I just had a look at your link and omg, if that isn't the very definition of law-making gone insane.
I agree with the broad goal of preventing "unrestricted use of wildlife for commercial purposes", but...
All birds native to North America, (which excludes pigeons, European starlings, and English house sparrows), are protected by at least one, and sometimes many more, federal laws. Additionally, many states and municipalities also regulate the keeping of wild birds...Each of these laws has a separate set of regulations and permits. Depending on the species of bird you would like to possess, at least one and possibly three federal permits may be required.
Does it not make more sense to streamline everything into one set of laws which can be more easily explained to the public? Normally I'm not in favour of ignorance of the law being an excuse, but it may well be justified in this case since the law makers seem to have gone out of their way to make it difficult for the public to stay on the legal side.
If you look at the website of the World Food Prize org, you will find:-
The World Food Prize sincerely thanks the following sponsors for supporting its annual programs:... The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation DuPont Pioneer John Deere Foundation The Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition Monsanto DuPont Pioneer Ruan Transportation Management Systems Claudia and Paul Schickler....
The World Food Prize Foundation on Friday accepted a $5 million contribution from Monsanto Company to ensure the continuation of the annual World Food Prize International Symposium -- now known as the "Borlaug Dialogue." The funds support a renewed fundraising campaign to transform the historic Des Moines Public Library building into a public museum to honor Dr. Norman Borlaug and the work of the World Food Prize Laureates.
When you look up the WFP website , you will find that "The World Food Prize is sponsored by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan and is located in Des Moines, Iowa."
Your solution is plausible, but it would be too much work and expense for the average ripper.
The idea is not to have an unbreakable DRM scheme, which would be impossible to create anyway but to raise the cost and difficulty of breaking the scheme to dissuade the casual ripper.
I'm not even sure that the average joe knows how to "use a statistical analysis to blank out the differences". I certainly don't.
Plus the fact that it doesn't sound like the results they obtain from that exercise is applicable across the board to different books, meaning they need to repeat this process for every single DRMmed book, ad infinitum.
If you want to know who to blame in Congress for passing laws authorizing government spying, here is a very helpful summary.
Sitting members who voted for surveillance every time
Rep. Robert Aderholt (Alabama, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Spencer Bachus (Alabama, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jo Bonner (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Mo Brooks (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Martha Roby (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Alabama, Republican)
Sen. Jeff Sessions (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Terri Sewell (Alabama, Democratic)
Sen. Richard Shelby (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Ron Barber (Arizona, Democratic)
Sen. Jeff Flake (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. Trent Franks (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. Paul Gosar (Arizona, Republican)
Sen. John McCain (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. David Schweikert (Arizona, Republican)
Sen. John Boozman (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Rick Crawford (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Tim Griffin (Arkansas, Republican)
Sen. Mark Pryor (Arkansas, Democratic)
Rep. Steve Womack (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Ken Calvert (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jeff Denham (California, Republican)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (California, Democratic)
Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Darrell Issa (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California, Republican)
Rep. Howard McKeon (California, Republican)
Rep. Gary Miller (California, Republican)
Rep. Devin Nunes (California, Republican)
Rep. Ed Royce (California, Republican) - all five times
Sen. Michael Bennet (Colorado, Democratic)
Rep. Mike Coffman (Colorado, Republican)
Rep. Cory Gardner (Colorado, Republican)
Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colorado, Republican)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut, Democratic)
Sen. Tom Carper (Delaware, Democratic)
Rep. Gus Bilirakis (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Vern Buchanan (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Kathy Castor (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Ander Crenshaw (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Ted Deutch (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. John Mica (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jeff Miller (Florida, Republican)
Sen. Bill Nelson (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Rich Nugent (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Tom Rooney (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Dennis Ross (Florida, Republican)
PC sales are declining with the rise of smartphones and tablets.
Uh oh, our traditional PC market is dying.
High-definition screens are proliferating, showing up on most every machine. Android is increasingly pervasive. Yesterday’s PC industry, which produced several hundred million units a year, will soon become a computing-devices industry that produces many billions of units a year. And visual computing is at the epicenter of it all.
But wait! The mobile market is hot hot hot!
For chip-makers like NVIDIA that invent fundamental advances, this disruption provides an opening to expand our business model.
We should go all in on mobile and get some of that delicious moolah.
But it’s not practical to build silicon or systems to address every part of the expanding market. Adopting a new business approach will allow us to address the universe of devices.
How can we like, totally dominate this market?
So, our next step is to license our GPU cores and visual computing patent portfolio to device manufacturers to serve the needs of a large piece of the market.
