NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Joel Tenenbaum has filed a reply brief in support of his petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, trying to get the Court to take on the thorny issue of copyright statutory damages in the age of mp3 files and micropayments."
StikyPad writes "Comcast is reportedly removing its oft-maligned 250GB data cap, but don't get too excited. In what appears to be an effort to capitalize on Nielsen's Law, the Internet's version of Moore's Law, Comcast is introducing tiered data pricing. The plan is to include 300GB with the existing price of service, and charge $10 for every 50GB over that limit. As with current policy, Xfinity On Demand traffic will not count against data usage, which Comcast asserts is because the traffic is internal, not from the larger Internet. There has, however, been no indication that the same exemption would apply to any other internal traffic. AT&T and Time Warner have tried unsuccessfully to implement tiered pricing in the past, meeting with strong push back from customers and lawmakers alike. With people now accustomed to, if not comfortable with, tiered data plans on their smartphones, will the public be more receptive to tiered pricing on their wired Internet connections as well, or will they once again balk at a perceived bilking?"
An anonymous reader writes "In the midst of Congressional races around the country, one stands out to techies. Thomas Massie, an MIT whiz kid who pioneered touch-based interfaces and founded SensAble Technologies in the 1990s, is the favorite to win the Republican nomination in his Kentucky district next week. SensAble was recently sold on the cheap, but in a new exclusive, Massie explains why he left the haptics firm years ago to lead a simpler life of farming, family, and guns — lots of guns. Along the way he built a solar-powered, off-the-grid house and became a local hero of the Tea Party. Now Massie is leading the charge to get more engineers into politics, and if he wins, he could be a force to be reckoned with in Washington, DC."
Dante_J writes "Up to 100,000 DSL modems may lose access to DNS come July the 9th, due to scripted web interface changes made to them by DNSChanger. This and other disturbing details were raised by respected Internet elder Paul Vixie during a presentation at the AusCERT 2012 conference."
New submitter PantherSE writes with an article at CNN about the geopolitical importance of labeling, excerpting thus: "Iran has threatened legal action against Google for not labeling the Persian Gulf on its maps 'Toying with modern technologies in political issues is among the new measures by the enemies against Iran, (and) in this regard, Google has been treated as a plaything,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Thursday, according to state-run Press TV. He added that 'omitting the name Persian Gulf is (like) playing with the feelings and realities of the Iranian nation.'"
An anonymous reader writes "After being the victim of a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by an unknown party, The Pirate Bay has returned. An Anonymous traitor who goes by the name AnonNyre has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack that kept the site offline for days."
An anonymous reader writes "Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again." See this earlier story on Saverin's plan to make the leap out of the U.S. tax system.
New submitter penmanglewood writes "I am a developer at a small IT company, and we primarily make software and games for the education market. I used to work with a team of developers, but for reasons outside the scope of this question, my boss and I are the only ones left. My boss says that our new strategy is to use outsourced developers to do the 'monkey work' for us. To me, this sounds like a bad idea. Do we give the developers access to our internal libraries? How will they be able to work on parts of our product without having access to our repository. I could think of a hundred more objections, but maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Is there a smart way to outsource development, or is it just a bad idea?"
parallel_prankster writes "Older adults who drank coffee — caffeinated or decaffeinated — had a lower risk of death [full paper is paywalled, at the New England Journal of Medicine] overall than others who did not drink coffee, according to a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP. Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer. These results from a large study of older adults were observed after adjustment for the effects of other risk factors on mortality, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. They also found that the association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a 10 percent lower risk of death. Researchers caution, however, that they can't be sure whether these associations mean that drinking coffee actually makes people live longer."
strawberryshakes writes "The death knell for IE6 was sounded a couple of years ago, but seems like some people just can't let go. Many UK government departments are still using IE6, which is so old — 11 years old to be exact — it can't cope with social media — which the government is trying to get its staff to use more to engage with citizens."
nonprofiteer writes "The Pentagon is increasingly transforming the military into an unmanned force, taking soldiers out of harm's way and replacing them with drones and robots. In 2011, it spent $6 billion on unmanned systems. The problem is that the unmanned systems don't work well together thanks to contractors building proprietary control systems (to lock government into exclusive relationships and to make extra money). A company called DreamHammer plans to have a solution to this — a universal remote control that could integrate all robots and drones into one control system. It would save money and allow anyone to build apps for drones. 'DreamHammer CTO Chris Diebner compares it with a smartphone OS — on which drones and features for those drones can be run like apps. Of course, Ballista is doing something on a much larger scale. It means that it takes fewer people to fly more drones and that new features can be rolled out without the need to develop and build a new version of a Predator, for example.'"
