Contents
- January 28 is Data Privacy Day
- Mars-Bound Probe Serves As Radiation Guinea Pig
- USPTO Declares Invalid Third of Three Critical Rambus Patents
- White House Chief Technology Officer Steps Down
- DARPA Funding a $50 Drone-Droppable Spy Computer
- North Star May Be Wasting Away
- Flaw In YouTube Takedown Process Exposed
- When Viruses Infect Worms
- The ACTA Fight Returns: What Is At Stake & What You Can Do
- Bill Gates Gives $750M To AIDS Fund
- FBI Building App To Scrape Social Media
- Russian Rocket Fleet Grounded Again
- Mars Rover Opportunity Turns 8
- ReDigi Defends Used Digital Music Market
- Man Who Downloaded Bomb Recipes Jailed For 2 Years
Mars-Bound Probe Serves As Radiation Guinea Pig
D.O.A.
This problem could make a manned trip to Mars impossible. The radiation in open space from one solar flare would fry a bunch of astronauts. Sending people to Mars becomes a gamble on the odds of a solar event occurring. Worse yet. There is no technology within reach that can protect astronauts from this type of radiation. A few feet of lead shielding might help some, but the weight would be too much to get into space. Plus, try slowing down all that mass when you arrive at Mars. Perhaps a nuclear powered wire loop ( super conducting??? ) with a circumference of a mile or two? Something with enough kick to deflect super high speed charged particles a few meters - enough to keep them away from the crew?...
I don't see any way to get people to mars with an acceptably high probability of survival.
USPTO Declares Invalid Third of Three Critical Rambus Patents
Any money back?
So do Nvidia, Hewlett-Packard , et al have any chance of recovering any money they paid to Rambus, or are they simply out the entire amount, or has no actual money traded hands yet?
ARM holdings?
There's something that seems unsavory and wasteful about a business environment in which a company's stock value "fluctuates sharply on its successes and failures in patent litigation and licensing."
If ARM holdings licensing came into question it would probably destroy the company's stock. I am loving the way the ARM architecture is handled, a lot more competition than x86, and it seems to be advancing quickly now that it has becoming popular.
I was trying to imagine today if ARM holdings could survive in a world without IP laws. I think yes it could. It seems that getting a hold of ARM holdings processor plans, from something like bittorrent, would not be super useful even to Texas Instruments, Samsung, or Nvidia engineers. ARM works with them to implement the design, so the payment agreement would probably just be altered slightly and ARM would have to protect its disclosure of ARM architecture details a little more closely. Perhaps ARM would morph more into a standards body and not be as profitable though? I am curious what someone with more info on the topic can share please!
What's wrong...
It's not that a company's price fluctuates with the state of its patent portfolio. The problem is that 3 patents, which should have never been issued in the first place, terrorized inventors and suppressed innovation for multiple years. This is squarely an indictment of the USPTO and of the Congress.
Of course Stock costs fluctuate.
Patents are a property; changes to the scope of existence of a property right change the value of the property governed by that right.
The market should estimate the possibility of a company's winning or losing a patent case; once the decision is made, the actual value of the company has changed because of the new determination of whether the company has the right.
The only alternative would be to split the patent right King-solomon style. But that only happens if both parties are willing to settle.
Parties are sometimes not willing to settle. They may know or mistakenly believe that they are in the right, or they may expect they can force the other side to settle for more later.
In addition, mucking up their estimation as to whether they will win--and thus whether it makes sense to settle--is the fact that empirical research demonstrates that lawyers are more attractive to clients when they project a higher chance of winning. Thus it is in the interest of the lawyers to artificially inflate the chance of winning by at least some margin--whether done subconsciously or deliberately--and this means parties have biased information when they decide whether to settle.
Finally, occasionally a court will do something nobody expected, either legitimately for reasons people did not anticipate would motivate them or out of stupidity.
White House Chief Technology Officer Steps Down
Can we apply as a group?
Maybe we can talk someone in the White House press office to use Ask Slashdot for technical questions and Your Rights Online for recommendations on tech bills... Would somebody please put together a resume for We the People of Slashdot?