Lets licence out our IP! You saw how it like, totally worked for ARM, right?
The reality is that we’ve done this in the past. We licensed an earlier GPU core to Sony for the Playstation 3. And we receive more than $250 million a year from Intel as a license fee for our visual computing patents.
We tried it in baby steps, and the money was delicious.
Now, the explosion of Android devices presents an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate this effort.
In the actual GAO report, WOW was not even mentioned by name once.
In fact, at the very start, the report says:-
Transactions within virtual economies or using virtual currencies could produce taxable income in various ways, depending on the facts and circumstances of each transaction. For example, transactions within a "closed-flow" virtual currency system do not produce taxable income because a virtual currency can be used only to purchase virtual goods or services. An example of a closed-flow transaction is the purchase of items to use within an online game. In an "openflow" system, a taxpayer who receives virtual currency as payment for real goods or services may have earned taxable income since the virtual currency can be exchanged for real goods or services or readily exchanged for governmentissued currency, such as U.S. dollars.
TFA makes it clear the only people who may be taxed are the gold-sellers who sell in game goods for real money on third party exchanges/websites outside of the game.
I don't disagree with you on the merits of the x264 encoder (open source, etc) but are you sure that x.264 is free? Because it seems from this webpage that you need to pay for a licence to use it.
Also, from the H.264 standard itself is not free. The party who makes the encoder and the party who distributes the encoded file to the end users for commercial use has to pay for licensing.
Although H.264 is an open standard, in that it was developed by a consortium of companies and anyone can make and sell an encoder or decoder, it's not free -- you've got to pay for a royalty fee to use it, and the rates are set by the MPEG-LA, which collects payments and distributes them to its members.
V8 and V9 are not the same. V8 itself may have a bad history and be a crap codec, performance wise. Is V9 a bad codec as well, performance wise? Has Google done anything that justifies the wholesale boycott of V9?
VP9 is still a work in progress, so no hard numbers as yet. One of its goals is to achieve 50% better quality with the same bitrate compared to VP8. Another goal is to provide a better encoding efficiency than H.265 which has the same approach on achieving a better quality around 50% compared to H.264.
Google actually did a direct comparison between VP9 and H.264 on a sample file at its recent I/O event and showed off a 63% reduction in file size. As for the quality, see the pic for yourself.
As for the licensing issue, Google cut a deal with the MPEG-LA consortium that controls H.264 to licence their patents for VP8 and VP9. So there is low possibility of any user of VP9 of being bogged down by patent lawsuits.
Why should you care? Unlike H.265, VP9 is free for commercial use. If your use is non-profit, there is no difference between the two.
For those of you who are US citizens, as someone who lives in a part of the world where this privilege against self-incrimination is not recognised, I say - guard this privilege jealously.
It is always a temptation for those in power to water down, as much as they can, rights given to their citizens. In their eyes, these rights make their job difficult. They will try to narrow the scope (Oh, these rights only apply in some exceptional circumstances). They will try to obfuscate (Do you have such rights? No, its not part of the law). They will try to impose restrictions (You only have this right if you take the following steps). They will create new law to circumvent the rights (Sorry, this new law says you no longer have that right).
Over time, rights which are not protected will be whittled down to uselessness. If you think this is hyperbole, go look up, for example, the erosion of consumer rights and the expansion of intellectual property laws. There was a time when the music/game you bought was yours and could be passed down to your son and grandson. Now most of the time you don't even own what you paid for, you only have a limited 'license' to use it, enforced by DRM which is made illegal by law to circumvent. They got away with this because the public allowed them to take away their rights.
I think its fairer to say Trillian did not fail because of their own efforts, but because the whole Instant Messaging scene was overtaken by mobile. Trillian is not the only IM service hurting today. Users have been quitting ICQ, AIM, MSN and other services for a while now.
Most people if they want to broadcast would send out a tweet. If they want to message a smaller circle of friends, mobile apps such as Whatsapp, LINE, Kakao etc. work nicely.
If Trillian could figure out a way to tap into the networks of Whatsapp, LINE, Kakao, Viber, Wechat and other mobile messaging apps, there might be a niche for their product.
Hate to rain on your parade, but MS will remain very viable in the near future. They may be suffering a loss of mindshare, but the profits are still rolling in and are likely to keep rolling in for the future.
While sales of Win8 is slow, a majority of desktops still sport a variant of WinX as their OS. At some point, it is a certainty their users will want to upgrade and there is no significant competition for WinX right now. Both Lunux and iOS are relatively niche products.
