Slashdot Mirror

New submitter gale the simple writes "While it is fairly common for the jaded and cynical to ride on the lawyers these days (often including Henry VI's famous line about them), every now and then we can see that they are not always the plague and scourge of the earth. EFF again shows that even lawyers can do good in this world. (PDF) All jokes aside, something seems to have moved. Maybe all that bloodletting between the major corporations (Apple vs Samsung) made the leaders recognize that MAD world of patents might not be very stable." From the EFF: "The Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research division of Congress known for its objective studies, recently released a report on the effects of patent trolls on innovation and the economy. ... According to the CRS report, 'The vast majority of defendants settle because patent litigation is risky, disruptive, and expensive, regardless of the merits; and many [patent trolls] set royalty demands strategically well below litigation costs to make the business decision to settle an obvious one.' Businesses lose both time and money, and innovation suffers."

nmpost writes "Nearly two years ago, the FCC outlined its rules for net neutrality. Notably absent were rules for wireless networks. There are several legitimate reasons that the same rules applied to wired networks can not apply to wireless networks. However, the same danger lies in leaving wireless networks unguarded against the whims of its administrators. As we move more and more towards a wireless dominated internet, those dangers will become more pronounced. We are going to need a massive investment in infrastructure in this country regardless of net neutrality rules. Demand for wireless is going to continue to grow for many years to come, and providers are not going to be able to let up. Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth. Eventually, demand will slow, and these practices will have to be addressed. This is where allowing internet providers to regulate themselves becomes an issue. Self regulation usually does not end well for the consumer. Imagine allowing power plants and oil refineries to determine what chemicals they could pour into the air. Would they have the population's best interest at heart when making that determination? In the future when the infrastructure can match the demand, what will stop internet providers from picking winners and losers over their wireless networks? As conglomerates like Comcast gobble up content providers like NBC, a conflict of interest begins to emerge. There would be nothing from stopping one of the big wireless providers like AT&T or Verizon from scooping up a content provider and prioritizing its data speed over the network."

judgecorp writes "Although Adobe wants to can mobile Flash, the Android Flash app has returned to the Google Play store in the UK after disappearing earlier this month. It has come back because of pressure from large organisations, in particular the BBC, whose popular iPlayer video on demand service uses Flash. The Android app is back, apparently for as long as it takes the BBC to move to HTML5."

Cory Doctorow has posted the content of his talk delivered at Google this month on what he calls the coming civil war over general purpose computing. He neatly crystallizes the problem with certain types of (widely called-for) regulation of devices and the software they run — and they all run software. The ability to stop a general purpose computer from doing nearly anything (running code without permission from the mothership, or requiring an authorities-only engine kill switch, or preventing a car from speeding away), he says boils down to a demand: "Make me a general-purpose computer that runs all programs except for one program that freaks me out." "But there's a problem. We don't know how to make a computer that can run all the programs we can compile except for whichever one pisses off a regulator, or disrupts a business model, or abets a criminal. The closest approximation we have for such a device is a computer with spyware on it— a computer that, if you do the wrong thing, can intercede and say, 'I can't let you do that, Dave.'"

New submitter jasper160 writes "An August 20th, 2012 announcement from Iran places restrictions on female university students. Iran will be cutting 77 fields of study from the female curriculum, making them male-only fields. Science and engineering are among those affected by the decree. 'The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.' The announcement came soon after the release of statistics showing that women were graduating in far higher numbers than men from Iranian universities and were scoring overall better than men, especially in the sciences. Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women." Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote to the UN that this effort is "part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena,"

New submitter RocketAcademy writes "With the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex as a backdrop, XCOR Aerospace has announced its intentions to establish an operational base for the Lynx spacecraft in Florida. Plans call for XCOR to begin initial operations from a Florida location in 2014 with the Lynx Mark I prototype. As market demand dictates, XCOR may also establish a manufacturing and assembly center for the production vehicle, designated Lynx Mark II."

