nunojsilva - Slashdot User

Comment Re:I'm afraid of generalization (Score 1) 240

by nunojsilva on Thursday April 08, 2010 @09:17AM (#31774836) Attached to: Photographers Want Their Cut From Google's Ebooks

You're right. As I believe Santa doesn't exist, I should give up on that idea that there's anything such as end of copyright.

See, "50 years after Mickey Mouse is public domain" is the new "50 years after everyone stops laughing".

Comment I'm afraid of generalization (Score 1) 240

by nunojsilva on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @06:08PM (#31768218) Attached to: Photographers Want Their Cut From Google's Ebooks

If I understand it right, Google is being sued for scanning copyrighted works - I don't completely understand the legality of this (I'm not from USA, nor do I know its legal system). Of course, it seems logical that if Google is giving away verbatim copies of the books they should have permission to do so. Maybe showing just - e.g. - 5 pages per user is allowed under some exception (fair use, etc.)?

But what I'm really afraid is if somebody just decides Google should pay a tax on every book they scan, no matter if they actually need that permission or not (sometimes, people give their works away for free, or copyright expires). Just like those taxes that are paid to play musics publicly, which are also sometimes incorrectly applied to public performances of CC music.

Comment Re:The abstract is not the patent (Score 1) 156

by nunojsilva on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @12:58PM (#31763260) Attached to: IBM Patents Optimization

You're right. Nevertheless, a good abstract should be about what follows it! (Otherwise it would be useless)

Comment Neodarwinism (Score 1) 156

by nunojsilva on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @12:55PM (#31763224) Attached to: IBM Patents Optimization

The picture I got after reading the post was that it's just another implementation (if they implemented it...) of natural selection. See, (e.g.) human reproduction involves random changes on DNA which will actually survive if they make the new being more productive/fast/efficient/stronger.

Comment Re:microSD (Score 1) 80

by nunojsilva on Monday April 05, 2010 @10:56AM (#31733914) Attached to: Toshiba To Test Sub-25nm NAND Flash

This means IPoAC will become more useful, as its main strenght is bandwidth (currently limited by the capacity of microSD cards and the like).

Comment Re:How much energy ? (Score 1) 351

by nunojsilva on Monday April 05, 2010 @05:36AM (#31731510) Attached to: Tsunami Warning From Space?

On one hand, as it may save lives, we shouldn't worry that much about the cost, but, on the other hand, if it just drains all the energy from the planet, that's another (big) problem to solve...

So, before deploying such a system, ideas on a less expensive way to power it, and discussions on that, are really important.

Bruce Schneier On Airport Security 582

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 29, 2009 @02:16PM from the he-should-know dept.

the4thdimension writes "Bruce Schneier has an opinion piece on CNN this morning that illustrates his view on airport security. Given that he has several books on security, his opinion carries some weight. In the article, Bruce discusses the rarity of terrorism, the pitfalls of security theater, and the actual difficulty surrounding improving security. What are your thoughts? Do you think that we can actually make air travel (and any other kind of travel, for that matter) truly secure?"

Submission + - Heat vs. fiction: how to run a cool data center

Submitted by pacopico on Saturday August 25, 2007 @05:42PM

pacopico writes: Data center efficiency has turned into the most-favored topic of the big chip and server vendors, despite the fact that they were happy to sell flaming hot gear a couple years ago. The Register has taken a look at which companies have truly helpful, power-friendly gear and which companies are just marketeers. They also interview people at Rumsey Engineers — some dudes that build data centers — about cooling techniques and weird water-filled systems.

Submission + - Skype-Linux reads /etc/passwd and firefox profile! (skype.com)

Submitted by

mrcgran

on Saturday August 25, 2007 @05:19PM

mrcgran writes: "Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files."

Submission + - Windows Vista for free for portuguese students

Submitted by

macnet

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @07:29PM

macnet writes: "Microsoft is offering 100 thousand copies of their latest operative system to the Portuguese college students and teachers in technology related courses. This offer is part of the educational program signed between the Portuguese government and Microsoft. Microsoft Portugal as included Windows Vista on the Microsoft Development Network Academic Alliance (MSDN-AA) just one month after its release. More info can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/portugal/universidade/pro gramas/univ_msdnaa.mspx."

Comment Re:Everyone uses it (Score 1) 250

by nunojsilva on Wednesday January 17, 2007 @03:34AM (#17642944) Attached to: Inside MySpace.com

It's the same that's happening with MSN Instant Messaging: It's broken, the official client is the worst IM client I've ever seen, and it does not support important features as formatted text (multiple formatting in a single message), but people use it.

Also, when somebody wants to discuss something, or just talk, over the Internet, he/she asks "What's your MSN?".

Uh, since when? It's always "what's your sn?" and it's in reference to AIM. I know like 3 people who actually use MSN. Every other kid uses AIM (or signs onto AIM using Trillian).

Not here in Portugal - it seems that MSN is only winning the IM wars outside of USA .
I even doubt AOL has ever provided Internet access here - I have my AIM account just because I started using Netscape 7.0 instead of M$ IE (when I was using that... thing called Windows), and it registered a screenname for me.

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