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Submission + - First Long-Term Artificial Heart Implant (reuters.com)

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: Previously devices have either been of an heart-assist type or short term heart replacements. Physicians at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris have inserted a heart made by the French Carmat company. The heart features bovine tissue components used to reduce the clot forming tendencies of fully artificial units and is intended to allow greater freedom of movement to the patient than previous, short-term use, units permitted. It is powered by external, wearable, lithium-ion batteries and is approximately 3 times heavier than a typical (European) human heart though the manufacturer intends to reduce the weight and size of the unit so as to allow use by smaller recipients in particular most women and men from areas of the world where average body size is less than white/caucasian averages...they specify India and China though this is hardly an exclucive clientelle.

Comment Good Memories (Score 5, Informative) 49

by TrueSatan (#44762269) Attached to: Ken Wallis Autogyro Pioneer Dies At 97
I knew Ken when I worked at Weslake Developments in Rye, East Sussex, an engineering R&D company that designed and tested engines for the UK automotive and aviation industries (I was the firm's Costing Engineer at the time); he was one of the directors of the firm. He was always a calm and reasonable voice in often head debates over the future of the company. His accomplishments gave him a platform that got people to listen but it was his warmth and understanding, both of technical issues and the people involved, that made him so respected and such an asset to the company. His flair for the dramatic was never far away...he'd journey from Lydd Airport (principally owned by Richard Branson who knew Ken well) piloting a skeletal Autogyro, of his own design and that he had built, landing it in a field behind the business park where Weslake Developments was housed. I've many happy memories from that time and value them greatly...I'll surely miss him.

Submission + - http://istumblrdown Shuttered by Cease and Desist Order (istumblrdown.com)

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: Blogging platform Tumblr has issued a Cease and desist notice to http://istumblrdown.com/ a rather trivial and harmless site that simply offered status updates for Tumblr. The site owner claims this to be symptomatic of Tumblr's disregard for users needs quoting http://zachinglis.com/posts/why-tumblr-sucks and their fixation on banning users rather than any more positive improvements they might make to their platform. http://www.dailydot.com/news/missing-e-banned-tumblr/

Submission + - Tesla Motors: Early Re-Payment of Tesla's ATVM Loan (teslamotors.com)

Submitted by fredan
fredan writes: On February 26, at an event hosted by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Elon Musk announced Tesla will pay off our Department of Energy (DOE) loan five years early, twice as fast as required by the original 2010 loan agreement signed by Tesla and the DOE.

It is worth noting that in comparison with these three other recipients, Tesla had the smallest loan. Ford's loan was for $5.9 billion, Nissan's was for $1.4 billion, and Fisker's was for $529 million.

Submission + - Copyright Trolls Order Wordpress to Disclose Critics IP Addresses (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: Notorious copyright troll Prenda Law have sent a subpoena to Wordpress attempting to force the disclosure of all IP addresses related to two Wordpress hosted sites that specialise in monitoring and encouraging action against copyright trolling. The sites in question are http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ and http://dietrolldie.com/ . These sites state their aims as "To keep the public and fellow victims informed and to ensure that through activism, trolls make as little money as possible."...aims which almost anyone bar a copyright troll, or lawyer acting for one, might well applaud.
  Prenda Law's demand is not for a subset of addresses that might have posted in a manner that could be construed as legally defamatory but for all IP addresses that have accessed these sites irrespective of the use made of them.
Prenda Law have filed three defamation lawsuits already http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2013/03/04/copyright-trolls-prenda-law-paul-duffy-and-john-steele-commence-three-lawsuits-v-paul-godfread-alan-cooper-and-our-community/ against the individuals who run fightcopyrighttrolls and one has been dismissed http://fightcopyrighttrolls.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gov-uscourts-flsd-416314-6-0.pdf

Dietrolldie release the following warning:

“As there is a possibility that a release could occur, the public IP address (date/time stamp) could fall into the hands of Prenda. I would expect that they would then try to cross-reference the IP address with their list of alleged BitTorrent infringement IP addresses,” .

“If you have ever gone to this site or Fightcopyrighttrolls.com since 1 January 2011, you may want to contact WordPress and tell them you want them to refuse this overly broad request and at least wait until the issue of the case being removed to the Federal court is answered, before releasing ANY information,” DTD concludes.

Submission + - US Attorney General Defends Handling of Aaron Swartz Case (wired.com)

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday said the suicide death of internet activist Aaron Swartz was a “tragedy,” but the hacking case against the 26-year-old was “a good use of prosecutorial discretion.” The attorney general was testifying at a Justice Department oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary committee and was facing terse questioning from Sen. John Cornyn (D-Texas).
Holder stated: “I think that’s a good use of prosecutorial discretion to look at the conduct, regardless of what the statutory maximums were and to fashion a sentence that was consistent with what the nature of the conduct was. And I think what those prosecutors did in offering 3, 4, zero to 6 was consistent with that conduct.”
Notwithstanding Holder’s testimony, Massachusetts federal prosecutors twice indicted Swartz for the alleged hacking, once in 2011 on four felonies and again last year on 13 felonies. The case included hacking charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that was passed in 1984 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality.

