elzurawka - Slashdot User

Submission + - BSG Renewed For 4th Season?

Submitted by BiteMyShinyMetalAss on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:22PM

BiteMyShinyMetalAss writes: According to the LA Times (reg required, SPOILER ALERT), the Sci Fi Channel is expected to announce on February 13th that Battlestar Galactica's 4th season will premiere in January 2008. Also of interest is discussion about the role of DVRs in calcuating viewship and advertising revenue:

[Mark Stern, head of programming for Sci Fi] also pointed out that 510,000 additional viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic are watching the show on digital video recorders. They bring the total demographic average closer to 1.6 million, the show's highest numbers since Season 1.
Advertisers, however, do not yet pay for the playback ratings because the general assumption is that viewers watching recorded programs fast-forward through the commercials. It could be a crucial point for the channel, and Stern is hopeful that the business model is shifting.

"Who knows? This upfront season you might find that we can monetize that DVR usage," he said. "The important thing is when you add in the DVR numbers, the audience is there."

Yay! I don't feel so guilty anymore :)

Submission + - Canada Claims Quantum Leap

Submitted by

egyptiankarim

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:16PM

egyptiankarim writes: "From the article:
...it's been a holy grail in the arcane world of supercomputers — and a Canadian firm claims it will be unveiling one on Tuesday.

D-Wave Systems, Inc. is making some big claims about having developed a quantum computer. Though, I don't know how willing I am to believe the announcements seeing as how even the researcher from MIT they cite seems skeptical."

Submission + - Firefox 3 To Support Offline Apps

Submitted by on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:19PM

An anonymous reader writes: Read/WriteWeb reports that Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla, a kiwi who drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox, spoke at the recent New Zealand Foo Camp event about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This means you'll be able to use your web apps — like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc — in the browser even when offline. Not only does this move suit Google, but it makes Firefox attractive as the browser platform of choice for SaaS providers like salesforce.com. All of which will hit Microsoft where it hurts. Robert O'Callahan turns up in the comments to the article to say that "Yes, Web apps need to be reengineered for this, and no, no-one (including Google) has announced they will do so — although we hope they will!".

Submission + - Congress Wants To Monitor All E-Mails, IMs, Etc.

Submitted by

Red Weasel

on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:00PM

Red Weasel writes: "A bill submitted February 6, 2007 called, what else, "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act (SAFETY) of 2007 " HR 837 IH would [It] would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely." The full bill at The Library of Congress THOMAS."

Submission + - How do your store your movie collection?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @03:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: I finally went HD. I bought a new TV, new stereo, even upgraded my DVR to HD. Problem is, my DVD recorder isn't HD, and I'd rather keep things at my finger tips instead of burning everything to DVD. I'd like to capture HD content from my sat/cable system and import my DVDs so I can access everything from my couch. Ideally you could browse, search, and organize the collection, use imported DVDs (still browse the DVD menus to see things like extra features), and record HD content. And it needs to have the capacity for a reasonably sized collection (at least 200 DVDs). It doesn't need lots of bells and whistles. Importing and organizing can be complicated, but browsing and playing needs to be simple. Are there commercial solutions? How would you go about building such a system? Or would you just buy a HD DVD burner and another bookcase?

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