warnellg - Slashdot User

Submission + - Music Labels Working on Digital Album Format

Submitted by Nerdfest on Monday August 10, 2009 @03:43PM

Nerdfest writes: The Guardian is reporting that the major music labels are working on an 'album' format that contains music, lyrics, artwork, etc, called CMX. Apple had also been invited, but is working on it's own format called 'Cocktail'. No word here on whether or not the format supports DRM. Here's hoping an open standard is the result of this.

Submission + - SPAM: Humans lose $21 billion to computer traders

Submitted by

destinyland

on Monday August 10, 2009 @02:11PM

destinyland writes: ""We are just mice dancing" between the supercomputers of Wall Street giants, complains one trading executive, and an investment manager notes computers are making 73% of all stock trades on U.S. exchanges. One former NYSE chairman admitted "This is where all the money is getting made." (Between April and June, Goldman Sachs earned $100 million in one day — on 46 different days.) High-speed algorithms use 30-millisecond trades to probe market conditions, and can buy and sell with a nearly omniscient knowledge of every other investor's price point. The New York Times notes that already these algorithms "execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously...""
Link to Original Source

Blizzard Going After WoW Related iPhone Apps 87

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 03, 2009 @12:31PM from the anything-you-can-app-we-can-app-better-in-a-few-years dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Blizzard is going after developers making iPhone apps for World of Warcraft (free and otherwise) by giving them cease-and-desist orders. As Mike Schramm says 'Blizzard may be planning to do more with the iPhone,' but 'It would be a real shame if Blizzard legal was simply going after fans who have invested a lot of time and effort into these apps even when there's no clear reason for them to do so.'" It's interesting that they're doing so around the same time a video for a (rumored, alleged, unconfirmed — take your pick) iPhone client for World of Warcraft has been floating around.

Submission + - Disney-Hulu Deal is Ominous for YouTube 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Friday May 01, 2009 @05:38PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Dow Jones reports that Hulu scored a big victory when Disney agreed to take a nearly 30% stake in Hulu and put full episodes of its ABC TV shows on the site, enabling users to see shows like Lost, Scrubs, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives for free. Disney views the move as a way to reach a new audience that isn't coming to the network's own website. Although the ABC.com website has attracted regular viewers of its shows, Hulu offers the opportunity to tap into a new group of viewers. Now Google is under mounting pressure to add more professional content to YouTube in order to attract more advertisers. According to Dow Jones' Scott Morrisson the equity structure of the Disney-Hulu deal suggests that content creators want greater involvement in online distribution than Google has offered with YouTube. "Content providers don't want to give (YouTube) content because the advertisers aren't there yet," said Edward Jones analyst Andy Miedler. The Wall Street Journal reported that It wasn't immediately clear why Disney opted for Hulu, but a person familiar with the situation said Google and Disney had also been in talks to put long-form content on YouTube and noted that Google was not be willing to offer any content provider an equity stake in YouTube. "I don't think (YouTube) can get into the premium space with revenue-share only," says Forrester Research analyst Bobby Tulsiani. "They are going to have to make upfront payments or equity deals.""

Submission + - AI Program to Compete on 'Jeopardy!' 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday April 26, 2009 @11:59PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Scientists at IBM have previously devised a chess-playing program to run on a supercomputer called Deep Blue but chess is a game of limits, with pieces that have clearly defined powers. Now IBM has announced a program called Watson to compete against human "Jeopardy!" contestants. The team is aiming not at a true thinking machine but at a new class of software that can "understand" human questions and respond to them correctly. "The big goal is to get computers to be able to converse in human terms," said the team leader, David A. Ferrucci, an artificial intelligence researcher. "And we're not there yet." Under the rules of the match that the company has negotiated with the "Jeopardy!" producers, the computer will not have to emulate all human qualities. It will receive questions as electronic text while the human contestants will both see the text of each question and hear it spoken by the show's host, Alex Trebek. The computer will respond with a synthesized voice to answer questions and to choose follow-up categories. IBM researchers said they planned to move a Blue Gene supercomputer to Los Angeles for the contest and the computer will not be connected to the Internet, but will make its answers based on text that it has "read," or processed and indexed, before the show. Harry Friedman, the executive producer of "Jeopardy!" added that the show is considering inviting Ken Jennings, the "Jeopardy!" contestant who won 74 consecutive times and collected $2.52 million in 2004."

Submission + - Unpaid Contributors Provide Corporate Tech Support

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday April 26, 2009 @08:20PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that Justin McMurry spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers with high-speed fiber optic Internet, television and telephone service. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. Such enthusiasts are known as lead users, or super-users, and their role in contributing innovations to product development and improvement — often selflessly — has been closely researched in recent years. These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. "You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens," says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon. The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Lyle Fong, co-founder of Lithium Technologies whose web site advertises that a "vibrant community can easily save a company millions of dollars per year in deflected support calls" and whose current roster of 125 clients includes AT&T, BT, iRobot, Linksys, Best Buy and Nintendo. Lithium's customer service sites for companies offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and kudos counts. "That alone is addictive," says Fong. "They are revered by their peers." Meanwhile McMurry, who is 68 and a retired software engineer, continues supplying answers by the bushel, all at no pay. "People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it.""

Daylight Savings Time Increases Energy Use In Indiana 388

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 09, 2008 @02:58PM from the all-change-has-friction dept.

enbody writes "The Freakonomics Blog at NYTimes.com reports on a study of Indiana energy use for daylight savings time showing an increase in energy use of 1%. 'The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy's intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.'" Maybe that's just from millions of coffee makers being pressed into extra duty.

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