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Announcements

Submission + - Now playing: An Open Source movie

Submitted by
Pritesh Jethwani
Pritesh Jethwani writes: "Now playing at a theater near you: The world's first film made by a worldwide community
— - —

LetsFilm.com — A unique community website project that plans to bring thousands of talented minds on the same online platform for the purpose of creating a "complete mainstream film," was launched today.

The project has officially begun building its first film called "The Bomb Within," a story that unfolds in a post 9/11 era, surrounding the discovery of a new biochemical weapon. Lets Film has written a synopsis of the script and posted it online, which a global community of thousands of talented, budding scriptwriters is expected to takeover and drive to completion.

Commenting on the launch, Hinesh Jethwani, Founder & Head, Lets Film, said, "Through this unique community website, we plan to bring talented individuals together that are passionate about movies and have a willingness to share and learn from one another. This would be the first time that anyone in the world has attempted to make a complete commercial film that will be starred, written, produced, directed, edited and distributed, by a team of people simply passionate about movies collaborating from all over the world."

Lets Film has setup a Wiki (the same technology that powers the immensely popular Open Source online encyclopedia called Wikipedia), which will allow virtually thousands of scriptwriters to work on the same script simultaneously. In the meanwhile, budding actors, directors, editors, producers, effects artists and even extras who want to play any kind of a role in the film can create their profiles on the site with their audios (voiceovers), videos (demo reels), photos (portfolios), profiles (resumes), etc.

An online rating system will allow both visitors and members to vote for their favorite members. A jury is in the process of being setup that will sort through profiles and pick the most popular members to play key roles in the making of the film.

However, whether somebody gets to play the lead role or not, at the end of the day, everyone is a winner, says Hinesh.

"Registration on LetsFilm.com is absolutely free for life. Members of Lets Film will be able to chat/IM/email each other, which will make it a true collaborative platform for them to expand their horizon. Plus, they will get the opportunity to interact with their counterparts located all across the world. For anyone with a genuine passion for movies, this would be an experience of a lifetime," he adds.

From the days of the dotcom fallout, the Internet has evolved into a new avatar, more popularly known as Web2.0. UGC or User Generated Content is at an all time high. Internet users from all over the world are contributing and sharing their knowledge through open media like blogs, forums and chat rooms. Lets Film's unique attempt at making a "complete commercial" film by bringing together people from all over the world on the Internet is an innovative spin-off on UGC.

"Sites like YouTube, DailyMotion and GoogleVideo have started a unique era for Web 2.0, something I like to term as User Generated Movies — i.e. UGM. It's about time that a complete User Generated Movie be played at your nearest cinema hall," says Hinesh.

Lets Film expects community-styled filmmaking to challenge closed-door proprietary fillmmaking that has long since been the norm in the film industry.

For more information and press inquiries, please contact:
###
Pritesh Jethwani,
Lets Film
pritesh at LetsFilm dot com
+91 98207 99225

About Lets Film
—
LetsFilm.com is a unique social networking website designed to bring thousands of film enthusiasts on the same platform for the purpose of creating a complete commercial film. LetsFilm.com has launched the world's first attempt at making a commercial film that will be starred, written, produced, directed, edited and distributed by people collaborating from across the globe over the Internet."
Censorship

Submission + - YouTube banned nationwide in Turkey

Submitted by
unity100
unity100 writes: "As of 07.03.2007, access to YouTube.com has been banned nationwide in Turkey through the nations' one and only internet backbone provider, Turkish Telecom, in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court.

The reason for this court's decision is a recent video that has been published on YouTube.com recently which is said to be insulting Turkish Republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal.

Curiously, this follows on the heels of a 3-4 month long campaign by the ruling party and the media supporting them against the freedom in the internet, citing "internet needs to be 'straightened up'".

All internet users nationwide are met with the below message that apparently emanates from Turkish Telecom DNS server or access filters :

"Bu siteye eriim mahkeme kararyla engellenmitir !...

www.youtube.com sitesine eriim stanbul 1. Sulh Ceza Mahkemesi'nin 2007/384 say ve 06.03.2007 tarihli karar gerei engellenmitir.

Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court.""
The Courts

Submission + - Is Piracy Really Killing the Music Industry?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: While various music industry trade groups claim that piracy is killing their industry and that higher CD prices, DRM, and file sharing litigation are its only recourse to survive, RoughlyDrafted presents a look at four groups critical of the labels' policies, and compares sales figures published by the RIAA itself. The article provides an interesting look at the variety of opinion on the subject, and how RIAA members can best adapt to current market realities. Is Piracy Really Killing the Music Industry?
Data Storage

Submission + - 161 Billion Gigabytes of Digital Information

Submitted by dthomas731
dthomas731 writes: The New York Times states that 161 billion gigabytes or 161 exabytes of digital information was created last year. Then they do their best to explain what "161 billion gigabytes" represents.