At least
This just in
Aneesh Chopra current lieutenant governor of Virginia has introduced the death penalty for on-line piracy bill (DPOP)
Re:Can we apply as a group?
Would somebody please put together a resume for We the People of Slashdot?
We could, but it would be full of contradictory skills and experiences, an entire year devoted to yelling "First Post!", and would boast certifications like "Made baby jesus cry."
Actually... It's still better than the current crop of presidential hopefuls. PRINT IT.
Re:Big talker, little substance
That sounds awfully familiar somehow.
DARPA Funding a $50 Drone-Droppable Spy Computer
Funding
Re:Cockroaches
Coverage? Can you hear me now?
"over any available Wi-Fi network."
In cities this may not be a problem (though who runs an unencrypted Wifi AP in the city?!!?!?) but in rural areas I suspect WIFI may be hard to come by. It needs a better backup.
An interesting use for Raspberry Pi
The article doesn't say, but I suspect the computer is Raspberry Pi. Throw in a cellphone-based modem, camera, and microphone and you've got yourself a spy.
WTF
If we can make tracking devices that we use on whales, sharks, bears, etc, that are self powered, unobtrusive to the animal, and auto-upload to satellite or base station, we have to rely on some twerp plugging in the device -and- for free WiFi to be available for a military device? Pshaw.
And people complain about dropping DARPA funding. With idiotic projects like this we damn sure should.
North Star May Be Wasting Away
Re:Oh my god!
Well, except that over that same time period, we'll be experiencing a reversal of the poles, and the accompaning period of magnetic flux that would make magnetic compasses rather useless.
Re:Cough. Earth's Mass?!?
Mass of the sun is 330,000 times the mass of earth.
So if it were losing an Earth-Mass yearly it would have had to be 7 times as massive as today at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and would only have a life expectancy of about 330,001 years left.
The Sun appears to have been active for 4.6 billion years and has enough fuel to go on for another Five billion years or so..
So I think you may have lost a few digits (in the exponents) when making your calculations.
Thanks a lot "Name a star, buy a star"
After decades of overselling the North Star, is there any wonder there's so little of it left?
Does this mean victory for the Southern Cross?
Re:Damn...
Flaw In YouTube Takedown Process Exposed
Re:"we believe in strong (c)!" (when it suits us!)
They only support "artist interests" when it suits their profit motive. The same is true for their support of copyright.
The only 'artistry' the media companies are interested in is the artistry needed to hide profits from the artists themselves. You don't really think all that money goes to rock stars, do you?
I got the chance to look over a 'standard starup contract' for a new band a few years back. Yeah, they got a $30,000 advance, on 3 albums. The fine print said, they had to use the label's recording studio at the usual rate, plus the label's engineers & techs, also at the usual rate. The label wiould supply the producer, paid for by the band at the producer's usual rate. Advertising and promotion would be provided by the label and paid for by the band at the label's usual rate. And so on and so forth. All of this was supposed to come out of the band's share of the profits before they got paid a dime. Oh, they also had to pay back that $30,000 advance before they saw any money. And they only got a small percentage of the profits.
I remember a commercial for a tax service that aired about 3 years ago where one guy played a musician and said "I made 250,000 last year. If I do that good this year, I might break even!'.
Re:Sue Universal For Copyright Ingringement
Give them a taste of their own medicine.
Massive escalating fines for take down orders that prove to be false is the only solution here.
$100,000 for first offense, payable 90% to the victim, 10% to the hosting site, escalating 10% (compounding) for each instance.
The risk of even one false take down order should be enough to get their attention.
Just Curious...
Why did I have no trouble with this, but the artists in TFA did? Perhaps none of the **AA's are even remotely interested in my video (likely), but the rap artists had the potential of $$$ with their video?
Re:Slander of title is more like it
The summary also makes it look like YouTube did this. In fact, Youtube allows the music labels themselves to add songs to filter on. So UMG saw their artist play a song then someone else play the song (the true author) and so uploaded the song as a violation...even though their artist was in fact the violator.
The problem isn't Universal. It's the DMCA.
