Dvorak News Blog

Firefox 4 Launches Today

By hhopper Tuesday March 22, 2011

Three years ago, Firefox 3 set the record for most downloads in a 24-hour period, cracking 8 million and positioning itself as a viable alternative to Internet Explorer.

Firefox 4 released today to the public at large after 12 public betas, two release candidates, and nearly a year of development, faces a hugely different landscape. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser. And in less than three years, a significant chunk of the browser market has taken a shine to relative newcomer Google Chrome.

You can get Firefox 4 here.
Click here to see the download tracker.

Record Companies Seek $75 Trillion in Damages from Limewire, Federal Judge Points and Giggles

By McCullough Tuesday March 22, 2011

24 Comments

“75 Trillion Dollars…Bwhahahahah!”

Does $75 trillion even exist? The thirteen record companies that are suing file-sharing company Lime Wire for copyright infringement certainly thought so. When they won a summary judgment ruling last May they demanded damages that could reach this mind-boggling amount, which is more than five times the national debt.

Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood, however, saw things differently. She labeled the record companies’ damages request “absurd” and contrary to copyright laws in a 14-page opinion. The record companies, which had demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, had argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. For a popular site like Lime Wire, which had thousands of users and millions of downloads, Wood held that the damage award would be staggering under this interpretation. “If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants’ damages could reach into the trillions,” she wrote. “As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is ‘more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.'”

While Wood conceded that the question of statutory interpretation was “an especially close question,” she concluded that damages should be limited to one damage award per work. Glenn Pomerantz of Munger, Tolles & Olson, who represented 13 record company plaintiffs, did not return requests for comment.

X3: Transphorming the Charge

By hhopper Tuesday March 22, 2011

11 Comments

An Appropriate Reward for Picking up a Bottle

By Eideard Tuesday March 22, 2011

24 Comments

Thanks, Cinaedh

Tories Know it’s ‘Crystal Clear’ that Creationism is Not Science

By Eideard Tuesday March 22, 2011

36 Comments

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

If he was entering a Republican Party conference he’d be carrying bible action figures.

The Department of Education responded to a letter of concern from the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE), which is worried by applications from Christian groups to run free schools. It fears that schools might be exploited by groups seeking to promote a literal interpretation of the Bible at the expense of science classes.

However, the Department of Education confirmed that Mr Gove is “crystal clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact”…

The BCSE expressed in writing its “extreme concern” about groups such as Christian School Trust who have made up to five applications to run free schools…

The Everyday Champions Church, in Newark, Nottinghamshire, submitted its proposal for a 652-place school in January. It claims that the parents of more than 660 children have signed up to attend the school.

The Church’s leader Gareth Morgan told the BBC: “Creationism will be embodied as a belief at Everyday Champions Academy, but will not be taught in the sciences. Similarly, evolution will be taught as a theory. We believe children should have a broad knowledge of all theories in order that they can make informed choice.”

In July last year Mr Gove acknowledged there were concerns about “inappropriate faith groups using this legislation to push their own agenda.” He told MPs on the cross-party Commons education committee that his department was working to ensure there were no “extremist groups taking over schools”.

A clear distinction between conservative politicians in the UK and US. The former resemble what traditional American conservatism used to embody – including disdain for populist pandering to religious nutters. That used to be left up to the Democrats in the United States.

X3: Corning’s Clear Conception

By hhopper Monday March 21, 2011

26 Comments

Apple Approves App to “Cure” The Gays

By McCullough Monday March 21, 2011

65 Comments

Hopeless cause

Apple has come under fire for approving an “app” that offers guidance on how homosexual people can be “cured” and convert to heterosexuality. The “gay cure” application, designed to be used on Apple’s hand-held devices, was created by and named after Exodus International, a religious organisation which believes in teaching “freedom from homosexuality through prayer and practicing conversion therapy”.

The app is offered free on Apple’s iTunes online shop and was given a “4+” rating by the company, meaning it is not considered to contain objectionable content. A description of the app on the online shop said: “With over 35 years of ministry experience, Exodus is committed to encouraging, educating and equipping the Body of Christ to address the issue of homosexuality with grace and truth.”

