atomicstrawberry - Slashdot User

Submission + - 1080p over component video standard proposed (hdtvinfo.eu)

Submitted by Xbm360 on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @02:39AM

Xbm360 writes: There is no official standard for delivering 1080p over analog, even though it can be done. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) http://www.ce.org/ may change that.

http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/content/view/127/1/

High definition analog component video is defined by the CEA specification, CEA-770.3-rev C. The spec was last revised five years ago, and defines 720p and 1080i, but not 1080p. Even in the absence of a standard, however, 1080p component video has made its way into a surprising amount of consumer devices. Several display manufacturers support 1080p over component video, either across the line such as Samsung, or as an undocumented feature on certain models such as Syntax/Brillian's.

Submission + - Space Shuttle Fuel Powers New BMW Luxury Sedan (local6.com)

Submitted by Rio on Thursday August 09, 2007 @12:37AM

Rio writes: A first-ever liquid hydrogen-powered luxury sedan was tested by NASA at Kennedy Space Center this week. The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel powering the space shuttle to reduce CO2 emissions by 90 percent, according to a news release. "It is the high-energy density of liquid hydrogen that allows the space shuttle to be accelerated into space," said Karl Heinz Ziwica, vice president of engineering at BMW. "The same concept is used to power the BMW Hydrogen 7."

Submission + - Is Microsoft looking for a new CEO? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

derrida

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @07:43PM

derrida writes: "As ars technica reports "This week the rumor mill churned out a new tasty morsel; one which could really change Microsoft. According to the experts on Wall Street, Microsoft is planning on firing CEO Steve Ballmer, attributing the company's shaky stock price as one reason.""

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 + - Duke Nukem Forever Solidifying?

Submitted by

BlueMonk

on Sunday July 15, 2007 @09:59PM

BlueMonk writes: "Browsing Best Buy's web site today, one may be surprised to find an offer to pre-order something that a lot of people may be hesitant to place as a pre-order considering its past. It looks like they think Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out in December and are feeling good enough about it to start taking orders."

Submission + - C vs. C++/OOP Paradigm

Submitted by on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: I just started work for a small start-up company that does R&D software for media. I quickly discovered that my boss is very resistant to using C++ and object-oriented programming; he insists that we standardize on using C. This goes against the last eight years of my education in being trained to use OOP and also arises concerns for the company in creating and maintaining reusable and scalable software. My boss states that he had bad experiences at previous companies that used C++ and OOP that resulted in less readable code. I suspect that he has little knowledge of the OOP paradigm and its advantages in writing good software. I'm wondering if the Slashdot community can provide some suggestions on how to approach a boss with strong convictions on this issue. Why should we be using C++ vs. C? What are the benefits of OOP? Why is it important for a start-up company to address these issues early on in order to develop good coding practices?

Submission + - Electronic Frontier Foundation Sues Uri Geller

Submitted by reversible physicist on Thursday May 10, 2007 @11:06PM

reversible physicist writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued spoon-bender Uri Geller for using "baseless copyright claims" to silence critics who question his paranormal powers. Brian Sapient posted on YouTube a 14-minute excerpt from the 1993 PBS NOVA program "Secrets of the Psychics," in which magician James Randi says Geller's spoon-bending feats were simple tricks. YouTube took down the video after Geller complained — his lawyers claim that 10 seconds of the video are owned by Geller. A shorter excerpt is still up on YouTube.

Submission + - Hubble's New Sibling

Submitted by

eonlabs

on Thursday May 10, 2007 @10:55PM

eonlabs writes: "The BBC is covering news that NASA has announced plans for a new space telescope capable of significantly outperforming its older brother, the Hubble.

'The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)...will be larger than its predecessor, sit farther from Earth and have a giant mirror to enable it to see more.'

At 24 meters long, this telescope is expected to report images of our universe significantly closer to its birth, and sitting safely in the L2 lagrange point with additional solar shielding, it should be more sensitive to infrared imagery."

Submission + - NASA unveils Hubble's successor

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10, 2007 @10:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: NASA has unveiled a model of a space telescope intended to replace the ageing Hubble telescope with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). A full-scale model is being displayed outside the NASA museum in Washington DC. The $4.5bn (£2.27bn) telescope will be shaded from sunlight by a shield, enabling it to stay cold, increasing its sensitivity to infrared radiation, take up a position some 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) from Earth, and will measure 24m (80ft) long by 12m (40ft) high, and incorporate a hexagonal mirror 6.5m (21.3ft) in diameter, almost three times the size of Hubble's.

