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Media

Submission + - Tough new optical disc coatings

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As everyone who uses Netflix knows, scratches on DVD are frustrating and create significant customer support costs. Blu-ray is the first major disc format to address the problem. The chemistry [1] [2] [3] behind these coatings a radical-curing urethane(meth)acrylate and a curing monomer, and is applied unformly over the disc. The results are impressive — this video shows a Blu-ray disc surviving steel wool and a pizza cutter, which would have destroyed traditionally-coated formats (e.g., CDs, DVD, or HD-DVD). Fewer scratched discs also means less waste.
Television

Submission + - Mooninite "Bombs" Setoff Copyright Battle

Submitted by
buckminster
buckminster writes: "If you had any doubt about America's national priorities, consider this: Yesterday's bomb scare has become today's copyright violation. Those Aqua Teen Hunger Force signs that brought Boston to a halt earlier this week are now setting off copyright alarms on eBay. It's strange because the signs being auctioned are apparently authentic. Which means they aren't copies, and as a result are not in violation of copyright. Could it be that someone just wants these signs to go away so they won't suffer any more embarrassment? Medialoper has the details in How To Copyright An Atomic Bomb."

Why Software is Hard 409

Posted by Zonk from the comedy-and-software-are-in-the-same-club dept.
GoCanes writes "Salon's Scott Rosenberg explains why even small-scale programming projects can take years to complete, one programmer is often better than two, and the meaning of 'Rosenberg's Law.' After almost 50 years, the state of the art is still pretty darn bad. His point is that as long as you're trying to do something that has already been done, then you have an adequate frame of reference to estimate how long it will take/cost. But if software is at all interesting, it's because no one else has done it before."
Security

Submission + - You Can Help Search for Jim Gray

Submitted by FreemanPatrickHenry
FreemanPatrickHenry writes: You can help search for Jim Gray using Amazon's Mechanical Turk service. You must create a (free) account to participate.

Instructions from the site:
"You will be presented with 5 images. The task is to indicate any satellite images which contain any foreign objects in the water that may resemble Jim's sailboat or parts of a boat. Jim's sailboat will show up as a regular object with sharp edges, white or nearly white, about 10 pixels long and 4 pixels wide in the image. ...
Marked images will be sent to a team of specialists who will determine if they contain information on the whereabouts of Jim Gray."

Let's help our comrade who may be in grave danger!
Announcements

Submission + - Silicon Valley Works to Find Missing Colleague

Submitted by
ubermiester
ubermiester writes: "The NY Times is reporting on the massive effort among Silicon Valley's "best and brightest" to aid in the search for missing MS researcher James Gray, who went missing on Sunday while sailing the Pacific on his private boat, "Tenacious". The Coast Guard suspended its search of more than 100,000 square miles of ocean on Thursday, but "dozens of Dr. Gray's colleagues, friends and former students [continued the search] with the tool they know best: computer technology... A veritable Who's Who of computer scientists from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NASA and universities across the country spent sleepless nights writing ad hoc software, creating a blog and reconfiguring satellite images so that dozens of volunteers could pore over them, searching for a speck of red hull and white deck among a sea of gray pixels." One Coast Guard official noted, "This is the largest strictly civilian, privately sponsored search effort I have ever seen". Go geeks go!"
Censorship

Submission + - How Best To Defend Student Bloggers' Rights?

Submitted by FeliX
FeliX writes: A couple of my classmates are currently under fire for having ran a school gossip blog on Blogger.com. The blog was promptly shut down after several students discussed on the blog complained to our principal, who in turn threatend suspension to the authors. However since the creators of the site have remained anonymous, our principal has further threatened police action to root them out if they do not come forward. A while a go discussed a case similar to this. What would be the best plan of action for protecting their rights? What authority does the school have when it comes to using law enforcement in this way? What would be the best plan for these students in order to defend their rights?
The Courts

Submission + - Keith Henson Jailed after Pickets, Usenet Posts

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Keith Henson was arrested on Friday, Feb. 2 in Prescott, Arizona. He faces extradition to California to serve one year in jail.

Henson was convicted of "interfering with a religion" in 2001 after he picketed Scientology's base in the California desert. The jury was misled into thinking he had posted jokes about "Cruise missiles" (as in Tom Cruise) to the internet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology; the posts in question were not made by him, but even if they had been, that does not constitute a credible threat as required by law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a press release after his conviction expressing grave concern that he had been convicted for exercising his free speech rights.

There were numerous anomalies during his trial (including a summons that was never mailed to him, which would have left him in contempt of court if he hadn't found out about the hearing another way).

Henson has a medical condition requiring regular medication; he has also received death threats and has grave fears for his safety, given Scientology's reach into many prison systems.

