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Media

Submission + - What are you're favorite intelligent podcasts?

Submitted by
jeremiahbell
jeremiahbell writes: "I live a fairly isolated life in the country, attend school full-time, work full-time, and have a family. When I'm studying I'd like to have an intelligent internet radio station to listen to, or even the occasional video, as background noise. The local radio station runs farm-talk and Rush Limbaugh so you can imagine that I'm going dying for something that would appeal to a geek.

What streams or podcasts, and where can I find them, do you listen too? Something about politics, economics, the world, technology, science, evolution, atheism, religion, heck, even the Singularity, just about any subject as long as it is aimed at a crowd that, for lack of a better description, actually reads."
Biotech

Submission + - How David Blaine Held His Breath for 17 Minutes

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "An average person in good health can hold their breath for about two minutes, but with even small amounts of practice it is possible to increase that time dramatically. How dramatically? On Wednesday, David Blaine was submerged underwater for 17 minutes and 4.4 seconds (video) to set a new world record for breath-holding during a live broadcast of Oprah. Time has the scoop on how he did it."
Google

Submission + - Valid HTML + Google? Yeah right! 2

Submitted by
xarium
xarium writes: "With all this hype about how good (or bad) various browsers are at passing the acid tests put forth by the W3C, many seem to be oblivious to the equally important "validation test" which ensures that compatible browsers have valid HTML to work with. We demand that Microsoft fix their browser to, at least seem to, make an attempt at compliance, but what about website compliance? Websites have an equal share of the responsibility.

Test Google's front page and laugh

Most websites, those which don't pass, usually have only a few fairly technical and nit-picky kind of mistakes; Google however is beyond ridiculous; the validator has to guess at numerous points because the pages are so badly constructed that it's amazing any browser renders anything at all. Not a single one of Google's various websites comes even remotely close to being valid (as any kind of HTML) — in fact, I can't even find one that is well-formed."
Music

Submission + - Tenth Anniversary of First Commercial MP3 Player

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "The first commercially released personal music player capable of handling MP3 files was launched in March 1998 — the MPMan F10, manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems with 32MB of Flash storage, enough for a handful of songs encoded at 128Kb/s. In the US, local supplier Eiger Labs wanted $250 for the F10, though the price fell to $200 the following year prompted by the release of the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300, which was priced at $200. The Rio was released in September 1998, but by 8 October had become the subject of a lawsuit from the RIAA which claimed the player violated the 1992 US Home Recordings Act although it was later ruled that the Rio had not infringed the Act because it was not responsible for the actions of its customers. Thanks to its lesser known name, the F10 avoided such legal entanglements, but at the cost of all the free publicity its rival gained through from the lawsuit. Apple's move to allow Windows PC owners to use the iPod, from April 2003, resulted in explosive growth and MPMan, Rio and other pioneers were left behind."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Writers strike could be over! (cnbc.com)

Submitted by BlueshiftVFX
BlueshiftVFX writes: A deal has been struck between the major media companies and the Writers Guild of America to end the writers' strike, former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner revealed on CNBC.

"It's over," Eisner said. "They made the deal, they shook hands on the deal. It's going on Saturday to the writers in general."

"A deal has been made, and they'll be back to work very soon," Eisner said, adding, "I know a deal's been made. I know it's over."

Now Battlestar Galactica can have it's proper finale.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Best Linux for returning user 11

Submitted by
mwjcp
mwjcp writes: "I haven't used anything non-windows since Free-BSD back in college 9 years ago, but now I'm building a new computer and I'm looking to put a linux based OS on it (along with XP). This OS will have to be simple to install/maintain due to my limited skills and it will need to have a very pretty, easy to use GUI suitable for use by the whole family (i.e. people who don't know what OS stands for). I'd love to get some suggestions of what OS, GUI and boot manager to use."
Security

Submission + - Open source DRM solutions? 2

Submitted by Feint
Feint writes: I'm working on an business platform for inter-company collaboration based on an open source software stack. As part of that platform I would like to integrate some sort of digital rights management for the documents managed in the system. The vast majority of articles are focused how good or evil it is to apply DRM to digital music or video. I haven't seen many articles address the open source solutions around how to protect business data like CAD/MSOffice/PDF/etc documents, which is a real need in business today. Can the Slashdot readership suggest some open source DRM offerings other than the Sun DReaM initiative (which hasn't had a release since Jan 2007)?
Wii

Submission + - What video games can I play with my girlfriend? 4

Submitted by tieTYT
tieTYT writes: My girlfriend and I really like video games, but we usually play them on our own. What are some great two player video games out there that are just perfect for couples?
Biotech

Submission + - New Nerve Gas Antidotes (wired.com) 1

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Scientists from Korea and the Czech Republic have discovered new drugs that can counteract the chemical overload caused by nerve gas. All of the experimental medications belong to a family of chemicals called oximes. Those molecules reactivate the enzyme that is damaged by the chemical weapons. Last year, the FDA approved the first combined atropine and oxime auto-injector for use by emergency personnel. Israel has been providing them to their citizens since the first Gulf War.
Software

Submission + - Version Control for Scientific Writing?

Submitted by
hweimer
hweimer writes: "After having written a few papers with several co-authors each I have learned to enjoy the benefits of a version control system. Personally, I prefer Subversion for the job, however there are still annoyances like merging various BibTeX files with incompatible index styles. What are your solutions for making life easier? Do you use any custom code like hook scripts in Subversion?"
Security

Submission + - Critical .mdb flaw Found - Microsoft may Never fix (beskerming.com) 4

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "When independent security researcher cocoruder found a critical bug with the JET engine, via the .mdb (Access) file format, he reported it to Microsoft, but Microsoft's response came as a surprise to him — it appears that Microsoft are not inclined to fix a critical arbitrary code execution vulnerability with a data technology that is at the heart of a large number of essential business and hobby applications.

Where should vendors be required to draw the line when supporting deprecated file formats and technology? In this case, leaving a serious vulnerability active in a deprecated technology could have serious effects if an exploit were to target it, but it is a matter of finding the right balance of security and usability such that Microsoft's users are not exposed to too great a danger for continuing to use Microsoft products."
Nintendo

Submission + - Wii breaks records in the UK (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by
pluke
pluke writes: "According to the Daily Telegraph, the Wii has sold 1,000,000 units during 38 weeks in the UK. This makes it the UK's fastest selling console ever, beating the Playstation 2 (50 weeks) and the XBOX 360 (60 weeks). Some industry analysts are also reporting that the Wii has overtaken the XBOX 360 to now become the worlds market leader across console and handheld fields. http://www.vgchartz.com/"

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