Mille Mots - Slashdot User

Submission + - Jim Gray, Turing Award winner, goes missing

Submitted by slimjim8094 on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @04:32PM

slimjim8094 writes: Jim Gray, a recipient of the A.M. Turing Award, has gone missing.

Gray, 63, of San Francisco, was last heard from on Sunday, the day he set out from San Francisco for the Farallon Islands, about 25 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. ... Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Amy Marrs called Gray's disappearance a mystery because the weather was good, he was in good health and the boat was equipped with radios and flares. There were no distress signals.

Submission + - BBC proposing DRM for Linux

Submitted by VJ42 on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @04:31PM

VJ42 writes: This morning the new BBC trust reached provisional conclusions on BBC on-demand proposals. The headline is that they are giving the go ahead for on demand services, but buried further down in the document is this:

The Trust will require the BBC Executive to adopt a platform-agnostic approach within a reasonable timeframe. This requires the BBC to develop an alternative DRM framework to enable users of other technology, for example, Apple and Linux, to access the on-demand services.
The good news is that these proposals are still open for consultation. Take particular note of question 5

Question 5
How important is it that the proposed seven-day catch-up service over the internet is available to consumers who are not using Microsoft software?
If the Beeb don't develop a "Linux DRM" will they just not support Linux users at all, and if they do how long until it's cracked?

Submission + - Was Blue Dragon What X360 Needed In Japan?

Submitted by simoniker on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @04:17PM

simoniker writes: Have major RPG Blue Dragon and other Microsoft efforts paved the way for Japanese Xbox 360 success? 8-4 Ltd's John Ricciardi and Kotaku's Japanese correspondent Brian Ashcraft have been talking about the issue, with Ricciardi commenting on Gears Of War's recent appearance in the Japanese Top 10 game chart, with 33,000 units sold in one week: "I mean, granted, everything is relative — so yes, in a market where the average 360 game sells around 5,000 copies, 30,000 or so may seem like a big deal, but at the end of the day, their userbase is not expanding. The week Gears came out they only sold a little over 7,000 pieces of hardware. It's not enough."

Submission + - Zenit Rocket Explodes on Pad

Submitted by

Rei

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @04:04PM

Rei writes: "SpaceDaily.com is reporting the failure of a SeaLaunch Zenit-3SL rocket and its payload, leading some to question whether the damage will prove too much for the company. A split-second after separating from the tower, the rocket fell and impacted the platform with a firey explosion. The failure of the Zenit, a privately developed orbital rocket, comes as SpaceX prepares to launch a new Falcon I rocket after its last failed on liftoff after three successive, failed launch attempts. While the news for simpler private suborbital rocketry continues to look rosy, is private orbital rocketry perched on a precipice?"

Submission + - "Pirate" fights back

Submitted by ThePabst on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @04:02PM

ThePabst writes: It appears that Robert Santangelo, of former being-sued-by-the-RIAA-fame, is taking the fight to them now.
from the article: "Robert Santangelo and his lawyer, Jordan Glass, responded at length on Tuesday, raising 32 defenses, demanding a jury trial and filing a counterclaim against the companies for allegedly damaging the boy's reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees."

Could be interesting...

Submission + - Legalised filesharing through taxed internet

Submitted by

Josh Dean

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:51PM

Josh Dean writes: "http://torrentfreak.com/holland-considers-banning- drm-legalizing-filesharing/ Last year the Dutch tried to tax all MP3 players, but that proposal didn't make it into law. But not to worry, they have other brilliant ideas. Earlier this week, Dutch politicians suggested that it might be a good idea to tax Internet traffic, and use this money to compensate the music industry. This, under the condition that DRM is abandoned, and people can't be charged for downloads. Say what? Recently Dutch Record Companies decided to no longer use copy protection on CDs because the costs didn't outweigh the benefits. Politicians are now looking for alternative ways to compensate the Music Industry. Martijn van Dam, a member of one of the bigger political parties in The Netherlands said, "Taxing Internet traffic is great way to compensate the Music Industry for the loss in sales by illegal filesharing". He added that a prerequisite would be that DRM and copy protection should be abandoned. The battle against piracy is lost according to Van Dam, he says that the Music Industry has to accept that their products will be traded over the internet. Surprisingly, Van Dam is not alone in this. Nicolien van Vroonhoven, a politician from the leading party (CDA) in the Netherlands, also thinks that this pirate tax would be a good idea. She adds that this could only work if people can't be charged for downloading music anymore. The statements (Dutch source) from these leading politicians basically say that piracy should be condoned, as long as Internet traffic is taxed. Although the (hypothetical) model might sound appealing to some, it is not very practical. First of all, illegal music downloads are just a small percentage of all files that are swapped illegally. What about movies and software, will those companies be compensated too? And an ever bigger problem, these politicians seem to assume that all internet traffic is generated by illegal downloads. What about sites like YouTube, or software, music and videos that are released for free? These all generate a lot of traffic, but have nothing to do with piracy. A bad idea if you ask me. It is good to see that politicians are exploring alternative methods to overcome piracy, but this one is quite ridiculous. This clearly shows how alienated politicians sometimes are from the real (or virtual) world."