There should never be a law in the United States that forces compliance without first having to go through due process. The system wasn't broken, and the DMCA didn't fix it. The DMCA made things worse.
I was against these provisions of the DMCA and protested them before the law was even passed. We are merely seeing the results that many of us knew had to happen if such a bad law was passed.
As far as I am concerned, the ONLY good parts of the DMCA are the "safe harbor" provisions. Given a choice, I would shitcan the entire rest of the Act.
When Viruses Infect Worms
Digital evolution at work
Only a million trillion times faster than it happens in the real world. I for one welcome our sentient viral overlords.
Shockwave Rider
Why does this bring back vague memories of that John Brunner classic, "The Shockwave Rider"? It's been about 30 years since I read it, so I can't recall if the protagonist wrote a "worm" that infected another worm, or just destroyed it/replaced it or something.
Re:oh shit!
Well, how about when a known virus infects an unknown worm? That should help the AV program to recognize the worm as undesirable.
Biological viruses and worms
Did anyone else start reading the summary assuming it was a story on biology? Here's how I first read it:
"Bitdefender reports that there exist viruses which, when they encounter other viruses, will merge and combine effects so that they create a new virus. 'A virus infects executable flies;
Instead of staring at the word "flies" which was actually "files", instead my eyes backed up and were focused on executable. What did it mean for a fly to be executable?
Re:Mental Image
Whatever you are taking, you need either more or less of it. The current dosage isn't working out.
The ACTA Fight Returns: What Is At Stake & What You Can Do
Re:BTW
Presidents routinely sign treaties that aren't later ratified by Congress, there is nothing special about what Obama did compared to any of the other dozen treaties that Congress never ratified.
Re:Obama!
Here is what the Feds say
But it seems to me that an "Executive agreement" as it is defined in that reference is pretty much unconstitutional.
I think your average reasonable man would say that a Treaty, duly ratified, has the force of law and is applicable to all citizens.
An Agreement, on the other hand, would have the parties conduct themselves in a certain manner (follows certain protocols or procedures) with respect o the subject matter. but do so within the framework of the law.
So, while an "Agreement" would have the Feds use the existing U.S. laws to enforce the goals, they would still have to follow the law (i.e. get a court order to shut down a site).
A Treaty, on the other hand, would have the force of law and presumably not require the government to get a court order.
That's my guess anyway. But only a fool relies on internet posts for their information eh?
Re:What benefits do these countries get from signi
Kill Hollywood.
They are the carriage industry refusing to die, and blocking progress. Kill hollywood. fix your problems. and no - 'dont buy their stuff' will not work. they already have enough money to buy lawmakers until the end of century. find another way. best would be to buy lawmakers ourselves. internet/tech companies need to spearhead this shopping spree.
Re:Signing is only the start of the battle
You will get blank stares because if you're like the UK, not one word has been mentioned in the press about the ACTA treaty. Even today, you can watch foreign news on protests in a few countries (there's a week long protest going on in Poland who signed the treaty), but despite the UK signing the ACTA treaty - not one word in the British press about it or that there are even protests abroad about ACTA, no mention of how devastating it will be for internet freedom democracy and rule of law.
No mentions in the press is censorship and just what proponents of ACTA like.
Bill Gates Gives $750M To AIDS Fund
Re:Good work
Bill contributed to an AIDS fund, not a "Stop AIDS" fund. Windows viruses were just the start of his reign of terror!
Re:Bill Gates foundation is a scam
I think you miss the benefit of the "tax shelter" if the money you wish to "shelter" doesn't belong to you anymore.
Re:Where Does the Money Actually Go Though?
Buying stock does not cause ANY money to be put 'in the companies coffers', unless it is newly issued stock (which is rare). Whoever owned the stock before you has the money. You, in turn, have an asset that will hopefully earn you more than you paid for it, over time. That worth could be realized as income from dividends or from sale of the stock at a higher price than you paid.
Germany buying stock in a German company in no way helps the company, so what is the point of doing it?
Why do other countries contribute to the foundation? Because they trust that the money will be managed and spent wisely. Could they do the same things themselves? Of course - but what makes you think they would do any better managing or spending the money?