"That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun. Or you might think of it as 3 million times the information in all the books ever written, according to IDC. You'd need more than 2 billion of the most capacious iPods on the market to get 161 exabytes."
Personally, I can't comprehend something that large. How would you describe it?
Spam

Submission + - User/Submitter Under Auction

Submitted by
postasaurus
postasaurus writes: "The money grubbers at User/Submitter are now attempting to auction off their site for bids in the region of $50,000. Current willing bidders : 0. There's some useful information, and some apparent cv rewriting going on at the ebay auction page.

At a glance:

        * Launched in October 2006
        * Profitable I bet it is, moral though?
        * PageRank 6-7 As far as I can see, you have 0.
        * Nearly 4,000 registered users When you take into account the number of users on Digg, not too many.
        * Coded in PHP and MySQL

Winning bid receives:

        * Trademark: User/Submitter
        * Domain name: usersubmitter.com
        * All code and full database export (provided that usernames/transactions remain private)
        * All intellectual property

Opportunities for User/Submitter:

        * Full-scale social media optimization
        * Offerings for users and submitters of other social networks
        * Targeted demotion campaigns ('burying' on Digg, for instance) The rumours are apparently true
        * International crowdsourcing
        * Integration with SEO services
        * Design and user interface

This comes as a bit of a shock really, and though the blurb reads that they're selling because they're unable to keep up with the demand — despite all the money they're making. It's possible that their inability to promote anything to the front page without it being buried quickly due to some smart Diggers within the last week or so has crippled their two bit operation. If you check out my last post you can see how to check up on the latest user/submitter stories with my application. There's a new version already developed — just waiting for them to try and cripple the original before I release.

Happy Digging in the future all."
Space

Submission + - Black Holes Discovered as Source of Gamma Rays

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A very recent paper has been published that gives a very sound explanation for the source of gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. Objects like the Milky Way's central supermassive object (Sagittarius A*) are now suspected to be the culprit but since these are widely believed to be a black holes, little is known and skepticism is high that even gamma radiation could escape them. All that has been observed is gamma rays seem to coming from black holes. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model and found that intense gravity near the event horizon caused protons to fling outward at near light speeds where some would randomly make it beyond 10 light years of the black hole after thousands of years. Once they are sufficiently far away, these super high-energy protons would collide with low-energy protons to form pions which decay into gamma radiation emanating in all directions from the collision. If their simulation holds to be accurate and survives the skepticism of the community, the source of some gamma rays that were believed to all be remnants of the big bang could instead be signals from just outside black holes. Not only does a rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet star collapsing into a black hole cause narrow streams of gamma radiation but apparently they continue to emit them long after their formation."
The Internet

Submission + - France Bans Amateur Videos of Violent Acts

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "On the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King beating, which was filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday, the French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules."
Space

Submission + - Chinese Astronaut Could Be On The Moon In 15 Years

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Xinhua and Reuters are reporting that China will have the technical capability to put astronauts on the moon within 15 years. According to Huang Chunping, chief launch vehicle designer, a Chinese lunar landing will be achievable in that time frame if funding is available and preliminary projects go well. Huang says that China's current generation of Long March rockets are 'slightly' better than Europe's Ariane rockets, but trail the United States and Russia. China achieved its first human space flight in 2003. The United States had its first human space flight in 1961, and put the first astronauts on the moon about 8 years later, in 1969. The US is planning to return to the moon by 2020, 13 years from now.
United States

Submission + - Will the US have to conduct more nuclear tests?

Submitted by
Matthew Sparkes
Matthew Sparkes writes: "The US has selected the design for a controversial new nuclear warhead to replace the Cold War era weapons currently deployed in its submarines. However, critics say the existing bombs are good enough, and that developing new warheads gives entirely the wrong message at a time when the US is trying to control nuclear proliferation. Questions also remain about whether or not the new warhead will require nuclear tests."
Announcements

Submission + - Via Carbon Free Processor

Submitted by st_johnny
st_johnny writes: "[The]chips use less than a sixth the energy of an Intel Pentium, and less than a quarter the energy an AMD Athlon uses. In addition to efficiency, VIA has started a program called "carbon-free computing", where they offset the carbon that will be produced by the manufacturing and lifetime energy use of their CPU's. They do these offsets by building renewable power generation in developing countries, restoring forest and wetlands, and doing energy conservation." http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006239.html http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/c7-d http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/cleancomputin g/carbon-free_computing.jsp
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - Microsoft Wanted To Drop Mac Office To Hurt Apple

Submitted by Overly Critical Guy
Overly Critical Guy writes: More documents in the Iowa antitrust case have come out. This time, it's revealed that Microsoft considers Mac users its "guinea pigs" for new Office features, and they once considered dropping Mac Office entirely, "as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately." This case has become a treasure trove of internal memos describing Microsoft's internal business practices of the last ten years.

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