Maxim Bange

There's a store in Australia that really hates it when its customers walk around the store without buying anything.

Redditor BarrettFox posted a pic of a sign informing shoppers of a new fee at a specialty food store in Brisbane.

It's $5 for "just looking."

The fee exists to stop people from "showrooming" — which occurs when a customer looks at items in a physical store, then makes the purchase online.

The sign assures that you'll have the five dollars deducted from the final purchase price, so you'll get your money back if you buy something.

Here's what the sign says:

As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for “just looking.”

The $5 fee will be deducted when goods are purchased.

Why has this come about?

There has been high volume of people who use this store as a reference and then purchase goods elsewhere. These people are unaware our prices are almost the same as the other stores plus we have products simply not available anywhere else.

This policy is line with many other clothing, shoe and electronic stores who are also facing the same issue.

Management

The policy is being ripped apart unanimously.

"It has to be the most misguided strategy we've seen for dealing with showrooming," wrote Matt Brownell at Daily Finance. "The goal of any retailer should be to impress customers with competitive pricing and great customer service — not treat their customers with suspicion and hostility from the moment they walk in the door."

"If customers aren’t buying, the seller needs to figure out why and adapt accordingly," wrote Chris Morran at The Consumerist. "If this store’s prices are truly the best, then maybe it should be offering a price-match guarantee. If it truly offers products that aren’t available elsewhere, then how are these showrooming shoppers buying these items from someone else?"

The commenters in the Reddit thread were more straightforward.

"This store seems desperate to go out of business," quipped one commenter.

"If it was me, I'd say 'Screw you.' and not give them a dime, walk out and refuse them any future business," wrote another. "They are asking to go out of business."

And those were the polite ones.

SEE ALSO: The Future Of Retail [SLIDE DECK] >

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Research into online piracy comes in all shapes and sizes, often with equally mixed results. The main question often is whether piracy is hurting sales.

A new study by The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, tackled this question in a unique way. With data from more than 16,000 European Internet users they determined what the effect was of people’s access to pirate sites on visits to online music stores.

The results are now published in a paper titled “Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data,” and the researchers found that overall, piracy has a positive effect on music sales.

“It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them,” they write.

In addition, the researchers are also the first to find that free and legal streaming websites don’t cannibalize legal music purchases.

“The complementary effect of online streaming is found to be somewhat larger, suggesting a stimulating effect of this activity on the sales of digital music,” they comment.

Most of the effects were found by comparing people’s visits to “pirate” websites and legal music stores. After controlling for interest in music, the researchers found that visits to pirate websites are positively linked to visits to legal music stores.

“If this estimate is given a causal interpretation, it means that clicks on legal purchase websites would have been 2 percent lower in the absence of illegal downloading websites,” the researchers write.

The effect of legal streaming services on visits to music stores is even greater, and estimated at 7 percent. So more free streaming is linked to more visits to music stores. The report notes that their data doesn’t cover visits to bricks and mortar stores.

The researchers admit that there could be external factors influencing these effects, but conclude that the results provide no evidence that piracy is hurting digital music sales in Europe. On the contrary, the data suggests a positive relation between piracy and music sales.

“Taken at face value, our findings indicate that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. This means that although there is trespassing of private property rights, there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues,” they write.

While the results are clear, the researchers don’t want to make any specific policy recommendations. They do, however, note that the music industry shouldn’t be all that concerned about online piracy.

“From that perspective, our findings suggest that digital music piracy should not be viewed as a growing concern for copyright holders in the digital era. In addition, our results indicate that new music consumption channels such as online streaming positively affect copyrights owners.”

The above will certainly influence the ongoing copyright enforcement debate in Europe. Those who are against increased surveillance and policing of copyrighted content will now have some strong evidence to back up their claims. The anti-piracy lobby, on the other hand, will not be happy with the new study.

Source: Online Music Piracy Doesn’t Hurt Sales, European Commission Finds

Xi3 distances itself from Valve

Op de Randweg bij Dordrecht is een verstrooide automobilist vanmiddag duizenden euro's kwijtgeraakt. Hij had zijn portemonnee op het dak van zijn auto laten liggen.

Dat ontdekte hij toen hij de oprit van de N3 richting Papendrecht opreed. Toen hij in zijn achteruitkijkspiegel keek, zag hij tot zijn grote schrik vele tientallen biljetten van 50 over de Rijksweg dwarrelen.

Onbekende vrouw

De man besloot om de eerste afrit te nemen en een rondje te rijden omdat op het stuk weg geen vluchtstrook is. Andere automobilisten trokken zich daar niets van aan. Ze stopten om de biljetten op te kunnen rapen.