Do they NEED to invest the money? Of course not - they could keep it in the proverbial vault and dole it out to orgs as needed. However, that would GUARANTEE that the money will eventually run out. With well-managed money you can theoretically continue handing out money forever.
Re:bill gates donates to charity, doesn't get canc
Admittedly it's not completely clear-cut, but he didn't exactly do as much as he could have. Observe:
Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for mainstream medical intervention for nine months,[103] instead consuming a special alternative medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Dr. Ramzi Amir, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death".[136] According to Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined."[139] "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004."[140] He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to successfully remove the tumor.[141][142][143] Jobs apparently did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy.[137][144] During Jobs's absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.[137]
So sayeth Wikipedia. The "flying to mysterious locations for exotic treatments" part did not work out so well.
Re:Where Does the Money Actually Go Though?
And how much did you give to charity, exactly? The Gates foundation is extremely focused on making sure the money it spends produces real results in helping people. If you did give money to charity, did you do the same? Do you think a child receiving a malaria vaccination gives half a shit where it was made? Have you ever done anything worthwhile in your entire life?
FBI Building App To Scrape Social Media
Re:So. It begins.
So what?
Yes, I sound cavalier, but I see so many people on /. blithely affirming that people should just know that what they put on the internet stays there forever, and should just know that their SSID is being broadcast and it's a good thing that it can be tracked and stored, and should be fine with people capturing anything whatsoever that's done outside the house, or in the house with the curtains open...
So I can't see that anyone on Slashdot has anything to complain about here. Or is it different because it's not Google doing it?
Privacy?
Who thinks Facebook is private? The whole point is to *not* be private, right? Otherwise... what is the point of Facebook?
If the FBI was going to start monitoring encrypted email, VPNs, and other things where you are *trying* to be private, I would be concerned (yes, I know-- whole 'nuther can o' worms). But Facebook? You are giving the info away as a user, that is the purpose of having a Facebook account.
Wake Up Mr. President!
Re:and here comes slashdot, late again
why does this site even exist anymore? reddit posts everything first, with less bias, and without all the self-loathing commentators screaming shill/troll/astroturf/mccarthyist label of the day.
We're here specifically to annoy you, AC. Looks like we're on top of our game again.
Track record
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Case_File
2001 Projected started just after 911. ... 2009 The FBI is years behind and millions over budget
2010 The FBI is $100 million over budget on the ... only half of the project's four-phase development had been completed
2011 The FBI's upgrade of its computerized case file system has hit another snag
Russian Rocket Fleet Grounded Again
Re:This
Nope. Sorry, I know far too many people at NASA for that to remotely ring true.
However, Space flight is very dangerous, requires high label of engineering and maintenance, and is risky not jsut to the crew, but to everyone who wants to get to space. So there are a lot of details and NASA, being the experts, know what companies need to do. Companies OTOH get all pissy when they find out going to space is in no way like flying a plane and need to be held to a high standard, just like NASA.
NASA has nothing to gain by limiting private companies. Being able to rational remove themselves from low orbit bus trips is something they would like see happen.
Congress did NOTHING to help them move to a new launch vehicle. NASA originally didn't want a shuttle, they wanted specialized ships. One for people, and one for Cargo. Had congress allowed for that, we would have a more robust commercial launch system...probably.
more complete comments from Alexei Krasnov
Alexei Krasnov, chief of piloted programs:
"The malfunction was found in the service elements of the descent capsule....but no decision was taken to delay a forthcoming launch.
Krasnov acknowledged that several days ago some problems really emerged....but the problems are related to a service element, rather than the descent capsule,
Krasnov did not rule out that “the schedule of piloted missions will be revised,” but he sees no tragedy in this. “There are program reserves to deal with the emerged problem,” he underlined.
“It is very good that upon the results of the tests we received critical remarks before the spaceship was brought to the Baikonur spaceport, because we have some time and possibilities to examine everything in detail,” Krasnov concluded.
Title is misleading
The title of this story is misleading. It isn't the rockets that are grounded, its the spacecraft that sits on top of them.