Gay activists quickly gathered more than 37,000 signatures for an online petition persuading Apple to drop the software. The petition on the website change.org said the Christian group was using “scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions” of gay life, and promoting “the use of so-called ‘reparative therapy’ to ‘change’ the sexual orientation of their clients, despite the fact that this form of ‘therapy’ has been rejected by every major professional medical organisation”.

Insulting the bulk of your customer base would appear to be a bad idea. OK, that was a joke…

No Agenda Podcast
George W. Obama

By John C Dvorak Sunday March 20, 2011

16 Comments

Executive Producer: Jan van der Reis
Co-Executive Producers: Charles Jordan, Will Lisac
Art By: Nick the Rat

Sign up for No Agenda Show Talking Points signup here.

Donate to show here or here.

No Agenda Survey Results

Listen to show by clicking ►

Direct link to show.
Show Notes here.
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AT&T Buys T-Mobile for $39 Billion

By Eideard Sunday March 20, 2011

40 Comments

AT&T has announced a definitive agreement to buy Deutsche Telekom’s American T-Mobile subsidiary in a cash and stock deal worth about $39 billion, and giving the German carrier an 8 percent stake in AT&T…

T-Mobile and AT&T share similar GSM and UMTS/HSPA networks, and both are working to build new next generation networks using HSPA+ and LTE. However, obtaining the rights to radio spectrum and building out these networks is both expensive and complex.

AT&T’s chief executive Randall Stephenson said the deal “provides a fast, efficient and certain solution to the impending exhaustion of wireless spectrum in some markets, which limits both companies’ ability to meet the ongoing explosive demand for mobile broadband…”

T-Mobile adds 33.7 million subscribers to AT&T’s network of of about 95.5 million, creating a total of about 130 million users, and becoming the largest American carrier. The deal will also expand Apple’s iPhone to three of what were the top four US carriers, as Apple has already brought it to Verizon earlier this year.

RTFA for the details.

Here’s their press release.

Caption This Photo

By McCullough Sunday March 20, 2011

42 Comments

Is Limited Time Travel Backward Possible?

By Uncle Dave Sunday March 20, 2011

44 Comments

Their theory prevents a person traveling back in time, but sending messages back might be possible. What message would you send to your younger self if you could?

One of the major goals of the [Large Hadron Collider] is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.

According to Weiler and Ho’s theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

“One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes,” Weiler said. “Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

The test of the researchers’ theory will be whether the physicists monitoring the collider begin seeing Higgs singlet particles and their decay products spontaneously appearing. If they do, Weiler and Ho believe that they will have been produced by particles that travel back in time to appear before the collisions that produced them.

US Attacks Libya

By McCullough Saturday March 19, 2011

200 Comments

More than 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles struck over 20 targets inside Libya today in the opening phase of an international military operation the Pentagon said was aimed at stopping attacks led by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and enforcing a U.N.-backed no-fly zone. President Obama, speaking from Brazil shortly after he authorized the missile attacks, said they were part of a “limited military action” to protect the Libyan people.

“I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice and it’s not a choice I make lightly,” Obama said. “But we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.”

The first air strikes, in what is being called Operation Odyssey Dawn, were launched from a mix of U.S. surface ships and one British submarine in the Mediterranean Sea at 2 p.m. ET, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

They targeted Libyan air defense missile sites, early warning radar and key communications facilities around Tripoli, Misratah, and Surt, but no areas east of that or near Benghazi. Because of darkness over Libya, Gortney said it was too early to determine the strikes’ effectiveness.

Report: Near Miss at Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant

By McCullough Saturday March 19, 2011

32 Comments

For 18 months, operators at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo didn’t realize that a system to pump water into one of their reactors during an emergency wasn’t working. It had been accidentally disabled by the plant’s own engineers, according to a report issued Thursday on the safety of nuclear reactors in the United States.

The report, from the Union of Concerned Scientists watchdog group, lists 14 recent “near misses” – instances in which serious problems at a plant required federal regulators to respond. The report criticizes both plant operators and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing some known safety issues to fester. “The severe accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 occurred when a handful of known problems – aggravated by a few worker miscues – transformed fairly routine events into catastrophes,” the report notes. The problem at Diablo Canyon, which is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., involved a series of valves that allow water to pour into one of the plant’s two reactors during emergencies, keeping the reactor from overheating.