Een onbekende vrouw ging er uiteindelijk met bijna al het geld vandoor. Ze had de andere automobilisten wijsgemaakt dat zij haar portemonnee op het dak van haar auto had laten liggen. Daarop gaf iedereen het geld aan haar.

3100 euro

De vrouw was net vertrokken toen de echte eigenaar van het geld terug was. Er zat 3100 euro in zijn portemonnee. Daarvan is 160 euro teruggevonden.

De politie is op zoek naar getuigen. De vrouw die er met het geld vandoor ging, zou in een blauwe auto hebben gezeten, samen met een man en twee kinderen.

Business Insider received some criticism over the weekend from readers — and, truth be told, internally from our own staff too — who wondered why we published an article on how to hire an assassin on the internet.

The story describes the hidden services on Tor, an anonymously encrypted "undernet" that exists in parallel to the regular internet. It's used by people who want to surf the web in complete privacy and anonymity. It's also used by criminals to prevent law enforcement from tracking their web browsing.

Some of the web pages viewable via Tor offer hitmen for hire.

One reader, using the screen name "Shame on Business Insider," addressed his/her comments to the author, Dylan Love:

What's next Dylan, the secret underground web of child porn? Or in your twisted morality is that worse than murder?

You should remove this post. It's profoundly not okay.

One of Dylan's colleagues emailed to ask:

Are we sure we want to run this article? ... Kind of creepy and twisted, no? And it's our lead story.

I'm Dylan's editor, and I commissioned the story. Here's why we chose to do this.

First, the vast majority of people have no idea Tor exists. The fact that it does — and the fact that it offers access to what purports to be a vast, unchecked playground for criminals — is news. It's probably news to a lot of law enforcement officers too, particularly those not assigned to cyber-crime beats. People need to know this thing exists.

We previously published a guide to using Tor so that ordinary people — and law enforcement — can actually see what's going on themselves. We also noted that you could buy drugs on web sites via Tor in a completely untraceable way.

Second, sunlight is disinfectant. Ignoring Tor will not make its underworld go away. Nor will it cause fewer people to use it — it exists precisely because most people don't know that it exists. Ignoring criminal activity in the hopes of preventing it is a bit like ignoring a series of home burglaries in the hopes that the thieves would get bored of being ignored.

So, yes, some of the things you can see via Tor are unpleasant. We do not endorse them, obviously.

But they are news and the public needs to know about it.

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

When I found out yesterday afternoon that Google was shutting down Google Reader, I thought it was a prank.

It is one of the three Google services I use multiple times a day for work, in addition to email and search. My reader is one of a few automatic tabs that open when I start my browser every morning.

As an editor, I love having the dozens of publications I read daily in one place, from the real estate section of the Wall Street Journal to a niche blog about luxury shopping in China.

So when I found out that the news was real, and that Google Reader would no longer be available after July 1, I was peeved.

Yes, I'm in the media, and probably rely on Google Reader more than most people to keep up with the news.

But I consider myself a "normal" person and not a "tech nerd" — I've had the same MacBook since 2007, I've never paid for an app, and even though I've worked at Business Insider for more than two years, a lot of the news on SAI goes right over my head.

In fact, this is the first time I can recall having an emotional reaction, positive or negative, to tech news.

The truth is, Google Reader makes my job much easier, and I dread the thought of turning on my computer the first day of July and seeing an error page where my feeds used to be. I've heard there are other services that can replace my reader once its defunct, but it seems inconvenient to switch when my current reader works perfectly well.

For me — and for the thousands of people who have signed petitions begging Google to change its mind — it's a useful tool, and probably not too costly or complicated to keep around.

So why are they killing it?

SEE ALSO: Photographer's Pictures Of His Girlfriend Leading Him Around The World Go Viral

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Since leaving Microsoft, Bill Gates has been spending time trying to solve some of the world's biggest problems with The Gates Foundation, particularly the infectious diseases that still cause millions of deaths in the developing world. 

Wired reports that, at a Royal Academy of Engineering summit, Gates harshly criticized capitalism for having fundamentally flawed priorities:  

"Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives," he said. "The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding. But if you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria."

The result of what Gates called a "flaw in the pure capitalistic approach" is that advances in treatments for things like malaria depend on the generosity of individuals and a select few companies. Gates' foundation is one of the only games in town for treatments and education people desperately need, and little is being done to change that.

It's an unfortunate truth. There's not much profit for drug companies in producing new and better medicines for people that can't really pay for them. Diseases suffered by the wealthy, like heart disease and cosmetic treatments like those for baldness will always command a higher price.

And it doesn't necessarily need to be a medical breakthrough, Gates argues. The inability to refrigerate vaccines without electricity leads to thousands of unnecessary deaths. 

Unless something changes, it's going to remain hard to attract money and talent to work on these problems instead of more lucrative ones. 

