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German Kindergartens Ordered To Pay Copyright For Songs Screenshot-sm 291

BBird writes "Deutsche Welle reports: 'Up until this year, preschools could teach and produce any kind of song they wanted. But now they have to pay for a license if they want children to sing certain songs. A tightening of copyright rules means kindergartens now have to pay fees to Germany's music licensing agency, GEMA, to use songs that they reproduce and perform. The organization has begun notifying creches and other daycare facilities that if they reproduce music to be sung or performed, they must pay for a license.'"

Submission + - Skype outage affects millions (skype.com)

JustABlitheringIdiot writes: As I write this I am waiting for my Skype to finally log me back in.

Apparently they lost some of their supernodes for quite a while there and things are now slowly recovering. Can anybody explain what happened in more depth? Did this affect your business today?

Submission + - Skype Suffers Massive Outage (dslreports.com) 1

tudorl writes: Several users have written in to note that Skype appears to be having a major outage at the moment, something confirmed by the significant volume of complaints on Twitter. Skype has yet to comment on the reason for the outage, or precisely how many customers are impacted, though their Twitter account confirms the problem. "Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype," says the company, adding that "we’re investigating, and we’re sorry for the disruption to your conversations."

Comment Re:That would explain this email I got last week.. (Score 1) 548

"Dear Xxxxxxxx, We want to let you know about two important changes to the Netflix service. 1. The price of your current plan, which includes access to Blu-ray discs, is changing from $16.99 a month to $17.99 a month. This new price will be effective with your next billing statement on or after January 2, 2011, and will be referenced in your Membership Details. With your current plan you can both instantly watch unlimited TV episodes and movies on your computer or TV and receive unlimited DVDs by mail........." If I ever get a choice, I'll be dropping Comcast like a hot rock; its not bad enough that they raise the prices and cut the services they provide every year, but now on top of everything else, they are going to cause the cost of everything I do and/or subscribe to online to go up too? Jesus what a bunch of fuckin' douchebags....

This was a Netflix wide price increase. I don't have Comcast anymore and neither do several of my friends (not even in the service area) and we all got the same email. If I remember I think I got a letter in the snail mail too.

Comment I can see it now (Score 1) 325

A hot woman wearing this underwear hits a scanner and

TSA Agent: *snickers* "Ma'am I'm afraid there appears to be an anomaly with your underwear. I'm going to have to ask you to take them off."
Woman: "Take them off?!?!"
TSA Agent: "Yes please go right over there behind that one way see through privacy shield and oh don't mind the cameras they aren't HD capable."
FOX News: "Local woman arrested for refusing to take off her bomb concealing underwear for the TSA. She must be a terrorist otherwise she would have cooperated like and good American. It is Un-American to keep your underwear on."

Comment Re:is this what you're worried about? (Score 1) 712

Next time a terrorist blows up a plane, stand up and say, "yeah, it is sad and tragic. But we as a country have gone through far worse. We lost a million soldiers in WW II. 50K in Vietnam. Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, London were all bombed mercilessly. We survived. Compared to that it losing two buildings and 3000 people is nothing. If we cower in our shoes and crap in pants, the terrorists have won. Just let us go back to normalcy."

Absolutely agreed. I've said the same thing before so you are not alone. But just like sex makes society uncomfortable so does death so this is a big pill for people to swallow. Thank you.

Comment Re:Shoot the messenger == no politicians left (Score 1) 712

images are being saved in the interests of national security and to use as evidence when and if potential threats are intercepted, and the perpetrators brought to justice".

Now I won't say that somebody in the interest of trying to sell the system to the masses didn't lie and say that the images are not stored. But, IIRC the answer from the people making the decision to implement and writing the spec was and always has been that an image is recorded and stored whenever an alert is triggered to be used as evidence in a trial.

I would suggest that given the need to keep the images from alerts as evidence that the gross failing of the system is the fact that these images were not encrypted and stored securely or destroyed after the person was cleared / the alert declared false.

