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Communications

Submission + - Cameron bans mobiles from cabinet meetings

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's new Prime Minister, David Cameron, has banned the use of mobile phones and BlackBerries from cabinet meetings. According to the BBC, use of mobile phones and other devices during meetings and debates in parliament used to be banned, but now politicians are allowed to have them, but they must be in silent mode. In 2008, then Commons Speaker Michael Martin rejected a plea from MP Greg Mulholland to fine colleagues if their mobile phones rang in the chamber. He made the call after a fellow MP's phone rang twice while then Culture Secretary Andy Burnham was answering questions in the Commons, but Mr Martin said he was "powerless" to implement the idea, even if the fines went to charity.
Power

Submission + - Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times reported that "scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day." This information corroborates what Paul Noel postulated regarding the oil rising through 5000 feet of salt water at great pressure serves as a quasi fractionating column, and what is seen on the surface is mabye 20% of what has been spewed out. /.ers will be plaesed to know that Noel apologized for his 5' diameter figure for the pipe opening, which is actually only 21 inches.

Comment Re:Targeted killing isnt ok?? (Score 2, Informative) 776

by Hunter0000 (#31509830) Attached to: ACLU Sues Over Legality of "Targeted Killing" By Drones

"(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;" [From U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d)] Emphasis mine..

Yes, true, drone attacks do cause collateral damage, but perhaps we should go back to carpet bombing because they are not prefect? (Not that I don't tend to agree on your last point)
The Courts

Netflix Prize Sequel Cancelled Over Privacy Concerns 65

Posted by Soulskill from the beware-the-evil-agorithims dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Netflix just announced that they have cancelled the sequel to the Netflix Prize, which was promised last year. Netflix made the choice after they were sued over privacy concerns. The prize involves releasing large amounts of data about users' movie preferences, which raised concerns from the Federal Trade Commission and a lawsuit from KamberLaw LLC. Netflix's Neil Hunt said, 'We have reached an understanding with the FTC and have settled the lawsuit with plaintiffs. The resolution to both matters involves certain parameters for how we use Netflix data in any future research programs.'"
Censorship

China Warns Google To Obey Or Leave 533

Posted by Soulskill from the who-wears-the-pants-in-this-family dept.
suraj.sun writes with this snippet from an Associated Press report: "China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or 'pay the consequences,' giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking. 'If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences,' Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature. ... 'Whether they leave or not is up to them,' Li said. 'But if they leave, China's Internet market is still going to develop.' ... Li insisted the government needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people. 'If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we will have to block it,' he said."
Advertising

Submission + - Ad blocking is devastating to the sites you love (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica recently conducted a 12 hour experiment in which story content was hidden from users of popular ad blocking tools. Explaining the experiment, Ken Fisher appealed to Ars' readership, 'My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.'

Comment Re:You're an idiot. (Score 2, Insightful) 172

by Hunter0000 (#30800642) Attached to: Is Gawker's "Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt" Illegal?

So in your world, telling someone about a company's products is the same as murder?

Um, no. GP said nothing of the sort. GP in fact said nothing about the severity of the crime. If you want to make a real comparison, ask yourself if hiring someone to murder is illegal, as murder is illegal.

Or you could baselessly insult a commenter that didn't even attempt to make factual statements, and in fact is clearly just raising questions.

Now are they asking someone to do something illegal?

Such as?

Last time I checked, telling people about a company's product isn't illegal.

Now, they may *possibly* be asking people to break and NDA, but that would be a civil matter, not a criminal one, and therefore it wouldn't be illegal.

You seem to have missed the question mark, noting that GP was asking a question not making a statement of fact.

On topic, to me this seems a bit grey. Obtaining information about Apple's tablet is not illegal in and of itself - There are certainly ways to obtain the information that are illegal, but it is not clear that there are no ways to do so legally.

Comment Re:Of course (Score 1) 406

by Hunter0000 (#30781570) Attached to: Bing Gaining Market Share Faster

Actually, the last time I installed chrome on a fresh system it asked me if I wanted to change the default search provider to anything else (gave me a list). The default search at the time was Bing! due to the fresh windows install...
Earth

Submission + - Sponge-Like “Swelling Glass” Absorbs (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes: A company called Absorbent Materials has created a new kind of “swelling glass” that can clean up contaminated groundwater by soaking up volatile molecules like a sponge. Dubbed Obsorb, the material can hold up to 8 times its weight in fuel, oil, and solvents without sucking up any of the water itself. Once the material is full it floats to the surface and the pollutants can be skimmed off.
Space

Submission + - Researchers Think They'll Find Avatar's "Pandora" (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: In James Cameron's film Avatar, the alien world is in fact an "exomoon" orbiting a fictional exoplanet around Alpha Centauri A. According to a Discovery News interview with Cameron, he says that his animated epic is "scientifically accurate," but is it accurate to think an exomoon could be habitable or already inhabited by an alien ecosystem? Yes, say a group of Harvard researchers. What's more, with the help of the Kepler space telescope and forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we should have the capability to detect an exomoon and analyze its atmosphere for organic chemicals. And if there is a Pandora out there, we could detect it within a decade.

Submission + - Ebay denies new page design is broken, lays blame (ebay.com)

Submitted by
krick-zero
krick-zero writes: "Ebay recently rolled out a new page design. Many Ebay sellers are reporting issues with missing description text, resulting in lost sales. Buyers are reporting the same intermittent issue, on multiple platforms, with multiple browsers. After complaining to Ebay customer service, one user got this response...

I have reviewed several of your listings using my computer and had several of my coworkers view your listings as well and we are seeing the complete listings. Many times when buyers are not able to see the whole description or just bits and pieces it is due to browser issues they are having. A lot of times if they simply clear out their cache and cookies or change browsers (i.e. change from Internet explorer to Firefox or vice versa) they no longer have this problem.

"
Government

Submission + - UK Government apologises to Alan Turing (number10.gov.uk) 1

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes: "After the petition, Gordon Brown comes through with the official apology to Alan Turing. 'Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction ... So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Linux developers disappear (kroah.com)

Submitted by Node
Node writes: After the recent bru ha ha over Microsoft's release of Hyper-V drivers for inclusion in the mainline Linux kernel tree, it appears that the whole affair may have been simply a marketing ploy. Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the staging area in Linux reports that "the Microsoft developers seem to have disappeared, and no one is answering my emails". Apparently, if they don't step up then the code will be removed from Linux, only two months after it was added. Was Microsoft's foray into the land of the GPL simply a headline-grabbing exercise or do they genuinely wish to improve interoperability with free software?

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