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OCAU News
Tuesday Evening (20 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 15-March-2011  19:12:03 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

First up, if you have family and friends living in Japan, Telstra is waiving call charges between Australia and Japan from the 11th until the 25th of March. Thanks to everyone who let us know about this; I moved back to Australia 36 hours before the big quake, so I'll certainly be using it to check up on friends.

Continuing in Japan, everyone is understandably nervous about the problems with the Fukushima nuclear reactors and the troubles they're having, but are they really as bad as the media are portraying? The Australian Science Media Centre have an interesting (but long and a little wordy) article regarding what's going on and what could possibly be expected. The short version is that it's not going to explode like a nuclear bomb, or be like Chernobyl, which according to a lot of sources, was a comedy of errors, ignorance and bad engineering. Regardless, I'm still keeping an eye on the news reports.

Everyone is pretty much aware of computer viruses, but once, there weren't any. In this interesting video, Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure searches for the original authors of the first virus, 'Brain'. It's a facinating look into some computing history.

Another video, this time a project from MIT: Using multiple display devices as a junkyard jumbotron screen. Pretty nifty idea and very cleverly executed... but not sure what you'd use it for? Ideas? Put them in the comments below.

One from the "Geez, Kids Today" file: 214,000 people said 'yes' to a Facebook event invite for a 16 year old girl's party, after she apparently made it open to invites, allowing anyone to attend. It was then 'adopted' by the infamous Anonymous crowd from 4chan, who sent it viral. The party was originally intended for the 26th of March, which is also my birthday. I'm kinda bummed because I was hoping we could make it a joint-party and now it's cancelled. :( Thanks to IntelInside for crushing my birthday dreams.

This one has to hurt: Steam user violates subscription policy, loses $1,800 in games. Seems the kid asked if someone would be willing to pay for their account - in theory. They weren't actually selling it, but Steam took exception to it and perma-banned them. Since then, the account has been reenabled, but the damage has been done, it seems. I'm of two minds about this: on one hand, you shouldn't be selling your access to Steam to other people, it's in their usage policy. On the other hand, you're paying to 'own' the game, not access to the games, which Steam acting as authentication system. If the game was on a DVD, you could sell it to your mate down at the pub, but via Steam...? What's your opinion?

Finally, while we're still at Ars, Global Piracy can only be stopped by one thing: lower pricing of legitimate media. It certainly doesn't help Australia where we're constantly forking over more cash for the same movie/game/tv season. This quote highlights the geographical disparity in pricing: In Russia, for instance, researchers noted that legal versions of the film The Dark Knight went for $15. That price, akin to what a US buyer would pay, might sound reasonable until you realize that Russians make less money in a year than US workers. As a percentage of their wages, that $15 price is actually equivalent to a US consumer dropping $75 on the film. Pirate versions can be had for one-third the price.

Right, off to dinner, but back with some extra stuff around midnight.



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All original content copyright James Rolfe. All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.