jmce - Slashdot User

Submission + - Motion Picture Industry revenue up in 2006 (hollywoodreporter.com)

Submitted by

Fusen

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:49AM

Fusen writes: "Even though we are subjected to numerous reports on piracy destroying the earth as we know it, a recent MPA study reveals that revenue from all filmed media increased 8% in 2006.

"After a disappointing 2005, the six major companies have received official confirmation from the MPA that their all-media revenue from filmed entertainment — comprising money from home video, television, theatrical and pay TV — expanded by 8% in 2006 to reach $42.6 billion.""

Journal Journal: Life of CDs for archiving data

Journal by Jeff1946 on Sunday March 18, 2007 @12:40AM

One of the science fair entries I judged today was on the use of CDs to archive data and the expected lifetime. The students did accelerated lifetime testing at 80C to determine the failure rate of the cyanine dye on which is written the data. They didn't have enough time at 80C to detect any failures. Of more interest to me and /. folks is conversations they had with people at NIST and the Library of Congress. The students learned that CDs lifetimes have greatly improved d

Submission + - Small Businessman Feels Pinch of Software Patents

Submitted by Penguinisto on Saturday March 17, 2007 @09:39PM

Penguinisto writes: A few days ago, Phil Cooke, a small-time hobbyist 3D/CG programmer, was sent a Cease and Desist notice from Reyes Infografica over a small 3D/CG clothes-generating program he had sold for years (it generated clothing mesh for a figures in a CG hobbyist program known as Poser). The program has since been pulled from the maker's site, as he cannot afford to retain counsel with which to fight back. Apparently, Phil's program had collided against a software patent that Reyes filed in 2001 (the patent was filed in the US and Spain). The C&D notice, and some of the discussion surrounding it can be found a PhilC's site discussion forums. While we usually see stories about small-time patent trolls raking in huge bucks from large companies, is this an indication of a disturbing trend by larger companies using software patents to intimidate and eliminate their smaller competition? And if so, then how on Earth is this supposed to foster innovation and creativity?

Submission + - Congressman calls for email and IM monitoring

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: vnunet.com covers a story on a bill introduced to the US House of Representatives that would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely. ynot.com has the same story.

Submission + - Norwegian Datacrime wants to block porn and p2p.

Submitted by

Jostein Hanken

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:38AM

Jostein Hanken writes: "Norways 2nd biggest (Dagbladet.no) newspaper reported today that Norwegian Datacrime (A section under Justice and Police Department) will put forward a suggestion to the Justisminister (Minister of Justice?) that sais ISP's should block all internet content that is illegal. That includes websites that contain porn, illegal downloads, racism etc. In short, that means Datacrime wants to block half the content on the internet, giving Norway one of the hardest Internet laws in the western world. This has been reported in the papir edition of Dagbladet and online by ITavisen ( http://www.itavisen.no/php/art.php?id=368846 ). Both are in norwegian im afraid."

Submission + - IBM launching an open desktop solution

Submitted by

DJ_Maiko

on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:36AM

DJ_Maiko writes: "IBM just announced their intent to release an open desktop solution which they're calling "Open Client Offering." The new offering will make it possible for big businesses to present their employees with a choice of running Linux, Macintosh or Windows software on desktop PCs, using the same underlying software code, which will cut the cost of managing Linux or Apple relative to Windows. If this project succeeds, it will make it unnecessary for companies to pay Microsoft for licenses for items that don't rely on Windows-based software. IBM plans to also roll this out in-house to 5% of their 320,000 employees worldwide. This sure seems like a promising endeavor.

From the article:
"We worked with the open source community and found a way to write software once that will work regardless of operating system. It will run on Windows, Macintosh or Linux," said Scott Handy, IBM's vice president of Linux and open source.

So what do you guys think, will this (finally) displace Windows as the flavor du jour in the business marketplace?"

Submission + - NZ copyright bill submissions close on Friday!

Submitted by

Clarke

on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:10AM

Clarke writes: "Thanks to the lobbying efforts of the RIANZ (our local RIAA clone) New Zealand is about to get a DMCA-style copyright law. This will emasculate Fair Use and turns DRM removal into a criminal act — so removing the infamous Sony rootkit from your PC will get you a criminal record, 5 years in jail and a $150,000 fine.

For the first time, the parliamentary committee considering the bill is allowing online submissions from anyone in the world: http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz.clients.interg en.net.nz/OnlineSubmission/Submission.aspx?id={A23 4B182-C669-4F08-BFD6-4C4BF4F495E1}

Can you please please please let people know it's not too late to kill or amend this stupid piece of legislation by making a submission. The full text of the bill can be found here: http://www.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpprint/docs/bil ls/20061021.txt"

Submission + - Choosing a USB Hard Drive

Submitted by

PunkOfLinux

on Sunday February 11, 2007 @01:46PM

PunkOfLinux writes: "I'm looking at getting an external hard drive (USB) for use with my laptop. When I look online, I see so many options that I have no idea where to start. Does anyone here on slashdot have experience with any particular models, or any recommendations?"

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