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News

Submission + - Bomb suspected in Russia train crash (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by reporter
reporter writes: According to a disturbing report just published by Guardian News (headquartered in Great Britain), "At least 22 people were feared dead and many more injured last night after an express train carrying hundreds of passengers from Moscow to St Petersburg derailed.

Early indications from government officials suggest a bomb may have been the cause, after investigators found a three-foot crater beneath the rails.

Russian Railways, the state-owned train operator, said four carriages of the luxury Nevsky Express came off the tracks near the town of Bologoye, 200 miles from Moscow, just after 9.30pm local time [on November 27].

In addition to those killed, more than 50 injured passengers required treatment at hospitals in St Petersburg.

An officer at the emergencies ministry said: 'A one metre-diameter hole has been found next to the railway track. Witnesses heard a loud slap before the accident. All of this could point to a possible act of terrorism.'"

President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the Federal Security Service (successor to the KGB) to investigate the "accident".

More information is available in a news report published by Voice of America.

Also, the "New York Times" has published a report (supplied by the Associated Press) that provides additional information.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft actively stifling Win 7 complaints

Submitted by aybiss
aybiss writes: Aside from failing to provide support for its medium grade server OSes, Microsoft seems to also be directly working to keep bad publicitiy about Windows 7 down. Not only have they closed (or rather renamed) the Windows 7 general discussion forum, they've been removing posts and forcing the closure of topics about Windows 7 that seem to get a little hot. For anyone who hasn't been watching the forums, you may find it interesting to see how many cases are closed by an MSFT, and there are cases all over the forum that are marked answered but are clearly unresolved.

Ones
like
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The Courts

Submission + - Film studios issue ultimatum to ISPs (itnews.com.au) 1

Submitted by bennyboy64
bennyboy64 writes: The court case between the film industry and ISP iiNet drew to a close yesterday after the film studios issued an ultimatum: Take copyright responsibilities seriously or leave the industry. 'Businesses such as ISPs want to enjoy the benefit of being able to make money out of the provision of internet service facilities and they enjoy that benefit. But it carries with it a responsibility,' said Tony Bannon SC, the film industry's lawyer. 'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business'. iTnews has done a short one minute interview with iiNet's CEO Michael Malone as he left the court on the final day. The judge also, on the final day, dismissed the Internet Industry Association's involvement in the case.
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

Submission + - Analytics at Twitter (tonybain.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter, like many web 2.0 apps, started life as a MySQL based RBDMS application. Today, Twitter is still using MySQL for much of their online operational functionality (although this is likely to change in the near future – think distributed), but on the analytics side of things Twitter has spent the last 6 months moving away from running SQL queries against MySQL data marts. This was because their need for timely data was becoming a struggle with MySQL, particularly when dealing with very large data volumes and complicated queries. For Web 2.0 the ability to understand, quantify and make timely predictions from user behavior is very much their life blood. When Kevin arrived at Twitter 6 months ago he was tasked with changing the way Twitter analyzed their data. Now the bulk of their analytics is executed using a Hadoop platform with Pig as the “querying language”.

Submission + - Contributors Leaving Wikipedia in Record Numbers

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "CNET reports that the volunteers who create Wikipedia's pages, check facts and adapt the site are abandoning Wikipedia in unprecedented numbers with tens of thousands of editors going “dead” — no longer actively contributing and updating the site — a trend many experts believe could threaten Wikipedia’s future. In the first three months of 2009 the English-language version of Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 contributors, compared with a loss of about 4,900 during the same period in 2008. “If you don’t have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly," says Felipe Ortega at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid who created a computer system to analyze the editing history of more than three million active Wikipedia contributors in ten different languages. "We’re not in that situation yet. But eventually, if the negative trends follow, we could be in that situation.” Contributors are becoming disenchanted with the process of adding to the site which is becoming increasingly difficult says Andrew Dalby, author of The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing Reality and a regular editor of the site. “There is an increase of bureaucracy and rules. Wikipedia grew because of the lack of rules. That has been forgotten. The rules are regarded as irritating and useless by many contributors.” Arguments over various articles have also taken their toll. "Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again," adds Ortega."

Comment Comment (Score 1) 2

by keeperofdakeys (#30223060) Attached to: Vocal dinosaur bypassed in state R18+ game law

The only reason Mr. Atkinson is holding back R18+ is because he believes that video games' content makes a higher impact than other forms of media. This means that games which may get a 18+ rating in other countries, but are not refused classification, get a MA15+ instead. This is a very bad thing, as adult material does get to younger people.

The petition suggests that the Queensland Government wants to go a step further. Instead of just allowing the R18+ rating, they also want to make some currently refused classification games R18+, which Mr. Atkinson would definitely oppose.
Apple

Submission + - Steve Jobs in standover against app developer (theage.com.au)

Submitted by BrokenHalo
BrokenHalo writes: The Age has an article showing us another unsavoury aspect of Apple's business model.