It is still to early to call on Xbox One - while consumer market is heavily negative at the moment, it only ships in November and there is plenty of time for MS to try and catch up. Anedoctal evidence seems to show that most gamers prefer the Xbox One hardware and games, but hate MS policies which can be changed.
Further, any growth for Android is a win for MS. Many Android hardware makers have a licensing patent agreements with MS and MS earns for every device they make.
While reception to Office365 is unenthusiastic, for many people there is no other viable alternative to Office. MS knows, and is banking on this to be their bread-and-butter.
To be fair to the judge, he was the victim of a focused smear campaingn by MS. MS was fighting for its life and did not scruple at using every dirty trick it could.
MS complained about several interviews that Judge Jackson gave with journalists, in which the judge uttered some blunt and unflattering comments about Microsoft and its icon, Bill Gates. The judge said that Gates had a Napoleon complex, that Gates's "testimony is inherently without credibility," and he likened Microsoft's behavior to that of street gangs and drug dealers.
However, the judge's interviews and comments were made after he had heard all the evidence and the cases were closed. He decided that MS was not telling the truth, and that was his job. His only mistake was in granting the interviews before he issued his final judgment.
The judge was careless, certainly, but his decision should have been allowed to stand.
Q: Why would Saudi Arabia ban communication tools such as Viber, Whatsapp and Skype?
A: Because they have no control or access to the messages passed with these apps.
According to TFA, Viber was blocked for non-compliance, and that WhatsApp and Skype may be next on the list. What is most interesting is that the regulator issued a directive in March saying tools such as Viber, WhatsApp and Skype broke local laws, without specifying which laws.
What we do know is that in 2010, Blackberry was also banned by Saudi Arabia. The reason behind the ban was because BBM did not allow their customers' exchanges to be monitored by government. The ban was lifted after BB made a deal with the government to share user data.
Skype, Viber and WhatsApp AFAIK do not share their user data (for now).
Why has Saudi Arabia become emboldened to act now? Because the disclosure of the PRISM program makes them immune from international criticism. They can rightly point out that the US government already has access to the data. It shouldn't take long for other countries to follow suit with similar demands.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia and India have successfully demanded for access to blackberry mail.
Countries such as Syria and Turkey have demonstrated that they can cut off the internet from their country at will.
Iran is actively trying to promote their own intranet over the Internet at large.
The disclosure of the PRISM programme will only accelerate this trend and I forsee three major consequences arising from it:-
1) Now governments all over the world will demand that internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc disclose data that they want including the data of parties who are not their citizens. If the US will assert extra-territorial jurisdiction over the data of foreigners, so will they. And I don't see any excuse that these internet companies can use to refuse to disclose without being seen as hypocrites and as tools of the US government.
2) Governments all over the world, especially those who have not been historically friendly with the US will restrict or hinder the use of internet communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter, GMail and the like and accelerate the development of their own internal versions. To a certain extent this has already been taking place, for example VKontacte has largely supplanted Facebook in Russia, and in China Tencent, Sina, Baidu and its legions of smaller competitors rule.
3) PRISM will be a large or even fatal blow to internet freedom. Authoritarian governments will argue that they are justified in monitoring their citizens because the US does the same through PRISM.
Slightly off-topic, but there are some studies that appear to suggest that watching excessive amounts of television can detrimentally effect the development of children’s brains.
As reported by Reuters this month, researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), found that background noise emitted from television is so distracting and mesmerizing to children that it is impacting their ability to interact with other human beings and potentially slowing down cognitive thinking and language development.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that children in the US are now exposed to more than five hours a day of television. Matthew Lapierre, who led the study, explained that children who are subjected to the most TV spend less time interacting with other children and parents.
In a separate study , doctors at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London found that children born today will have watched a full year of television by the time they are seven years old. The study also found that on average children now spend more time watching television than they do in school.
Dr Aric Sigman published the study in the Archives Of Disease In Childhood, a medical journey jointly own by the British Medical Journal group.
Sigman noted that such extensive exposure to television can lead to a void when it comes to social relationships, can lead to attention deficit problems, and can promote significant psychological difficulties.
Granted, none of these are determinative but it is still food for thought.
In TFA, Varoufakis talks about the value of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, or ERT to Greece.
In light of the well publicised financial problems faced by the government in Greece today, can Greece affored to keep it open?
The government's excuse is thus:-
Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou – a former state TV journalist – described ERT as a "haven of waste". He said its employees would be compensated.
Kedikoglou said in a televised statement aired on the state broadcaster: "At a time when the Greek people are enduring sacrifices, there is no room for delay, hesitation or tolerance for sacred cows.
