33074817
submission
MoldySpore writes:
If anyone has tried to get to The Pirate Bay in the last 24 hours, they have most likely been met with a timeout. As an article on TorrentFreak notes, only a week ago The Pirate Bay scolded Anonymous for it's attack on ISP Virgin Media, and now the site is currently the victim of a DDoS attack that is effectively keeping people from viewing the site. There is a lot of speculation as to whether this is retaliation from Anonymous, the work of an agency such as the RIAA and their associates, or an anti-pirate company such as PiratePay.
20931484
submission
MoldySpore writes:
When Zediva burst onto the streaming scene earlier this year, they managed to do something nobody else was doing. Navigating around the copyright law they found a way to stream rental movies not currently available on other services, because they were still inside the DVD sales window, and filled a role not currently part of the competitions services. The service grants a "rental" of the physical movie to the user, who is then able to stream it over the internet, usually with the option to re-rent after played. By having it be a rental service, they were able to avoid some of the legalese associated with streaming movies outside of that sales window. Needless to say the MPAA was not pleased. But instead of making nice with the MPAA, Zediva has decided to fight back in the form of expensive legal heavy-hitters from " elite San Francisco law firm, Durie Tangri", which has forced the MPAA to hire their own team of expensive legal ninjas.
Zediva argues what most technologically informed people would when looking at this service: that they are essentially a rental service who are renting physical media, and providing the DVD player and a very long cable to the renters' TV. They are able to do this while providing the same function that the traditional brick and mortar stores do during the DVD sales window: a place for people to watch rental movies that were just released on DVD. The only difference is that you don't have to physically walk into a shady video store and pick it up because they stream that DVD for you that you just rented. It is a clever interpretation of the copyright law, and will certainly have some impacts on future streaming cases.
18268574
submission
MoldySpore writes:
Stepping back from the positive and negative reviews of the new Tron sequel, Tron: Legacy (which has so far amassed over $111,000,000 dollars world-wide), something occurred to me after seeing the movie and reading the numerous reviews. It seems many of the reviews, and perhaps the reviewers themselves, can be split into two categories: Those who saw the original Tron when it came out and can put the new movie in context and those who either watched Tron recently to prepare for the sequel and/or never saw it and jumped right into the new movie.
While nostalgia plays an important role in any franchise's resurrection, technology has come so far in the last 28 years since the original release of Tron in 1982, it would seem the human imagination regarding technology has become somewhat disenchanted. Back in 1982, most anyone who saw the original Tron (or a few years after as it garnered "cult classic" status) was captivated, not just by the amazing computer generated graphics of the time, but about the possibility of a world inside a computer system, where programs walk around and interact with each other like humans, where bits and bytes are interactive things you could touch and see, and artificial intelligence was something to be feared (in the form of the MCP) rather than embraced.
For the new movie, most of my friends were born in the 80's, and the ones that saw the original Tron were much more open to the storyline than the ones who never saw the original or who watched it only recently to prepare for watching the new movie. While they all agreed the CG and 3D was amazing, they felt the story was "unimaginative" or "run-of-the-mill". Also, any younger people not born in the 80's, such as my younger sister who is very tech savvy herself, seemed to dismiss the plot and characters completely instead speaking only of the quality of the graphics and the music. I believe this speaks to how the human race has grown out of it's own imagination when it comes to technology since it entered the digital age. Young people can't see passed the fact that there isn't a world inside the computer, programs are just tools to be used by humans, and artificial intelligence is something discussed on a daily basis and should be embraced.
I'd be interested to hear what the Slashdot community's experiences and feelings have been about the new movie and it's effect on the people who went and saw it. Imagination is something uniquely human and has always played an important part in our ability to look passed our current limitations. With negative reviews of the new movie often referencing the "...sub-moronic script that feels like it was written by people who had never used a computer...", has some of this been lost now that digital technology is part of our daily lives? Does this signal a movement towards humans becoming indifferent to technological advances, and by association, the hindering of outside-the-box thinking when it comes to technology?