An anonymous reader writes "Google+ is a lonely place. At least according to a new study that paints the social networking site as a virtual tumbleweed town. Using information culled from the public timelines of 40,000 randomly selected members, data analysis firm RJMetrics found that the Google+ population, which currently numbers 170 million, is largely disengaged, with user activity rapidly decaying—at least when it comes to public posts. According to RJMetrics, 30 percent of first-time Google+ public posters don't post again. Of those who make five public posts, only 15 percent post again. The average time lapse between posts is 12 days, and RJMetrics cites a cohort analysis showing that members tend to make fewer public posts with each successive month. And the response to public posts on Google+ is extremely weak. The average post receives fewer than one reply, fewer than one '+1' (the equivalent to Facebook's 'Like'), and fewer than one re-share — basically most posts in the study did not garner any response."
jones_supa writes "RunCore announces the global launch of its InVincible solid state drive, designed for mission-critical fields such as aerospace or military. The device improves upon a normal SSD by having two strategies for the drive to quickly render itself blank. First method goes through the disk, overwriting all data with garbage. Second one is less discreet and lets the smoke out of the circuitry by driving overcurrent to the NAND chips. Both ways can be ignited with a single push of a button, allowing James Bond -style rapid response to the situation on the field."
First time accepted submitter Arker writes "A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction late Wednesday to block provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military to indefinitely detain anyone it accuses of knowingly or unknowingly supporting terrorism. The Obama administration had argued, inter alia, that the plaintiffs, including whistleblower and transparency advocate Daniel Ellsberg and Icelandic Member of Parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir lacked standing, but Judge Katherine Forrest didnt buy it. Given recent statements from the administration, it seems safe to say this will be the start of a long court battle."
An anonymous reader writes "Not a single judge was fooled by the chatbots in the 2012 Loebner Prize, which was won by the bot Chip Vivant. According to a journalist who was a human decoy in this year's Turing Test, interactions with the humans was a tad robotic while the bots went off on crazy tangents talking about being a cat and offering condolences for the death of a pet dragon."
The detention facility that the U.S. built in Afghanistan is state-of-the-art. Except for all the faulty hinges on the cell doors. Or the locks that are, in the words of a new report from the Defense Department's inspector general, "incapable of locking either manually or electronically." Or the construction that's deemed "not up to the standard suitable for a detention facility." The worst part? U.S. military commanders have known about these flaws since the prison opened its doors.
Stunt performers aren't born to be blown up—they're made. And the odds are good that their making-of story starts at the International Stunt School.
Head-mounted wearable computers present a bit of an interface problem. Voice-based systems give the impression that a person is murmuring to themselves and accelerometer-based systems that rely on head movement make users look like they have a nervous tic. One solution to the head-mounted-computer user interface conundrum is the use of hand gestures.
Calligo may not be the first to take its cloud services HQ offshore, but in the age of software-defined networking (SDN) it could be the start of something bigger.
Apple is cleaning up its energy act. The computer company says that by early next year, the energy used to power its worldwide data centers will all come from renewable sources, such as solar, wind power, or hydro-electric dams. It announced the news Thursday in a post to its website.
COVER: How to Be a Geek Dad / with MythBusters host Adam Savage / pg. 126WIRED serves up 14 hands-on projects designed to jump-start a lifelong love of science and technology. For all ages and levels of expertise, these activities will inspire parents to have fun with their kids while building geek values. Projects include ...
The Polo Gear Elite Saddle was developed with polo star Nic Roldan, who boldly claims it is the first major reboot of saddle design in 50 years. He says it is the first to emphasize the comfort of the horse as much as the performance of the athlete riding it.