SEE ALSO: NOVARTIS CEO: The Age Of Massive Blockbuster Drugs Is Over

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A SimCity player has found a straightforward way to hack the game so it can be played without a persistent internet connection.

According to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary George Little, on Mar. 12, an IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) combat plane attempted to intercept a U.S. MQ-1 drone flying in international airspace.

As happened on Nov. 1, 2012, when two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran, the interception of the unmanned aircraft failed.

Interestingly, the last close encounter was unsuccessful because the fighter jets scrambled to intercept the unarmed U.S. drone were discouraged from accomplishing the mission: at least one of the two F-4 Phantom jets came to about 16 miles from the UAV but broke off pursuit after they were broadcast a warning message by two American planes escorting the Predator.

Clearly, following last year’s close encounter the Pentagon has decided to escort the drones involved in intelligence gathering missions with fighter jets (either F-18 Hornets with the CVW 9 embarked on the USS John C. Stennis whose Carrier Strike Group is currently in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to the UAE).

Although dispatching fighter jets to escort drones makes them less vulnerable, it also makes the UAV more visible. Unless the fighter jets providing HVAAE (High Value Air Asset Escort) are F-22 stealth fighters.

A few days ago, Iran recovered from sea a mysterious drone; most probably an Iranian one.

SEE ALSO: Iranians Found Some Kind Of 'Mystery Drone' In The Gulf Of Oman >

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Google heeft sommige applicaties die advertenties kunnen weren uit zijn Play Store verwijderd. Volgens het bedrijf is de functie van deze zogenoemde adblockers in strijd met de algemene voorwaarden.

Google verkoopt via Play Store applicaties voor mobiele telefoons en tablets. De applicaties die advertenties blokkeren waren gewoon te downloaden, maar worden vanaf nu blijkbaar geweerd door het bedrijf. In de voorwaarden van Google staat dat applicaties de functies van andere toepassingen niet mogen belemmeren.

Zeker twee bedrijven die adblockers ontwikkelden en verkochten via Play Store kregen een e-mail van Google waarin stond dat ze de regels overtraden. Google zelf heeft nog niet gereageerd. Het bedrijf haalt veel winst uit de verkoop van online-advertenties.

On Monday a controversial domain was brought to our attention. The site, DumpDropbox.com, seemed to have one thing on its mind – providing a laundry list of reasons why users should literally dump Dropbox.

The reasons the site gives are many, from Dropbox relying on Amazon’s servers instead of its own, using data deduplication which “sacrifices user privacy”, a lack of encryption, to other concerns including a claimed vulnerability to US privacy laws.

We wanted to know who was behind DumpDropBox so we started asking questions. Our inquiries kept turning up the same name over and over again.

Golden Frog are the operators of VyprVPN and the Dump Truck file-storage product which is given away free to every subscriber of Usenet giant Giganews. Although separate business entities, Golden Frog and Giganews have a few things in common, not least their sharing of the same co-founder, Internet entrepreneur Ron Yokubaitis.

Yokubaitis is a resident of Austin, Texas, so it didn’t come as a surprise that TorrentFreak managed to catch up with him during the SXSW festivities on Monday. So, is Golden Frog behind the anti-Dropbox campaign?

“Yes, Golden Frog is behind the dumpdropbox.com website,” Yokubaitis told us.

“Austin is our hometown so we wanted do something fun at SXSW. We decided the dumpdropbox.com campaign was a fun way to inform users about the privacy and security issues that affect online storage. We hope these conversations continue beyond SXSW.”

One key claim from the campaign site is that Dropbox doesn’t use its own servers for file-storage but relies on Amazon’s instead. Many sites rely on ‘the cloud’ – not least The Pirate Bay – so why does this pose a problem?

“Our goal is to educate users that there is ‘another way’ – Your data. Our servers. No 3rd parties,” Yokubaitis explained. “At our core, Golden Frog is focused on providing secure online tools for netizens and I think that resonates with both Golden Frog and Giganews userbases.”

Amazon’s servers are in the United States, a point highlighted as a supposed negative on the DumpDropBox site. However, raising this issue of jurisdiction is tricky for Dump Truck. Its servers are also entirely based in the U.S. but Yokubaitis told us that will soon change. In response to concerns European customers have over U.S. privacy laws, in the coming months users will be given a choice of where to store their files.

“Dump Truck will launch a European server cluster this year with the ability for users to designate that their files be stored in ‘Europe only’,” Yokubaitis told us. “We do a lot of business in Europe and our European users have heavily requested the feature. We are very focused on meeting the needs of our European userbase.”

So what exactly are the problems with the US?

“There are doubts about storage companies in the US and we share the same concerns. Last week, there was much discussion about Microsoft and Verizon scanning user’s files,” Yokubaitis said, pointing us to this article on Ars.

