Comment Re:Imaginary problem (Score 2, Informative) 51
You're wrong. See Russia's cyberwars on Estonia (2nd story) and Georgia.
SCO v. Novell Goes To the Jury 67
Excelcia writes "Closing arguments in the six and a bit year old slander of title case between SCO and Novell occurred today and the case is finally in the hands of the jury. It's been an interesting case, with SCO alternately claiming that the copyrights to UNIX did get transferred to them, and that the copyrights should have been transferred to them. 'Judge Ted Stewart said, after the jury left to begin to deliberate, that in all his years on the bench, he's never seen such fine lawyering as in this case.' We're not going to find out the results until at least Tuesday, however, as one juror is taking a long weekend. Great lawyering notwithstanding, we can all hope next week that the Energizer bunny of all spurious lawsuits will finally go away."
Submission + - FCC inquires about Verizon fees (wired.com)
olsmeister writes: As previously discussed here on Slashdot, the FCC has sent Verizon Wireless a letter asking them why they are increasing the early termination fees, as well as why they are charging non-data customers who accidentally press the wrong button and go online. The pdf of the letter can be viewed here. Maybe someone at the FCC does read /.
Submission + - What Drugs Do Astronauts Take? (discovery.com)
astroengine writes: Science fiction is stuffed full of examples of pill-popping space explorers and aliens enjoying psychedelic highs. After all, space is big, it can get boring/scary/crazy up there. It's little wonder, then, that our current space explorers consume a cocktail of uppers, downers, tranquilizers and alcohol to get the job done. Robert Lamb on tranquilizers in the space station: "Sure, it hardly makes for a civilized evening aboard ISS, but it beats someone blowing the hatch because they think they saw a something crawling on one of the solar panels."
Submission + - Hearst Launching Kindle Competitor (engadget.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "The Hearst Corporation has announced their intention to launch an e-reader competitor to Amazon's Kindle and a supporting store and platform that is much more "publisher friendly." More details are also available form their official press release this morning. "Launching in 2010, Skiff provides a complete e-reading solution that includes the Skiff Service platform, Skiff Store and Skiff-enabled devices. Skiff will sell and distribute newspapers, magazines, books, blogs and other content. Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to maintain their distinct visual identities, build and extend relationships with subscribers, and deliver dynamic content and advertising to a range of dedicated e-readers and multipurpose devices. Skiff is headquartered in New York City and also has offices in Palo Alto, Calif. Visit Skiff at www.Skiff.com.""
Submission + - Salon.com Editor Looks Back at Paywalls (guardian.co.uk)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Techdirt pointed out an interesting retrospective by Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of Salon.com, about their experiments with paywalls and how repercussions can last a lot longer than some might expect. "More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is "closed" to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.""
Submission + - Play with LEGOs, get arrested by SWAT team (jeremybell.com)
An anonymous reader writes: 6 SWAT, 2 uniformed officers, 2 undercover, a chopper in the air, surrounding streets blocked off with five cop cars, two ambulances and a dozen cops. That's what it takes to stop a man packing LEGOs. Jeremy bought himself one of these, someone saw him playing with it in the office and the rest is history.
Comment Re:without interruption of its primary function... (Score 1) 332
It totally begs the question: how is that a benefit to society?
The system is designed to reward the inventor and allow them a fair chance to recoup their research and development costs by granting them an exclusive monopoly. Having a patent makes it harder for you to get ripped off as you try to manufacture/market/sell your invention. Would AMD/ATI spend millions of dollars to develop the next GPU if the instant they produced it nVidia could start making the same product, but sell it at half the price because they didn't have R&D costs to recoup?
It theoretically benefits society because it requires innovations to be disclosed in exchange for the grant of this monopoly. After the patent runs out the innovation is available to all to use. In the short term, it invites people to innovate, rather than copy. Theoretically it would also push people to actually _do_ something with their ideas, rather than let them die in a notebook somewhere.
The problem is that the system has turned to one that is used to stifle innovation, rather than to promote it. When the patent office started allowing broad concepts or obvious ideas to be patented is when things took a turn for the worst. When Amazon can sue you for allowing your customers to order things with a single click, the system is broken. When (at least from the way it sounds) it is impossible to create and market a software program of any complexity without some shell company with nothing but an armful of questionable patents attempting to shake you down, the system is broken. When companies with deep pockets can prevent useful products that would benefit society from threaten their business model from making it to market by sitting on key patents, it's a problem.
Comment Re:ok (Score 1) 151
Actually, Netflix made streaming to Macs available late last year. Unfortunately, it requires you to install MS Silverlight, which is pretty irritating to many Apple aficionados.
Submission + - One broken router takes out half the internet? (merit.edu)
Silent Stephus writes: "I work for a smallish hosting provider, and this morning we experienced a networking event with one of our upstreams. What is interesting about this, is it's being caused by a mis-configured router in Europe-- and it appears to be affecting a significant portion of the transit providers across the internet. In other words, a single mis-configured router is apparently able to cause a DOS for a huge chunk of the internet. And people don't believe me when I tell them all this new-fangled technology is held together by duct-tape and bailing wire!"
Congress Endorses Open Source For Military 145
A draft defense authorizing act in Congress includes wording plugging open source software. It seems both cost and software security were considerations. This is an important victory for open source. "It's rare to see a concept as technical as open-source software in a federal funding bill. But the House's proposed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (H.R. 5658) includes language that calls for military services to consider open-source software when procuring manned or unmanned aerial vehicles."
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The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. -- Edsger Dijkstra
