jhjessup - Slashdot User

Submission + - Document Management Systems

Submitted by SomeGuyTyping on Thursday August 09, 2007 @11:27AM

SomeGuyTyping writes: As I read about various Document Management Systems (DMS), I find they all want you to scan everything. I'm looking for a system that would allow you to tag paper and store a record of it existence and location as well as keeping track of electronic documents. Also, if any DMS has a feature to alert you of documents that are not filed yet, whether they exist or not (i.e., a permit needed for a project), that would be a major plus. Open Source is preferred, but a commercial system is not out of the question.

Submission + - 'Most Wanted' Nigerian Scammer Arrested In Fla. (local6.com)

Submitted by Rio on Thursday August 09, 2007 @10:46AM

Rio writes: A man accused of being a member of a notorious group of Nigerian identity scammers was arrested during a routine traffic stop in Florida, according to the Secret Service. A WKMG-TV report said Rilwan Soetan, who is on the U.S. Secret Service's "Most Wanted List," was taken into custody in Hamilton County.

Submission + - PWC migrates to OpenBSD after crippling by Windows (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by

Renegade88

on Thursday August 09, 2007 @08:32AM

Renegade88 writes: "After months of network failures and depleted IT budget, newly hired IT manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan was "forced" to migrate half of the company's Windows servers to OpenBSD to stabilize and secure their network. After eliminating the frequent downtime and data loss PWC had experienced for months, Mark Uemura was ordered to reinstate their Checkpoint firewall for political reasons. The Checkpoint server was later overwhelmed by a network virus so rather than taking it offline again, PWC placed an OpenBSD firewall in front of the Checkpoint Firewall! Mark's advice: "My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it — don't ask! [Management] will thank you later.""

Submission + - Hacker cracks Netflix 'Watch Now' Movies (rorta.net)

Submitted by Diabolus Advocatus on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @07:16PM

Diabolus Advocatus writes: At the start of 2007 Netflix started offering a 'Watch Now' service that lets subscribers watch flicks and tv shows online at no extra cost. The limit is one hour per dollar, so if you pay $18 for your subscription, you get 18 hours of credits to watch shit online. All well and good, but the trouble is that Netflix doesn't easily allow you to save the flicks and watch them at your leisure because the films are entrapped in some shittastic Windows Media DRM wrapper. Let's see if we can fix that. This guide will thus show you how to save and decrypt the movies from Netflix so that you can convert them to other mediums and watch them at your leisure.

Submission + - Inside the Race to Clone the iPhone (popsci.com)

Submitted by twoblackeyes on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @06:24PM

twoblackeyes writes: PopSci gives an in-depth look at precisely how China's tech-bootlegging economy works, start to finish. As China's overall economy continues to explode, the knockoffs coming out of Shenzhen are often indistinguishable from the real thing, on top of being usable products in their own right at a fraction of the cost. From a cheap MP3 player to a technology company's entire corporate identity, nothing escapes China's great replicators. The iPhone represents a holy grail for Chinese clone manufacturers, and the race is on to make the first iClone commercially available.

Submission + - Algorithm That Seemlesly Patches Holes in Images (cmu.edu)

Submitted by

Beetle B.

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @04:09PM

Beetle B. writes: "From the site:

'What can you do with a million images? In this paper we present a new image completion algorithm powered by a huge database of photographs gathered from the Web. The algorithm patches up holes in images by finding similar image regions in the database that are not only seamless but also semantically valid. Our chief insight is that while the space of images is effectively infinite, the space of semantically differentiable scenes is actually not that large. For many image completion tasks we are able to find similar scenes which contain image fragments that will convincingly complete the image. Our algorithm is entirely data-driven, requiring no annotations or labelling by the user. Unlike existing image completion methods, our algorithm can generate a diverse set of image completions and we allow users to select among them. We demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm over existing image completion approaches.'

English translation: The algorithm replaces arbitrarily shaped blank areas in an image with portions of images from a huge catalog in a totally seamless manner."

Submission + - Google gives Linux its patent protection

Submitted by Rob on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @06:10AM

Rob writes: Search giant Google has promised not to use its patent portfolio against the Linux operating system and other open source projects by becoming the first end-user licensee of the Open Invention Network. By joining the OIN Google has licensed over 100 patents from the non-profit organization, which was formed in November 2005 by IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Sony and Phillips to stockpile intellectual property for use as a defensive weapon. "Linux plays a vital role at Google, and we're strongly committed to supporting the Linux developer community," noted the company's open source programs manager, Chris DiBona.