Comment Re:Have studied Geomorphology (Score 2, Informative) 250

I'm not from USofA and thus have no idea if You will need to $$ to get it.

You don't always need to pay for a topo map. They can be found online here for free. I use these at work all the time and they are decent if not really out of date sometimes. All you need is the coordinates (can be had from google earth or maps).

Also I agree with previous poster RWarrior(fobw) it is probably a ferrous carbonate such as siderite or something similar and you have most likely found a sinkhole. Now if they are uncommon in your area you may have something special there.

Comment Re:Disturbing to see TSA still behind the curve. (Score 1) 633

Really now that actually taking control of a commercial aircraft is all but impossible, those aircraft are no longer the really high value targets.

It's not so much that it is a high value target anymore. Hell these people really aren't after high value targets, if they can get one in the process that is gravy, but otherwise they are only in it to sew the seeds of fear. Their only discernible goal is to cause as many people as possible to be inconvenienced or waste as much money as possible. The whole goal is to degrade the value of western society as we know it. The fact that the US and the world for that matter has reacted they way it has means they have been successful. The leaders have even publicly stated they consider these "failures" to be successes because people are scared and more money is being wasted on "security measures".

It may sound callous but I think that the only way to defeat these idiots is to not change anything and to just go about our lives. Yeah they blew up a plane and a lot of people died. OK we mourn the dead, get over it, and move on. No costly changes to procedure no fear of what will be next. Eventually services to the areas they infect will diminish, i.e. no air travel or cargo in or out, etc. They can go back to living in the stone age and the locals will suffer and eventually rise up and better themselves or continue to live blissful and ignorant.

I do believe in equality for ALL people all over the world and I work towards a peaceful secular society in my actions daily but until that happens what else do we have but life, liberty, and happiness?

Comment Re:Internet2 was great for academia.. (Score 1) 216

The last time a "walled garden" Internet was tried, we had AOL.

I will forever suffer night terrors at the hands of that program. The mere mention of AOL keywords will cause seizures and uncontrollable wailing of "You've got mail!" aNd WhEn I wAkE uP i CaNt HeLp BuT tYpE lIKe ThIs.

xxxDamnItxxx

Comment Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score 1) 178

What does it say about our society when we, as a society, are eating our own because of our differences in basic premises? How is this sustainable? How is this good for society? If this keeps on in the same direction it will end in some type of civil war as civility between opposing points of view is rapidly deteriorating. Both sides will have their own thought police. Is that really a society any of us want to live in? If you don't like that society you're the only one who can change our current direction as the only way the current direction our society is taking can change is for individuals to change. Government can't do anything about it, other than try to legislate what point of view is allowed, and I don't really think anyone wants to go there.

Too late... The time for change was long ago, 1960's, at least in the US anyway.

Comment Re:Science Journalism (Score 3, Funny) 570

So, is a mini-big bang just a bang, then?

I hate this constant need for science journalists to oversell and over-hype an outstanding achievement with misleading hyperbole. They didn't create mini big bangs. They smashed lead ions to try to recreate the conditions that existed shortly after the big bang. It's already an impressive enough achievement without cheapening it with sensationalist BS.

Absolutely right no need to over hype it and create big headlines. Just give them credit for the bang-up job.

Comment Re:Why bother? (Score 1) 111

But it doesn't make sense from a practical standpoint. All the parts that went into it are out of production. You might find some screws or maybe even some tubing that have lingered on to fill the need of some obscure sub-market, but other than that, it's all gone. You'd have to create production lines for every last part. And production lines for every part that goes into every larger part. Certify all of the components and the facilities where they are made.

How is developing and certifying new production lines for Saturn V parts any different than the original proposal to develop and certify production lines for a new heavy lift rocket like the constellation? It would seem to me to be the same cost with the one exception being that having produced the other parts at some point previously there should be some record of the challenges and common problems that had to be overcome which would make it slightly easier to restart production than from scratch.

That's just my two cents but I would be interested to hear otherwise.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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