It looks like we'll be getting Retina display MacBook Pros sooner than later -- this based on supply chain indicators and a recently published Apple patent application.
COVER: Marc Andreessen Knows What?s Coming Next / pg. 162? No one has done more to change the way we communicate than Marc Andreessen. At 22, he invented Mosaic, the first easy-to-use web browser. He later helped bring the Internet to the masses by co-founding Netscape and then took it public in a massive IPO. ...
A bill that would require law enforcement agents to obtain a probable-cause warrant to collect geolocation data on an individual would be burdensome to criminal investigators and prevent them from gathering the evidence they need to make a case, according to law enforcement witnesses at a hearing on Thursday.
The new game will occupy the same universe as the will drop the hard sci-fi look in favor of the comic book approach.
Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel "Starship Troopers" presents a futuristic war fought by heavily armored infantry, that when suited up, makes you look like a "big steel gorilla." Today, the U.S. Army and Marines are edging closer to the Mobile Infantry of Heinlein's world by reportedly taking an interest in armored face shields.
Mark Zuckerberg is following the example of Bill Gates at Microsoft and Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google, in building Facebook to do nothing less than dominate.
With Microsoft recently beating out Google for providing cloud service to the Los Angeles Community College District, the focus of one report was that the win reflects "how Microsoft can use its lock on conventional productivity software as a springboard into the cloud." Is Office lock-in going to work for Microsoft long-term?
Don't make a web browser? Then you don't have a voice in the future of the web. That seemed to be the message from the WHATWG earlier this week, but fortunately for web developers things aren't really as bad as they may seem.
Buying what you know, especially Facebook shares, is a path to heartbreak. Here's why.
Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.
How do volcanic eruptions trigger so much lightning? Volcanologist and Eruptions blogger Erik Klemetti dives into a new study that suggests electrically charged ash is to blame.
Laugh all you want, but the stupendously silly $200 million blockbuster opening Friday isn't close to sinking toy- and game-based films anytime soon. Here are 10 classic childhood diversions that got burned into our brains thanks to cheesy television commercials. We think Hollywood should eye these for their own movies.
Arnhel de Serra?s photos are like the British equivalent of a good cartoon: quirky and insightful. His series on the U.K.?s agricultural shows ? which are similar to county fairs here in the U.S. ? gives viewers a curious peak into the eccentric events that have been part of the country?s heritage since the 1800s.
The next generation of videogames is going to rock your world. And it's all thanks to a piece of software called Unreal 4.
Thor Heyerdahl sets sail with his crew from Safi, Morocco, aboard Ra II.
HP and Intel call it Itanium. But others call it the Itanic. This difference of opinion goes a long way toward describing the ongoing court battle between HP and another giant of the tech world: Oracle.
The average episode of runs around $1 million to produce. But those high-style, high-flying ? and incredibly expensive ? aerial shots just got slightly more affordable with the introduction of a new quadrocopter specifically developed for shooting automotive action.
Honda has unveiled a new personal mobility concept vehicle that lets riders move around indoors at about the same speed as their legs could carry them.The UNI-CUB is the evolution of the U3-X, unveiled back in 2009, and uses Honda's proprietary balance control system to keep from tipping over. It also uses the company's Omni ...
A menagerie of medical machines join forces in , a new project by artist Revital Cohen. The tangled mass of life-support devices are hacked to support each other, detached from their usual human hosts.
*If I didn't blog this, I'd have to be put out to pasture and shot as a mercy.http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14041http://justinpickard.net/gonzo-futurist-manifesto.pdf(...)"The gonzo futurist is a super-empowered hopeful individual. She may have been a ?graduate with no future? (Mason, 2011), or the victim of public sector cuts, but has since grieved and moved on. She plays, tests, and play ...
Self-promotion is tough for anyone, but for designers it's an Olympic challenge. Everything they hand out, post, and send to potential clients has to visually represent their (inimitable) style and (immeasurable) talent.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
On this week's edition of the Gadget Lab Show, the gang takes a gander at the Nook Simple Touch e-reader and Pebble Smartwatch, the most successful Kickstarter project ever.