iPass Away – Do My Digital Downloads Die with Me?
March 8th, 2012Never mind the fact that there are no used e-book stores, check this out!
Via: Which?:
As it stands, the rights of iTunes and Amazon customers look pretty shaky when it comes to passing on downloads. If you buy a music track from a digital store, you’re essentially buying a licence to play that track – a licence granted to you only, which isn’t transferable upon death.
Legally you’re essentially just renting tracks – you don’t actually own them, as Matthew Strain of law firm Strain-Keville pointed out to us in the latest issue of Which? Computing:
‘We do not “own” what we purchase on iTunes, we only have the right to use it. The right to the “product” is therefore limited and passing it on to someone else is not likely to be accepted by Apple.’
The issue extends to the rapidly-growing ebooks market as well – Amazon’s Kindle licence explicitly forbids you from passing on your downloaded ebooks:
‘Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sublicence or otherwise assign any rights to the digital content or any portion of it to a third party.’
Justice Department May Sue Apple, Publishers for Colluding to Raise Prices of E-Books
March 8th, 2012Via: Reuters:
The Justice Department has warned Apple (AAPL.O) and five major publishers that it plans to sue them, accusing them of colluding to raise the prices of electronic books, a person familiar with the probe said on Thursday.
Several parties have held talks to settle the potential antitrust case, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The five publishers facing possible Justice Department action are Simon & Schuster Inc, a unit of CBS Corp (CBS.N); Lagardere SCA’s (LAGA.PA) Hachette Book Group; Pearson Plc’s (PSON.L) Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc, a unit of News Corp (NWSA.O).
U.S. and European officials have been investigating whether e-book publishers and Apple fixed prices in the growing electronic book industry, blocking rivals and hurting consumers.
…
Apple’s push for agency pricing was detailed in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs.
The book says that Jobs, who died in October, was aware of publishers’ frustration with Amazon. It quotes Jobs as saying: “So we told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent and yes, the customer pays a little more but that’s what you want anyway.’ … So they went to Amazon and said, ‘You’re going to sign an agency contract or we’re not going to give you the books.'”
UK ‘Must Plan for Euro Collapse’
March 8th, 2012Via: BBC:
Ministers should draw up plans to deal with a break-up of the eurozone “as a matter of urgency”, a committee of MPs and peers has warned.
The joint committee on the government’s National Security Strategy (NSS) said the full or partial collapse of the single currency was “plausible”.
It said political unrest and a rise in economic migrant numbers could result.
“Long-term security” is at the heart of foreign policy thinking, the government said in response.
The committee, whose members include ex-MI5 director general Baroness Manningham-Buller, said economic instability could leave the UK “unable to defend itself”.
It added that governments across the EU could be forced to cut defence spending if the instability were to continue.
“International economic problems could lead to our allies having to make considerable cuts to their defence spending, and to an increase in economic migrants between EU member states, and to domestic social or political unrest,” it said.
And, while the committee welcomed the government’s decision to publish the NSS alongside the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, it said that “a clear over-arching strategy” had not yet emerged.
Research Credit: Timbooch
U.S. Gives Israel Advanced Weapons to Delay War with Iran
March 8th, 2012Via: AFP:
THE US offered Israel advanced weaponry in return for it committing not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities this year, according to an Israeli report last night.
Citing unnamed Western diplomats and intelligence sources, the report in the Maariv daily said that during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, the US administration offered to supply Israel with advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refuelling planes.
In return, Israel would agree to put off a possible attack on Iran until next year, after the US elections in November.
The issue of Iran was top of the agenda at talks between Mr Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama in Washington this week. The US and Israel are at odds over just how immediate the Iranian threat is. Mr Netanyahu said on Monday that sanctions against Iran had not worked, and “none of us can afford to wait much longer”.
A key difference between Washington and Israel has emerged on the timeline available for a strike against Iran, with the Jewish state warning that the weaponry available to it gives it a shorter window for action.
In response, the report said, the US administration offered to give Israel weapons and material that could extend its window to act against Iran. In particular, it would offer bunker-busting bombs more powerful than those currently possessed by Israel, which could target Iranian facilities even under rock.
Open Thread: Space Doom
March 8th, 2012Lots of people like to submit Space Doom stories. Even though I wouldn’t normally post about this stuff, some of the boards I read (which rarely have any credible information on them anyway) are losing their minds over this solar flare event, which I doubt will amount to much, if anything at all.
I think that there is a deeply embedded Space Doom meme in fringe circles that was planted by Ed Dames with his Killshot woowoo back in the 1990s. That stuff went out over Art Bell’s radio show to millions of people and my guess is that the echos of it are still reverberating around the Internet.
Anyway, bring on the Space Doom!
—
Update: Ed Dames Still Going Strong
T let me know that Dames is still at it:
This is pretty much how I remember the story — and I like the heavy drama voice over. THE KILL SHOT. HAHA. Admittedly, I only ever listened to Art Bell as background noise, while waiting for something to download at about 30kbits/sec. and taking out seven to ten bottles of Moosehead. 😉
Respiratory Illness Kills Three Members of Family in Maryland
March 8th, 2012Via: NBC:
Lab testing identified the same strain of influenza in two of the three victims who died with respiratory sickness last week in Calvert County.