Submission + - Dotcom wins right to sue NZ Government (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Court of Appeal judgement released today has ruled in favour of the internet mogul and will let him sue the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) alongside New Zealand Police. During the High Court case, it emerged that the GCSB had been illegally spying on Dotcom prior to the raid on his Coatesville mansion, on behalf of the FBI, who now wants the Megaupload millionaire extradited to face trial in the US over copyright infringements.
GNOME

Submission + - Gnome Founder Miguel de Icaza Moves To Mac (tirania.org) 1

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: Miguel de Icaza, via his blog, has declared his intention to move to the Apple Mac platform stating his main reasons as being, "To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros, and the incompatibilities across versions of the same distro were my Three Mile Island/Chernobyl."

Reaction to his announcement includes http://blogs.kde.org/2013/03/05/gnome-founder-leaves from Jonathan Riddell of Blue Systems/Kubuntu.

Given Miguel de Icaza past asociation with Microsoft (CodePlex Foundation) and the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman's description of de Icaza as a "traitor to the free software community" http://www.osnews.com/story/22225/RMS_De_Icaza_Traitor_to_Free_Software_Community this might be seen as more of a blow to Microsoft than to GNU/Linux.

Submission + - Tesla Motors Loses Appeal Against BBC Top Gear (bailii.org)

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: In a highly detailed decision the UK Court of Appeal has rejected Tesla's appeal against an eartlier ruling by a lower court that, too, rejected Tesla's case. Reading through the decision it is clear that the judge saw Tesla's case as lacking sufficient detail and specific instances of proof to support each claim. The judge stated that that Tesla's chances of a successful appeal, should the case have gone to trial, were insufficiently high to justify holding a trial. He stated that Tesla's case had no real chance of success and in many notes picked appart Tesla's legal team's arguments...that said he did not say that Top Gear were right or justified in portraying Tesla's vehicle in the way they did merely that there wasn't a legal case for an appeal.
One of the key flaws in Tesla's case, according to the judicial decision, was Tesla's inability to show that actual pecuniary harm, with detailed financial figues, had occured.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Canonical Announces Mir: A New Display Server Not On X11 Or Wayland (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On the Ubuntu Wiki is now the Mir specification, which is a next-generation display server not based on X11/X.Org or Wayland. Canonical is rolling their own display server for future releases of Ubuntu for form factors from mobile phones to the desktop. Mir is still in development but is said to support Android graphics drivers, open-source Linux graphics drivers, and they're pressuring hardware vendors with commercial closed-source drivers to support it too. They also said X11 apps will be compatible along with GTK3 and Qt/QML programs. Canonical isn't using X11 or Wayland with their future Unity desktop as they see many shortcomings from these existing and commonly used components. Will Mir work as Ubuntu's own display server?
Canada

Submission + - Canada Launches ACTA Bill (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: In an utterly craven move the Canadian government has launched a bill http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=6013262 to bring Canada into full compliance with the discredited, US led, ACTA agreement...an agreement to which most of the world does not agree. To further pressure the acceptance of this awful bill the US, on the same day, released their Trade Policy and Agenda Annual Report http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/AnnualReport Final2013.pdf that calls on Canada to comply with ACTA obligations. For ACTA to take effect it would require six signatures from the major economic blocks and it appears to have no remaining possibility of getting them yet the US, and now Canada, continue to push it forward.

The Canadian bill features claims based on spurious health and safety concerns that have been thoroughly debunked by a US report http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423 , Despite these claims being so dubious they remain a cornerstone of the Canadian bill. Similarly the claimed losses due to counterfeiting ($30 Billion US) stated in the bill have also been debunked and were plucked from thin air as 3-4% of US/Canadian trade http://cacn.ca/PDF/4-JMyers-CME.pdf without any substantiation of why the figure should be applied.

    The Canadian bill seeks to give border guards an unprecedented level of control without the possibility of judicial oversight and with any contentious decisions being at the whim of copyright holders discretion...guilty until proven innocent and with no chance to prove oneself innocent.

Despite a lack of evidence to suggest that Canada is a major source of counterfeit product the bill puts at risk fully legal parralel import of generic items..pharmaceuticals for instance see https://sites.google.com/site/iipenforcement/acta-section-analysis.

  The bill would also change copyright infringement from a civil dispute to a breach of criminal law.

Pity Canada if this bill is enacted!

Comment "Refining" Openness and Accessibility = Reducing (Score 2, Insightful) 49

by TrueSatan (#43026537) Attached to: Ubuntu Developer Summits Shifting Online, Increasing Frequency
Forcing anyone who might wish to participate to join Google+ Hangouts also forces them to allow Google access to their real names and personal data thus Canonical yet again sjows that it has no, real, understanding, nor interest, in openness or accessibility and still less personal freedom and privacy. As they have with their Amazon affiliate contract they care more about commercial interests than the rights of their users or developers. Like the EFF and the FSF I never include Ubuntu GNU/Linux in any recommendation list...actually I steer people away from it.

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