Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Moon

Has NASA Found the Lost Moon Tapes? 222

Posted by timothy from the don't-you-mean-the-b-roll? dept.
jra writes "For over 5 years, various people both inside and retired from NASA have been engaged in a quest. They were looking for the long-lost original slow-scan video tapes from the Apollo 11 moon landing, which went missing in a record-keeping snafu, covered in unreasonable detail in a Wired article a couple years ago. Well now, according to the UK's Sunday Express newspaper, some tapes may or may not have been found which may or may not be the Apollo video. Apparently — I love the British press — the NASA boffins are a bit put out that it leaked; they were hoping to blow everyone's minds with the scoop themselves."

Comment Re:Err.. (Score 1) 326

by blurryrunner (#28374845) Attached to: Harvard Study Says Weak Copyright Benefits Society

Nobody owes you anything. If you decide you want to be an artist and only record albums, then YOU have to figure out how to make that work. Society is not responsible for your financial well being--that is YOUR responsibility. Just because you want things to be a certain way, it doesn't mean that society is responsible for making that work out for you.

br/
Government

NSA Email Surveillance Pervasive and Ongoing 243

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-happily-inflict-my-inbox-upon-them dept.
dkleinsc writes "The NY Times has a piece about work being done by Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) and others to curb NSA efforts to read email and Internet traffic. Here's an excerpt: 'Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency's ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former NSA analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans' e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.'"
Privacy

Anonymous Newspaper Commenters Subpoenaed In Tax Case 394

Posted by Soulskill from the somebody-point-these-lawyers-at-youtube dept.
skuzzlebutt writes "In a federal tax case reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal last week, a local businessman has been paying his employees in gold coins instead of cash or ACH, and has reportedly told them that they can only be taxed on the face value of the coinage — not the much higher market value of the metal. The United States disagreed, and brought him up on 57 counts of income tax evasion, tax fraud and criminal conspiracy. The non-authenticated comments section of the original article brought a lot of supporters out of the woodwork, including a few who thought the jury should be hung (literally, procedurally, or figuratively ... pick one). In response, the prosecution has subpoenaed the names of the anonymous commenters, citing fears of jury safety. Or something. The obvious questions of privacy and protected speech aside, for the folks that support the defendant (the newspaper is fighting the subpoena), this also brings back into the spotlight the troll-empowering nature of pseudo-anonymous, non-authenticated boards. If they want to find you, they will; is anonymous commenting still worth it, or is it just too risky for the board owners?"
Microsoft

Bing Gets Porn Domain To Filter Explicit Content 200

Posted by kdawson from the still-no-sex-in-india dept.
sopssa writes "Bing has set up a separate domain just for porn images and videos. '[The] general manager of Microsoft Bing said in a blog post that potentially explicit images and video content now will be coming from one separate domain — explicit.bing.net. 'This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be.' When Bing was first launched, there was some online chatter about explicit images popping up when videos were 'previewed' in the search results. This means the thumbnails and videos are served from that domain, allowing easy filter of them in corporate and school networks. Users still normally use www.bing.com. Instead of heavily filtering the results, this is quite a good move."
Earth

Climate Change Bill Includes IP Protections 236

Posted by kdawson from the quick-let's-patent-carbon-sequestration dept.
moogsynth writes "Buried in section 329 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R. 2410), voted in recently, are measures to oppose any global climate change treaty that weakens the IP rights in the green tech of American companies. Peter Zura's patent blog notes that 'the vote comes in anticipation of the upcoming negotiations in December as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. ... Previously, there was sufficient chatter in international circles on compulsory licenses, IP seizures, and the outright abolition of patents on low-carbon technology, that Congress felt it necessary to clarify the US's IP position up front.'"

Computers Key To Air France Crash 911

Posted by kdawson from the who-or-what-do-you-trust dept.
Michael_Curator writes "It's no secret that commercial airplanes are heavily computerized, but as the mystery of Air France Flight 447 unfolds, we need to come to grips with the fact that in many cases, airline pilots' hands are tied when it comes to responding effectively to an emergency situation. Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw — it's a philosophical divide. It's essentially a question of what do you trust most: a human being's ingenuity or a computer's infinitely faster access and reaction to information. It's not surprising that an American company errs on the side of individual freedom while a European company is more inclined to favor an approach that relies on systems. As passengers, we should have the right to ask whether we're putting our lives in the hands of a computer rather than the battle-tested pilot sitting up front, and we should have right to deplane if we don't like the answer."
Patents

IBM Wants Patent For Regex SSN Validation 281

Posted by timothy from the noteworthy-inventions dept.
theodp writes "What do you get when you combine IBM contributors with the Dojo Foundation? A patent for Real-Time Validation of Text Input Fields Using Regular Expression Evaluation During Text Entry, assuming the newly-disclosed Big Blue patent application passes muster with the USPTO. IBM explains that the invention of four IBMers addresses a 'persistent problem that plagues Web form fields' — e.g., 'a social security number can be entered with or without dashes.' A non-legalese description of IBM's patent-pending invention can be found in The Official Dojo Documentation. While IBM has formed a Strategic Partnership With the Dojo Foundation which may protect one from a patent infringement lawsuit over validating phone numbers, concerns have been voiced over an exception clause in IBM's open source pledge."