Submission + - Kittens could kill the spam (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by jcatcw on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @05:20PM

jcatcw writes: Researchers at Microsoft are proposing the use of images of kittens when software gets good enough to decipher captchas, which is inevitable. "It's possible that kittens are the wave of the future," according to Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group. Humans can identify the image in a picture while software cannot. A beta service, called Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access), of the photo recognition technology is available from Microsoft for free to Web site hosters.

Submission + - iPhone unlocked for use on European carriers

Submitted by thefickler on Monday August 06, 2007 @06:35PM

thefickler writes: Thanks to a Macedonian hacker and the iPhone hacking team at Hackint0sh, the Apple iPhone is now usable across the pond. All you need to unlock the iPhone for use with a European carrier is a SIM reader/writer, V1Comp SIM card, and a blank SilverCard smart card.

Submission + - $99 open source mini from Popular Mech homepage (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by

DMCBOSTON

on Monday August 06, 2007 @04:00PM

DMCBOSTON writes: "From the article: "The catch: You'll need to provide a mouse, keyboard and monitor, and sign a $13-per-month contract. But considering how easy it was to set up our unit, and the company's policy of overnighting a new box if yours fails, the Zonbu might be the future of hassle-free computing. — Erik Sofge" Too good to be true? It appears that PM at least tested this. But, from the FAQ "but you cannot install applications on Zonbu. We provide you 20 world-class applications , more than most people ever need. By restricting your ability to install applications, we enhance the security of Zonbu" So, what's going on? Any ideas? (I KNOW that you folks have an opinion...)"

Submission + - IP rights? Server hosting site hijacks content (therangerstation.org)

Submitted by

blanchae

on Monday August 06, 2007 @11:31AM

blanchae writes: "Over at The Ranger Station (www.therangerstation.com), there is a battle over who owns the rights to the Ranger Station's online forum. The Ranger Station owner was unhappy with the service of OnlineSolutions.org and changed server hosting. Online Solutions have hijacked The Ranger Station's forums stating that they own the databases and content and started their own Ranger Station forum under www.therangerstation.org. This doesn't seem right to me and I want to know who owns the content on a hosted server?"

Submission + - Google is removing results due to legal reasons

Submitted by TinBromide on Friday April 13, 2007 @02:50PM

TinBromide writes: After doing a quick search for an xchat weather plugin, i noticed this line at the bottom of the page "In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org." After clicking the link, I was taken to this page. I didn't find any additional information, but it looks like all those lawsuits are now affecting our searches.

Submission + - It Tastes Like Chicken

Submitted by

desultorypolemic

on Friday April 13, 2007 @02:49PM

desultorypolemic writes: ""Researchers have decoded genetic material from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, an unprecedented step once thought impossible." Amazingly, scientists have been able to recover DNA from soft tissue recovered from a T-rex fossil. After comparing the DNA to existing records, the conclusion was that the closest match in creatures alive today was collagen from chicken bones. So now we know what T-rex tasted like. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070413/ap_on_sc/t_rex _birds;_ylt=ApJ_rVdCXzLbERp.dycDwWYPLBIF"

Journal Journal: What is your favorite 20th-century OS? 1

Journal by davidwr on Friday April 13, 2007 @02:47PM

What is your favorite 20th-century OS version or distribution? Mainframe OSes are fair game.

The main rule is has to be officially unsupported as of January 1, 2000. Rule #2 is you had to actually USE it at least once. No "I heard the Amiga was cool."

I like the Commodore 64 and MacOS 2.0.

Submission + - Disguiseing an MP3 player.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13, 2007 @02:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: I work at a company that does not allow any recordable media into the building for security reasons. They do however allow hand-held radios. I've been looking for information on how to disguise an MP3 player, and I've seen a lot of websites that say they've disguised their MP3 players ranging from rubber ducks to mint boxes. But you can't bring a rubber duck to work and a head phone jack coming out of a mint box is kind of a dead giveaway. So, has anyone tried to convert a simple off-the-shelf AM/FM radio chassis into a usable interface for their MP3 players?

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