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Software

Submission + - How FairPlay Works: Apple's iTunes DRM Dilemma

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Understanding how Apple's FairPlay DRM works helps to answer a lot of questions: why it hasn't been replaced with an open, interoperable DRM that anyone can use, why Apple isn't broadly licensing FairPlay, and why the company hasn't jumped to add DRM-free content from indie artists to iTunes.
Wii

Submission + - The 12 Awesomest Games of 2010

Submitted by ipsofacto
ipsofacto writes: Get in line now! These games will be flying off the shelves in just a few years. Wii games, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC games that you have to see to believe.
Linux Business

Submission + - Dell takes small steps toward Linux

Submitted by daria42
daria42 writes: Dell has acknowledged that 83,000 users have urged it to sell PCs with Linux pre-installed, but it has fallen short of accepting their suggestion. The requests were made through a new user forum, Dell IdeaStorm, which was launched by Dell 10 days ago, shortly after Michael Dell regained the chief executive's seat. Dell IdeaStorm gives users the chance to tell the PC vendor what kind of systems it should offer.
Math

Submission + - UW scientists unlock major number theory puzzle

Submitted by
Jake's Mom
Jake's Mom writes: "From the University of Wisconsin — UW scientists unlock major number theory puzzle.

"Mathematicians have finally laid to rest the legendary mystery surrounding an elusive group of numerical expressions known as the "mock theta functions."

Number theorists have struggled to understand the functions ever since the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan first alluded to them in a letter written on his deathbed, in 1920.

Now, using mathematical techniques that emerged well after Ramanujan's death, two number theorists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have pieced together an explanatory framework that for the first time illustrates what mock theta functions are, and exactly how to derive them."

For more, read the full article."
The Courts

Bloggers Immune From Suits Against Commenters 142

Posted by kdawson from the common-carrier dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Suppose a commenter posts a libelous comment here at Slashdot. Can Slashdot and its owners be sued for defamation? A federal appeals court just held that no, they cannot. The court noted that a federal law was designed to ensure that 'within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,' adding that, were the law otherwise, it would have an 'obvious chilling effect' on blogger speech."
Biotech

Submission + - Are Vision Implants Part of Our Future?

Submitted by Amazing HDR
Amazing HDR writes: Trey Ratcliff a programmer/CEO/photographer acclaimed for his HDR photos talks about the future of vision, "The color spectrum we see the world in is extremely limited, but that will change in the next 10 to 15 years as people evolve to get eye implants that both improve vision and can see (and record) new wavelengths beyond the current visible spectrum. There are already a few mutant tetrachromatics currently alive today that see four colors, one order of magnitude beyond the exiting three-axis RGB scale."
Upgrades

Submission + - Why Does Apple Have All the Sexy?

Submitted by il1019
il1019 writes: I hate Apple. I hate people that use Apples. How they proclaim their "superior" product. And yet I always find myself drooling over Apple products. HP, IBM/Levono, Dell, even higher end machines from Alienware or VoodooPCs don't have the same sexy that Apple does. The iMac, MacBook, and MPB are all gorgeous machines. Simple, elegant, and they just look great. No other computers coming out look as good as Apples do. The real question is: why does Apple have all they sexy? Can't any Windows PC makers take a hint that the public (myself included) would like to have something that doesn't look like a grey brick?
The Almighty Buck

British Government Slashes Scientific Research 168

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the no-soup-for-you dept.
asobala writes "The British Government has slashed the funding of scientific Research Councils by £68 million. The Research Councils most affected by this include the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which has been hit by a £29 million reduction in funding, and the Medical Research Council, which is seeing a £10.7 million reduction in funding. The response of the BBSRC biological research council announces that the council will have to cut 20 new grants and reduce expenditure on new equipment."
Announcements