Also, for what it's worth, the shuttle wouldn't have been help matters much if the Russian's can't fly a Soyuz. While the shuttle is fine for swapping crews (in fact, the shuttle's runway landings are gentler than the Soyuz's parachute landings, a good thing for people who have spent the last six months in 0g), the shuttle can only fly a two week mission, meaning without a Soyuz attached to the station, we'd have to leave people in orbit without an immediate way home, a risk that neither NASA nor Roscomos is willing to take. The Soyuz itself is only rated for six months in orbit, giving them a limited window to fix the problems before we have to talk about unmanning the station.
Re:This
But we can save money. Soyuz program is the most successful launch platform by wide margin. It's safe, cheap, reliable and can launch frequently. Soyuz has over 1700 successful launches. It's the closest thing to "space truck" that there is.
Re:This
Mars Rover Opportunity Turns 8
Re:Yea ok
A break-in period that consisted of being shipped slowly on a ship compared to a violent launch on the top of a rocket, as well as the re-entry into the atmosphere of a largely mysterious planet, and finally the potentially violent landing.
Then, once in use and with the odometer actually ticking up, the Mercedes gets an oil change every few thousand miles, or every few months; it's also refueled probably every other week, at least. And it's probably not in a hostile environment the entirety of its driven life, at least without serious repair assistance.
So, yes, we really should be proud of the Opportunity for lasting for eight years while 78 million miles from a repair shop.
Re:Great engineering!
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?
Practically all of it, since I don't buy horribly-made cheap crap.
Pay for quality, get quality. Simple.
Re:Great engineering!
Still, we had a visitor to our local Astronomy club explain the one oversight which may ultimately doom Opportunity - dust build up on the Solar Panels. Next probe will probably have a little robotic arm and brush to sweep itself off now and then.
This wasn't an oversight, it was well understood that this would happen. They've gotten lucky that dust devils have cleaned the panels a few times.
The next Mars rover is nuclear powered. There are no attempts at any kind of dust cleaning device- it would be far too heavy and fragile to be worth bothering with.
Re:Great engineering!
Makes you wonder, when people say we can't do that for consumer vehicles, eh? Where's the Can-do spirit?!?
You could, it just costs more. That said, most US made vehicles will run 100K miles with minimal supervision. My 12 year old GMC truck has really been quite reliable and could well run another 10 years. I'm part owner of a 40 year old plane that could fly for another 40 years.
Not everything is an iPad.
Re:Great engineering!
Of course You can afford to
Pay for quality
You're the Pope!!
you probably bathe in a golden bathtub..
ReDigi Defends Used Digital Music Market
Re:"First sale" doesn't really apply.
What possible reason can you offer for suggesting that the rules are different simply because the storage mechanism is different?
It's the same reason that pro-piracy advocates use: IP goods are not the same as physical goods. If IP can't be stolen (it's merely being copied), then there's no way to enforce sale of a "used" IP either. There's absolutely no way to enforce that when you sell your copy of the IP, that you are selling the your original copy and not merely a copy of your copy.
All the pro-piracy advocates say that IP shouldn't try to operate using an artificial-scarcity business model to make it seem like a physical good. Well, without (artificial) scarcity, there is also no logically-consistent argument for sale of "used" IP either.
Pick one: artifical, government-enforced/DRM-managed scarcity + first-sale doctrine, or IP-should-be-free + no used sales. Those are your logically consistent options.
Re:Issues such as fair use & first sale
think the question of reselling digital music is absurd in the face of reality. It would take someone deeply convinced that people are buying digital music and spending tens of thousands of dollars on it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Quite an ability to delude themselves it what it would take. It probably says something about a lawyer willing to take on such a client as well.
It's not the government's job to prop up a dying business model. Aluminum used to be very expensive, even more so than silver. The top of the Washington monument is aluminum, at the time a precious metal. Should government have stepped in to guard the value of someone's aluminum store, when the Hall–Héroult process made it almost worthless?
The cost and value of creative works is being adjusted due to the Internet and cheap storage. Some businesses will thrive, and others die off.
Re:This is extremely laughable.
You can't resell something that cannot be adequately protected through DRM, period.
