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Submission + - Verizon Posts Message in Morse Code to Mock FCC's Net Neutrality Ruling

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Chris Matyszczyk reports at Cnet that Verizon has posted a message to the FCC titled: FCC’s ‘Throwback Thursday’ Move Imposes 1930s Rules on the Internet” written in Morse code. The first line of the release dated February 26, 1934 in old typewriter type reads: "Today (Feb.26) the Federal Communications Commission approved an order urged by President Obama that imposes rules on broadband Internet services that were written in the era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph." The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines in favor of new Internet service rules that prohibit blocking, slowing or prioritizing traffic. The rules, which have not yet been released, are opposed by cable and telephone companies that fear it will curb Internet growth and stifle payback on network investment. "It isn't a surprise that Verizon is a touch against Thursday's order. In 2012, it insisted that the very idea of Net neutrality squished its First and Fifth Amendment right," writes Matyszczyk. "I wonder, though, who will be attracted by this open mockery. Might this be a sign that Verizon doesn't think the fight is over at all?"

Comment Quick Update (Score 4, Informative) 86

by Soulskill (#49149149) Attached to: The Only Constant is Change

We've just rolled out several bug fixes.

  • The Post button (and similar) should no longer be hidden.
  • The Older/Newer buttons on the front page should be back.
  • Tags should now be visible.
  • The left-hand navigation on user pages should be back.
  • We've fixed some of the responsiveness issues with the new header (more to do yet).
  • Contrast on Slashbox titles should be fixed.

We still have more to fix, and we're going to get started on that.

Submission + - Blu-Ray Players Hackable via Malicious Discs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Blu-Ray disc interactive features use Java and Stephen Tomkinson just posted a blog discussing research showing how using a specially created Blu-Ray discs it is possible to hack a couple of players. He hacked one Linux based network connected player to get root due to issues introduced by the vendor. Similarly he did the same thing against Windows Blu-Ray player software. He then combined both along with detection techniques into one disc..

Submission + - One Astronomer's Impassioned Quest to Reinstate Pluto as a Planet (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: Most of us grew up believing that tiny, distant Pluto was the outermost planet in our solar system. Then, one day, the scientific powers that be decreed that it wasn’t. But it seems the matter is far from settled.

“The International Astronomical Union of wants to hide from the issue,” David Weintraub of Vanderbilt University told me in an email. “They have refused to allow the issue to appear on the agenda at the 2009 or 2012 or 2015 meetings. They hope it will go away.”

Weintraub—who describes Pluto’s exile as a stunt organized by a “very small clique of Pluto-haters”—would have the dwarf world rejoin the ranks of our Solar System’s fully-fledged planets today. But solid evidence that Pluto deserves the title may come in July, when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft slingshots around the icy rock and sends us back a detailed picture of its composition.

Pluto’s planethood was revoked by majority vote on the final day of the 2006 IAU conference. Over 2,500 astronomers attended the meeting throughout the week, but only 394 votes ultimately decided Pluto’s fate: 237 in favor of demoting the planet and 157 against.

Submission + - Lenovo says goodbye to bloatware (betanews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Lenovo today announced that it has had enough of bloatware. The world's largest PC vendor says that by the time Windows 10 comes out, it will get rid of bloatware from its computer lineups. The announcement comes a week after the company was caught for shipping Superfish adware with its computers. The Chinese PC manufacturer has since released a public apology, Superfish removal tool, and instructions to help out users.

At the sidelines, the company also announced that it is giving away 6-month free subscription to all Superfish-affected users.

Submission + - Genetic Data Analysis Tools Reveal How US Pop Music Evolved

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: The history of pop music is rich in anecdotes, folklore and controversy. But despite the keen interest, there is little in the form of hard evidence to back up most claims about the evolution of music. Now a group of researchers have used data analysis tools developed for genomic number crunching to study the evolution of US pop music. The team studied 30-second segments of more than 17,000 songs that appeared on the US Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 2010. Their tools categorised the songs according to harmonic features such as chord changes as well as the quality of timbre such as whether guitar-based, piano-based orchestra-based and so on. They then used a standard algorithm for discovering clusters within networks of data to group the songs into 13 different types, which turned out to correspond with well known genres such as rap, rock, country and so on. Finally, they plotted the change in popularity of these musical types over time. The results show a clear decline in the popularity of jazz and blues since 1960. During the same period, rock-related music has ebbed and flowed in popularity. By contrast, was rare before 1980 before becoming the dominant musical style for 30 years until declining in the late 2000s. The work answers several important question about the evolution of pop music, such as whether music industry practises have led to a decline in the cultural variety of new music and whether British bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones triggered the 1964 American music revolution [spoiler: no in both cases].

Submission + - VLC Gets First Major Cross-Platform Release

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VideoLAN today launched what is arguably the biggest release of VLC to date: an update for the desktop coordinated with new versions across all major mobile platforms. Theworld's most used media player just got massive a cross-platform push. The company told VentureBeat that the releases are the result of more than a year of volunteer work on the VLC engine and the libVLC library. As a result, VLC has gained numerous new features, has seen more than 1,000 bugs fixed, and has significantly increased its scope of supported formats.

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