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Government

RIAA CEO Hopes SOPA Protests Were a "One-Time Thing" 441

Posted by samzenpus from the wishful-thinking dept.
hapworth writes "After posting a controversial op-ed in The New York Times saying Wikipedia and Google 'misinformed' the public about SOPA and PIPA, Cary Sherman, CEO of the RIAA said in an interview yesterday that he hopes the SOPA protests were a 'one-time experience.' He also said that Wikipedia and Google users were duped into thinking SOPA was a bad bill because they assume "if it comes from these sources, it must be true." In another hilarious comment, Sherman blames the Internet for making it impossible for Congress to get out its side of the story, and for not spreading information with the same 'clarity and integrity' of broadcast journalists."

Comment Re:It may be true, however... (Score 1) 144

by acooks (#39144349) Attached to: Developer's View: Real Life Inspirations Or Abstract Ideas?

The credit card companies have designed the system in such a way that they never carry the risk for fraud. It's brilliant - they're basically printing money.

The consumer was "safe" on the old card-not-present system in the sense that the merchant has to refund the payment when the consumer cries fraud to the card company. If enough consumers cry fraud, the payment processing gateway (another middle man) may decide to stop the merchant's transaction processing.

The new MasterCard SecureCode and Visa 3-D Secure mechanism is kind of like paypal in the sense that you have to supply a "go ahead" instruction to the card company, except that the merchant still has your card details. Whether a transaction requires the extra step or not is determined by the merchant, the payment gateway and the card company. This is an attempt to move the fraud risk to the consumer, though the merchant could still leak card details.
Patents

Submission + - European Parliament to exclude free software with FRAND

Submitted by jan.van.gent
jan.van.gent writes: The European Parliament is on the verge to adopt a directive about reform of standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), an undefined term which has been a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open source software. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been very active before the European Commission proposed the text on trying to get FRAND terms inside the text.
Biotech

Submission + - Russian Scientists Revive Plant From 30,000-Year-Old Seeds (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species. The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. ... 'The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,' said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. 'It’s a natural cryobank.'

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How do you deal with online photo theft? (thomashawk.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With a number of people publishing photos online, is it really fair game for organizations to use them to publicize events of clients? Should organizations do more to check the source of these images?
What is the best way to get your out there and avoid these pitfalls.
Cloud

Submission + - Is it time for NoSQL 2.0? 1

Submitted by rescrv
rescrv writes: Key-value stores (like Cassandra, Redis and DynamoDB) have been replacing traditional databases in many demanding web applications (e.g. Twitter, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and others). But for the most part, the differences between existing NoSQL systems come down to the choice of well-studied implementation techniques; in particular, they all provide a similar API that achieves high performance and scalability by limiting applications to simple operations like GET and PUT. HyperDex, a new key-value store developed at Cornell, stands out in the NoSQL spectrum with its unique design. HyperDex employs a unique multi-dimensional hash function to enable efficient search operations — that is, objects may be retrieved without using the key under which they are stored. Other systems employ indexing techniques to enable search, or enumerate all objects in the system. In contrast, HyperDex's design enables applications to retrieve search results directly from servers in the system. The results are impressive. Preliminary benchmark results on the project website show that HyperDex provides significant performance improvements over Cassandra and MongoDB. With its unique design, and impressive performance, it seems fittng to ask: Is HyperDex the start of NoSQL 2.0?
HP

Submission + - Where did blade servers come from? From Sun to Cubix to RLX (fosketts.net)

Submitted by PedXing
PedXing writes: Blade servers aren't a new idea, but the name only appeared in 2001. RLX Technologies and Egenera both appeared with integrated blade servers that year. Before this came two waves of similar systems: Cubix and company with their "high-density servers" and all the VMEbus servers from Sun, HP, and the rest. These differed from modern blades, since they weren't truly hot-swappable and integrated, but they paved the way.

