Dekortage - Slashdot User

Submission + - Friendster Going Strong in Asia and Maybe in Court (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @07:02AM

Dekortage writes: "Remember Friendster? Long surpassed by MySpace and Facebook, and a textbook case of social networking collapse, Friendster appears to be going strong in Asia, and has recently stolen Google's Asia chief for its new CEO. More ominously, though, a recent press release (PDF) notes that the company "was the first social networking company to launch key features, including the social graph server, a network activities tracker, and more... Friendster has been granted three fundamental patents and has more patents pending." Hello lawyers!"

Submission + - Are Your Kitchen Counters Radioactive? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Friday July 25, 2008 @12:59PM

Dekortage writes: "Is your bowl of Cheerios a little warmer than expected? Maybe it's because your kitchen counters are radioactive, emitting radiation as well as radon gas. Granite naturally contains a small percentage of uranium, and some blocks of granite are more radioactive than others. In some cases, radiation levels have been measured at 100x of our usual background radiation, but most scientists think granite countertops are mostly harmless. Nonetheless, as one doctor said, "If you can choose another counter that doesn't elevate your risk, however slightly, why wouldn't you?""

Submission + - Hasbro Sues Makers of Scrabulous Online Game (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Thursday July 24, 2008 @03:22PM

Dekortage writes: "As today's lawsuit indicates, Hasbro has apparently had enough of Scrabulous, the online word game remarkably similar to Scrabble. Filed in New York, Hasbro's suit is against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, brothers from Kolkata, India, and asks the court to remove the Scrabulous application from Facebook, disable the Scrabulous.com web site, and grant damages and attorneys fees to Hasbro. Why did Hasbro tale so long to "protect" its intellectual property rights in court? They waited "in deference to the fans" until EA had launched the official Scrabble Facebook app earlier this month. EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million. This was the next logical step for Hasbro after filing DCMA takedown notices against Scrabulous in January."

Submission + - Mideast Water Shortage Requires Money, Technology (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Monday July 21, 2008 @08:38AM

Dekortage writes: "The New York Times discusses two related problems in the Mideast: a population that has quadrupled in the last 50 years, and a severe four-year draught. Together, these lead to food shortages and civil unrest. Egypt is using the Nile to turn desert into farmland, Israel relies on advanced drip irrigation, and Djibouti grows rice in seawater-cooled greenhouses. But this results in some of the most expensive food in the world, leading every government in the region to look for new technologies and opportunities."

Submission + - EBay Deal Signals the End for Individual Auctions (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Monday July 14, 2008 @05:56AM

Dekortage writes: "EBay's recent deal with Buy.com appears to be seriously irritating its veteran individual sellers. The deal allows Buy.com and other large fixed-price retailers to list millions of items on eBay without paying listing fees, and appears to be the direction that eBay will follow in the future. Understandably, individual sellers are outraged, like this blogger: "I've paid eBay many hundreds of thousands in fees over the past several years and believed them when they talked about a level playing field. And they just plain and simple are going back on their word." This comes after the dire prediction that eBay is losing its popularity. Will eBay recover from this?"

Submission + - The Privacy Paradox: Don't Ask and They Won't Care (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Wednesday July 02, 2008 @05:29PM

Dekortage writes: "The New York Times has a piece up about the paradox of privacy: "normally sane people have inconsistent and contradictory impulses and opinions when it comes to their safeguarding their own private information." More specifically, it's all how you ask: if you don't talk about privacy, people won't worry about it. In one survey, "when the issue of confidentiality was raised, participants clammed up. For example, 25 percent of the students who were given a strong assurance of confidentiality admitted to having copied someone else's homework. Among those given no assurance of confidentiality, more than half admitted to it.""

Submission + - U.S. Government Halts All Solar Energy Projects (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Friday June 27, 2008 @08:09AM

Dekortage writes: "The U.S. Government's Bureau of Land Management, overwhelmed by applications for large-scale solar energy plants, has declared a two-year freeze on all new projects until it completes an extensive environmental impact study. The study will also produce "a single set of environmental criteria to weigh future solar proposals, which will ultimately speed the application process." The freeze means that current applications will continue to be processed — plants producing enough electricity for 20 million average American homes — but no new applications will be accepted until the study is complete. Solar power companies are worried that this will harm the industry just as it is poised for growth, while others see the temporary hold as a necessary step before the industry gets too big."