Sure you can. It's actually quite easy. You're missing a fairly fundamental concept, which is this: what is necessary to prevent playback of copies is not required to merely prevent sale of those copies. To do the former, it must be impossible to get a decryption key without proving that you are the current owner. This is fundamentally impossible to do in an unbreakable way, and the harder you try, the worse the customer experience is. By contrast, to do the latter, you need only the ability to uniquely identify each sold copy of a file. This requires nothing more than a guarantee from the companies that sell the original tracks that there will never be two identical copies of the track, plus a verifiable, ideally signed marker of some sort to determine authenticity.
In other words, to support resale of commercially-sold tracks, you need only take advantage of the watermarks that most or all of those services put in the tracks to begin with. Tracks are usually sold with additional info in the track's metadata that ties it to a particular user's account so that if it gets pirated, it can be traced back to the person who illegally distributed it.
This means that every digital download is unique and trivially verifiable as authentic or inauthentic without the need for actual DRM that would limit your ability to play the file. Thus, all that is necessary is a central database that every reseller talks to, in which the current ownership of every track that gets sold is tracked based on which account purchased it originally.
At least I'm assuming this is how they're doing it. It's certainly the most straightforward and obvious way to do it.
What this does not do, of course, is prevent you from making a copy before you sell the track. However, resale of physical CDs and DVDs has exactly the same problem, making this argument largely irrelevant as far as drawing a legal distinction between the two types of resale.
Re:Issues such as fair use & first sale
Thanks for posting regarding this story, Mr. Beckerman. I've followed such stories with great interest since a friend of mine had a ridiculous situation where he licensed a movie for showing in his venue then received a C&D the date of the showing. Please be aware that some of us truly appreciate the work you do and your communication with us here.
Thank you. The support of the Slashdot community means a great deal to me. We are living in an interesting time, where 10 large, politically connected corporations -- 4 record companies and 6 motion picture companies -- are on a rampage to save their dying business models and to deflect blame from their management for allowing their businesses to die. Instead of investing in the future, and building better technology, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on nonsensical litigation. Very sad. I look forward to the day when they have been beaten back.
Re:Issues such as fair use & first sale
It's not the government's job to prop up a dying business model. Aluminum used to be very expensive, even more so than silver. The top of the Washington monument is aluminum, at the time a precious metal. Should government have stepped in to guard the value of someone's aluminum store, when the Hallâ"Héroult process made it almost worthless? The cost and value of creative works is being adjusted due to the Internet and cheap storage. Some businesses will thrive, and others die off.
And I can think of a record company that is dying off, but not before it wastes even more of its money on frivolous litigation.
Man Who Downloaded Bomb Recipes Jailed For 2 Years
Re:Arrested for knowledge? WTF?
in 5 yrs or less, TSA will convert 'drivers licenses' into internal US passports.
ie, they'll install themselves at every point where people change planes, busses, trains, etc. highways/tollboothes are not out of their reach, either, in their eyes.
so, to pass around in the US, you'll need to stay off this or that 'bad guy' list. move around in your own country? you'll have to reverify yourself.
but its all for our own safety, don't you know.
Re:Arrested for knowledge? WTF?
That's not clear intent, that's wishful thinking. Where and when did he intend to bomb? If there's no plan, there's no intent.
Re:Arrested for knowledge? WTF?
That's pretty much the definition of fraud....
Re:Arrested for knowledge? WTF?
God, who modded this up? In what way does that clearly show intent? It might, or it might not, depending on how he meant the word "jihad," which normally does not mean terrorism or, to western Muslims, even any kind of armed fight with or assault on enemies. It can (and frequently does) mean nothing more than the personal struggle to lead a good life.
Mind, I'm not saying he didn't have nefarious ends in minds; I have no idea. But how are you so sure he did, from those words?
Re:Arrested for knowledge? WTF?
The only choices left are which depressing SF/SciFi/SyFy dystopia you like
SyFy != Sci Fi. Sci fi is Asimov and Heinlein and Star Wars and 2001. SyFy is stupid shit on a useless cable channel that is an embarrasment to anybody with half a brain.
Damn no one tell