MrBlic - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Netflix is one of the places where DRM makes se (Score 1) 394

by MrBlic on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @10:18AM (#43461307) Attached to: Netflix Wants To Go HTML5, But Not Without DRM

I agree with you _but_...

Why the heck would I want to download a Netflix video to my hard drive? It would just fill it up. I can stream Netflix movies to my appleTV or iPad, so the only reason I might download something is if I wanted to watch it when I was going to be disconnected.

Netflix has made piracy unnecessary by making so much great content available for a reasonable rate... there's no reason to protect against it anymore, since Netflix is a more convenient way of watching the content than any pirate collection of videos. They've won. Just like being able to buy audio tracks means I no longer have to go to pirate sites to try to find music I like. Piracy is becoming obsolete as content availability becomes totally reasonable.

Comment Just a legal issue (Score 1) 182

by MrBlic on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @02:23PM (#35655932) Attached to: Man Accused of Selling US Military Drones On EBay

The plane itself is nothing dangerous or even impressive.

Build your own if you want... start here: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=14465

Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed 1352

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 16, 2010 @01:58PM from the fair-balanced-and-simple dept.

A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox viewers were once again less knowledgeable on the subject than average. Let the flame war begin!

Rare Sharing of Data Led To Results In Alzheimer's Research 159

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 13, 2010 @04:56PM from the never-forget dept.

jamie passes along a story in the NY Times about how an unprecedented level of openness and data-sharing among scientists involved in the study of Alzheimer's disease has yielded a wealth of new research papers and may become the template for making progress in dealing with other afflictions. Quoting: "The key to the Alzheimer's project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort. 'It was unbelievable,' said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer's researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. 'It's not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.'"

At Google, You're Old and Gray At 40 543

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @08:06AM from the cult-of-youth dept.

theodp writes "Google faces an imminent California Supreme Court decision on whether an age discrimination suit against it can go forward. But that hasn't kept the company from patting itself on the back for how it supports 'Greyglers' — that's any Googler over 40. At a company of about 20,000 full-time employees, there were at last count fewer than 200 formally enrolled Greyglers working to 'make Google culture ... welcome to people of all ages.'"

Europe To Import Sahara Solar Power Within 5 Years 450

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @02:27AM from the nothing-new-under-the-sun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "If just 1% of the Sahara Desert were covered in concentrating solar panels it would create enough energy to power the entire world. That's a powerful number, and the European Union has decided to jump on its proximity to the Sahara in order to reap some benefits from the untapped solar energy beaming down on Northern Africa. Yesterday, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger announced that Europe will start importing solar energy from the Sahara within the next five years. It is estimated that the initiative will cost €400 billion ($495 billion). It's part of an EU goal to derive 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. From the article: 'The EU is backing the construction of new electricity cables, known as inter-connectors, under the Mediterranean Sea to carry this renewable energy from North Africa to Europe. Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.' To this the energy minister replied, essentially, 'Good question, we'll get back to you on that.'"

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