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United States

Submission + - Did the NTYimes violate the DCMA?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The weekly Circuits e-mail asks the following question.

Q & A

Free Software to Play DVDs

By J.D. BIERSDORFER

I would like to watch DVDs on my computer with a program that works better than Windows Media Player. Are there any free ones available?

The answer to this question does not appear at the paper's web site (login required).

Today's printed paper tells us to to try AVS DVD Player and VLC media player. Will the Times be called to task for encouraging us to watch DVD's with unlicensed software?
The Media

Submission + - Snakes on an Airplane!!

Submitted by
Anonymous
Anonymous writes: "Turns out someone took the movie with Samuel Jackson a bit too seriously. Yahia Rahim Tulba admitted to trying to smuggle 700 live snakes onto an airplane in Cairo, included in the 700 snakes were two poisonous cobras. Tulba was arrested for violating export laws and endangering other passengers."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Have Pictures of French Fries? You're a Terrorist!

Submitted by
Complain Here
Complain Here writes: "What would've been an innocent story about how someone's nephews loved the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry's "Ferry Fries" turned bizarre when the ship's crew threatened a passenger with arrest for taking pictures of their food. Frederick A. Hall, vice president and general manager of the ferry company was unrepentant, however, and said that the threat of arrest over three pictures showing children with fries and the food counter was justified because "there have been past incidents where possible acts of terrorism have been threatened." Clearly, this can only mean that terrorists are working on Weapons of Fat Destruction, which pose a grave threat to the American Way."
Books

Submission + - Researchers Enlist Humanity to Digitize Books

Submitted by Crazy Taco
Crazy Taco writes: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have discovered a way to use the popular CAPTCHA puzzles as a method to digitize books. While books are ordinarilly digitized using scanners and then turned into readable text using optical character recognition, some books are too old or faded for this technique to work. In that case, humans are needed to help decipher the text so that it can be digitized. This particular method can harness many humans to help in this time consuming process.

"Humanity is wasting 150,000 hours every day on these [CAPTCHAs]," said Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He helped develop the CAPTCHAs about seven years ago. "Is there any way in which we can use this human time for something good for humanity, do 10 seconds of useful work for humanity?"


Apparently he found the answer to his own question.
Supercomputing

Submission + - Enigma of Ancient Computer Solved

Submitted by
zentropa
zentropa writes: "A 2,100-year-old clockwork machine whose remains were retrieved from a shipwreck more than a century ago has turned out to be the celestial supercomputer of the ancient world, scientists say. Using 21st-century technology to peer beneath the surface of the encrusted gearwheels, stunned scientists say the so-called Antikythera Mechanism could predict the ballet of the Sun and Moon over decades and calculate a lunar anomaly that would bedevil Isaac Newton himself. Built in Greece around 150 to 100 BC and possibly linked to the astronomer and mathematician Hipparchos, its complexity was probably unrivalled for at least a thousand years, the boffins reckon."

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