haddieman - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Why does the law punish attempts at all? (Score 1) 768

by haddieman on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @11:37AM (#19131095) Attached to: Congress May Outlaw 'Attempted Piracy'

I'm not sure I agree with your example. Starting to download something is more akin to seeing a pile of money on a table picking it up and starting to walk out of the room only to discover that it is government property and putting it back. If a government official walks into the room right after you start to walk out with the money he can make a pretty good case that you were attempting to steal it. Like they say, "ignorance of the law is no excuse".

I'm not saying that I agree with the proposed law but if it is put into effect you had better find out if something is under copyright before you start downloading it.

Submission + - Italy village gets 'sun mirror'

Submitted by

Gre7g

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @02:05PM

Gre7g writes: "A sun-deprived village in the Italian Alps has come up with a novel solution to fix the problem — by installing a giant mirror.

The mirror — an eight-by-five metre (26x16ft) sheet of steel — was placed on a nearby peak to reflect sunlight onto Viganella's main square below.

The computer-operated mirror will now be constantly following the sun's path."

Submission + - Rare Semi-Identical Twins Discovered

Submitted by daftna on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @01:38PM

daftna writes: Twins can be identical, fraternal and apparently semi-identical, scientists now report.

Researchers discovered twins who are identical on their mom's side of the equation but share only half their genes from dad.

Here's how it happened: Two sperm cells fertilized one egg — an event assumed to be very rare — then split into two embryos.

Submission + - Atom-thick carbon transistor could succeed silicon

Submitted by

Matthew Sparkes

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:58AM

Matthew Sparkes writes: "Transistors more than four times smaller than the tiniest silicon ones — and potentially more efficient — can be made using sheets of carbon just one-tenth of a nanometre thick. The transistors are made of graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms in a flat honeycomb arrangement. Graphene makes graphite when stacked in layers, and carbon nanotubes when rolled into a tube. "This new material has properties that suggest it could have a range of powerful applications.""

Submission + - P2P trojan threatens to "kill you," delete

Submitted by

soulxtc

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:46AM

soulxtc writes: "Instead of the proverbial "gotcha letter" via your ISP, a mysterious copyright holder has created a trojan that overwrites all of their program, music, and system files with popular comic book character images warning them not to use P2P or it will "kill them." Have Japanese copyright-holders in fact gone "nuclear" in their fight? It will most certainly only backfire as parents have to soon start consoling their children about how their favorite comic book character is dancing on their PC screen deleting all of their kids files and threatening to "kill them" or "turn them in to the police.""

Submission + - Virtual Reality Game Ties Depression To Brain Area

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:16AM

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists are using a virtual-reality, three-dimensional video game that challenges spatial memory as a new tool for assessing the link between depression and the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub, Science Daily reports. Spatial memory is the memory of how things are oriented in space and how to get to them. Researchers found that depressed people performed poorly on the video game compared with nondepressed people, suggesting that their hippocampi were not working properly.

Submission + - Wired News discusses gaming of Digg

Submitted by

indraneil

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @10:59AM

indraneil writes: "Wired is running an article on how Annalee Newitz created a spurious blog and posted a story on the same at Digg.
She then hired a Digg-gaming service called User/Submitter and paid them $450 to digg the article up.She explains how you can buy a Digg vote (for $1 per vote) from User/Submitter which hires people to digg up your story (and pays them $0.5 per vote).After a few rigged vites, she ended up getting votes from people who did not get paid, and soon her story had been awarded the "became popular" tag and had 121 diggs.
She explained the phenomenon thus:
"There's a perverse incentive here: Diggers who vote early on stories that become wildly popular become more "reputable" in the Digg system. If you're trying to move up the Digg ranks, it's in your best interest to vote on anything that looks like it's gaining popularity. And my blog, with its flurry of paid votes, fit the pattern." While the story did eventually get buried, the article raises questions on whether someone can game sites like Digg to rise up the search engine ranks or even gain otherwise from ad revenues.
Diggers are themselves arguing it out here."

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