A long-time Apple software developer from Sydney fears he may have to lay off most of his staff after draconian Apple legal threats and a rare personal email from Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs.

Mathew Peterson, 25, has been creating Mac software since he was 17 and one of his most popular products has been "iPodRip", which allows people to back up their music collections from their iPods on to their computers. It was an instant hit and particularly useful in emergencies because, if a user's computer dies and they attempt to connect their iPod to their new machine, all music and videos on the device are usually wiped... Peterson's Manly-based company, The Little App Factory, now employs eight staff members, makes two other Apple-related software tools and claims to have approximately 6 million customers. But iPodRip, which sells for $US19.95, pulls in the lion's share of revenue.

Despite iPodRip being available for the past six years, about 2 weeks ago, Peterson received a cease and desist letter from Apple's lawyers, Baker & McKenzie. It asked him to stop using "iPod" in his software's name, remove any Apple-related logos from his product and relinquish control of his domain name, ipodrip.com.
Censorship

Submission + - Vocal dinosaur bypassed in state R18+ game law 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many of you /.ers have had a nice chuckle about us Aussies lacking an R18+ game rating in Australia. Most of you have heard that just about the only person preventing a change to this is the South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson. Well in an interesting turn of events the Queensland government is looking to bring an R18+ game rating to the progressive state, thereby bypassing the national law. A Queensland Parliament E-Petition has been tabled (you know, the kind that government actually listen to) that should give them an idea of how popular this issue actually is and whether or not they should go against the vocal dinosaur Michael Atkinson.

From the petition:
"Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that the Classification of Computer Games and Images Act 1995 is currently out of step with the wishes of the electorate.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House that it be amended to permit computer games to receive the R18+ classification when they have been refused classification under the Commonwealth Act."

The petition can be found here (Queensland signatories only)
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_qld/CurrentEPetition.aspx?PetNum=1346&lIndex=-1
Government

Two Senators Call For ACTA Transparency 214

Posted by kdawson from the we-got-more-senators-than-that dept.
angry tapir writes "Two US senators have asked President Barack Obama's administration to allow the public to review and comment on a controversial international copyright treaty being negotiated largely in secret. The public has a right to know what's being negotiated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent, argue in the letter."

Submission + - P2P Injunctions - Lawyers Pretended to Be Police (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by commodore64_love
commodore64_love writes: In May of this year, anti-piracy group SGAE made a visit to Juan Colone of Spain, who was running two P2P trackers. They SGAE visitors included a lawyer, a computer expert and a clerk, purporting to be officers of the court and handing-over what appeared to be a warrant. They searched through Colone's house looking for evidence and computers, and then obtained an injunction from a Spanish court to take-down Colone's P2P trackers.

Today the court reversed its initial decision, allowing the trackers to be restored to operational order, and dismissing the collected hard drive evidence. “As I said in the hearing: how can it be that an interchange between a Polish and an Argentinian would be registered in [Colone's] hard disk if not even a single bit passes through my client’s website? I explained to the judge how P2P networks function and he was convinced that this evidence is impossible and useless, so he annulled the previous resolution held by the same court.” said defense lawyer Javier de la Cueva.

What is troubling is that the court initially allowed illegally-collected evidence to be the basis for seizing a private citizen's personal property. Where is due process?
Communications

Telcos Want Big Subsidies, Not Line-Sharing 340

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the give-us-money-and-leave-us-alone dept.
It seems that a recent survey of global broadband practices by Harvard's Berkman Center at the behest of the FCC has stirred the telecommunications hornet's nest. Both AT&T and Verizon are up in arms about some of the conclusions (except the ones that suggest offering large direct public subsidies). "Harvard's Berkman Center study of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC's request, is an 'embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance,' declares AT&T. The study does nothing but promote the lead author's 'own extreme views,' warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it 'should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan,' concludes the United States Telecom Association. Reviewing the slew of criticisms, Berkman's blog wryly notes that the report seems to have been 'a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants.'"
Apple

Submission + - A 1980s home computer family celebration (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: In the early 1980s, makers of PCs and related products felt they had to work really hard to convince typical American families that home computing was fun, useful, and not too intimidating. So they ran lots of ads with wholesome families crowded around the computer, entranced by its wonders. A quarter-century later, the ads are nostalgic, funny...and vaguely disturbing. At Technologizer, we rounded up ten examples.
The Media

Submission + - Murdoch-Microsoft Deal in the Works

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is in discussions to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet. Microsoft’s interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content. “This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan. "It's easy to believe that [Microsoft] may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google," writes Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. "Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either: he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.""

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