"ERT is a typical example of unique lack of transparency and incredible waste. And that ends today," Kedikoglou said. "It costs three to seven times as much as other TV stations and four to six times the personnel – for a very small viewership, about half that of an average private station."
ERT has long been seen as a bastion of quality programming in a media landscape dominated by commercial stations. But it was also used by successive governments to provide safe jobs for political favourites, and, while nominally independent, devoted considerable time and effort to showcasing administration policies.
Granted the government's self-interest is to spin this story in their favour, but unless they are lying, given the fact that there are more urgent public sector needs that need to be met (eg. hospitals, food kitchens etc) the reasons they gave seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.
So assuming that your home computer runs XP, is connected to the internet, and MS stops issuing security updates. You continue using the computer.
If you have a decent anti-virus and are careful about downloading suspicious files from strange sites, chances are you will never get infected with a virus/trojan.
Worst case scenario, you get infected with a virus/trojan. Most of them today are not interested in harming your computer/data, instead they harvest your personal information, especially financial information. If you have been reasonably careful about putting your financial information online (and you should be, regardless of how secured you may think your computer is), again, not much fallout there. You could be embarassed if your email is hijacked to send out spam, but theres no lasting harm from that.
Or, you could be hit with something that turns your computer into a bot. So what? Most people don't even notice it.
Then again, if your computer carries sensitive information or financial data, you should really have started taking steps long ago to protect it.
If the user is migrating to a new PC, which will have a new OS, a straight clone of the old hard disk is out of the question. You won't want bits and pieces of the legacy OS messing up your new comp. The average user is also less than organised, bits and pieces of his data will be scattered all over his hard disk in My Computer, Pictures, on his desktop, in the folder marked "Aunt Fanny". That's a substantial time investment digging out stuff he wants to keep and stuff he doesn't. Then theres also the legacy programs he still wants to use, for example the image browser whose settings he's customised to his satisfaction and figuring how to move that program over into his new hard disk...
These are the kinds of problems an average user would face. Most of them would not even have an external drive. The only extra drive they probably have is the one in their new computer.
I think that viewpoint is a bit too idealistic and disregards human nature. Humans have never been very good about reaching consensus and acting in concert. Just look at slashdot itself- imagine trying to get all the posters to agree on the same point and to take the same action.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of several likely responses you will get if you propose a boycott:- - It's not too expensive. - Developers deserve to be rewarded. - I can afford it. - I hate the price but I can't live without it - Why do I care.
My point being that your suggestion of a boycott is impractical and is never likely to happen.
If they saw an actual decline in consumption based on their price then maybe they would wake up.
Or, they could decide that since there was no demand, they won't make it any more. Eg. "Sales of the last RPG we made bombed, nobody plays RPGs anymore. Lets keep pumping out Madden games instead".
Reading TFA, it doesn't say anything about the camera being "always on".
Leaving open the possibility of using the "camera was not on" excuse. Why go through the hassling of explaining what happened to the footage instead of simply claiming it doesn't exist.
In 2012, of the 1,789 requests made by the government to monitor electronic communications, one was withdrawn by the government. Of the remaining 1,788 applications which came up before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), not a single one was denied. Yes, all 1,788 applications to monitor electronic communications were approved.
With a track record of 1,788 out of 1,788, thats an amazing homerun for the DoJ. Im forced to conclude that you are right, it is a fig leaf and a mighty flimsy one at that.
"There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize."
.
Doing the sums, 1,788 applications in 365 days (assuming they work over over Christmas and weekeneds etc) means they process almost 5 applications per day. One wonders how rigorous the review process can be under such deadlines.
If the authorities were truly concerned about the information being taken out of context, they could have explained the context. It's still not too late to do so. I hear crickets, however.
Perhaps a more apt summary of the PR statement would be, "We were caught with our hand in the cookie jar and have no excuses".
Slashdot Mirror
I just had a look at your link and omg, if that isn't the very definition of law-making gone insane.
I agree with the broad goal of preventing "unrestricted use of wildlife for commercial purposes", but...
All birds native to North America, (which excludes pigeons, European starlings, and English house sparrows), are protected by at least one, and sometimes many more, federal laws. Additionally, many states and municipalities also regulate the keeping of wild birds...Each of these laws has a separate set of regulations and permits. Depending on the species of bird you would like to possess, at least one and possibly three federal permits may be required.
Does it not make more sense to streamline everything into one set of laws which can be more easily explained to the public? Normally I'm not in favour of ignorance of the law being an excuse, but it may well be justified in this case since the law makers seem to have gone out of their way to make it difficult for the public to stay on the legal side.