Latest news at the Wikipedia entry on Keith Henson; more may appear at Who is Keith Henson?.
Linux Business

Open Source Advocacy Group Quiet About Launch 31

Posted by Zonk from the stealth-penguins-in-action dept.
polar_bear` writes "Yet another open source advocacy group is in the offing, but trying to keep the lid on until its official launch at LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit. Robin 'Roblimo' Miller ferrets out a few details of the nascent Open Solutions Alliance on Linux.com: 'Our anonymous interviewee says 'at least 10' companies have signed up, and that they are 'talking to dozens more.' While he refused to name any participants, Linux.com has confirmed that SpikeSource and JasperSoft are both involved.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Security

Submission + - MS Confirms 5th Office Zero-day Attack

Submitted by
El Tiante
El Tiante writes: "Microsoft has confirmed a fifth zero-day attack against Microsoft Office users, warning against opening Excel files that arrive unexpectedly, even if it comes from trusted sources. Although .xls files are currently being used to launch the attacks, users of other Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, etc.) are potentially at risk. Confirmed vulnerable: Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Office 2004 v. X for Mac."
Media

Submission + - The semantics of climate change

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "A nice article on the BBC talks about the difficulty in curbing the growth of greenhouse gases because scientists and politicians are speaking a different language ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own _correspondent/6324357.stm ). Quoting the author " I have wondered long into many nights why it always ends up like this; why it is so difficult to curb the global growth in greenhouse gas emissions which now runs above 2% per year. I have been concentrating on semantics. And it has brought me to a conclusion which is so simple I cannot believe I missed it years ago. The crux of the matter, it seems to me, lies in the different ways that scientists and politicians use language. Science is nothing without precision... political language, on the other hand, is a triumph of misrepresentation. When a scientist talks about 'reducing greenhouse gas emissions' he or she means just that; actually reducing them. But what it is coming to mean in the political lexicon is something very different. The emissions will still rise, but a bit less quickly than they would have done otherwise. Having them grow less fast becomes equivalent to reducing them.""
Software

Vista - iPod Killer? 557

Posted by Zonk from the stranger-and-stranger dept.
JMB wrote us with a dire warning, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. Apple is cautioning its Windows-using iTunes customers to steer clear of Vista until the next iTunes update. The reason for this is a bit puzzling. Apparently, if you try to 'safely remove' your iPod from a Vista-installed PC, there's a chance you may corrupt the little music player. They also claim that songs may not play, and contacts may not sync with the device. Apple went so far as to release a detailed support document on the subject, which assures users that a new Vista-compatible version of the software will be available in a few weeks. Is this just some very creative FUD? If it is not who do you think is 'at fault' here, Microsoft or Apple?
Security

Submission + - VA Loses another HDD with data on 48,000 veterans

Submitted by
Saqib Ali
Saqib Ali writes: "Seems like VA has managed to lose another hard drive containing data on 48,000 veterans. The hard drive was stolen from a employees home. The good news is that hard drive was partially encrypted. So it is expected that no more then 20,000 records were impacted. Which is still a high number. My question, why the partial encryption? If you are going to encrypt, just encrypt the whole drive."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Interview with Linux kernel developer Jens Axboe

Submitted by
AlanS2002
AlanS2002 writes: "Jens Axboe has been involved with Linux since 1993. 30 years old, he lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, and works as a Linux Kernel developer for Oracle. His block layer rewrite launched the 2.5 kernel development branch, a layer he continues to maintain and improve. Interested in most anything dealing with IO, he has introduced several new IO schedulers to the kernel, including the default CFQ, or Complete Fair Queuing scheduler. In this interview, Jens talks about how he got interested in Linux, how he became the maintainer of the block layer and other block devices, and what's involved in being a maintainer. He describes his work on IO schedulers, offering an indepth look at the design and current status of the CFQ scheduler, including a peek at what's in store for the future. He conveys his excitement about the new splice IO model, explaining how it came about and how it works. And he discusses the current 2.6 kernel development process, the impact of git, and why the GPL is important to him."
Software

Is Computer Programming a Good Job for Retirees? 147

Posted by Cliff from the never-too-old dept.
braindrainbahrain asks: "Ask Slashdot has been rife with career advice lately, so maybe I can get some too. I hit a milestone recently, the big five oh, and the realization of retirement is starting to settle in. The trouble is, I don't want to sit around, play golf, or even travel that much. I work in a technical field, but I have always enjoyed programming. Indeed, I do it as a hobby. I wonder what you readers would think about programming as a post retirement job. It seems well suited for a retiree, one could do contract work for a few months of the year, in some cases work from home even. By way of background, I have worked in hardware engineering for a very long time, and have pursued graduate study almost regularly (two Masters degrees so far). Should I begin preparing for a post-retirement career in computer science?"
The Media

Submission + - High Tech Search for Jim Gray

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: The NY Times has an article describing the high-tech involvement of Silicon Valley in the search for computer scientist Jim Gray, who went missing while sailing last week. High-resolution satellite images of the 132,000 sq. mi. search area were requisitioned from DigitalGlobe, and volunteers are pouring over them through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Affluent dot-com'ers with small aircraft have searched the coastline. "'It wouldn't have surprised me to get a brush off [from the Coast Guard],' Professor [James] Frew said. 'They're professionals, and they know what they're doing, and here comes this army of nerds, bashing down the doors. But they've dealt with us very nicely.'"

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