MPAA Kills More Innovation; Zediva Shut Down Permanently

Found on Techdirt on Monday, 31 October 2011
Browse Legal-Issues

Zediva, if you don't recall, let people rent movies remotely. It would load them up in a DVD player that you could log into. It legitimately bought the DVDs and used them just as you would at home if you rented a DVD and brought it home. The only real difference here was that the DVD player was at a central location, rather than your home. In a very weird ruling, a court determined that the length of the cord determines if something is infringing.

If you want to get a sense of the future under E-PARASITE/SOPA: this is it. Except it's even worse. Chris Dodd and the MPAA won't even need to go to court, they can just send a single notice to the payment processor for Zediva, and the plug would be pulled. Dead.

So I keep telling people how greedy and censor-happy the industry is. I keep telling people that thanks to them, their choices and market freedom gets limited. By doing so, I make people re-think their stance towards this industry, knowing that some now don't hand over as much money to them as before.

Qantas ordered to resume flights by tribunal ruling

Found on BBC News on Sunday, 30 October 2011
Browse Politics

An independent tribunal in Australia has ordered a permanent end to the industrial dispute that has grounded all Qantas flights.

Secretary of the ACTU union Jeff Lawrence said the ruling had made it clear that union action was not causing harm to the economy and that it was Qantas's actions that had brought the tribunal's intervention.

A Qantas statement on Saturday said all employees involved in industrial action would be locked out from Monday evening and flights grounded from 06:00 GMT on Saturday.

It must be tough having to deal with employees who do not act like slaves and decide to demand fair pay and good working conditions.

Made in China: Country's new supercomputer uses homegrown chips

Found on CNet News on Saturday, 29 October 2011
Browse Hardware

China is stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing efforts and using domestic chips for its latest supercomputer. It's going to be interesting to see how fast China can close in on U.S. supercomputer processor makers Intel, AMD, and Nvidia.

The Wall Street Journal noted that the China domestic supercomputing effort is very credible and signals an effort to cut the country's reliance on western companies. It's unclear whether China's chips are completely original blueprints or based on a previous design.

Maybe those blueprints are from other companies. It's not really much of a secret that China is the biggest player when it comes to industrial espionage and considering that a lot of factories over there already produce chips for others, it's not really far-fetched to assume that the technology behind those chips is not 100% chinese.

Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms

Found on Linux Foundation on Friday, 28 October 2011
Browse Hardware

"Secure boot" is a technology described by recent revisions of the UEFI specification; it offers the prospect of a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that can improve the security of many system deployments. Linux and other open operating systems will be able to take advantage of secure boot if it is implemented properly in the hardware.

How convenient that UEFI with it's current specifications would lock out other operating systems than Windows.

TSA misses loaded gun in bag at LAX

Found on USA Today on Thursday, 27 October 2011
Browse Various

Despite all the extra airport security measures installed since the 2001 terror attacks, federal security officials at Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX, missed a loaded gun inside a checked bag on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations are reporting.

The .38-caliber handgun fell out of a duffel bag as a luggage ramp crew was loading it onto an Alaska Airlines flight to Portland, Ore., the Times reports.

The TSA is way too busy groping children and old people to search guns in bags.

BT gets 14 days to block Newzbin2

Found on The Register on Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Browse Censorship

Websites and IP addresses will become unreachable for the first time in the UK for copyright reasons. The High Court has ordered BT to block subscribers access to Newzbin 2, as well as any other sites or end points it uses.

US movie studios brought the case over Usenet scraper Newzbin, and although BT tried to argue that copyright infringement wasn’t any of its business, and that policing it was intrusive, a court comprehensively rejected its arguments earlier this year.

We need even more blocks and censorship. It will help to increase the development of new layers on top of the current Internet which will make such attempts unuseable. Censorship has always been nothing more than a small roadblock; in the long run, it has never been a successful solution to any problem.

5 SECONDS to bypass an iPad 2 password

Found on The Register on Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Browse Software

Bypassing the unlock screen on iPad 2 can be accomplished by first pressing the power button until the power-off screen is displayed. Users then need only to close and reopen the fondleslab's 'smart cover' before, finally, pressing the cancel button to unlock the device.

One obvious workaround would be to instruct users to close any foreground application before locking their iPad.

Having to close foreground applications is a workaround just like the "hold your iPhone not like that" workaround.

Google dumps + from Boolean search tool

Found on The Register on Monday, 24 October 2011
Browse Internet

Google has quietly dropped the use of the + symbol to link search items, in a move it says will simplify the process of Boolean searching.

“We're constantly making changes to Google Search - adding new features, tweaking the look and feel, running experiments - all to get you the information you need as quickly and as easily as possible,” said Kelly Fee, Google Search community manager in a Google forum. “This recent change is another step toward simplifying the search experience to get you to the info you want.”

What a totally stupid move. Having to type two quotation marks instead of one plus sign surely enhances my experience. Just like the instant suggestions which slow my search down and the instant preview which is so annoying when accidentally having it pop up while navigating the search results. Google is going downhill fast with those changes and gives competitors a good chance.

Near-Perfect Young Dinosaur Fossil Found in Bavaria

Found on Spiegel on Sunday, 23 October 2011
Browse Nature

The fossil found in the central Bavarian community of Kelheim is about 98 percent complete, and also includes preserved bits of skin. "The around 135-million-year-old fossil is of outstanding scientific importance," dinosaur expert Rauhut told the German news agency DPA.

Though the 72-centimeter juvenile dinosaur is preserved in stone, a number of anatomical details remain. "The best-preserved Tyrannosaurus we have are about 80 percent preserved, and that is already terrific," said Rauhut, comparing the two theropods, which are among the rarest dinosaur fossils.

It would be great if they would find a 100% DNA sample that can be cloned. Putting aside the whole Jurassic Park story, seeing them run around again would be an impressive sight.

DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones

Found on Slashdot on Saturday, 22 October 2011
Browse Technology

DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost.

I'm not really sure if it's easier and cheaper to build new satellites from the junk that's already up there. At least not without a decent large space station.