Have you checked out Monty Python’s YouTube channel? It’s got a selection of their brilliant (as always) clips, and it’s got links to buy their DVDs on Amazon. As those crazy Monty Python dudes put it, We’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies and TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.
And you know what? Despite the entertainment industry’s constant cries about how bad they?ïre doing, it works. As we wrote yesterday, Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to No.2 on Amazon’s Movies and TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent
Several studies have shown that an extension of copyright on sound recordings is a bad idea. It will lead to less competition and higher prices while only the record labels benefit from it. Next Tuesday, the Open Rights Group will be hosting a round-table event to discuss performance copyright extension in the EU
A team is reporting what is the first successful transfer of a qubit — an undecided bit of quantum information — between two widely separated, charged atoms. Because the quantum information instantly hops from one atom to the other without ever crossing the space between the two, scientists call the transfer teleportation. Being able to teleport such information between atoms could aid the development of ultrafast quantum computers and extremely secure quantum communication, the researchers point out
Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists
A Trojan horse that turns Macs into bots is being spread by pirated copies of Apple’s iWork 09 productivity suite. Malware writers are increasingly targeting Apple’s Mac OS X. Graham Cluley of Sophos said Mac users would be crazy
to download pirated copies of iWork 09, but it’s even worse because many are reckless about virus protection
Internet giant Google bucked the economic downturn to outperform Wall Street’s expectations, according to its latest financial results. The company reported revenues of $5.7bn for the three months ending in December, up 18% year-on-year, but an increase of just 3% on the previous quarter’s figures. Profit was down significantly to $382m, compared with $1.2bn a year ago — however, this was largely the result of investments in internet rival AOL and wireless broadband provider Clearwire
Relief may be on its way for women who suffer from a loss of libido and other symptoms when taking contraceptives, with a new pill set to be trialled at a Sydney Hospital. The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick will trial the oral contraceptive which uses a natural form of the female hormone oestrogen, called estradil
Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations — via Slashdot
US researchers have developed a new type of semiconductor ink that brings companies a step closer to making bendable computer screens or inexpensive sensor tags to help retailers keep track of their inventory. The discovery lies in the new material &8212; a soluble semiconductor ink capable of carrying a negative electrical charge, said Philippe Inagaki, chief executive officer of Polyera Corp, a specialty chemicals company in Skokie, Illinois, that makes materials for flexible and printed electronics
Surgical procedures could soon be helped along with tiny robots, according to researchers. Miniaturisation of motors has not kept pace with that of electronics, leaving such tiny robots with no means to get around in the body. Now, research reported in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering has demonstrated a motor about twice the size of a human hair
A vicious worm-infection has crashed the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s computer systems but an official says the medicine is working and they are back running. But deputy director general Alan Hesketh said their staff were still not allowed to use the internet
Proteus Biomedicals, a company in California, has developed an intelligent pill that sends digital signals to an external receiver after being swallowed. The pill still works as an ordinary drug that a patient might take to control a health issue such as heart trouble or a psychiatric disorder. But it also has digestible sensors that are made of food products and are activated by stomach fluids. Once swallowed, the sensors can send a digital signal through the body to a receiver. The receiver date- and time-stamps, decodes, and records information about the drug and the dosage. It also measures and reports heart rate, activity, and respiratory rate
Net neutrality really is the hot topic at the moment. After the FCC slapped Comcast for slowing down BitTorrent users, Canada is now looking into the network management practices of its ISPs. And rightly so, as a CRTC investigation reveals that most of the ISPs in Canada actively slow down customers using P2P applications
Belkin’s alleged, and now confirmed, payola scheme may have been one of the first times we’ve heard about their shady practices, but an employee of Belkin says it’s actually very common. To summarise the note, Belkin’s supposedly paid for positive reviews, gave products with custom firmware to reviewers in order to hide bugs, faked certification logos, writing poor reviews of competitor’s products and backing out of CES for lack of funding. The company’s supposedly in such bad shape that it’s commonly accepted that current CEO Mark Reynoso is running everything into the ground, while increasing his salary year after year
Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday before a massive crowd reveling in a moment of historical significance, and called on Americans to confront together an economic crisis that he said was caused by our collective failure to make hard choices
Tools for grabbing videos from YouTube have existed for some time now, but Google’s video portal began experimenting this weekend with allowing users to download a high-quality H.264 version directly from a video’s site. The feature appeared first on the Obama campaign’s ChangeDotGov account, and it is expected to roll out to the rest of YouTube users in the coming weeks
In addition to Google’s announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it’s discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video. Jaiku, however, will live on as an open source project. Gundotra said that Google engineers have been porting the microblogging service to Google App Engine and that when the migration is completed, the company plans to make the code available under the Apache license — via Slashdot
A distributed denial-of-service attack turned dark at least several thousand Web sites hosted by GoDaddy.com Wednesday morning. The outage was intermittent over several hours, according to Nick Fuller, GoDaddy.com communications manager. Neither e-mail nor DNS services were interrupted, Fuller said
It was recently discovered that Belkin’s lead online sales rep, Michael Bayard, has been secretly paying internet users to review his company’s products favourably on Amazon.com and other websites like Newegg, whether or not they’ve ever used the devices. Bayard instructed the people he was paying to Write as if you own the product and are using it… Mark any other negative reviews as ‘not helpful’ once you post yours.
Ironically, he was using Amazon’s own Mechanical Turk service to hire his fraudsters. Did he honestly think he wouldn’t get caught? — via Slashdot
Aleksandr Lebedev, a Russian billionaire and former KGB agent, is known as a gadfly in his home country, where he has sometimes dared to criticise Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. But in recent days his mischief-making seems to have spread to Britain, where he has expressed an interest in becoming a newspaper publisher. On Thursday, The Guardian reported that Lebedev was about to seal a deal for a controlling stake in The Evening Standard, a London tabloid owned by the Daily Mail & General Trust, publisher of The Daily Mail
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