by Erik Kain on March 1, 2012
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says the US government is protecting an outdated business model by shutting down his site and placing him behind bars. The eccentric internet entrepreneur is in jail after being accused by the US government of profiting off of internet piracy through his website, to the tune of $175 million dollars. Last [...]
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by Erik Kain on March 1, 2012
[updated] Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says the US government is protecting an outdated business model by shutting down his site and placing him behind bars. The eccentric internet entrepreneur is in jail after being accused by the US government of profiting off of internet piracy through his website, to the tune of $175 million dollars. [...]
Read more at Forbes.
by Erik Kain on March 1, 2012
Google counted the number of views each of the main GOP candidates and President Barack Obama received on YouTube over the past thirty days and this is what they came up with: The president looms above the rest of the pack, thanks to a few spikes in views. Remarkably, the Republican spread is not that [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 24, 2012
Students at have put together a fun experiment. They’ve calculated just how much it would cost to build a Death Star from Star Wars. The steel alone, they estimate, would cost at “2012 prices, about $852,000,000,000,000,000. Or roughly 13,000 times the world’s GDP.” Kevin Drum says this is a bargain – for the Galactic Empire: [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 23, 2012
Topix is a local forum site that spans the United States, including thousands of cities across the country. It allows users to discuss local news and local issues with one another. As such, it can be a useful tool for gauging public opinion on all sorts of issues, including politics. Recently Topix and Equation Research [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 22, 2012
The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is the latest effort by Congress to do something about the threat of cyber attacks and cyber crime. Fortunately, and perhaps thanks to the efforts to quash SOPA and PIPA, the Act is quite a bit more restrained in scope than its predecessors. You can read the whole thing here. [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 22, 2012
Foxconn has opened its doors to the Fair Labor Association and ABC News – but is it hiding something? After reports of poor working conditions and worker suicides at ‘s Chinese vendors’ manufacturing facilities, a number of groups have called for investigations and audits of the plants. The Fair Labor Association and ABC News have [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 16, 2012
The latest controversy out of is the announcement that women will be allowed to serve closer to the front lines. Though the Pentagon’s new rules maintain the prohibition on women in direct combat roles, over 14,000 new assignments will open up to women, and that’s just the beginning. Placing women into combat roles has long [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 15, 2012
Responding to Kevin Drum, who argues that we just haven’t tried hard enough to enforce IP law in this country, Tim Lee has an extremely useful timeline of the major efforts to crack down on piracy over the past two and a half decades: 1992: Congress passed the Audio Home Recording Act, which mandated that [...]
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by Erik Kain on February 13, 2012
governor Chris Gregoire signed legislation today making same-sex-marriage legal for Washingtonians. This makes the seventh state to grant gay couples the right to get married. It also marks a second major victory for marriage equality advocates, after a court recently struck down a ban in California when it ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional. This is good [...]
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