Submission + - Ebook Reader

Submitted by
Andrew1963
Andrew1963 writes: "Sony's new ebook-reader is crippled by Digital Restriction Management and restricted in the supported formats. NAEB is a new company providing ebook readers free of DRM which can use any format the user wishes. Check out NAEB and sign up now."
Data Storage

Submission + - Why we hate lawyers in IT: Reason No. 1,997

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: How many laws affect IT? Steve Duplessie says zillions. Most are about record retention, and they were a boon to the storage industry. The lawyers on the good side put tough laws in place to say, "Thou shalt keep stuff, electronic or other, so that we can see it when we think you're a lying dirtbag." The lawyers on the bad side then started making money, first by trying to show their clients how to skirt the issue, and then by showing them how to comply. But now retention isn't enough. You have to also find the stuff. There are numerous approaches to the problem, but they seem to be lumped into these basic categories: 1. Let someone else deal with it; 2. Categorize and classify things up front; 3. Index stuff in the backup stream; 4. Internal search technologies.
Biotech

Submission + - Fuel Cell Car and Experiment Kit

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Kids can't help but get excited about saving the planet when they see their own model car zoom across the floor powered by nothing but water! Fuel-cell technology is the environmentally friendly wave of the future. The water becomes fuel before kids' eyes as electrolysis (powered by a solar cell) breaks it into its separate components of hydrogen and oxygen, creating a gas that is then stored for use by the fuel cell when it's time for the car to get going. During the building process, children from age twelve can use the included 96-page Experiment Manual as a guide to performing thirty experiments on such subjects as the effects of direct and indirect radiation, the characteristics of a solar module, constructing and loading a reversible fuel cell, and decomposition of water in the fuel cell, plus they can design experiments of their own. The kit contains everything children need to build and experiment with their fuel cell and car (except 1 quart of distilled water)."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - The ghost of the Newton haunts Apple's iPhone

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "David Haskin has looked back at why the Newton failed to succeed in the early PDA market, and warns that Apple may be setting itself up for a similar failure with the iPhone. The iPhone appears to have a revolutionary interface, and the product has generated tons of interest from the Mac community — just like the Newton did, back in the 1990s. But the iPhone also shares with the Newton a hefty starting price — $500 for the iPhone, vs. $700 (in 1993 dollars) for the Newton. And Joe Public may not be so keen on the cost, as recent survey data suggests (see Slashdot discussion). Moreover, Haskin notes that the iPhone will have to deal with two additional factors that were not issues for the Newton: Competition, and wireless service providers: 'Besides overcharging for iPhone, Apple faces significant competition, something it didn't face in 1993 when it launched Newton. And you can bet that competition from the likes of Samsung and LG will both be good (although probably not as good as iPhone) and most assuredly cheaper. It's also becoming clear that Apple may be suffering from excessive hubris. That is evident by its strong demands on its partner in the U.S., Cingular/AT&T. The demands, including a slice of the cellular revenues and control of the sales channel, were so strong that Verizon Wireless turned the deal down. I'm more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular. If Apple doesn't respond quickly by lowering the price and making nice to AT&T, which surely will be ticked off, iPhone may well become Apple's next Newton. Remember that two years after Newton was introduced, a smaller, cheaper PDA appeared — the Palm Pilot — which truly did rock the world.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Visual Studio: Industry Leading IDE, but in what?

Submitted by
Yoooder
Yoooder writes: "I've used Visual Studio 2005 for some time, but the longer I use it the more frustrated I get with it. Amid all it's wonderful features there's something smelly, something that oozes from the cracks and lets me know that underneath me there is something disturbing and wrong. Random crashes, out of control memory usage, a finicky designer, and a lack of updates all plague this IDE — and the grand-daddy of them all is a Service Pack that runs umpteen times, requiring user interaction the whole way through and lacking proof of any real fixes.

Does anyone else have the feeling that Microsoft's flagship programming tool is a victim of Too Much Too Fast? What are your horror stories within the unpredictable vessel of vs2005?"

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