Fluffeh - Slashdot User

Submission + - Could a Power Efficient Console Make a Real Difference to Energy Use? (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Monday April 16, 2012 @06:25PM

Fluffeh writes: "Environmental groups often push for efficiency improvements in big energy hogs like cars and appliances. It's viewed as a major way to reduce our collective energy use and carbon footprint. But a recent study argues a simple firmware update for current high definition video game consoles could provide a much easier way to chop off a small but significant portion of US residential energy usage. The study, published by a team of Carnegie Mellon researchers in the latest issue of the journal Energy Efficiency, estimates that 100 million video game consoles sucked up nearly 16 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy a year in the US in 2010. That's roughly one percent of the total household energy consumption for the entire country, and nearly twice as much as all the electricity used by all homes in the state of Rhode Island."

Submission + - Feds shut down TOR using narcotics store (arstechnica.com) 3

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Fluffeh

on Monday April 16, 2012 @06:20PM

Fluffeh writes: "Federal authorities have arrested eight men accused of distributing more than $1 million worth of LSD, ecstasy, and other narcotics with an online storefront called "The Farmer's Market" that used the TOR anonymity service to mask their Internet addresses. Prosecutors said in a press release that the charges were the result of a two-year investigation led by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Los Angeles field division. "Operation Adam Bomb, " as the investigation was dubbed, also involved law enforcement agents from several US states and several countries, including Colombia, the Netherlands, and Scotland. The arrests come about a year after Gawker documented the existence of Silk Road, an online narcotics storefront that was available only to TOR users. The site sold LSD, Afghani hashish, tar heroin and other controlled substances and allowed customers to pay using the virtual currency known as Bitcoin."

Submission + - Oracle and Google to Finally Enter Courtroom (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Sunday April 15, 2012 @07:17PM

Fluffeh writes: "After around 900 motions and filings, not to mention a timeline of two years, Google and Oracle are finally putting their case before a jury which will be selected on Monday. While Oracle originally sued for billions, the possible damages have come down to a more reasonable US$30-something million (the details vary depending on if you ask Google or Oracle). However, the sides are still far apart. Oracle's proposal was a minimum, not a maximum, and Oracle has asked for a tripling of damages because of the "willful and deliberate nature of Google's infringement." For ongoing royalties from future sales, Google has proposed payment of just over one-half of one percent of revenue if patent infringement is proven, but Oracle wants more. Beyond financial damages, Oracle has asked for a permanent order preventing Google from continuing to infringe the patents and copyrights. The case is planned to start on Monday afternoon, after jury selection or Tuesday at the latest."

Submission + - Scientists Claim Viking Mars Missions have Proof of Life (msn.com)

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Fluffeh

on Friday April 13, 2012 @02:16AM

Fluffeh writes: "New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows that NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week. The new study took a different approach. Researchers distilled the Viking Labeled Release data, provided as hard copies by the original researchers, into sets of numbers and analyzed the results for complexity. They found close correlations between the Viking experiment results' complexity and those of terrestrial biological data sets. They say the high degree of order is more characteristic of biological, rather than purely physical, processes."

Submission + - US Unhappy With Australians Storing Data on Australian Shores (delimiter.com.au)

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Fluffeh

on Friday April 13, 2012 @12:59AM

Fluffeh writes: "The United States’ global trade representative has strongly criticised a perceived preference on the part of large Australian organisations for hosting their data on-shore in Australia, claiming it created a significant trade barrier for US technology firms. A number of US companies had expressed concerns that various departments in the Australian Government, namely the Department of Defence had been sending negative messages about cloud providers based outside the country, implying that “hosting data overseas, including in the United States, by definition entails greater risk and unduly exposes consumers to their data being scrutinised by foreign governments”. Recently, Acting Victorian Privacy Commissioner Anthony Bendall highlighted some of the privacy concerns with cloud computing, particularly in its use by the local government. He said the main problems were the lack of control over stored data and privacy, in overseas cloud service providers."

Submission + - World Bank Embraces Open Access and makes ALL of its Research Freely Available (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Thursday April 12, 2012 @06:29PM

Fluffeh writes: "The World Bank is taking steps toward greater transparency. It announced yesterday that it would be instituting a new "Open Access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products" begining July 1. The policy's full title is "World Bank Open Access Policy for Formal Publications," and the Bank says it will apply to "manuscripts and all accompanying data sets... that result from research, analysis, economic and sector work, or development practice... that have undergone peer review or have been otherwise vetted and approved for release to the public; and... for which internal approval for release is given on or after July 1, 2012", as well as the final reports prepared by outside parties for the Bank. Over 2,100 books and papers from 2009-2012 are already available in the Repository"

Submission + - Apple Updates Java to Include Flashback Removal (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Thursday April 12, 2012 @06:19PM

Fluffeh writes: "In the third update to Java that Apple has released this week, the update now identifies and removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware that has infected over half a million Apple machines. "This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware," Apple wrote in the support document for the update. "This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets.""

Submission + - Social Networking has Myriad of 30,000 Patents (techdirt.com)

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Fluffeh

on Tuesday April 10, 2012 @06:05PM

Fluffeh writes: "M-Cam has spent some time analyzing the patent misunderstanding between Yahoo and Facebook, and found some interesting information. While investigating just 10 patents that Facebook is asserting in its counterclaims against Yahoo, and discovered that there are over 30,000 related patents that cover similar aspects — many of which have been around for a while. A very large number of these patents are "functional forgeries" in that they cover stuff that's in other patents. Really what this goes back to is the fact that the patent system relies on patent examiners to magically know what's new and non-obvious. But, if it's impossible for those who actually work in the space to know about the 30,000 related patents, how do you think a patent examiner does it?"

