ernesto99 - Slashdot User

Success Not Just a Matter of Talent 247

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 15, 2008 @01:22PM from the ninety-nine-percent-something-something dept.

NinjaCoder writes "The Guardian has an interesting article based on a new book (Outliers: The Story Of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell) which examines some persons of interest to computer technology (Bill Joy, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, amongst others). It examines reasons for their successes and strongly suggests a link between practice (10,000 hours by age 20 being the magic milestone) and luck. This maybe an obvious truism, but the article does give interesting anecdotes on how their personal circumstances led to today's technological landscape. It points out that many of the luminaries of the current tech industry were born around 1955, and thus able to take advantage of the emerging technologies.

US Has More IPv6 Eyeballs Than Asia, Because of Apple 162

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 13, 2008 @09:54PM from the yummy-apple dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has been checking to see who's using IPv6. According to the company's tracking, half of all IPv6-capable systems seen by Google are Macs, helping the US land in fifth place in percentage of IPv6 users world wide, ahead of China and Japan."

Submission + - SPAM: Researcher warns of "Digital Dark Age"

Submitted by alphadogg on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:17AM

alphadogg writes: A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign assistant professor is sounding a warning that companies, government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there are 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. "If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture," ," McDonough said. "Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date."
Link to Original Source

RIAA Expert Witness Called "Borderline Incompetent" 170

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 26, 2008 @06:18PM from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Prof. Johan Pouwelse of Delft University — one of the world's foremost experts on the science of P2P file sharing and the very same Prof. Pouwelse who stopped the RIAA's Netherlands counterpart in its tracks back in 2005 — has submitted an expert witness report characterizing the work of the RIAA's expert, Dr. Doug Jacobson, as 'borderline incompetence.' The report (PDF), filed in UMG v. Lindor, pointed out, among other things, that the steps needed to be taken in a copyright infringement investigation were not taken, that Jacobson's work lacked 'in-depth analysis' and 'proper scientific scrutiny,' that Jacobson's reports were 'factually erroneous,' and that they were contradicted by his own deposition testimony. This is the first expert witness report of which we are aware since the Free Software Foundation announced that it would be coming to the aid of RIAA defendants."

Submission + - RIAA Launches Attack on Usenet (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @09:52AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The major record labels have launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against Usenet.com. The complaint filed in the federal District Court in New York accuses Usenet.com of providing access to millions of copyright infringing files and slams it for touting its service as a "haven for those seeking pirated content" Usenet.com has been putting up a fight against the RIAA, refusing to block access to alleged 'copyright infringing groups' Game On"

Submission + - Interpol identifies face-twirling criminal (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

tfurrows

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @09:30AM

tfurrows writes: "Chalk one up for the good guys; they caught that face-swirling idiot that we all read about not too long ago here on Slashdot.

"Thai police today named the 32-year-old suspect who was identified after an unprecedented global appeal launched last week ... Yesterday Interpol said that the suspect, photographed abusing children in Vietnam and Cambodia, had been identified by five sources"

I wonder if Interpol will give credit to the internet community and enlist their help more in the future..."

iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks 250

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @09:22AM from the that's-called-competition dept.

jawtheshark writes "Apple has made the decision to revise the pricing of Plus songs on the iTunes Music store. Whereas previously the DRM-less tracks were more expensive than the 'normal' option (at $1.29 vs. $0.99), DRM-less tracks bought via ITMS will now be priced on the same level as DRM'd tracks. 'Apple plans to expand iTunes Plus to include certain indie music labels starting Wednesday, October 17 (or sometime this week, at least) ... This expansion won't include all independent music labels just yet, although we're optimistic that more will be included in the future. While we have no information on whether the iTunes Plus songs are selling well, we assume that the decision to drop the price is a response to the Amazon MP3 store. Amazon sells individual tracks for between 89 and 99 apiece, all without any DRM restrictions. With that in mind, it's kind of hard for Apple to compete at $1.29.'"

Submission + - Porn Industry Infighting As Pirate Bay Takes On Bi (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by

aussie--43

on Monday September 24, 2007 @08:09PM

aussie--43 writes: "After declaring their own war on BitTorrent, players from the porn industry have been debating The Pirate Bay's calls for police action after major media companies tried to illegally sabotage their operations..."

Submission + - Upcoming firmware will brick unlocked iPhones (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by iCry on Monday September 24, 2007 @07:43PM

iCry writes: It was rumored last week, and Apple has now confirmed it: 'Apple said today that a firmware update to the iPhone due to be released later this week "will likely result" in SIM-unlocked iPhones turning into very expensive bricks... So what are users of SIM-unlocked iPhones to do? Not run the latest software update, that's for sure. Users can instead pray to the hacking deities — the famed iPhone Dev Team that released the free software unlock, and iPhoneSIMfree, which released a commercial software unlock — to write applications that will undo the unlocks, as it were, if those users want to run the latest iPhone software.'

Submission + - Pirate Fights for his Right to Use Linux

Submitted by ernesto99 on Saturday September 08, 2007 @06:59AM

ernesto99 writes: Scott McCausland, a convicted ex-administrator of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker is going back to court to fight for his right to use Ubuntu GNU/Linux while he is home confined. The US government is forcing him to use Windows, because that's the only OS their monitoring software can run on.

Submission + - TorrentSpy Blocks Searches From US Visitors

Submitted by

Ernesto

on Monday August 27, 2007 @07:26AM

Ernesto writes: "Starting today, TorrentSpy.com blocks all searches from US visitors and redirects them to a privacy statement. TorrentSpy is caught up in a lawsuit in which the MPAA demands that TorrentSpy hands over all user info stored in "random access memory" (RAM). This service denial seems to be a preventive measure to protect their users, when US users try to search on TorrentSpy they now get this message."

Submission + - US Home Confinement Program is Windows Only (torrentfreak.com) 2

Submitted by

Ernesto

on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @02:09PM

Ernesto writes: "Sk0t, an ex-administrator of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker is to have his internet connection forcibly monitored by the US Government. If that wasn't bad enough, the monitoring software is Windows based — which means he is being forced to ditch Linux — or face being barred from the internet."

Submission + - Comcast Blocks BitTorrent (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by FsG on Friday August 17, 2007 @09:06PM

FsG writes: Over the past few weeks, more and more Comcast users have reported that their BitTorrent traffic is severely throttled and they are totally unable to seed. Comcast doesn't seem to discriminate between legitimate and infringing torrent traffic, and most of the BitTorrent encryption techniques in use today aren't helping. If more ISPs adopt their strategy, could this mean the end of BitTorrent?

Submission + - The Pirate Bay About To Relaunch Suprnova.org 3

Submitted by kungfujesus on Thursday August 02, 2007 @08:02PM

kungfujesus writes: The Pirate Bay crew has been working on this secret project for quite some time now. Back in April they wrote a cryptic post on their blog announcing that something was coming. In a response to this announcement TPB admin Brokep told TorrentFreak: "The past, the present and the future. It's all the same, but one thing's for sure, we will radiate for weeks", today it became clear that he was referring to the resurrection of Suprnova. Article Here

Submission + - Shining Light on the Warez Darknet

Submitted by Ernesto on Saturday May 19, 2007 @06:28AM

Ernesto writes: TorrentFreak published an interesting interview with an established 'Scener'. From the interview:

It's (the Scene) also a place where the `Geek` rules all. He is not frightened by the big guy who plays football, the boxer down the road or the bullies at school because he knows he has the power to take the access away. Once you have been given access and trust, to have it taken away can be devastating for some. Same as money I guess — I suppose it's all about power.

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