First time accepted submitter presroi writes "Al Jazeera is reporting on the current state of plans by the German government to amend the national copyright law. The so-called 'Leistungsschutzrecht' (neighboring right) for publishers is introducing the right for press publishers to demand financial compensation if a company such as Google wants to link to their web site. Since the New York Times reported on this issue in March this year, two draft bills have been released by the Minister of Justice and have triggered strong criticism from the entire political spectrum in Germany, companies and activist bloggers.(Full disclosure: I am being quoted by Al Jazeera in this article)"

New submitter atsabig10fo writes "Twitter has finally released the hinted-at changes to their API, which include limiting the number of users for third party clients, per-endpoint rate limiting, and restrictions on how tweets can be displayed and posted. Twitter's Michael Sippey wrote, 'One of the key things we've learned over the past few years is that when developers begin to demand an increasingly high volume of API calls, we can guide them toward areas of value for users and their businesses. To that end, and similar to some other companies, we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens.' Third party app developers are certainly going to be sweating these changes, and it puts the future of new development in question."

First time accepted submitter Penurious Penguin writes "Last week Craigslist demanded exclusive license to the content you post there, an odd demand which would have prevented ad-content on Craigslist from being advertised anywhere else but Craigslist. Thankfully, today we read from the EFF, the Good News: Craigslist drops exclusive license to your posts. From the article: 'For many years, craigslist has been a good digital citizen. Its opposition to SOPA/PIPA was critically important, and it has been at the forefront of challenges to Section 230 and freedom of expression online. We understand that craigslist faces real challenges in trying to preserve its character and does not want third parties to simply reuse its content in ways that are out of line with its user community’s expectations and could be harmful to its users. Nevertheless, it was important for craigslist to remove the provision because claiming an exclusive license to the user’s posts--to the exclusion of everyone, including the original poster--would have harmed both innovation and users’ rights, and would have set a terrible precedent. We met with craigslist to discuss this recently and are pleased about their prompt action.'"

ananyo writes "Almost one-quarter of the world's population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion (abstract). Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers — which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders — provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries. Yet in most of the world's major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs' capacity for renewal."

waderoush writes "PARC research fellow Van Jacobson argues that the Internet was never designed to carry exabytes of video, voice, and image data to consumers' homes and mobile devices, and that it will never be possible to increase bandwidth fast enough to keep up with demand. In fact, he thinks that the Internet has outgrown its original underpinnings as a network built on physical addresses, and that it's time to put aside TCP/IP and start over with a completely novel approach to naming, storing, and moving data. The fundamental idea behind Jacobson's alternative proposal — Content Centric Networking — is that to retrieve a piece of data, you should only have to care about what you want, not where it's stored. If implemented, the idea might undermine many current business models in the software and digital content industries — while at the same time creating new ones. In other words, it's exactly the kind of revolutionary idea that has remade Silicon Valley at least four times since the 1960s."

alstor writes "Yesterday an update to Knight Capital Group's algorithmic trading software caused massive volume buys and sells, resulting in large price swings on the New York Stock Exchange. As a result, the NYSE canceled some of the trades, but today the loss to Knight has been calculated at $440 million. Ignoring adjustments for inflation, this makes the cost of this glitch almost as much as the $475 million charge Intel took for the Pentium FDIV Bug, which might warrant adding this bug to the list of worst bugs. In light of this loss and the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash, perhaps investors will demand changes from firms using algorithmic trading, since the SEC is apparently too antiquated to do anything about it (PDF)."

Bill Dimm writes "Craigslist now demands an exclusive license to the content you post there. How many people are aware that they are agreeing not to post their job ads, rentals, items for sale, etc. anywhere else when they post to Craigslist?" It's not going out on much a limb to suspect this is to strengthen Craigslist's position against those extension sites they love so much.