If you look at the website of the World Food Prize org, you will find :-
The World Food Prize sincerely thanks the following sponsors for supporting its annual programs: ...
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation DuPont Pioneer John Deere Foundation
The Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition Monsanto DuPont Pioneer
Ruan Transportation Management Systems Claudia and Paul Schickler....
So, Monsanto is one of the sponsors of WFP. A pretty important one too, as shown by this link which used to exist on the Monsanto website.
The World Food Prize Foundation on Friday accepted a $5 million contribution from Monsanto Company to ensure the continuation of the annual World Food Prize International Symposium -- now known as the "Borlaug Dialogue." The funds support a renewed fundraising campaign to transform the historic Des Moines Public Library building into a public museum to honor Dr. Norman Borlaug and the work of the World Food Prize Laureates.
When you look up the WFP website , you will find that "The World Food Prize is sponsored by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan and is located in Des Moines, Iowa."
Not in itself damning, until you realise that :-
Monsanto has more facilities in Iowa than in any other state in the country
Monsanto has made substantial investments in Iowa
Monsanto actively lobbies to change laws in Iowa
I think its fair to say that Monsanto has a lot of influence in Iowa.
I question the integrity of this "prize".
Read between the lines, AC. Or are you one of those who take at face value everything the PR departments spoon feed to you?
Your solution is plausible, but it would be too much work and expense for the average ripper.
The idea is not to have an unbreakable DRM scheme, which would be impossible to create anyway but to raise the cost and difficulty of breaking the scheme to dissuade the casual ripper.
I'm not even sure that the average joe knows how to "use a statistical analysis to blank out the differences". I certainly don't.
Plus the fact that it doesn't sound like the results they obtain from that exercise is applicable across the board to different books, meaning they need to repeat this process for every single DRMmed book, ad infinitum.
If you want to know who to blame in Congress for passing laws authorizing government spying, here is a very helpful summary .
Sitting members who voted for surveillance every time
Rep. Robert Aderholt (Alabama, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Spencer Bachus (Alabama, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jo Bonner (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Mo Brooks (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Martha Roby (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Alabama, Republican)
Sen. Jeff Sessions (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Terri Sewell (Alabama, Democratic)
Sen. Richard Shelby (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Ron Barber (Arizona, Democratic)
Sen. Jeff Flake (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. Trent Franks (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. Paul Gosar (Arizona, Republican)
Sen. John McCain (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. David Schweikert (Arizona, Republican)
Sen. John Boozman (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Rick Crawford (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Tim Griffin (Arkansas, Republican)
Sen. Mark Pryor (Arkansas, Democratic)
Rep. Steve Womack (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Ken Calvert (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jeff Denham (California, Republican)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (California, Democratic)
Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Darrell Issa (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California, Republican)
Rep. Howard McKeon (California, Republican)
Rep. Gary Miller (California, Republican)
Rep. Devin Nunes (California, Republican)
Rep. Ed Royce (California, Republican) - all five times
Sen. Michael Bennet (Colorado, Democratic)
Rep. Mike Coffman (Colorado, Republican)
Rep. Cory Gardner (Colorado, Republican)
Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colorado, Republican)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut, Democratic)
Sen. Tom Carper (Delaware, Democratic)
Rep. Gus Bilirakis (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Vern Buchanan (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Kathy Castor (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Ander Crenshaw (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Ted Deutch (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. John Mica (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jeff Miller (Florida, Republican)
Sen. Bill Nelson (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Rich Nugent (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Tom Rooney (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Dennis Ross (Florida, Republican)
David Shannon says:
PC sales are declining with the rise of smartphones and tablets.
Uh oh, our traditional PC market is dying.
High-definition screens are proliferating, showing up on most every machine. Android is increasingly pervasive. Yesterday’s PC industry, which produced several hundred million units a year, will soon become a computing-devices industry that produces many billions of units a year. And visual computing is at the epicenter of it all.
But wait! The mobile market is hot hot hot!
For chip-makers like NVIDIA that invent fundamental advances, this disruption provides an opening to expand our business model.
We should go all in on mobile and get some of that delicious moolah.
But it’s not practical to build silicon or systems to address every part of the expanding market. Adopting a new business approach will allow us to address the universe of devices.
How can we like, totally dominate this market?
So, our next step is to license our GPU cores and visual computing patent portfolio to device manufacturers to serve the needs of a large piece of the market.
Lets licence out our IP! You saw how it like, totally worked for ARM, right?
The reality is that we’ve done this in the past. We licensed an earlier GPU core to Sony for the Playstation 3. And we receive more than $250 million a year from Intel as a license fee for our visual computing patents.