Submission + - Cosmetic Surgeons Ask Patients to Post to YouTube (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Thursday June 26, 2008 @07:40AM

Dekortage writes: "If you had cosmetic or eye surgery, would you post a video of it to YouTube? How about if the surgeon offered you an $800 discount on future treatments? Apparently, this is exactly what many surgeons are doing, and as many as 10% of patients are complying. Many doctors believe there is no conflict of interest; however, others are not so sure. "It's disappointing to see commercialism creeping into what should be a very altruistic profession," says a bioethics professor at Columbia, while the Better Business Bureau laments that "you're running the risk that the consumer's opinion was skewed by dollar signs, and isn't necessarily telling the truth." In any case, YouTube has thousands of videos on Botox, Lasik, and breast augmentation."

Submission + - IBM to Help Sequence the Chocolate Genome (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Thursday June 26, 2008 @06:07AM

Dekortage writes: "The New York Times reports this morning that IBM will work with Mars — the candy company who makes M&Ms and Snickers, among other things — on a five year project to sequence the cocoa genome. According to Howard-Yana Shapiro, global director of plant science at Mars, the goal is to "discover the genetic building blocks of traits like disease and pest resistance, drought tolerance and perhaps flavor." Additionally, the project's results will be available for free from the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture."

Submission + - First U.S. Offshore Wind Power Park in Delaware (cnn.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Tuesday June 24, 2008 @07:22AM

Dekortage writes: "Offshore wind power company Bluewater Wind has announced an agreement to build America's first offshore wind turbine park off the coast of Delaware. "Each turbine [will sit on] a pole about 250 feet above the waterline... the units are to be constructed to withstand hurricane-force winds. From the shore, the park will be visible only on clear winter days, and the turbines will be nearly invisible during summer months when Rehoboth Beach fills with vacationers. Each blade on the three-blade rotor is to be 150 feet long.""

Submission + - Deutsche Telekom Secretely Tracked Phone Calls (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Tuesday May 27, 2008 @09:20AM

Dekortage writes: "German telephone giant Deutsche Telekom has admitted to secretly tracking the phone calls between board members and journalists, in an effort to identify media leaks about internal affairs. As noted by the German Journalists' Association, "This company has special access to the records of its customers.... That means it has a special obligation to be trustworthy." DT denies having eavesdropped; it merely tracked the calls dialed."

Submission + - Johnson & Johnson Loses Major Trademark Lawsui

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Saturday May 24, 2008 @07:32PM

Dekortage writes: "As previously discussed on Slashdot, the health-products giant Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over use of the ubiquitous "red cross" logo. J&J has lost. The presiding judge said Johnson & Johnson's claim against the organization was doubtful because the manufacterer entered into a brand-sharing promotional agreement with the American Red Cross in 1986 — not to mention that the two organizations agreed to share the logo way back in 1895. Sounds like J&J may need to crack open some Tylenol and Band-Aids."

Submission + - Video Game Actors Don't Get Their Due (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Wednesday May 21, 2008 @07:16AM

Dekortage writes: "The New York Times reports today about Michael Hollick, the actor who provided the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV. Although the game has made more than $600 million in sales for Rockstar Games, Hollick earns nothing beyond the original $100K he was paid. If this was television, film, or radio, Hollick and the other GTA actors could have made millions by now. Hollick says, "I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies." Is it time for video game actors to be treated as well as those in other mediums?"

Submission + - Johnson & Johnson Loses Suit Against Red Cross (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Friday May 16, 2008 @09:41AM

Dekortage writes: "As mentioned last year on Slashdot, the health-products giant Johnson & Johnson had sued the American Red Cross over its use of the ubiquitous "red cross" emblem. They have lost, thankfully. From the article: "Judge Rakoff said the doubtfulness of Johnson & Johnson's claim against the organization was 'well illustrated by the ironic fact' that in 1986 the company itself entered into a [brand-sharing promotional agreement] with the Red Cross... [in which it agreed] to donate 5 cents to the Red Cross for coupons redeemed to buy company products." Sounds like J&J has some egg on its face."

Submission + - On DVRs, Youngsters Skip Ads Less Than Seniors (adage.com)

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Tuesday May 13, 2008 @12:18PM

Dekortage writes: "In analyzing DVR viewing research, Ad Age has noted something unexpected: older DVR users are more likely to skip ads than younger DVR users. The skew is particularly apparent among men: 50% of seniors skipping all the ads, but only 20% of teens do so. Women of any age group tend to be around 35%. Ad Age hypothesizes that younger viewers "just pay attention to other media when the ads are on TV or, worse yet, perhaps the TV is just 'background music'...." I always thought that ad skipping was a major benefit of DVRs. Do you skip all the ads?"

Slashdot Top Deals