7617446
submission
Jbabe writes:
Two men have been charged after cooking a rat and serving it with rice as a meal for fellow contestants on a reality TV show. D'Acampo, 33, and Manning, 30, were confronted by RSPCA...they were both charged with animal cruelty offences and ordered to appear in court on February 3...If found guilty, the pair face up to three years in jail...Broadcasts of the program in Britain, could also face charges. RSPCA NSW chief inspector David O'Shannessy said it was unacceptable for the rat to have been killed for a TV show. "The concern is this was done purely for the cameras. The show's producers were ordered by the RSPCA to hand over footage showing how the rat, which was believed to be tame, was killed.... But D'Acampo and Manning had been filmed telling contestants how they had caught the rat in the bush before the chef killed it with his kitchen knife and skinned it. "It was the best recipe I ever did," he said afterwards.
7617250
submission
bonch writes:
In a surprising statement on CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This will only fuel concerns about Google's behavior as it becomes a powerful gatekeeper of information, though Google says it's aware of its growth and has taken steps to be transparent to users about the information they store.
7616670
submission
awyeah writes:
The New York Times reports that the FCC is finally looking into the practice of cable companies requiring use of their set-top boxes to access their digital cable and video on demand services. The inquiry states "Consumers can access the Internet using a variety of delivery methods (e.g., wireless, DSL, fiber optics, broadband over powerlines, satellite, and cable) on myriad devices made by hundreds of manufacturers; yet we know of no device available at retail that can access all of an MVPD's services across that MVPD's entire footprint."
Yes, there are a few devices out there — for example CableCARD-enabled TVs, and CableCARD/Tuning Adapter-enabled TiVos and Windows Media Center PCs, but only the cable companies' set-tops can access services other than broadcast TV, such as video-on-demand and pay-per-view.
Is it finally time to open these devices and embrace actual standards and competition?