We tried it in baby steps, and the money was delicious.
Now, the explosion of Android devices presents an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate this effort.
More money is good.
The slashdot summary is wrong.
In the actual GAO report, WOW was not even mentioned by name once.
In fact, at the very start, the report says :-
Transactions within virtual economies or using virtual currencies could produce taxable income in various ways, depending on the facts and circumstances of each transaction. For example, transactions within a "closed-flow" virtual currency system do not produce taxable income because a virtual currency can be used only to purchase virtual goods or services. An example of a closed-flow transaction is the purchase of items to use within an online game. In an "openflow" system, a taxpayer who receives virtual currency as payment for real goods or services may have earned taxable income since the virtual currency can be exchanged for real goods or services or readily exchanged for governmentissued currency, such as U.S. dollars.
TFA makes it clear the only people who may be taxed are the gold-sellers who sell in game goods for real money on third party exchanges/websites outside of the game.
The WOW 1%ers are safe.
I don't disagree with you on the merits of the x264 encoder (open source, etc) but are you sure that x.264 is free? Because it seems from this webpage that you need to pay for a licence to use it.
Also, from the H.264 standard itself is not free. The party who makes the encoder and the party who distributes the encoded file to the end users for commercial use has to pay for licensing.
Although H.264 is an open standard, in that it was developed by a consortium of companies and anyone can make and sell an encoder or decoder, it's not free -- you've got to pay for a royalty fee to use it, and the rates are set by the MPEG-LA, which collects payments and distributes them to its members.
V8 and V9 are not the same. V8 itself may have a bad history and be a crap codec, performance wise. Is V9 a bad codec as well, performance wise? Has Google done anything that justifies the wholesale boycott of V9?
VP9 is still a work in progress, so no hard numbers as yet. One of its goals is to achieve 50% better quality with the same bitrate compared to VP8. Another goal is to provide a better encoding efficiency than H.265 which has the same approach on achieving a better quality around 50% compared to H.264.
Google actually did a direct comparison between VP9 and H.264 on a sample file at its recent I/O event and showed off a 63% reduction in file size. As for the quality, see the pic for yourself.
As for the licensing issue, Google cut a deal with the MPEG-LA consortium that controls H.264 to licence their patents for VP8 and VP9. So there is low possibility of any user of VP9 of being bogged down by patent lawsuits.
Why should you care? Unlike H.265, VP9 is free for commercial use . If your use is non-profit, there is no difference between the two.
Also from the list .
All of the top 10 supercomputers are running Linux. Overwhelming dominance indeed.
For those of you who are US citizens, as someone who lives in a part of the world where this privilege against self-incrimination is not recognised, I say - guard this privilege jealously.
It is always a temptation for those in power to water down, as much as they can, rights given to their citizens. In their eyes, these rights make their job difficult. They will try to narrow the scope (Oh, these rights only apply in some exceptional circumstances). They will try to obfuscate (Do you have such rights? No, its not part of the law). They will try to impose restrictions (You only have this right if you take the following steps). They will create new law to circumvent the rights (Sorry, this new law says you no longer have that right).
Over time, rights which are not protected will be whittled down to uselessness. If you think this is hyperbole, go look up, for example, the erosion of consumer rights and the expansion of intellectual property laws. There was a time when the music/game you bought was yours and could be passed down to your son and grandson. Now most of the time you don't even own what you paid for, you only have a limited 'license' to use it, enforced by DRM which is made illegal by law to circumvent. They got away with this because the public allowed them to take away their rights.
I think its fairer to say Trillian did not fail because of their own efforts, but because the whole Instant Messaging scene was overtaken by mobile. Trillian is not the only IM service hurting today. Users have been quitting ICQ, AIM, MSN and other services for a while now.
Most people if they want to broadcast would send out a tweet. If they want to message a smaller circle of friends, mobile apps such as Whatsapp, LINE, Kakao etc. work nicely.
If Trillian could figure out a way to tap into the networks of Whatsapp, LINE, Kakao, Viber, Wechat and other mobile messaging apps, there might be a niche for their product.
Hate to rain on your parade, but MS will remain very viable in the near future. They may be suffering a loss of mindshare, but the profits are still rolling in and are likely to keep rolling in for the future.
While sales of Win8 is slow, a majority of desktops still sport a variant of WinX as their OS. At some point, it is a certainty their users will want to upgrade and there is no significant competition for WinX right now. Both Lunux and iOS are relatively niche products.
