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Comment This is politics, not antitrust (Score 1) 167

Unlike the Microsoft case, there is no entry bar for another competitor. They don't have ties into browsers and markets any more than anyone else. The sole reason they dominate the market is because they do it the best. One only has to type in another search engine site and/or change the homepage to use another serach engine. There is no consumer restriction here, thus no antitrust. All it takes is for someone to have a better search and Google is history. Of course competitors seem to more inclined to bring a case against them rather than try to improve their own sites There is probably a better case against Microsoft for forcing all IE users to use Bing to start. Google is not using another market to muscle its way into search, they ARE the market due to constant innovation.

Comment Re:Wait a sec... (Score 1) 596

Here here. It's not like you can't pirate on IOS or PCs or XBox or Playstation...... This guy is just complaining because he can't screw people as much as he wants for a crappy game. There are donation only apps that make ton s of money, and I have been more than happy to scape a few bucks here and there to pass on. What I won't do is pay through the teeth for half-baked games Besides if people really didn't like those choices Android would not be outselling Iphones. The real difference between the two OSes are the people that use them. People who use Iphones usually do so becuase it's "simple" or "cool". This type of customer usually downloads the first thng that catches thier eye and pays for it. Android users tend to be more about productivity or messing around. Each of these groups tend to look into alteratives before downloading, so if there is a free app that does the same thing they tend to choose that. I also challenge him to show piracy and not simply low sales.

Comment I'm not sure if we are asking the right questions. (Score 1) 1115

The question proposed is "Has any creative work failed because of piracy?" The real question is "why has piracy become acceptable?" I Think we can answer this in 2 parts. 1) Congress has made copyright so long that it is essentially "forever" in terms of relevance. This also has an effect of stifling new work that may make use of, or resemble, something else released since it will never become public domain in our lives. 2) Because the respective industries have taken great pains to lock out any works they do not own, they have no reason to produce anything but music, movies etc. that meets the lowest common denominator since it is cheaper to market a few groups or movies than thousands. The book publishers still thrive despite thousands of choices and a vast array of independent publishers. Sure there are some blockbusters and duds, but they still make money, and would without the incredibly long copyright period. This policy of force feeding media and eternal copyright has made the whole idea a joke. Couple that with the "creative accounting" where the artists don't get paid and no one respects the copyright law. Why should they? The only ones who make money seem to be the ones intent upon curtailing our choices and creativity.

Comment Re:gone (Score 1) 1093

"Except, the burden of proof is not on the skeptics" Actually that is completely wrong. A theory has been proposed that supposedly endangers us all. Evidence is presented. If they are wrong, there is little damage in implementing the solutions provided, and may even ultimately save us money. However, failing to act could be disasterous. "Hey Harry, I think letting the collant run out of the Reactor chamber would be bad" "Oh Geoge, you're just being an alarmist. Can you prove it is disasterous every single time?" The problem is that you can only disprove the sceptics by letting it happen, and by then it is too late. Even if the global temperature rise IS natural, and by some freak of nature, all of the pollution and CO2 we spew out has nothing to do with the excelleration, a rise in temperature is bad for us. This is simple logic. So, even IF all of these scientists are wrong, we still need to do something.

Comment It was HIS fault.... (Score 1) 902

If people become too much of a jerk, start telling their manager that you can't keep going over there to fix things "they" broke. Doesn't matter if they did. If managers think their employees are loosing time becasue they are mucking with their computer, they tend to get upset. It used to work well for me when I was doing helpdesk many years ago. I was treated like crap by the engineers until I started bring ing their managers into the process. Once the manager knew the person was costing the company money, things changed.
Security

Submission + - Phony TCP Retransmissions Can Hide Secret Messages 2

Hugh Pickens writes: "New Scientist reports that a team of steganographers at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland have figured out how to send hidden messages using the internet's transmission control protocol (TCP) using a method that might help people in totalitarian regimes avoid censorship. Web, file transfer, email and peer-to-peer networks all use TCP, which ensures that data packets are received securely by making the sender wait until the receiver returns a "got it" message. If no such acknowledgement arrives (on average 1 in 1000 packets gets lost or corrupted), the sender's computer sends the packet again in a system known as TCP's retransmission mechanism. The new steganographic system, dubbed retransmission steganography (RSTEG), relies on the sender and receiver using software that deliberately asks for retransmission even when email data packets are received successfully. "The receiver intentionally signals that a loss has occurred," says Wojciech Mazurczyk. "The sender then retransmits the packet but with some secret data inserted in it." Could a careful eavesdropper spot that RSTEG is being used because the first sent packet is different from the one containing the secret message? As long as the system is not over-used, apparently not, because if a packet is corrupted the original packet and the retransmitted one will differ from each other anyway, masking the use of RSTEG."
The Courts

