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Piracy

How RapidShare Plans To Avoid MegaUpload's Fate 97

Posted by samzenpus from the easy-now dept.
concealment writes "On November 27, RapidShare will start putting a tight cap on outbound downloads for its free users. Paid members will still have 30 gigabytes in outbound downloads per day, but everybody else will be capped at one gigabyte. The change is expected to further deter pirates from using RapidShare to distribute copyright material on a large scale."
Cloud

Cisco To Buy Meraki For $1.2 Billion 59

Posted by samzenpus from the circle-of-business dept.
UnanimousCoward writes "Several outlets are reporting Cisco's intent to acquire Meraki for $1.2 billion. From the article: 'Cisco Systems of San Jose, California, says it is buying Meraki Networks of San Francisco for around $1.2 billion in cash. The news of the deal leaked on Twitter, when Cisco accidentally posted the news on its blog and swiftly removed it, but it was too late. Cisco is hoping to focus on smaller and medium-sized campuses with Meraki and its products.'"
Idle

GIF Becomes Word of the Year 2012 315

Posted by samzenpus from the in-other-arbitrary-news dept.
mikejuk writes "GIF started out as a humble acronym 25 years ago, entered common parlance as the format used for web graphics and now achieves fame as a verb by becoming Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year 2012. GIF as a noun has always been an all-capital letter noun. Becoming a verb has caused problems concerning the use of capital and lower case letters. The common form is to keep the noun in caps and add the verbal endings in lower case — as in GIFed,GIFing), However, an all lower-case spelling with the f duplicated (giffed, giffing) is also being used."
The Almighty Buck

Legalizing Online Futures Betting 80

Posted by samzenpus from the playing-the-odds dept.
Bennett Haselton writes: "Online political futures betting is in a legal limbo in the United States. But with the lifting of legal sanctions, and with the addition of one simple new feature, online futures betting could not only provide more accurate forecasts of the merits of different candidates, but also provide a tool for quieting partisan blowhards who think the opposing party's candidate is going to drag the country to hell. Let the blowhards bet!" You'll find the rest of Bennett's story below.
Crime

John McAfee Launches Blog, Offers $25K Reward For "Real Killers" 377

Posted by samzenpus from the on-the-run dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The IT security pioneer John McAfee has launched a blog to document his life on the lam, as Belize police chase him down for suspicion of killing a neighbor. McAfee is using the blog to state his case, raise suspicions about Belize authorities and to offer a $25K reward to find the real killer or killers. From the article: 'McAfee writes that he is on run with a 20-year-old female named Sam, photos of whom are in the blog, along with a post from her. McAfee says a handful of friends and associates have been rounded up by police over the past week or so. His posts are filled with dramatic descriptions of his actions (including returning to his home in disguise to find police digging up his dead dogs and cutting off their heads) and lay bare his suspicions about Belize authorities. '"
Crime

Dutch Cold Case Murder Solved After 8000 People Gave Their DNA 513

Posted by samzenpus from the check-me dept.
sciencewatcher writes "A 1999 cold case rape and murder in The Netherlands has been solved. Dutch police asked 8000+ men living within 5 kilometers of the crime scene to volunteer their DNA so that the murderer could be traced through (close or distant) family members sharing part of this DNA. As it turned out, the man now in custody turned in his own DNA, resulting in a 100% match. The request of the police was discussed here on Slashdot in September. The percentage of people participating was closing in on 90%; in the midsize town of the victim it was 96%."
Medicine

Nanoparticles Stop Multiple Sclerosis In Mice 50

Posted by samzenpus from the working-on-a-cure dept.
HangingChad writes "Scientists have used nanoparticles covered in proteins to trick the immune system to stop attacking myelin and halt the progression of multiple sclerosis in mice. The nanoparticles, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, are made from the same material as dissolving stitches. Scientists compare the process an immune system 'reboot'. The process keeps the immune system from treating myelin as an alien invader and to stop attacking it."
EU

EU Working On Most Powerful Laser Ever Built 83

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-no-moon dept.
kkleiner writes "On the coattails of CERN's success with the Large Hadron Collider, Europeans and the world at large have another grand science project to be excited about: the Extreme Light Infrastructure project to build the most powerful laser ever constructed. These lasers will be intense enough to perform electron dynamics experiments at very short time scales or venture into relativistic optics, opening up an entirely new field of physics for study. Additionally, the lasers could be combined to generate a super laser that would shoot into space, similar to the combined laser effect of the Death Star in the Star Wars trilogy, though the goal is to study particles in space, not annihilate planets."
Censorship