It is still to early to call on Xbox One - while consumer market is heavily negative at the moment, it only ships in November and there is plenty of time for MS to try and catch up. Anedoctal evidence seems to show that most gamers prefer the Xbox One hardware and games, but hate MS policies which can be changed.
Further, any growth for Android is a win for MS. Many Android hardware makers have a licensing patent agreements with MS and MS earns for every device they make.
While reception to Office365 is unenthusiastic, for many people there is no other viable alternative to Office. MS knows, and is banking on this to be their bread-and-butter.
To be fair to the judge, he was the victim of a focused smear campaingn by MS. MS was fighting for its life and did not scruple at using every dirty trick it could.
MS complained about several interviews that Judge Jackson gave with journalists, in which the judge uttered some blunt and unflattering comments about Microsoft and its icon, Bill Gates. The judge said that Gates had a Napoleon complex, that Gates's "testimony is inherently without credibility," and he likened Microsoft's behavior to that of street gangs and drug dealers.
However, the judge's interviews and comments were made after he had heard all the evidence and the cases were closed. He decided that MS was not telling the truth, and that was his job. His only mistake was in granting the interviews before he issued his final judgment.
The judge was careless, certainly, but his decision should have been allowed to stand.
Q: Why would Saudi Arabia ban communication tools such as Viber, Whatsapp and Skype?
A: Because they have no control or access to the messages passed with these apps.
According to TFA, Viber was blocked for non-compliance, and that WhatsApp and Skype may be next on the list. What is most interesting is that the regulator issued a directive in March saying tools such as Viber, WhatsApp and Skype broke local laws, without specifying which laws.
What we do know is that in 2010, Blackberry was also banned by Saudi Arabia. The reason behind the ban was because BBM did not allow their customers' exchanges to be monitored by government. The ban was lifted after BB made a deal with the government to share user data.
Skype, Viber and WhatsApp AFAIK do not share their user data (for now).
Why has Saudi Arabia become emboldened to act now? Because the disclosure of the PRISM program makes them immune from international criticism. They can rightly point out that the US government already has access to the data. It shouldn't take long for other countries to follow suit with similar demands.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia and India have successfully demanded for access to blackberry mail.
Countries such as Syria and Turkey have demonstrated that they can cut off the internet from their country at will.
Iran is actively trying to promote their own intranet over the Internet at large.
The disclosure of the PRISM programme will only accelerate this trend and I forsee three major consequences arising from it :-
1) Now governments all over the world will demand that internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc disclose data that they want including the data of parties who are not their citizens. If the US will assert extra-territorial jurisdiction over the data of foreigners, so will they. And I don't see any excuse that these internet companies can use to refuse to disclose without being seen as hypocrites and as tools of the US government.
2) Governments all over the world, especially those who have not been historically friendly with the US will restrict or hinder the use of internet communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter, GMail and the like and accelerate the development of their own internal versions. To a certain extent this has already been taking place, for example VKontacte has largely supplanted Facebook in Russia, and in China Tencent, Sina, Baidu and its legions of smaller competitors rule.
3) PRISM will be a large or even fatal blow to internet freedom. Authoritarian governments will argue that they are justified in monitoring their citizens because the US does the same through PRISM.
Slightly off-topic, but there are some studies that appear to suggest that watching excessive amounts of television can detrimentally effect the development of children’s brains.
From the article :-
As reported by Reuters this month, researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), found that background noise emitted from television is so distracting and mesmerizing to children that it is impacting their ability to interact with other human beings and potentially slowing down cognitive thinking and language development.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that children in the US are now exposed to more than five hours a day of television. Matthew Lapierre, who led the study, explained that children who are subjected to the most TV spend less time interacting with other children and parents.
In a separate study , doctors at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London found that children born today will have watched a full year of television by the time they are seven years old. The study also found that on average children now spend more time watching television than they do in school.
Dr Aric Sigman published the study in the Archives Of Disease In Childhood, a medical journey jointly own by the British Medical Journal group.
Sigman noted that such extensive exposure to television can lead to a void when it comes to social relationships, can lead to attention deficit problems, and can promote significant psychological difficulties.
Granted, none of these are determinative but it is still food for thought.
In TFA, Varoufakis talks about the value of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, or ERT to Greece.
In light of the well publicised financial problems faced by the government in Greece today, can Greece affored to keep it open?
The government's excuse is thus :-
Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou – a former state TV journalist – described ERT as a "haven of waste". He said its employees would be compensated.
Kedikoglou said in a televised statement aired on the state broadcaster: "At a time when the Greek people are enduring sacrifices, there is no room for delay, hesitation or tolerance for sacred cows.