Submission + - Church of Scientology on trial in France (theage.com.au)

Anonymous Coward writes: "A trial opened in Paris that could spell the end of the controversial Church of Scientology in France. Seven senior French officials of the church, as well as its French headquarters — the Church of Scientology-Celebrity Centre — and the headquarters' bookshop went on trial on charges of organised fraud and operating a pharmacy without a licence. A conviction on the charges could lead to a fine of up to 5 million euros ($A8.95 million) and, more importantly, the dissolution of the church in France. The case is based on complaints filed by two women in December 1998 and July 1999."
Communications

Submission + - Chemical Infofuses Communicate Without Electricity (technologyreview.com)

Al writes: "Researchers at Harvard and Tufts University have developed a way to encode messages without using electricity. David Walt, professor of chemistry at Tufts and Harvard's George Whitesides developed "infofuses" that can transmit information simply by burning. The fuses--metallic salts depositing on a nitrocellulose strand--emit pulses of infrared and visible light of different colors whose sequence encodes information. They were developed in response to a call from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for technologies to allow soldiers stranded without a power source to communicate. In the first demonstration of the idea, they used the infofuses to transmit the message "LOOK MOM NO ELECTRICITY.""
Sony

Submission + - Sony CEO proposes "Guardrails for the Internet (huffingtonpost.com) 4

testadicazzo writes: "Micheal Lynton, the guy who said " I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet. Period. "has posted an editorial at the Huffington Post entitled Guardrails for the Internet , in which he defends his comment, and suggests that just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway. The following is pretty indicative of the article:

Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want. Freedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.

"

Comment Re:Duh. (Score 1) 1601

That's great as long as there are consequences for reporting lies, and halve-truths. The problem has become that no one even gets a hand slapped when they don't research, or even make up, stories and report lies or rumors. You want to use the public airwaves? Sure, but you can't lie to the people while doing it. Combine this with government pressuring reports on what they can and can't report and we have fascism.

Comment Re:Duh. (Score 1) 1601

Just because you are a conservative, doesn't mean you are a neo-con. The Fox is biased, NOT towards liberals, but towards the neo-con agenda. I am a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal. You would think I would love Fox for the fiscal side. However, the recent and administration and Fox news are NOT conservatives. They have spent money, hand-over-fist for pork, wars and personal gain. This is not what a conservative does.

Comment Re:Duh. (Score 1) 1601

The problem with that is that the new is supposed to be a check in this system of checks and balances. That is a major reason for the freedom of the press. They are supposed to be able to investigate and criticize the government. If you bring in "news for ratings" you break the balance. The news is supposed to report...well, the news. Biases will happen, but gross, conscious biases prevent people from getting the facts. The fact that many news organizations wrote positive articles about Obama can be directly abtributed to his charisma and positive message. What I found appalling is the lack of research and fact finding the news has been doing on either side. They should have been digging deep and offering information without an agenda. Fox on the other hand was inventing stories with and obvious bias. They had nothing to back up many of the stories, but headlined them anyway. This is just irresponsible, and if someone were doing it in the liberal direction, it would be just as bad. Even if all news organizations were unbiased, you have to realize that the news will not always be in the direction you like. Putting the number of article for one candidate against the number of the other one without understanding the other factors is simply bad science and is only hurting us as a nation. Remember that the decrease in pirates is the reason for global warming... http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

Comment Re:Two words (Score 1) 3709

So, you are saying we should have elected someone else and let these issues get worse? If you can't fix it all, and instantly, we might as well give up. Many of us know reality and know the first part of getting a plan together is getting the proper people. No, these types of issues will take some time. IT is easier to mess everything up than to fix it. So, are you going to be part of the problem or the solution?
AMD

Submission + - Inside AMD's Phenom Architecture

An anonymous reader writes: InformationWeek has uncovered some documentation which provides some details amid today's hype for AMD's announcement of its upcoming Phenom quad-core (previously code-named Agena). AMD's 10h architecture will be used in both the desktop Phenom and the Barcelona (Opteron) quads. The architecture supports wider floating-point units, can fully retire three long instructions per cycle, and has virtual machine optimizations. While the design is solid, Intel will still be first to market with 45nm quads (the first AMD's will be 65nm). Do you think this architecture will help AMD regain the lead in its multicore battle with Intel?

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