geobaker - Slashdot User

Submission + - Amazon Servers Used in Sony Playstation Hack (yahoo.com)

Submitted by

the simurgh

on Saturday May 14, 2011 @03:38PM

the simurgh writes: "Amazon servers may have been used to carry out the massive Playstation hack that compromised the personal information of more than 100 million Playstation Network users. According to a report from Bloomberg, sources close to the ongoing investigation say the attack was mounted from Amazon Web Service's cloud computing platform."

Submission + - Live Justice Comes to the Internet

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Saturday May 14, 2011 @01:06PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Boston Globe reports that an experiment in live justice is coming to the Internet, uniting citizen bloggers with the public’s right to know in one of Massachusett's busiest courthouses, Quincy District Court. Dubbed Open Court, the project will operate live cameras and microphones during criminal sessions where the court’s proceedings will be streamed live over the Internet at the Open Court website to give the public an unfiltered view of court proceedings while an operating Wi-Fi network serves citizen bloggers who want to post to the Internet. “The idea is that people can live blog, but they can also tweet,’’ says John Davidow, executive editor in charge of new media at WBUR, who developed the idea for the project adding that during the next year, the goal is to move the experiment outside the first session courtroom and to stream criminal and civil trials and small claims cases as well. The project was seeking a busy court and found it in Quincy where last year the court handled more than 7,000 criminal claims and more than 15,000 civil cases, including more than 1,100 restraining orders, nearly 1,000 substance abuse and mental health cases and more than 1,200 landlord-tenant cases."

Submission + - Keeping a Cellphone system going in a war (aljazeera.net)

Submitted by dogsbreath on Saturday May 14, 2011 @01:28AM

dogsbreath writes: An Al Jazeera article provides fascinating insight about how engineers for one of the Libyan cell providers in the rebel held East have kept the system going in the middle of a civil insurrection. Administering a now free cellular system in a war zone brings new meaning to the term BOFH as the engineers deal with bandwidth hogs and prioritize international traffic.

A technical decision to keep a copy of the user database (the HLR) in Benghazi was crucial to keeping peoples phones on line. There are reasons besides earthquakes and Tsunamis to keep your data backed up in geographically diverse locations.

The report expands and corrects the WSJ article covered on slashdot before.

Submission + - Appeals court throws out Rambus patent ruling (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Friday May 13, 2011 @07:47PM

angry tapir writes: "A U.S. appeals court has ruled on two patent lawsuits that pit Rambus against two competing DRAM makers, sending both cases back to district courts for reconsideration. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a lower court ruling requiring Hynix Semiconductor to pay Rambus damages and fees totaling US$397 million for the use of its patents in DRAM chips."

Submission + - Zediva Fights Back Against MPAA (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by MoldySpore on Friday May 13, 2011 @03:54PM

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.

Comment Re:Not just KPN (Score 1) 77

by geobaker on Friday May 13, 2011 @03:17PM (#36121278) Attached to: Dutch Provider KPN Under Fire Over DPI

Is it a sad commentary on the US that the general press in NL carry this as a hot/lead story, while over here it would be blip on the general press radar? Perhaps that's my age showing that I 'remember when...' this would have been a big deal in general in the US; now I think it would only be in certain interested groups.

(and I'm with MarkvW on DPI. damn i'm old... :)

Comment Re:Without PSN (Score 1) 386

by geobaker on Friday May 13, 2011 @03:53AM (#36115794) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Should Sony Compensate PSN Users?

Amen. I used to read the fine print on packaging of games and hardware to look for confirmation of compatability. Now I want to see what login/access stipulations are required.
I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but I'm just not interested in providing a company with my key personal data AND my hard-earned cash. Let me toil away in obscurity if *I* choose; I know I can expose myself (informationally speaking) at any time by clicking 2 buttons or 'answering a short survey' in exchange for a free 6-pack of coke.

Comment Re:resellers are forced (Score 2, Informative) 849

by geobaker on Monday December 08, 2003 @09:53PM (#7664922) Attached to: Finding Holiday Discounts on iPods?

... or shall we say 'co-erced'?
I worked for system integration companies for several years (98-02) which sold a large number of Apple based systems. What several others have deduced is correct:
as an Authorized Apple reseller, you agree to sell their products for certain prices or lose your Authorized status. The profit for the reseller varied by the MSRP - the higher the price, the wider the profit margin. So you made barely $100 (US) on an iMac, almost $200 on a dual USB iBook (2001), but $500 and up on a mid- to high end G4. [Makes me wonder how much vendors make on the Xserve and Xserve RAID...]

The only 'deals' you find (outside of free add-ons, as others have mentioned) are resellers who have lost (or are not renewing) their Authorized Reseller status. Then all bets are off and the vendor can clean house....

Unfortunately, there are only a few each year that are in that position, and they tend to have small inventories. The best 'deal' on Apple product otherwise are from those vendors that refurbish products (e.g.- SmallDog). Then you can get $100+ off the products which were returns, open boxes, or demos.

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