"ERT is a typical example of unique lack of transparency and incredible waste. And that ends today," Kedikoglou said. "It costs three to seven times as much as other TV stations and four to six times the personnel – for a very small viewership, about half that of an average private station."
ERT has long been seen as a bastion of quality programming in a media landscape dominated by commercial stations. But it was also used by successive governments to provide safe jobs for political favourites, and, while nominally independent, devoted considerable time and effort to showcasing administration policies.
Source here
Granted the government's self-interest is to spin this story in their favour, but unless they are lying, given the fact that there are more urgent public sector needs that need to be met (eg. hospitals, food kitchens etc) the reasons they gave seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.
So assuming that your home computer runs XP, is connected to the internet, and MS stops issuing security updates. You continue using the computer.
If you have a decent anti-virus and are careful about downloading suspicious files from strange sites, chances are you will never get infected with a virus/trojan.
Worst case scenario, you get infected with a virus/trojan. Most of them today are not interested in harming your computer/data, instead they harvest your personal information, especially financial information. If you have been reasonably careful about putting your financial information online (and you should be, regardless of how secured you may think your computer is), again, not much fallout there. You could be embarassed if your email is hijacked to send out spam, but theres no lasting harm from that.
Or, you could be hit with something that turns your computer into a bot. So what? Most people don't even notice it.
Then again, if your computer carries sensitive information or financial data, you should really have started taking steps long ago to protect it.
Not that easy.
If the user is migrating to a new PC, which will have a new OS, a straight clone of the old hard disk is out of the question. You won't want bits and pieces of the legacy OS messing up your new comp. The average user is also less than organised, bits and pieces of his data will be scattered all over his hard disk in My Computer, Pictures, on his desktop, in the folder marked "Aunt Fanny". That's a substantial time investment digging out stuff he wants to keep and stuff he doesn't. Then theres also the legacy programs he still wants to use, for example the image browser whose settings he's customised to his satisfaction and figuring how to move that program over into his new hard disk...
These are the kinds of problems an average user would face. Most of them would not even have an external drive. The only extra drive they probably have is the one in their new computer.
So now they want to search your phone for evidence the accident was caused the driver talking or texting.
Or, it could have been caused by your lack of sleep due to sleep apnea. So you should surrender your medical records, too.
Or, maybe your lack of sleep was because you have been working too hard. There goes your job records.
Or, maybe you were distracted by that hot blond by the roadside. Why not search her too (I could get behind that).
Or, maybe you were getting a bj while driving. Yes Maam, open up. Gotta swab the mouth ya know.
I think that viewpoint is a bit too idealistic and disregards human nature. Humans have never been very good about reaching consensus and acting in concert. Just look at slashdot itself- imagine trying to get all the posters to agree on the same point and to take the same action.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of several likely responses you will get if you propose a boycott :-
- It's not too expensive.
- Developers deserve to be rewarded.
- I can afford it.
- I hate the price but I can't live without it
- Why do I care.
My point being that your suggestion of a boycott is impractical and is never likely to happen.
If they saw an actual decline in consumption based on their price then maybe they would wake up.
Or, they could decide that since there was no demand, they won't make it any more. Eg. "Sales of the last RPG we made bombed, nobody plays RPGs anymore. Lets keep pumping out Madden games instead".
Reading TFA, it doesn't say anything about the camera being "always on".
Leaving open the possibility of using the "camera was not on" excuse. Why go through the hassling of explaining what happened to the footage instead of simply claiming it doesn't exist.
I did some research, and these are the facts.
In 2012, of the 1,789 requests made by the government to monitor electronic communications, one was withdrawn by the government. Of the remaining 1,788 applications which came up before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), not a single one was denied. Yes, all 1,788 applications to monitor electronic communications were approved.
In case you question the source, we know this from a 30 April 2013 letter from the Department of Justice to Senator Harry Reid. The source article is here.
With a track record of 1,788 out of 1,788, thats an amazing homerun for the DoJ. Im forced to conclude that you are right, it is a fig leaf and a mighty flimsy one at that.
Incidentally, Reggie Walton, presiding judge of the FISC has denied being a rubber stamp court. In his own words :-
"There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize."
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Doing the sums, 1,788 applications in 365 days (assuming they work over over Christmas and weekeneds etc) means they process almost 5 applications per day. One wonders how rigorous the review process can be under such deadlines.
Bravo, a keen observation.
If the authorities were truly concerned about the information being taken out of context, they could have explained the context. It's still not too late to do so. I hear crickets, however.
Perhaps a more apt summary of the PR statement would be, "We were caught with our hand in the cookie jar and have no excuses".