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Rammstein Sonne (cover) – Children Medieval Band

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 23:12 by John Sinteur in category: News


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Food’s Biggest Scam: The Great Kobe Beef Lie

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 19:38 by John Sinteur in category: News

[Quote]:

Think you’ve tasted the famous Japanese Kobe beef?

Think again.


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SnapNPlay, take pictures of sheet music to play it!

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 19:18 by John Sinteur in category: awesome

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Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 18:51 by John Sinteur in category: Great Picture


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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supports CISPA?

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 16:39 by Paul Jay in category: News

[Quote]:

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short) is currently being discussed in Congress and it seems that Mark Zuckerberg is in support of the Act.

Digital Journal recently reported on CISPA, the official title of this controversial act being H.R. 3523, and that it is feared that CISPA is far worse than SOPA and PIPA in its possible effects on the Internet.
Now Demand Progress is reporting that, despite his remarks recently about protecting privacy and the free internet, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is actually in support of the act.

Facebook has signed on in support of CISPA, the new bill which would potentially let ISPs block websites, cut off users accused of piracy and give the military broad new abilities to spy on the internet.

The Center for Democracy and Technology has said, “CISPA has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies and it supersedes all other privacy laws.” It is suggested that internet users visit their web page to find out more about CISPA.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “An ISP could even interpret this bill as allowing them to block accounts believed to be infringing, block access to websites like The Pirate Bay believed to carry infringing content, or take other measures provided they claimed it was motivated by cybersecurity concerns.”
Digital Trends has published an article listing 800 companies that are in support of CISPA.
Demand Progress is now running a petition which anyone determined to keep the internet free should sign.
The message to Zuckerberg from this petition?
 ”What is Facebook thinking? You’re encouraging Congress to obliterate online privacy. Even as your users express increasing concern about the privacy of their accounts on your site. Please withdraw your support for CISPA right away.”

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  1. I was at a Larry Lessig talk the other day, and he pointed out something that’s obvious in retrospect but worth keeping in mind: regular people, even domain experts, are willing to fight for and against laws. But after a while they get bored and move on. Lobbyists, on the other hand, stay around and fight until they get what their clients want. It’s very hard to beat lobbyists without having your own, because they keep coming back.

Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 1:03 by John Sinteur in category: News

[Quote]:

As soon as the Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it was suing five major publishers and Apple on price-fixing charges, and simultaneously settling with three of them, Amazon announced plans to push down prices on e-books. The price of some major titles could fall to $9.99 or less from $14.99, saving voracious readers a bundle.

But publishers and booksellers argue that any victory for consumers will be short-lived, and that the ultimate effect of the antitrust suit will be to exchange a perceived monopoly for a real one. Amazon, already the dominant force in the industry, will hold all the cards.

“Amazon must be unbelievably happy today,” said Michael Norris, a book publishing analyst with Simba Information. “Had they been puppeteering this whole play, it could not have worked out better for them.”

[..]

“I am now more convinced that we need a viable alternative to Amazon or this nonsense will continue and get much worse,” the suit quoted David Shanks, the Penguin USA chief executive, as saying.


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  1. Viable alternative: don’t charge more for the eBook than the physical one. That would be a viable alternative.

  2. Another viable alternative would be self publishing by authors. Eliminate Amazon and Penguin altogether. I’m surprised it’s not the predominant practice now given that most books go to publishers in electronic format to begin with.

  3. this kind of self-publishing, you mean?

  4. Or the Amazon self publishing. Almost the same.

Nokia on ‘brink of failure’, warns analyst

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 1:00 by John Sinteur in category: Microsoft

[Quote]:

Fogg may have underestimated the developer issue. What most Nokia-watchers appear to be unaware of is that for developers, breakage lies ahead. The three bedrock components of Windows Phone 7x – the Embedded CE kernel, the Compact .NET framework and Silverlight – are all being cast aside. Windows 8 Apollo will share the same kernel as Windows 8. What third-party developers are supposed to do is not clear. Will all today’s applications break? Will there be a legacy runtime? What source-conversion tools will be available? Even key Nokia sources don’t know the answer to these questions yet.

I’ve got a Lumia 800 to develop on, and it’s a nice phone. But I haven’t been able to make a business case for an app on it, yet, and I worry I never will.


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  1. When they’ve been desperately paying bounties to developers for putting out WP7 apps do you think they’d carelessly throw away that investment? Seems quite unlikely. Remember how apps came along from DOS to Win95 to WinNT/XP? Yeah.

    This drivel is coming from “one analyst”. Analysts are those guys who couldn’t get a gig as a well-paid consultant and had to find something else, right?

Meanwhile in Belgium…

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 0:52 by John Sinteur in category: News


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  1. More like mayhem than drama but the American TV channel involvement explains that.

Watch an iPad get made from the Foxconn factory floor

Posted on April 13th, 2012 at 0:44 by John Sinteur in category: Apple


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