Submission + - Best language for experimental GUI demo projects 1

Submitted by
GrantRobertson
GrantRobertson writes: "I am not a professional software developer and never have any aspirations to become one. I've been through a generic university computer science degree-program and I can tolerate C++ begrudgingly. I do OK with Java and prefer it, though I still have to look up every API before I use it. Most of the code I want to write will be not much more than prototypes or proof of concept stuff for the research I will be doing, rather than full-on applications ready for distribution and use. I can learn any language out there, if need be, but these days it is more about the ecosystem than the core language. IDEs, libraries, cross-platform compatibility, user support, open source licensing.

My research/tinkering will be along two main lines:
1) Devising entirely new graphical user interface elements, mostly in 2-D, though often in a true or simulated 3-D space. I am working on ways to visualize, navigate, and manipulate very, VERY large data-sets of academic research information.
2) Computer based education software, though of a type never seen before. This will combine some of the GUI elements invented in (1) as well as displaying standard HTML or HTML5 content via a browser engine.

My requirements are:
A) A decent IDE ecosystem.
B) A decent set of libraries, but ones that don't lock me in to a particular mind-set like Swing does in Java. (Boxes in boxes in boxes, Oh My!)
C) An ability to easily draw what I want, where I want and make any surface of that 3-D object become a source for capturing events.
D) Ease of cross-platform use. (So others can easily look at my examples and run with them.)
E) No impediments to open-source licensing my code or for others to go commercial with it either (as I have seen when I looked into Qt).

So, should I just stick with Java and start looking outside the box for GUI toolkits? Or is there something else out there I should be looking at?"

Submission + - Adobe employee speaks out on bloatware (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This controversial post by Adobe's Kas Thomas asks if splash screens are just a sign of program bloat and callous disregard for users. It suggests that big programs should launch instantly (or appear to), perhaps by running against an instance in the cloud while the local instance finishes loading. Users of cell phones and tablets are accustomed to apps being instantly available. This is the new standard for performance, the author argues. Nothing short of it will do, any more.
Open Source

Submission + - LibreOffice is the triumph of maturity over adversity (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by superapecommando
superapecommando writes: Simon Phipps, former head of open source at Sun, points out how the story of LibreOffice is a great example of how open source communities can triumph over adversity.

"While much of what has happened has been the steady momentum you'd expect from a community-run project, the announcement this morning that parent organisation The Document Foundation has finally been officially incorporated in Germany seems a symbolic maturity point for the once-renegade project. Incorporation was made possible by the amazing week in 2011 when hundreds of individual donations provided the €50,000 starting capital for the Foundation, and while it's taken a year to happen, the entity that's been created — a German Stiftung — is as solid as rock. "
The Almighty Buck

Obama Pushes For Cheaper Pennies 825

Posted by samzenpus from the new-money dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Time Magazine reports that hidden deep inside in the White House's $3.8 trillion, 2,000-page budget that was sent to Congress this week is a proposal to make pennies and nickels cheaper to produce. Why? Because it currently costs the federal government 2.4 cents to make a penny and 11.2 cents for every nickel. If passed, the budget would allow the Treasury Department to 'change the composition of coins to more cost-effective materials' resulting in changes that could save more than $100 million a year. Since 1982, our copper-looking pennies have been merely coppery. In the 1970s, the price of copper soared, so President Nixon proposed changing the penny's composition to a cheaper aluminum. Today, only 2.5% of a penny is copper (which makes up the coin's coating) while 97.5% is zinc. The mint did make steel pennies for one year — in 1943 — when copper was needed for the war effort and steel might be a cheaper alternative this time. What about the bill introduced in 2006 that the US abandon pennies altogether.? At the time, fifty-five percent of respondents considered the penny useful compared to 43 percent who agreed it should be eliminated. More telling, 76 percent of respondents said they would pick up a penny if they saw it on the ground."

Comment S-PVS vs IPS Pro vs PLS Panels (Score 1) 381

by acooks (#39039483) Attached to: Television Next In Line For Industry-Wide Shakeup?

"TVs are ultimately about picture quality. ... and there is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on picture quality"

First thought: Bullshit. Then I saw it's not S-PVA vs IPS Pro anymore; Samsung's doing PLS now.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/samsung-sa850_2.html

Need more detail on PLS...
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/2144217/television-next-in-line-for-industry-wide-shakeup#

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Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!

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