Comment Re:Mixed messages (Score 1) 527
Wouldn't that dilemma be solved with alcohol and cigarettes which are legal and not good for you at the same time?
Comment Re:My concerns about network neutrality. (Score 1) 223
"If a cartel of major ISPs is paid to promote YouTube, say, at the expense of everyone else's video site, small businesses everywhere will feel the sting." - Should we outlaw Akamai then? I think what you've described is precisely what they're doing, with edge servers closer to the user, and dedicated racks in major ISPs.
Comment Re:This flaw is no longer available (Score 1) 145
What happened when you tried someone else's e-mail address?
Comment Re:Not The Only Problem (Score 2, Informative) 145
Only if 'Search for me on Facebook' is set to 'Everyone'
http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy§ion=basic
Comment Re:Too late (Score 1) 293
"Someone in these kind of stories always suggests that you set up your own Facebook-like service or just a website. That's just thinking too much of yourself - why would people visit your site just to see your stuff?" - Well, you can do that with Open Graph protocol with the caveat that it works for pages only. But you can host your own entity, or, like TripAdvisor, create thousands of Facebook page equivalents all controlled by you.
Comment Re:Yes, it could. (Score 1) 293
How do you generate News Feed that's interesting and not just a collection of useless facts?
Comment Re:and again.... (Score 1) 200
Semiconductors were invented by a man with some pretty wild ideas. I'm assuming you whole-heartedly support them, as you have voted with your money for products containing semiconductors.
Comment Re:and again.... (Score 1) 200
Accel also invested in Foundry Networks and 2Wire.
Serving on a board of a random association is a super-strong tie, shouldn't Accel be funneling the data to The Man on the router level though?
Comment Re:Publicly available (Score 1) 158
Disclaimer: I work for the company mentioned in the article, not in legal role though.
Privacy is dynamic and "publicly available information" is not set in stone - user could've chosen to hide specific bits of that information a few minutes later, and there doesn't seem to be any update protocol to remove those bits from the scraped DB.
AMD Radeon HD 5870 Adds DX11, Multi-Monitor Gaming 195
Vigile writes "Few people will doubt that PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in the arm with the consistent encroachment of consoles and their dominating hold on developers. Today AMD is releasing the Radeon HD 5870 graphics card based on the Evergreen-series of GPUs first demonstrated in June. Besides offering best-in-class performance for a single-GPU graphics board, the new card is easily the most power efficient in terms of idle power consumption and performance per watt. Not only that, but AMD has introduced new features that could help keep PC gaming in the spotlight, including the first DirectX 11 implementation and a very impressive multi-monitor gaming technology, Eyefinity, which we discussed earlier this month. The review at PC Perspective includes the full gamut of gaming benchmarks in both single- and dual-GPU configurations as well as videos of Eyefinity running on three 30" displays."
The PS3's "Yellow Light of Death" 292
Xest writes "More and more reports are appearing about PlayStation 3 consoles failing in a similar way to the earlier models of the Xbox 360, except for Sony, it's the 'Yellow Light of Death.' The BBC has an interesting article which suggests the problem could be almost identical to that which caused the Red Ring of Death — poor soldering connections. From the article: 'Several of those businesses have told Watchdog that the vast majority of consoles they see with the "yellow light of death" can be repaired by heating up specific parts of the circuit board. This process is called solder re-flow. By heating the connections between the components and the circuit board to temperatures in excess of 200 Celsius, the metal solder joints melt, just like they did when the device was first assembled. Console repairers say that this process method is commonly used to repair fractured connections, or dry joints.' But that's not the only rule from Microsoft's playbook Sony has been following; while they have admitted 12,500 out of 2.5 million systems have failed (a convenient 0.5%), they refuse to release full figures of failure rates, citing them as being 'commercially sensitive.' Unfortunately, Sony does not appear to be following Microsoft's lead with regard to an extended warranty, stating that if a PS3 fails after 12 months, it is not their problem. In the UK at least, the Sale of Goods Act would disagree with that statement."
FCC To Propose Net Neutrality Rules 110
wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes news that the FCC is preparing to propose net neutrality rules on Monday. Quoting: '[FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski] will discuss the rules Monday during a keynote speech at The Brookings Institute. He isn't expected to drill into many details, but the proposal will specifically be for an additional guideline on how operators like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can control what goes on their networks. That additional guideline would prevent the operators from discriminating, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content and services. ... The agency is expected to review what traffic management is reasonable and what practices are discriminatory. The guidelines are known as "principals" at the agency, which some public interest groups have sought to codify so that they would clearly be enforceable.'"
Skype Founders File Copyright Suit Against eBay 107
Saif writes to let us know that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, have filed a copyright suit against eBay for altering and sharing the peer-to-peer source code behind the calling service. The founders managed to maintain ownership of the source and licensed it to eBay in their 2005 deal and are now seeking an injunction and statutory damages which could total more than $75 million per day. "Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis have developed a reputation for litigiousness in some legal circles. They filed three separate lawsuits against Pamela Colburn, an investment banker who represented them in the original sale of Skype, in the United States, the Netherlands and Britain. In May, a British judge dismissed the case and said the two men's reason for pursuing the matter in his country 'remains inexplicable.' The buyers of Skype have not publicly addressed the founders' lawsuit against eBay in Britain or their potential legal liability."
Submission + - Possible Rollback of Telcom Immunity? (arstechnica.com)
Asmodae writes: "Ars Technica has an article about a proposed Act in congress to roll back telecom retroactive immunity among other privacy safeguards."
IBM Computer Program To Take On 'Jeopardy!' 213
longacre writes "I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human 'Jeopardy!' contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward. ... The team is aiming not at a true thinking machine but at a new class of software that can 'understand' human questions and respond to them correctly. Such a program would have enormous economic implications. ... The proposed contest is an effort by I.B.M. to prove that its researchers can make significant technical progress by picking "grand challenges" like its early chess foray. The new bid is based on three years of work by a team that has grown to 20 experts in fields like natural language processing, machine learning and information retrieval. ... Under the rules of the match that the company has negotiated with the 'Jeopardy!' producers, the computer will not have to emulate all human qualities. It will receive questions as electronic text. The human contestants will both see the text of each question and hear it spoken by the show's host, Alex Trebek. ... Mr. Friedman added that they were also thinking about whom the human contestants should be and were considering inviting Ken Jennings, the 'Jeopardy!' contestant who won 74 consecutive times and collected $2.52 million in 2004."
