REVIEW: Innovation For the 21st Century

This review was originally scheduled for publication in May 2009 on TorrentFreak.com As we decided to move away from reviews for the time being, it's being published here.

In a new feature to TorrentFreak, we're going to look at a new book, recently published by Oxford University Press. Innovation for the 21st Century, written by Rutgers law professor Michael A. Carrier, takes a look at copyright, and patent law, and mixes it with antitrust (monopoly) law. The questions is, how does it read?

OFCOM Closes Consultation Early

>As some might know, OFCOM's running a consultation on the aspects of the Digital Economy Act it's supposed to enforce. Now, in theory, it's supposed to be open until at least 5pm, but when I went to check the consultation document on another computer (so I could read both at once) I found a 404.

Yet another utorrent using idiot

Idiots are nothing new, they're probably one of the most common things out there; that doesn't mean you have to settle for their idiocy though. I like to name and shame idiots when I see them, to try and instill in others that you should start using your danged brain.

US Box Office Estimates July 23-25 2010

Inception holds the the top spot for another week, from Angelina Jolie's new spy thriller Salt, showing a strong retention over the previous week. Despicable continues to draw good crowds though, keeping it in a decent third place, while Nicholas Cage's Sorcerer's Apprentice starts to drop ticket sales.

Ars Forgets How Torrents Work, Cites Faulty Study

If you follow tech news, you have a certain list of sites you'll keep an eye on. Personally, I always keep an eye on TorrentFreak (but then, I am their researcher, and night-time comment moderator) but there are others as well, Wired's Threat Level, Slyck, and of course, ArsTechnica.

The problem for all tech news sites is that there's a deadline game. You have to be first to break the story, so you can get it passed around the social media circles, facebook, slashdot etc. Often that means that stories, or more specifically the data that comprises the story, doesn't get the attention it should, and ArsTechnica has fallen foul of this, repeating the conclusions of a study, and not noticing some glaring errors.

US Box Office Estimates July 16-18 2010

Only one weekend at the top for Despicable Me, unseated as Sci-fi heist film Inception takes the top spot. Undergoing a marketing blitz like nothing else, it made a strong start, albeit nowhere near the directors release two years ago - the Dark Knight (although had DiCaprio died before the film came out, I'm sure it would have boosted the numbers to be comparable). The other new top film, (another) remake of Fantasia, (again) called The Sorcerer's Apprentice tried to get a jump on things with a Wednesday release. It didn't help.

20 Quadrillion Muons - Muon1 hits milestone

One of the projects I've supported for a long time, the Muon1 DPAD, has hit 20 Quadrillion particle-timesteps (pts). Thats a 2, with 16 zeros (20,000,000,000,000,000), or two million-billion. A particle timestep is simulating a particle for 0.01 nanoseconds (0.00000000001 second). I've been invovled with the project since around 2003, and as of writing this, I'm 362 overall, having done 5,867,002,100,000 pts, or 0.0293% of the total work.

US Box Office Estimates July 9-11 2010

Twilight didn't last long at the top, despite notching up an impressive 2 week total, being deposed by animated film, Despicable Me. Despicable's protagonists, Steve Carell and Russel Brand, have recently been in the top-10 with other films - Date Night, and Get Him to the Greek  - showing great consistency from those two. In fact, Date Night, which opened in early April, dropped from the top-10 the weekend of Greek's release, which likewise has now dropped out this weekend, going from 8th to 12th.

US Box Office Estimates July 2-5 2010

Slightly different this week (and sorry for the delay). As it was possibly the biggest 'day off' holiday that cinemas would be open for (unlike Christmas and Thanksgiving), the four-day weekend figures will be covered. Where applicable, the figures for Monday as well (Friday-Monday) will be coloured red (also giving you an idea of a daily take). The holiday weekend is also why this is being done on a Wednesday, rather than the Sunday/early Monday it usually is.

Benchmarking Browsers - How Does Opera 10.60 Stack Up?

About a month ago, I did a bit of a browser comparison using my desktop and laptop. It gave some quite interesting results, showing just how far behind the two popular browsers, IE and FireFox, are behind. Chrome and Opera, on the other hand, have been making HUGE strides in speed, stability, and features, and since 10.60 has just come out, I thought I'd test it, and see how it stacks up. I also thought I'd install and throw in Safari 5, which was launched to great fanfare recently, claiming to be the fastest Does Opera 10.60 beat Chrome, or was the google-monster faster, and how did the all-seeing-Apple product fare? Find out after the jump.