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Submission + - Dutch Supreme Court sees game objects as goods (newser.com)

Submitted by thrill12
thrill12 writes: The Dutch Supreme Court ruled on January 31st that the taking away of possessions in the game Runescape from a 13-year-old boy was in fact theft because the possessions could be seen as actual goods. The highest court explained this not by arguing it was software that was copied, but by stating that the game data were real goods that were acquired through "effort and time investment" and "the principal had the actual and exclusive dominion of the goods" — up until the moment the other guy took them away, that is.
Communications

Submission + - Thailand welcomes Twitter's censorship plans, roya (thenextweb.com)

Submitted by
patiwat
patiwat writes: "The Thai government has called Twitter's tweet censorship move a "welcome development." Tweets may now be blocked at the request of the Thai government; the system will be used to discourage and punish lese majeste (criticism of the Thai King). The government previously declared that Facebook users worldwide "liking" a lese majeste Facebook link would also be prosecuted; over 10,000 Facebook pages have been removed and hundreds of individuals, including children and academics, have been jailed. Calls to reform the lese majeste laws have been fiercely criticized by no less than the Army Commander, whose backing is critical to the government's stability."
Google

Submission + - Judge Denies Dismissal of No-Poach Conspiracy Case

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Testifying before Congress in 2007, Google's HR chief stated: 'We make great efforts to uncover the most talented employees we can find.' But according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Google actually went to some lengths to avoid uncovering some of tech's most talented employees, striking up agreements with Apple, Intel, and other corporations to avoid recruiting each other's employees. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Disney, Pixar, Intuit and Lucasfilm must face a lawsuit claiming they violated antitrust laws by entering into no-poaching agreements with each other. 'I don’t want to see any obstruction on discovery,' Koh told lawyers during a hearing. According to the head attorney representing the plaintiffs, the total damages could exceed $150 million if just 10,000 entry-level engineers were affected.
Cloud

Submission + - New privacy laws could boost EU cloud industry (techworld.com)

Submitted by sweetpea86
sweetpea86 writes: Cloud providers based in the European market could turn the fear, uncertainty and doubt around data protection and the US Patriot Act to their advantage, according to Andy Burton, chairman of the Cloud Industry Forum. The only way that European companies can absolutely guarantee that their data doesn’t end up in the hands of US authorities is by choosing a provider that not only has a data centre within their jurisdiction, but is also owned by an organisation based in that jurisdiction.
Idle

Submission + - Bootstrapper Recognizes Tabletop Computer Users by (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Facial recognition might be all the rage in giving computer systems the ability to ascertain the identity of individuals — what with most people having different facial features and all. But a team from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, has taken a different approach to identify users of touch-based tabletop computers like Microsoft's Surface. Instead of focusing on the face, the team has looked in the opposite direction to develop a system known as Bootstrapper which distinguishes between users based on their footwear.

Comment Re:affect (Score 1) 2

by MojoMax (#38789661) Attached to: Google Updates Algorithm to Punish Websites with E
Worst case scenario is that a site appears lower in a Google search. You could argue that that might have a profound effect on any profits being made by these sites, but if they are making money from information that others are providing without filling the user's screen with ads I would argue that this is just a free market in action. I for one wholeheartedly agree with Google that user experience should be considered a search metric, and those sites with tons of pop ups and ads, in my opinion, should definitely move down a notch or two.

Comment best proxy (Score 1) 2

by MojoMax (#38789619) Attached to: Choosing anonymous proxies
I use the tor browser bundle for all my web traffic. It was originally designed to protect US Navy communications, it is completely free and almost entirely driven by the community. I think of it as a sort of p2p network, but rather than download peers the commodity being shared here is internet "relays". In my opinion tor is the best option for anyone looking to "anonymise" their traffic - or even just access BBC iPlayer from abroad without the need for a server for which you have shell access.
Google

Submission + - Google Updates Algorithm to Punish Websites with E (itproportal.com) 2

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Google has decided to take punitive actions against those websites that flood the top of their web pages with ads due to which the visitors have to scroll down to finally view the relevant contents on the page. According to Google, this type of layouts annoys the users and thus the web search company will be penalizing those websites through search results. The company disclosed this on its blog. According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such websites might not get high ranking on Google web search.
Technology