The county’s health department has been investigating a cluster of illnesses that led to three deaths in Lusby, MD, near the Calvert Cliffs nuclear facility.
The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Health said on Wednesday afternoon that Influenza H3, a strain of Influenza A that has been circulating this season, was found in two of the cases.
The department said in both cases, bacterial co-infections, a known complication of flu infection, also contributed to the victims’ deaths.
An 81-year-old woman was the first to fall sick, in late February. The woman’s three adult children, two daughters and a son, traveled to her home to care for her. Subsequently, they became sick as well with similar symptoms. The mother and two of her children died in the first week of March.
On Monday afternoon, a team wearing hazardous material suits from the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene entered the home of the 81-year-old to collect samples.
Letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell About 1984
March 8th, 2012Via: Letters of Note:
Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.
Indian Slums Provide Pharmaceutical Companies with Endless Supply of Human Guinea Pigs
March 7th, 2012Bargains.
Via: MSNBC:
Few people in the slums of Ahmedabad, India, know more about the supply of human guinea pigs for clinical drug trials than Rajesh Nadia.
When Indian firms working for pharmaceutical companies need test subjects, they often turn to Nadia, who has carved a small niche for himself as a recruiter in the international drug-testing industry.
“Companies call me or send me text messages,” he told “Dateline NBC” correspondent Chris Hansen.
Self-confident and well-groomed with gelled hair and tight-fitting designer jeans, Nadia said he is paid about $12 for every recruit he brings to the three Indian research labs with whom he works. In a region of western Indian where the average worker earns 50 cents a day, that’s good money.
“I don’t feel guilty,” Nadia said. “I believe conducting these studies is a humanitarian effort. So many people benefit from (the) advancement of medicine.”
Drug trial outsourcing to foreign countries is rapidly becoming an attractive alternative for U.S. pharmaceutical companies looking to save millions of dollars, avoid regulatory scrutiny and tap into a seemingly endless supply of drug study participants.
But a year-long Dateline investigation into one of the preferred destinations for overseas drug trials, India, raises questions about lax regulatory oversight in these studies, the integrity of some of the companies contracted to run them and the reliability of the data they produce.
Whether the studies are for birth control, diabetes, migraines or high blood pressure, money often draws volunteers into Indian drug trials. And Nadia said that many of his desperately poor recruits are so eager to enroll that they disregard potential risks.
“They don’t regard the smaller side effects,” Nadia explained. “Sometimes, people feel weak or get body ache. They don’t care about these little things because they need the money.”
Man Demonstrates Why TSA Body Scanners Are Worthless for Security Purposes
March 7th, 2012Update: TSA Threatens Mainstream Media Not To Cover Story
Via: TSA Out of Our Pants:
I’ve been on the phone all day for the last 2 days with reporters and journalists of all kinds, including the big bad MSM, and one South Florida reporter told me that he had been “strongly cautioned” by the TSA not to cover this story. Absolutely unbelievable:
Update: The name of the TSA spokeswoman who attempted to intimidate this journalist is Sari Koshetz.
Update 2: Second journalist comes forward in comments on this post: SmarterTravel March 8, 2012 at 3:34 pm | #11 Reply | Quote | Edit We were also “strongly cautioned” not to cover the story. We did anyway at SmarterTravel: http://tinyurl.com/7te5wj8
—End Update—
Via: TSA Out of Our Pants:
Obama Administration Moves to Aid Syrian Opposition
March 7th, 2012In the piece below, we read that this, “Stops short of providing any direct military assistance to the armed opposition.”
If you want to read detailed, voluminous accounts of how the U.S. covertly and illegally provides weapons to any state or group it pleases, see, Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq by Alan Friedman and, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed.
In other words, planeloads of weapons are going to be given to Al Qaeda (See: Syria: Clinton Admits U.S. On Same Side As Al Qaeda).
Via: Foreign Policy:
The Obama administration is moving to provide direct assistance to the internal opposition in Syria for the first time, marking a shift in U.S. policy toward a more aggressive plan to help oust President Bashar al-Assad.
Last week, a group of senior Obama administration officials met to finalize a package of options for aiding both the internal and external Syrian opposition, to include providing direct humanitarian and communications assistance to the Syrian opposition, two administration officials confirmed to The Cable. This meeting of what’s known as the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council set forth a new and assertive strategy for expanding U.S. engagement with Syrian activists and providing them with the means to organize themselves, but stops short of providing any direct military assistance to the armed opposition.
For now, riskier options, such as creating a no-fly zone in Syria, using U.S. military force there, or engaging directly with the Free Syrian Army, are all still off the table. But the administration has decided not to oppose, either in public or in private, the arming of the rebels by other countries, the officials said.
“These moves are going to invest the U.S. in a much deeper sense with the opposition,” one administration official said. “U.S. policy is now aligned with enabling the opposition to overthrow the Assad regime. This codifies a significant change in our Syria policy.”