You Can't Say That On the Internet 432

Posted by samzenpus from the watch-what-you-say dept.
hessian writes in with a story about the arbitrary and often outdated online decency standards being imposed by companies."A bastion of openness and counterculture, Silicon Valley imagines itself as the un-Chick-fil-A. But its hyper-tolerant facade often masks deeply conservative, outdated norms that digital culture discreetly imposes on billions of technology users worldwide. What is the vehicle for this new prudishness? Dour, one-dimensional algorithms, the mathematical constructs that automatically determine the limits of what is culturally acceptable. Consider just a few recent kerfuffles. In early September, The New Yorker found its Facebook page blocked for violating the site’s nudity and sex standards. Its offense: a cartoon of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve’s bared nipples failed Facebook’s decency test."
Space

Ariane 5 Has No Chance, Says Elon Musk 188

Posted by timothy from the when-tony-stark-talks-people-listen dept.
Dupple writes with some remarks by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, as reported by the BBC, on the Ariane 5 launch vehicle: Musk is anything but a disinterested party, but he has some especially harsh words for the ESA rocket: "'I don't say that with a sense of bravado but there's really no way for that vehicle to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. If I were in the position of Ariane, I would really push for an Ariane 6.' Ariane's future will be a key topic this week for European Space Agency (Esa) member states. They are meeting in Naples to determine the scope and funding of the organisation's projects in the next few years, and the status of their big rocket will be central to those discussions."
Biotech

A Better Thought-Controlled Computer Cursor 34

Posted by timothy from the you-know-what-you-want-to-do dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Stanford researchers have developed a new algorithm (Abstract only) that significantly improves the control and performance of neural prosthetics — brain-controlled computer interfaces for individuals suffering from spinal cord injury and neurodegenerative disease to aid interaction with computers, drive electronic wheelchairs, and control robotic arms and legs. With this algorithm, monkeys implanted with multielectrode arrays in motor regions of their brain controlled a computer cursor more quickly and accurately than ever before, including navigation around obstacles. Further, the system maintained this high performance across 4 years, demonstrating long-term reliability. These improvements in performance and robustness are crucial for clinically-useful neural prosthetics, and pave the way for success in clinical trails."
Media

Ask Slashdot: Which International Online Music Stores Are Legit? 166

Posted by timothy from the when-googling-for-mp3s-isn't-enough dept.
rjnagle writes "I'm an American lover of music who is interested in buying legally music from other countries. How do I know which CD/online music stores are legit and actually benefit the artist? I'm very cost-conscious and prefer indie music anyway, but the types of international music for sale on Amazon/iTunes tends to be from the bigger labels. Suppose I wanted to buy music from Pakistan/Ukraine/China/Brazil/Chad. What's the best way to identify which labels or online stories are authorized to sell them? Perhaps all I need is a list of the best known online music stores for each region (Yesasia.com, etc)."
Microsoft

Windows Phone 8 Users Hit Some Snags 391

Posted by timothy from the my-android-phone-freezes-way-too-often dept.
symbolset writes "As reported on The Verge, many people are experiencing freezing, rebooting and battery problems on their new Windows Phone 8 devices. This WP8Central thread shows many of the issues. Affected devices include Lumia 920 and HTC 8X." Every phone and every OS has its problems, and happy users probably aren't as vocal; it would be good to know how Windows Phone users who are also iOS and Android users compare them for reliability.
Businesses

Coffee and Intellectual Property 198

Posted by timothy from the it-puts-the-coffee-lotion-(tm)-on-its-skin dept.
cervesaebraciator writes "A 'Coffee Branding Workshop,' sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization, was held recently in Arusha City, at which the Director General of the Tanzania Coffee Board presented a paper titled 'Supporting the Coffee Sector with added Value Products Through Intellectual Property and Branding.' The paper encouraged the use of intellectual property claims, including trademarks, copyrights, patents, and designs, as sources of income which can be used to support agriculture in Africa. The Director General claimed that '[Intellectual property rights] are the basis for today's knowledge based economy and international competitiveness.' This is no doubt related to a broader effort to advance western style intellectual property in Africa through claims of the benefits it offers agriculture. Promoting western style intellectual property law as a means of third world development is a popular strategy for WIPO, the only branch of the UN to have significant wealth deriving from contributions independent of Member States. On a related note of interest to Slashdotters, there is a history of tension between WIPO advocates and FOSS advocates." I hope they take advantage of the marketing possibilities offered by civet-processed coffee.
Android

Dual-Booting PengPod Tablet Can Run Linux/Android 109

Posted by timothy from the first-in-relation-to-what dept.
New submitter garbagechuteflyboy writes "The PengPod is the first dual-booting tablet; It's able to run both Linux and Android. Pengpod is now running the latest Plasma Active which gives this powerful Linux tablet features that were previously only available to iPad and Android tablets. PengPod is currently selling pre-orders on Indiegogo." garbagechuteflyboy adds links to articles about the dual-OS tablet at liliputing, at Ars Technica, and at PCWorld. "First dual-booting tablet" seems like a hard claim to back, but it's nice to see a tablet marketed with Plasma Active in mind.

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