Submission + - Startup Combines CPU, DRAM and a Bunch of Crazy (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "CPU design firm Venray Technology announced a new product design this week that it claims can deliver enormous performance benefits by combining CPU and DRAM on to a single piece of silicon. Venray's TOMI (Thread Optimized Multiprocessor) attempts to redefine the problem by building a very different type of microprocessor. The TOMI Borealis is built using the same transistor structures as conventional DRAM; the chip trades clock speed and performance for ultra-low low leakage. Its design is, by necessity, extremely simple. Not counting the cache, TOMI is a 22,000 transistor design. Instead of surrounding a CPU core with L2 and L3 cache, Venray inserted a CPU core directly into a DRAM design. A TOMI Borealis core connects eight TOMI cores to a 1Gbit DRAM with a total of 16 ICs per 2GB DIMM. This works out to a total of 128 processor cores per DIMM. That said, when your CPU has fewer transistors than an architecture that debuted in 1986, there is a good chance that you left a few things out--like an FPU, branch prediction, pipelining, or any form of speculative execution. Venray may have created a chip with power consumption an order of magnitude lower than anything ARM builds and more memory bandwidth than Intel's highest-end Xeons, but it's an ultra-specialized, ultra-lightweight core that trades 25 years of flexibility and performance for scads of memory bandwidth."
Amiga

Submission + - Commodore OS Vision Beta (Linux) Available as Free (commodoreusa.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Commodore USA has been shipping its revamped C64s, which pack modern PC hardware into the good old plastic C64 keyboard-casing, for some time. A new line of Amigas, which feature even more powerful graphics-workstation level PC hardware, is also in development, and was announced some time ago. What has puzzled would-be buyers of the new C64s and Amigas for some time, however, has been precisely what Commodore USA's announced new Commodore OS will look like. That veil of secrecy has now been lifted with Commodore OS Vision Beta having been made available as a free download to all. Commodore OS appears to be a Linux-derived and Linux- compatible 64bit OS with a retro-novel Commodore look/styling, but also features full backwards compatitibility with old 8bit, 16bit and 32 bit era Commodore software via emulation, many classic games in particular (although you only get these when you buy one of the new Commodore computers). It also allows Windows to be installed and run in a virtual machine (Virtualbox), and promises a special "seamless mode", where Windows applications can be run straight inside Commodore OS as thought they are native applications. Those curious about whether Commodore can revive the once mighty Commodore platform now have a chance to (beta) test the new Linux, Windows and vintage Commodore compatible Commodore OS Vision for themselves.
Cellphones

Submission + - AT&T Caps Netflix Streaming Costs at $68K/Yr 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: What would you say if you went to join a gym and were told that it could cost you anywhere from $360 a year to $68,000 a year for the exact same usage? Don't be ridiculous, right? Well, that's really not so different from what the potential costs of streaming video on an AT&T smartphone are. According to AT&T's Data Usage Calculator, 1,440 minutes worth of streaming video consumes 2.81GB, which — if you manage to keep Netflix fired up all day and night — would result in a $360 annual bill under the grandfathered $30-monthly-unlimited-data plan, or $68,376 under the new $20-monthly-300MB plan. Still, that didn't stop a spokesman from characterizing the new AT&T data plans as 'a great value' for customers. So, what exactly does the Bureau of Consumer Protection consider unfair?
Businesses

Submission + - How the US Lost Out on iPhone Work

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year manufactured overseas. "It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad," write Charles Duhig and Keith Bradsher. "Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have outpaced their American counterparts so much that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products." Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option and recount the time Apple redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” says one Apple executive. “There’s no American plant that can match that.” Apple’s success has benefited the US economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products but ultimately, Apple executives say curing unemployment is not Apple's job. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”"
Science

Submission + - Faster-than-Fast Fourier transform

Submitted by CanEHdian
CanEHdian writes: MIT news reports on research done resulting in a Faster-than-fast Fourier Transform algorithm, the Nearly Optimal Sparse Fourier Transform, which also has practical applications:

At the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) this week, a group of MIT researchers will present a new algorithm that, in a large range of practically important cases, improves on the fast Fourier transform. Under some circumstances, the improvement can be dramatic — a tenfold increase in speed. The new algorithm could be particularly useful for image compression, enabling, say, smartphones to wirelessly transmit large video files without draining their batteries or consuming their monthly bandwidth allotments.

Paper will be available on arXiv.

Facebook

Submission + - Teens Sharing Passwords As Form of Intimacy (nytimes.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: The New York Times claims that the hot new trend among teenagers in love is to share passwords to their email and Facebook accounts, as the ultimate form of trust. According to Pew, 33% of teens surveyed say they do this. One expert says the pressure to share passwords is akin to the pressure to have sex. Forbes says don't do it!. "There is something pure and romantic about the idea of sharing everything, and having no secrets from one another. But it’s romantic the same way that Romeo and Juliet is romantic, in a tragic, horrible, everyone-is-miserable-and-dies-at-the-end kind of way." Sam Biddle at Gizmodo writes about which passwords are okay to share (like Netflix), but says to stay away from handing over email or Facebook passwords. "We all need whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.”

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I've never been canoeing before, but I imagine there must be just a few simple heuristics you have to remember... Yes, don't fall out, and don't hit rocks.

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