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a massive power breakdown has hit India for a second day running, leaving more than half the country without power as the northern and eastern grids have both collapsed. The breakdown has hit a large swathe of the country including Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan states in the north, and West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in the east. Power cuts are a common occurrence in Indian cities because of a fundamental shortage of power and an aging grid. The chaos caused by such cuts has led to protests and unrest on the streets but the collapse of an entire grid is rare — the last time the northern grid failed was in 2001. India's demand for electricity has soared in recent years as its economy has grown but its power infrastructure has been unable to meet the growing needs. In the weeks leading up to the failure, extreme heat had caused power use to reach record levels in New Delhi and on July 30 a line feeding into the Agra-Bareilly transmission section, the 400-kV Bina-Gwalior line, tripped, triggering the collapse. The second grid collapse occurred on 31 July as the Northern, Eastern and North-Eastern power grids of India tripped/failed causing power blackout in 19 states across India. The crisis was allegedly triggered after four states — Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and UP — drew much more than their assigned share of power."

nk497 writes "Google is in more trouble over the Street View Wi-Fi data slurping incident. Two years ago Google admitted it had collected snippets of personal data while sniffing for Wi-Fi connections. The UK's data watchdog, the ICO, didn't fine Google, but did demand it delete the collected data. Following the FCC's investigation, the ICO double-checked with Google that the data was deleted, receiving confirmation that it had. Except... it hadn't all been deleted, Google has now admitted. That breaches the deal between the ICO and Google, and the watchdog has said it's in talks with other regulators about what to do next."

Kiyyik writes "Google just announced the details behind their inaugural fiber optic service in Kansas City. They're doing a set of packages including $120/month for tv plus internet, $75/month for internet alone, and regular 'conventional' internet for a one time $300 fee. Rollouts are starting in the central areas and will work their way out on a demand basis: at least ten percent of a neighborhood must sign up for the service before Google will come in and start hanging fiber." Update: 07/26 22:04 GMT by T : Nick Kolakowski points out at GeekNet's Slash Cloud that this Google will probably hinge future developments on how well the Kansas City push works.

judgecorp writes "Southampton Council in the UK has been ordered to stop snooping on every taxi cab in the city. Privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office has said it is "disproportionate" to demand that every Southampton taxi has CCTV that constantly monitors driver and passengers, including recording all conversations."

nmpost writes with one interpretation of Netflix's Q2 results (PDF). From the article: "The beginning of the end may be at hand for Netflix. On Tuesday, the movie rental company posted its second quarter results, and they were not promising. While the company returned to profitability following a first quarter loss, Netflix had a 91% drop in net income. The company's troubles began when it attempted to split its DVD-by-mail and streaming services, effectively doubling the price it was charging customers. External forces are now beginning to weigh on the company, and its doom appears to be within sight. The biggest challenges facing Netflix over the coming months are going to be competition and licensing fees. Three huge companies are competing against Netflix in the streaming arena, which has already surpassed its DVD-by-mail business. Amazon, Apple, and Google all offer streaming content as well. As movie and television studios began to demand higher licensing fees, Netflix will not be able to pay, while these tech giants will. Netflix will eventually be priced out of the market." Engadget, on the other hand, shines some positive light on the report: "The results are in from its Q2 2012 earnings report, and it's claiming 27.56 million streaming subscribers worldwide, up from 26 million last quarter. In the US alone that includes 23.94 million customers, after it reported 23.4 million in Q1, while DVD customers dropped by 850k to 9.24 million." So it appears that Netflix is either gaining new streaming customers, or converting those expensive DVD customers into more lucrative streaming-only customers.

itwbennett writes "Amazon, which has come under attack for harsh warehouse working conditions, on Monday announced a new training benefit program for fulfillment center employees. The program will cover 95% of the cost of vocational training for jobs that Amazon determined to be in high demand and that pay relatively well, including aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technology, medical laboratory science and nursing." Two limitations of note: the maximum Amazon will contribute is $2,000/year for four years, and the employees need to have worked full-time for three consecutive years before they can take advantage of the program.

walterbyrd writes with news that Apple has won a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 across the European Union, thanks to a decision in a German regional court today. At the same time, the court re-affirmed the denial of an injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a version of Samsung's 10.1" tablet that was modified to avoid infringing upon the same patents Apple had asserted earlier. The two companies are still fighting on the other side of the Atlantic as well. In a filing today in a San Diego, California court, Apple is claiming $2.5 billion in damages. "Samsung's infringing sales have enabled Samsung to overtake Apple as the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world. Samsung has reaped billions of dollars in profits and caused Apple to lose hundreds of millions of dollars through its violation of Apple's intellectual property." Samsung, of course, thinks it should owe much less — $0.0049 per unit per patent — if anything.