Comment Re:Mine (Score 1) 188

by blurryrunner (#27991793) Attached to: Finding a Personal Coding Trifecta

I'd be really interested how you put together your chair. I had the same thought a couple months ago about a car seat being almost ideal for the reason you mentioned. I didn't find any one selling chairs like that from searching, though my co-worker did send me this link:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5132451/emperor-workstation-priced-at-40000

Maybe one day... :)

br/
Image

Universal Design for Web Applications Screenshot-sm 85

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Two decades ago, Web usage was limited to a single individual (Sir Tim Berners-Lee) using the only browser in existence (WorldWideWeb) running on a single platform (a NeXT Computer). Nowadays, billions of people access the Web daily, with the ability to choose from over a dozen browsers running on desktop computers, laptops, and a variety of mobile devices, such as cell phones. The number of possible combinations is growing rapidly, and makes it increasingly difficult for Web designers and developers to craft their sites so as to be universally accessible. This is particularly true when accounting for Web users with physical and cognitive disabilities — especially if they do not have access to assistive technologies. The challenges and solutions for anyone creating an accessible website are addressed in Universal Design for Web Applications, authored by Wendy Chisholm and Matt May." Keep reading for the rest of Michael and Laura's review.
Medicine

New Flu Strain Appears In the US and Mexico 315

Posted by Soulskill from the fluent-in-english-and-spanish dept.
Combat Wombat writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "A strain of flu never seen before has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and also appeared in the United States, where eight people were infected but recovered, health officials said on Friday. Mexico's government said at least 20 people have died of the flu and it may also be responsible for 40 other deaths. [The government] shut down schools and canceled major public events in Mexico City to try to prevent more deaths in the sprawling, overcrowded capital. ... Close analysis showed the disease is a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC. Humans can occasionally catch swine flu from pigs but rarely have they been known to pass it on to other people. Mexico reported 1,004 suspected cases of the new virus, including four possible cases in Mexicali on the border with California.

Comment Re:Venture Capital isn't doing its job (Score 1) 445

by blurryrunner (#27621139) Attached to: Why Republicans Won't Retake Silicon Valley

IANAVC, but know a few things about venture capital and private equity.

To state it plainly, the goal of venture capitalists is to invest money and make a return. There's nothing that they are "supposed to do." This isn't bad or good any more than buying bonds is bad or good. VCs specialize in looking at ideas and funding the promising ones. They put together a pool of money from people that believe in their skill to choose winners. After they put that pool together, they have to get the money out and invest it. After they invest it, sometimes they step in and provide additional assistance to make sure that they get a return for the people that invested the money. This behavior has the effect of stimulating innovation.

VCs are often painted as bad buys because of the changes they make to companies that are disagreeable. They have also received more scrutiny lately because they have been able to operate in a tax loophole that allowed their earnings to be taxed at a lower rate (iirc, their income from gains were taxed as investments at the capital gains rate and not as regular income). Not renewing the Bush tax cuts has the effect of removing this loophole.

I think you're on the right track on not having blockbusters to invest in. In a general sense, I think that investment opportunities began to become more scarce. There were more dollars following fewer investments. This caused the price of the investments to rise and which caused the value on the investments to kind of rise like inflation. Since there was more demand for real estate for investment, the prices rose.

Just my 2 cents. /br

Comment Decouple (Score 1) 161

by blurryrunner (#27527915) Attached to: FCC Seeks To Improve US Broadband Access

What needs to happen is the one that provides the connection to the house should not provide the service. The government then regulates the infrastructure provider/maintainers. The service providers then sit on that infrastructure.

For example, here in Utah we have UTOPIA (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, http://www.utopianet.org/). UTOPIA themselves provide the fiber to the premise. Then you sign up with the providers on the network. There are a handful of different ISPs that provide service over it (including Qwest!). You can choose based on whatever meets your fancy. ISP too oversubscribed? Choose another one.

The fiber delivers internet, phone, and tv. Here at my office we have a symmetric 30Mbs connection for about $110. Makes me hate to go home to my Comcast connection...

The problem is the only motivation for the infrastructure provider is to keep the ISPs and governments to off their backs. The government should own the infrastructure and then private companies should compete for the maintenance contracts. Hopefully somebody in the city knows something about an SLA... /br

Slashdot Top Deals

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst

Close