up its genome. Since the guide RNA strand contained no human DNA sequences, it left the host cell intact — but free from HIV."

+ - RJ Reynolds told to pay wife of cancer victim $23.6bn

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "A US court has ordered the country's second largest cigarette company to pay $23.6 billion to the wife of a smoker who died of lung cancer. RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company was hit with the punitive fine in addition to $16.8m in compensatory damages. Cynthia Robinson took action against the firm in 2008, seeking compensation for her husband's death in 1996. A company official said the verdict was ``grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law.'' During the four-week trial, lawyers for Ms Robinson argued that RJ Reynolds was negligent in informing consumers of the dangers of consuming tobacco. This negligence, the lawyers said, led to her husband Michael Johnson Sr contracting lung cancer from smoking after becoming "addicted" and failing multiple attempts to quit."

+ - Edward Snowden Says NSA Workers Pass Around Your Nude Photos

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "If you thought that nude photo you took of yourself was just for you and your significant other, you may be wrong. According to whistleblower Edward Snowden, young NSA employees occasionally get a hold of nude photos while searching through personal data and, if the person is attractive, the photos get passed around the office. Snowden explained how this happens to The Guardian during a 7-hour interview. Here's the relevant bit: You’ve got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old, they’ve suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records. Now in the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sense. For example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation, but they’re extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around and they show their coworker. And their coworker says ‘Oh hey, that’s great. Show it to Bill down the way.’ And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom, and sooner or later this person’s whole life has been seen by all of these other people."

+ - Manuel Noriega sues Activision over Call of Duty

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, is suing Call of Duty's video games publisher.

The ex-military ruler is seeking lost profits and damages after a character based on him featured in Activision's 2012 title Black Ops II. The 80-year-old is currently serving a jail sentence in Panama for crimes committed during his time in power, including the murder of critics. One lawyer said this was the latest in a growing trend of such lawsuits. "In the US, individuals have what's called the right to publicity, which gives them control over how their person is depicted in commerce including video games," explained Jas Purewal, an interactive entertainment lawyer. "There's also been a very well-known action by a whole series of college athletes against Electronic Arts, and the American band No Doubt took action against Activision over this issue among other cases. "It all focuses upon the American legal ability for an individual to be only depicted with their permission, which in practice means payment of a fee. "But Noriega isn't a US citizen or even a resident. This means that his legal claim becomes questionable, because it's unclear on what legal basis he can actually bring a case against Activision.""

+ - Massive Job Cuts Are Reportedly Coming For Microsoft Employees

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "Microsoft Corp is planning its biggest round of job cuts in five years as the software maker looks to integrate Nokia Oyj's handset unit, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the company's plans. The reductions, expected to be announced as soon as this week, could be in the Nokia unit and the parts of Microsoft that overlap with that business, as well as in marketing and engineering, Bloomberg reported. The restructuring may end up being the biggest in Microsoft history, topping the 5,800 jobs cut in 2009, the report said."

+ - Pope Francis: 'About 2%' of Catholic clergy paedophiles

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that "about 2%" of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles. The Pope said that abuse of children was like "leprosy" infecting the Church, according to the Italian La Repubblica newspaper. He vowed to "confront it with the severity it demands". He wants to show a more compassionate attitude towards Church teaching than his predecessors, but this can sometimes cause consternation among his media advisers, our correspondent adds."

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. -- Robert Benchley

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