Submission + - New York teen sues record industry

Submitted by

anethema

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:41PM

anethema writes: "An Inquirer story about: "A New York teen, dubbed a pirate by the Record Industry, is counter suing them for defamation, violating anti-trust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats." Finally someone really fighting back."

Submission + - NIST Hash Algorithm Contest

Submitted by

Owen Linderholm

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:29PM

Owen Linderholm writes: "The NIST has called for a complete reworking of the hash algorithms used for security in SSL and TLS. The background and details are covered here but the bottom line is that this is the future of security on the internet.

http://www.itsecurity.com/features/next-generation -nist-algorithms-013107/"

Submission + - WUSB to become the norm in digicams within a year

Submitted by

Iddo Genuth

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:19PM

Iddo Genuth writes: "The semiconductor company Artimi developed a wireless USB (WUSB) technology for cameras which it claims is going to reach the market within a year and become a standard of the industry for cameras over $250 in 2008 and for lower priced cameras within 2-3 years. WUSB technology will allow users to send pictures from the camera to the computer quickly and without the need to carry and use wires."

Submission + - Sony Open to Considering PS3 Price Cuts

Submitted by

njkid1

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:18PM

njkid1 writes: "Even though the PS3 is losing Sony a ton of money at the moment, the company is apparently seriously looking at a potential price cut for the next-gen system. A senior Sony exec told reporters that it's an option that may be used to expand the market. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=1512 2&ncid=AOLGAM000500000000031"

Submission + - Teen "Pirate" Sues Record Industry

Submitted by wile_e_wonka on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @02:55PM

wile_e_wonka writes: A 16-year-old boy being sued for online music piracy is fighting back. He has accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats. In papers responding to a lawsuit filed by five record companies, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it's impossible to prove that he did.

Submission + - Best Search Engine for Technical Answers

Submitted by

iadude1010

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @02:43PM

iadude1010 writes: "When using the Big 'G' to search for linux related answers, I often end up following many un-related links to finally find an answer if at all. Do slashdot readers have any favorite search engines that seem to be more specific with technical and programming problems and issues?"

Submission + - An 'origami lens' for your camera phone?

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @02:43PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Your next camera phone might get a new kind of lens if researchers at the University of California at San Diego convince the cell phones makers. They have designed an 'origami lens' which will slim high resolution cameras. Today, their 5-millimeter thick, 8-fold imager delivers images comparable in quality with photos taken with a compact camera lens with a 38 millimeter focal length. In a few years, these bendable lenses could be used in high resolution miniature cameras for unmanned surveillance aircraft, cell phones and infrared night vision applications. Read more for additional references and images of this 'origami lens.'"

Submission + - President Bush Amends Federal Regulatory Process

Submitted by do wop on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @02:42PM

do wop writes: OMB Watch brings our attention to amendments to Executive Order 12866 on Regulatory Planning and Review . The most notable of the changes will require federal agencies to: implement a stricter market failure criterion for assessing the need for regulation; require agencies to develop a summation of total costs and benefits each year for all proposed regulations; install a presidential appointee as agency Regulatory Policy Officer; and subject "guidance documents" to the same White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review process as regulations.

Submission + - KIWI gives enterprise clout to virtual appliances

Submitted by OSS_ilation on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @02:40PM

OSS_ilation writes: Novell's announcement of a tool that creates Xen virtual images and the open sourcing of the openSUSE Build Service may have provided some much-needed enterprise clout to the idea of running virtual appliances in the enterprise. Novell's program, called the openSUSE Build Service, allows developers to maintain and build packages at a single location for multiple Linux distributions. From there, developers can create complete system images using KIWI, which provides a complete operating system image for Linux-supported hardware platforms. Ultimately, this could allow SUSE developers to start creating Novell-branded virtual appliances. Could Novell's KIWI efforts be the beginning of a deluge of virtual appliances in the data center?

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