You really want to know who set this up?

Find out who scheduled the vote for the same day as the release of the iPhone 5. I think the vote was probably on the docket for awhile. If so...

To whomever made sure these events coincided: Couldn't have been planned better. Well played.

"The answer to all your questions is: Money"

Regarding the copyright vs. public domain: really? I was quoting from the Al Jazeera article, so perhaps the article is wrong.

This is one of the most incomprehensible post summaries I've ever seen on Slashdot; it could have used a little TLC in the way of explanation.

So basically the German publishers are claiming that the current copyright law be amended to make any quote from an article, even the headline, subject to a copyright licensing fee. Under current law, the headline and opening sentences of an article are in the public domain. Linking itself is free; it's the snippet quoting that Google and other sites like to do that would cost money. However, it would have disastrous consequences for blogging and online journalism as a whole, not to mention search engines, as pretty much any web page that quotes a German article would be liable to pay a fee.

Reading the second article, it would appear that the second draft of the bill has already gotten to the point of compromise where nobody would be happy with the eventual outcome, including the publishers, so it will most likely stall or be shelved permanently. At this point, it's almost more a bullet dodged than actual news. Kudos on posting an article in which you're quoted, though.

On a side note, the original German term seems much less ambiguous than the British English "neighboring rights" or American English "related rights". "Leistungsschutzrecht" literally means"right to protection of effort".

Yakuza.

Nintendo is an ooooooold company. Those same hidden hands that have been there for them when others have had 'supply chain problems' for decades are more useful than some transient body and bad press.

Saudi Arabia is currently flooding the oil market to drive down prices in an attempt to destabilize the economies and governments of Syria and Iran and weaken their broker Russia.

More or less anything else that might be conjured up to explain this precipitous drop (aside from a worldwide recession that is driving down consumption and demand) is just nonsense. This is an odd byproduct of economic warfare. My only question is looking for the bottom so I can maximize returns after this economic war turns into a shooting one.

The government also invented the freeway system and the internet, and those didn't turn out too bad.

This conversation is a moot point in Japan and many other countries, because here (in Japan) we have competition rather than the rampant collusion among the American carriers. There are still unlimited data plans available on every carrier, and they're getting cheaper due to portable wi-fi hotspots in 3G, LTE and Wimax flavors.

As for capacity, it's not about airwaves, it's about server collisions. As you said, it's going all data, and American phone companies are loathe to cooperate in sharing the actual wired data networks, let alone upgrading their own. They've always been very good on making excuses as to why they can't build out their infrastructure while the rest of the world moves forward. They rely on natural American insularity to protect them from comparisons with successful systems abroad (and no, geography doesn't play as big a role as they'd like you to believe).

The government has attempted to play fair and leave this in the hands of the carriers since the 90s, even doling out billions in grants to help these companies in building out aforementioned infrastructure, but the companies have merely pocketed the money while thinking up new and interesting ways to screw their customers over.

That's a myth perpetuated by the carriers, but actually the US has plenty of spectrum; they just want to make sure they don't have to *share* spectrum with anyone else, and to buy up everything available. Even if they did, they could co-habitate, using new technologies that more efficiently manage the signal. Sending and receiving cell phone data isn't like overlapping trumpet blasts, after all.

MIT Girl. Stop.

"What if China goes the DIY route and makes its own ISA or microarchitecture with silicon-level censorship and monitoring, or an always-open backdoor for the Chinese intelligence agencies?"

Then they will have yet again copied the West's products and then rebranded the designs for their own use. As they have been doing for some time now..... China knows for a fact that the US is using backdoors in technology for warfare (see: Iran) and to overthrow governments (see: Arab Spring) - and is not going to long term put itself at risk by using these American technologies that invite 'revolutions of the people' (see: coups).

I hope Microsoft is skipping these features by design, because it would make them look pretty intelligent. A tablet does not need all of the domain bells and whistles that a desktop in the enterprise does; at most, it needs to be able to sync to a particular desktop, which is secure enough. Beyond that, make sure the tablet is sandboxed so that it can't become a vector for viruses and you already have all the advantage you need to becoming integrated into a Windows environment. I think bemoaning the lack of these features is premature.

Eventually you mature and leave the cradle. No guarantees for those who choose to remain behind in the cradle.

By the way:

Net censorship in china is not specifically nationwide. It is done by province. So in Beijing you can read "x" but not in Chongqing and versa vice.

And again most of the censors are just "kids" really. No Older than 30 most of the time. So a bit more tuned in - and prob better at their job than adults would be.

I always heard it was between 5 mao or 1 kuai per post deleted. As there was an attempted coup last week of imagine some kids are getting PAID this week....

If you lived there you'd know this. Everyone in china does.

  That is why they are less afraid to post subversive Ideas at times than Americans: their posts will just be deleted by someone making 1RMB a post (15c - an actual figure). As opposed to Americans who I find self censor much more as they know everything they ever type is being specifically cataloged by the NSA.

Funny watching this discussion and last weeks COUP (attempted) gets no mention.

I'm sure the biggest political upheaval in China since the trial of the Gang of Four has little or no signifigant value in this discussion about the actions and motives in any recent actions by said government....

That is what I have been wondering.

How many open source projects / commercial products are compromised by 3 letter agency insiders? Yeah we can 'look at the source' for some software but I have no pretenses on most anyone being able to find a backdoor left in by the best of the best that MIT / NSA etc have to offer. And with an unlimited budget to boot...

I know if I was in charge id just make sure to get my code into Flash installers, Webkit, MS Office, and a few of the most popular linux packages and call it a day. I mean, what computer worth looking at isnt going to have an office suite, a browser, or flash?

By the looks of Stuxtnet apparently routers are also a good thing to throw backdoors into as well....