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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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?

Aneesh Chopra current lieutenant governor of Virginia has introduced the death penalty for on-line piracy bill (DPOP)

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.

That sounds awfully familiar somehow.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

After decades of overselling the North Star, is there any wonder there's so little of it left?

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!'.

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.

Only a million trillion times faster than it happens in the real world. I for one welcome our sentient viral overlords.

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.

Well, how about when a known virus infects an unknown worm? That should help the AV program to recognize the worm as undesirable.

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?

Whatever you are taking, you need either more or less of it. The current dosage isn't working out.

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.

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?

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.

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 contributed to an AIDS fund, not a "Stop AIDS" fund. Windows viruses were just the start of his reign of terror!

I think you miss the benefit of the "tax shelter" if the money you wish to "shelter" doesn't belong to you anymore.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/328095.html

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Of course You can afford to

Pay for quality

You're the Pope!!

  you probably bathe in a golden bathtub..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.