Submission + - Lawsuit Invokes DMCA to Force DRM Adoption

Submitted by TechnicolourSquirrel on Thursday May 10, 2007 @09:35PM

TechnicolourSquirrel writes: Forbes.com informs us that Media Rights Technologies is suing Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real Networks for not using its DRM technology and therefore 'failing to include measures to control access to copyrighted material,' alleging that their refusal to use MRT's X1 Recording Control technology constitutes a 'circumvention' of a copyright protection system, which is of course illegal under the Digital Millenium Copryight Act. I would say more, but without controlling access to this paragraph with MRT's products, I fear I have already risked too much...

Submission + - April Foo...oh, wait, what?

Submitted by

Wade Tregaskis

on Thursday May 10, 2007 @08:32PM

Wade Tregaskis writes: "I'm tempted to post this under "It's funny, laugh", but I'm terrified that they might actually be serious. Media Rights Technologies, a company that develops DRM technology, have — according to their own press release — "issued cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks and Apple with respect to the production or sale of such products as the Vista OS, Adobe Flash Player, Real Player, Apple iTunes and iPod." They assert these companies are "actively avoiding the use of MRT's technologies", and seek damages of "$200 to $2500 for each product distributed or sold". I don't even know how to respond to that."

Submission + - Creationists Launch Peer-Reviewed Journal

Submitted by oostevo on Thursday May 10, 2007 @08:23PM

oostevo writes: CNet is reporting that the Institute for Creation Research has started to solicit papers for the International Journal for Creation Research, which is, in effect, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, where all papers must support the idea of a young-earth. Says the call for papers, the IJCR is "a professional peer-reviewed online technical journal ... for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific research from the perspective of a recent Creation and a global Flood within a biblical framework." It also states that papers "must be from a young-earth perspective and aim to assist the development of the Creation Model of Origins."

Their call for papers can be found here, their instructions for authors can be found here, and their review "process" is here (all PDFs).

Submission + - bamboo laptop!?

Submitted by Ken Birchall on Thursday May 10, 2007 @06:48PM

Ken Birchall writes: I need to see what its guts are before I promise to buy it, but a cardboard and bamboo laptop with an idiot proof repair by numbers process sounds like a neat idea! www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/asus_bamboo_eco.p hp

Submission + - Free X and Mesa drivers for new Intel 965GM chip

Submitted by

keithp

on Thursday May 10, 2007 @06:23PM

keithp writes: "The Intel Open Source Technology Center graphics team is pleased to announce the availability of free software drivers for the recently released Intel® 965GM Express Chipset family mobile graphics controller. These drivers include support for 2D and 3D graphics features for the mobile version of the newest generation Intel graphics architecture.

The Intel® 965GM Express Chipset represents the first mobile product that implements fourth generation Intel graphics architecture. Designed to support advanced rendering features in modern graphics APIs, this chipset includes support for programmable vertex, geometry, and fragment shaders.

Extending Intel's commitment to work with the X.org and Mesa communities to continuously improve and enhance the drivers, support for this new chipset is provided through the X.org 2.0 Intel driver and the Mesa 6.5.3 releases. These drivers represent significant work by both Intel and the broader open source community.

In addition to Intel® 965GM chipset support, the X.org 2.0 driver adds native video mode programming support for all chipsets from i830 forward. The driver supports automatic video mode detection and selection, monitor hot plug, dynamic extended and merged desktops and per-monitor screen rotation. These Intel-developed features are built in to the X.org 1.3 X server release and will eventually be supported across most of the open source X.org video drivers.

Additional information available at the Intel Linux Graphics web site.

Intel's committment to providing high-quality drivers that meet the needs of the mobile Linux community is second to none.
Matthew Garrett, Ubuntu Mobile Linux Engineer

"

Submission + - Russian Teacher Guilty in Re-Opened MS Piracy Case

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday May 07, 2007 @04:03PM

eldavojohn writes: "The highly publicized re-opened case of a Russian school teacher pirating Microsoft software has ended with the verdict being guilty of causing $10,000 in damages. Before we cast stones (again), note that Microsoft had nothing to do with this case: 'Microsoft, however, has said repeatedly it has nothing to do with the charges, which were brought by Russian prosecutors in the Ural Mountains region where Ponosov's school is located. The case "was initiated by Russian authorities under Russian law," the company said in an e-mailed statement after the verdict. "Microsoft neither initiated nor has any plans to bring any action against Mr. Ponosov."' The closing, re-opening & guilty verdict may all have been a result of the United States placing Russia on a piracy watch-list though many people feel the media has turned this into a David Vs Goliath tale with a reprieve on the ending."

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