“Of course, Dropbox also uses data deduplication to scan users’ files to save on storage costs. We don’t scan users’ files and don’t rely on third parties to store our users’ data,” he added.

When considering possible weaknesses of US-based file-hosting services another issue comes to mind – the fate of Megaupload. Of course, Kim Dotcom is off to a fresh start with Mega.co.nz in New Zealand, backed by a company that is going out of its way to comply with every legal requirement. The service has received a good reception overall so we asked Yokubaitis if he sees Dotcom’s baby as a serious competitor. He wasn’t complimentary.

“Mega’s history makes them hard to trust with any important data. They’ve shown that they have little respect for governments and other corporations, and that leads to battles where the victim is the customer’s data. They might ‘beat the rap’, but their customers are getting ‘taken for a ride’,” he said.

That’s pretty harsh criticism. Time and again Kim Dotcom and his team have reported that they sought the best legal advice in the United States and were informed that their service complied with the law. And of course, Megaupload was a storage facility at its heart, one not entirely different from those provided by Dump Truck or indeed Giganews.

All of these services accept content uploaded by their users (some of it infringing, but that’s not the companies’ faults) and all have to comply with the DMCA as a result. Megaupload did and there’s no doubt that Giganews and Golden Frog do too – it’s almost a fact of life on the web these days. Nevertheless, Yokubaitis sees differences between the products.

“Ultimately, Mega looks to be the same service as Megaupload, just with more ass-covering for Mega. The fact that they don’t have tools to enable you to sync between your life and Mega shows that it’s a file-sharing product only. We don’t want Dump Truck users to sacrifice ease of use for security and privacy. We want our users to have both,” he concludes.

Perhaps it’s because i’m from Europe but I find the DumpDropbox campaign fairly uncomfortable reading. That being said, i’m informed this style of ‘negative’ advertising is common and widely accepted in the United States. Personally i’d prefer to see the virtues of a particular product promoted on their own merit, but others may well see things differently. Maybe the only important point is whether running Dropbox down will achieve the required result of more sales for Dump Truck, but for the answer to that we shall have to wait and see.

At the time of publication Dropbox had not responded to a request for comment.

Source: Giganews / Golden Frog Founder Fires Off at Dropbox and Mega

Facebook has joined Microsoft in offering a very lukewarm statement about pending legislation in Congress, the recently-reintroduced Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The goal of CISPA is to allow companies to share information on "cyber threats" with the government, but the scope, nature, and direction of that sharing has raised the hackles of privacy advocates. Although both companies supported CISPA the first time around, their backing isn't as forthcoming this year. Rather than throwing its full weight behind the bill, Facebook today told CNET that it preferred to find a "legislative balance" between sharing information and user privacy. The sentiment echoes Microsoft's statement, given to The Next Web, where it...

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Uit een enquête van de Consumentenbond onder 142 gebruikers van Windows 8 blijkt...

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Jack Reacher is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Week ending March 10, 2013

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	Jack Reacher (R6)	7.2 / trailer
2	(2)	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey	8.2 / trailer
3	(…)	This is 40	6.3 / trailer
4	(…)	Les Miserables	7.9 / trailer
5	(5)	Identity Thief	8.2 / trailer
6	(1)	Silver Linings Playbook	7.4 / trailer
7	(…)	Java Heat	?.? / trailer
8	(9)	Lincoln (DVDscr/BrRip)	8.2 / trailer
9	(4)	Argo (DVDscr)	8.2 / trailer
10	(6)	Red Dawn	5.3 / trailer

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of the Week

Intel heeft de x86-port van de nieuwste Android-versie 4.2.2 bijna af en voorziet die de mogelijkheid om te dualbooten met Windows 8. De chipmaker lijkt dus op tablets te mikken.

Slowly diversifying from hard disk drives

New York Times (blog)

The End of Google Reader Sends Internet Into an Uproar New York Times (blog) Last night, I went to meet a group of friends for dinner in San Francisco after work. As I sat down at the table, two of my dining companions asked in unison, with eye-opening looks on their faces, “Did you hear the news?” “Yes,” I replied as I shuffled my chair in ... Alternatives to Google ReaderWashington Post Top free alternatives to soon-to-be shuttered Google ReaderLos Angeles Times Google Reader shut down: Try these RSS feed alternativesCBS News CNET -Forbes all 471 news articles »

The iOSphere rumour machine for the iPad 5 is running on vapors, given that some were predicting as of last week that the Next iPad will be released "April-ish."

More cruise ship trouble? HLNtv.com Another Carnival ship may be in trouble, just a month after that fire that crippled the Carnival Triumph. A number of passengers on board the Carnival Dream contacted CNN to say the power is out and the toilets don't work. FLASHBACK: Smells are 'gross' ... and more »

It's not just about churning out silicon