Submission + - Heartland Security Breach Class Action Results: Victims $1925, Lawyers $600,000 (techdirt.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Monday April 09, 2012 @07:45PM

Fluffeh writes: "Back in 2007, Heartland had a security breach that resulted in a 130 million credit card details being lifted. A class action suit followed and many thought it would send a direct message to business to ensure proper security measures protecting their clients and customers. With the Heartland case now over and settlements paid out and divided up, the final breakdown is as follows: Class members $1925 (11 cases out of 290 filed were "valid"). Lawyers for the plaintiff class action $606,192. Non-Profits around $1,000,000 (The Court ruled a minimum of $1 million dollars in payouts). Heartland also paid its own lawyers around $2 million.

Eric Goldman (Law Professor) has additional commentary on his Law Blog: "The opinion indicates Heartland spent $1.5M to advertise the settlement. Thus, it appears they spent over $130,000 to generate each legitimate claim. Surprisingly, the court blithely treats the $1.5M expenditure as a cost of doing business, but I can't wrap my head around it. What an obscene waste of money! Add in the $270k spent on claims administration, and it appears that the parties spent $160k per legitimate claimant. The court isn't bothered by the $270k expenses either, even though that cost about $1k per tendered claim (remember, there were 290 total claims).""

Submission + - Microsoft buys AOL Patents - including NetScape (businesswire.com)

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Fluffeh

on Monday April 09, 2012 @07:22PM

Fluffeh writes: "A few weeks ago AOL announced that it was looking to sell off a major portion of its patent holdings and Microsoft just came to the party and announced a US$1 Billion dollar deal that will snag it 800 of these patents, including the NetScape patents that AOL had used against Microsoft when the two were fighting for control of the early internet.

“This is a valuable portfolio that we have been following for years and analyzing in detail for several months,” said Brad Smith, General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft. “AOL ran a competitive auction and by participating, Microsoft was able to achieve our two primary goals: obtaining a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio.”"

Submission + - EU Wants to make "Cyber Attacks" a Criminal Offence (techdirt.com)

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Fluffeh

on Wednesday April 04, 2012 @07:08PM

Fluffeh writes: "With Anonymous chalking up yet another attack, the EU is looking to demonize Cyber Attacks through the legislative proposal concerning "Cyber Attacks" approved by the "Civil Liberties Committee". It appears to ramp up criminal penalties for all sorts of broadly defined activities. It even applies criminal penalties to a company if an employee hacks into a competitor's database (even if they weren't told to do it). But where it gets scary is when it appears to directly target "hactivism" like what Anonymous does.

"The Committee's proposals would make it a criminal offence to conduct cyber attacks on computer systems. Individuals would face at least two years in jail if served with the maximum penalty for the offence. A maximum penalty of at least five years in jail could apply if "aggravating circumstances" or "considerable damage ... financial costs or loss of financial data" occurred, the Parliament said in a statement. ""

Submission + - Bogus Takedown Notice lands $150k settlement in Australian Court (techdirt.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Wednesday April 04, 2012 @06:23PM

Fluffeh writes: "Richard Bell, an Australian Film Maker, on a fellowship in New York, produced and directed approximately 18 hours of raw footage for a film with the help of an assistant called Tanya Steele and paid her for these services. Ms Steele, through her American lawyers, sent letters to Mr Bell and his agent claiming that she owned the copyright in the footage and demanding that the trailer be removed from the Internet. She also caused the Vimeo website to remove the trailer. In response, Bell went to the (Australian) courts, which declared him the owner of the copyright in the film, and deemed Steele's threats "unjustifiable". Bell then asked for damages. These were granted in the latest judgment because Bell had lost the opportunity to sell some of his works, which typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, as a result of Steels' threats. The Australian judge awarded over $150,000 in damages plus another $23,000 costs against her."

Submission + - The Supreme Court to rule on Monsato Seed Patents (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Wednesday April 04, 2012 @06:13PM

Fluffeh writes: "Can a farmer commit patent infringement just by planting soybeans he bought on the open market? This week, the Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on the question. The Court is pondering an appeals court decision saying that such planting can, in fact, infringe patents. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled, as it had on several previous occasions, that patent exhaustion did not cover second-generation seeds. The Supreme Court has now asked the Solicitor General, the official in charge of representing the Obama administration before the Court, to weigh in on the case."

Submission + - Round Two: Facebook Vs Yahoo (techdirt.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @07:53PM

Fluffeh writes: "When Facebook barely had more patents than Zuckerberg had fingers, Yahoo decided to throw a lawsuit timed nicely to coincide with the Facebook IPO. However, with some cash in pockets, Facebook bought a portfolio of patents — and is now throwing a hefty lawsuit back in the direction of Yahoo.

"Facebook admits that messaging and privacy are offered as options on certain websites. Facebook denies that “[w]ithout Yahoo!’s achievements, websites such as Facebook would not enjoy repeat visitors or substantial advertising revenue.” Facebook further denies that the functions identified in this paragraph of the Complaint involved any innovation by Yahoo!."

Techdirt has a listing of the patents in the counter-suit as well as further reading."

Submission + - EU targets Motorola in anti-trust over standards-essential patents (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @07:33PM

Fluffeh writes: "Motorola Mobility has found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust investigation by the European Commission due to its alleged abuse of standards-essential patents related to WiFi, H.264, and 3G wireless networking. The EC investigation comes shortly after it launched a similar investigation of Samsung, which has been attempting to leverage its 3G-related patents against Apple. The investigation could be especially worrisome for Google, which was recently granted approval of its planned merger with Motorola."

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