jase001 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Petition to Stop the E-PARASITE Act. (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by Feltope on Monday November 21, 2011 @03:06PM

Feltope writes: This Bill would allow essentially allow A Great Firewall of America and would be a shameful desecration of free speech and any sort of reasonable copyright law. The new Law would allow copyright holders to force websites which have any copyrighted material to be blocked by ISP companies around the country, without requiring that the websites be given time to take the offending material down. It would also put pressure on ISP companies to monitor their users like never before, a gross invasion of privacy. This bill is a direct assault on a free internet and a shameful attempt by copyright lobbyists to destroy net neutrality. Essentially it's a censorship law that would end the internet as we know it in America.

Submission + - XKCD details distribution of wealth in the US (xkcd.com)

Submitted by vellorean on Monday November 21, 2011 @01:46PM

vellorean writes: The latest XKCD provides a detailed split of where all of the money is, and has split it into several bins, clearly demarcating the 1%-99% splits as well as what sectors are in receipt of the money. Interesting analysis.

Submission + - DLP Drives Nail in 35mm Coffin in 2011 (smartertechnology.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21, 2011 @01:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: By the end of 2011, the digital light processor (DLP) from Texas Instruments will surpass venerable 35mm film in total number of cinemas worldwide, and by 2015 digital cinemas will vanquish 35mm film altogether relegating "real" film to artsy venues running legacy films. Ironically, as major movies stop distributing real-film movies over the next four years, they will go up in value! So start stockpiling those 35mm films, but keep them in your temperature/humidity controlled wine cellar so they don't fade as they appreciate :)

Submission + - MS To Build Antivirus Into Win8: Boon Or Monopoly? (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Monday November 21, 2011 @01:38PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Microsoft has quietly announced that it's planning on baking anti-virus protection write into the Windows 8 OS. Users have been criticizing Windows' insecurity for years — but of course this move is raising howls of protest from anti-virus vendors, who have built a nice business out of Windows' holes. Is this a good move by Microsoft, or a leveraging of their monopoly as bad as bundling IE?"

Submission + - RMS on Jobs: "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad (latimes.com)

Submitted by Garabito on Sunday October 09, 2011 @12:22PM

Garabito writes: Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has posted on his personal site: "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.' Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing." His statement has spurred reaction from the community; some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice.

Submission + - Eric Raymond Defends Stallman Over Jobs Remarks (muktware.com) 1

Submitted by N!NJA on Sunday October 09, 2011 @06:14AM

N!NJA writes: Many have already read on the Internets what Richard Stallman said about Steve Jobs:

"Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing. Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective."

Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/10/steve-jobs-stallman-dissenting-view.html

Eric S Raymond, the author of Cathedral in Bazaar has come out to defend Richard M Stallman:

"But the Mac also set a negative pattern that Jobs was to repeat with greater amplification later in his life. In two respects; first, it was a slick repackaging of design ideas from an engineering tradition that long predated Jobs (in this case, going back to the pioneering Xerox PARC WIMP interfaces of the early 1970s). Which would be fine, except that Jobs created a myth that arrogated that innovation to himself and threw the actual pioneers down the memory hole."

"Second, even while Jobs was posing as a hip liberator from the empire of the beige box, he was in fact creating a hardware and software system so controlling and locked down that the case couldn’t even be opened without a special cracking tool. The myth was freedom, but the reality was Jobs’s way or the highway. Such was Jobs’s genius as a marketer that he was able to spin that contradiction as a kind of artistic integrity, and gain praise for it when he should have been slammed for hypocrisy."

"What’s really troubling is that Jobs made the walled garden seem cool. He created a huge following that is not merely resigned to having their choices limited, but willing to praise the prison bars because they have pretty window treatments."

Source: http://www.muktware.com/news/2623

Submission + - Why do I download TV shows illegally? (howtodownloadtv.com)

Submitted by

G0ds1ay3r

on Sunday October 09, 2011 @04:36AM

G0ds1ay3r writes: "I live in New Zealand and New Zealand gets TV shows quite a bit later than the rest of the world.

I download TV shows because I like to keep up with my favorite shows and I like to discuss these shows online with fans of the shows as soon as they air for the first time in the shows country of origin and NOT months after if I were to watch the shows when the network wants me to watch them in my country of residence.

I download ALOT of TV; probably alot more than the average person; I am a huge TV aficionado but I do not have a cable hooked up to my TV giving me local TV because quite frankly the TV shows produced in New Zealand are utter shit.

My parents cant understand why I do not have my TV hooked up to the satellite that came with the house; they cant understand that I don't even want it hooked up if even just to watch the news; Mum, Dad; I can read the news on the internet and watch the highlight clips and don't have to sit there listening to the news hosts make jokes that aren't funny even in the slightest.

When I come home from work my computer has all the shows downloaded that aired that day in America OR where ever they aired and the computer has even put the TV show in the right directory on my Hard drive; all done automatically and there are no commercial breaks :-)

Isn't this illegal? in a matter of speaking yes it is illegal but not in the criminal sense; you cant go to jail for downloading TV and I wouldn't have to break the law if the TV networks just changed their way of doing business.

The way I figure it is that the TV networks are pissed because people are downloading their TV shows 'illegally'and so they are missing out on Advertising revenue because the people who upload the shows to the net are cutting all the ads out.

Now if the TV networks had one ad at the start of the Show and one ad at the end of the show and very minimal ads at the bottom of the screen during the show; maybe a little product placement in the show its self; they could then release the show to a global audience simultaneously online (steaming or for download) which would work if they could cut advertising deals with local companies.

The TV networks could even charge a flat rate monthly fee for subscribers to download or stream high quality TV shows; maximum of $3-4 per network of course; TV shows are spread through out a huge number of networks; I alone have shows on at least five networks which would make my bill $15-20 monthly; I am already paying around the same price to download these shows 'illegally' so I have no problem paying the same to download them legally.

So until the TV networks come around to the 21st century way of doing business in a global market; I will keep downloading my TV shows 'illegally' and they will keep losing advertising revenue.

"

Submission + - iPhone 4S Blog (iphone4sblog.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06, 2011 @07:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: This site has the best news on the iPhone 4S , as well as some great articles regarding about the loss of steve jobs.

Submission + - Steve Jobs taught us to love (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by pmcgrath_2 on Thursday October 06, 2011 @07:33PM

pmcgrath_2 writes: With the passing of Jobs this week, we are also mourning a man who defined a new kind of worker.

The Jobs world-view consecrates the sacrifices of an ambitious, dedicated, and committed professional class that seeks recognition and passion in creative work.

The language of love and intimacy is central to this career project

Submission + - BitTorrent goes freemium: uTorrent Plus (extremetech.com) 2

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Thursday October 06, 2011 @05:06PM

MrSeb writes: "BitTorrent has just announced a freemium version of uTorrent: uTorrent Plus. It has all of the same features, plus a few very tasty extras: built-in virus scanning (and treatment), an integrated media player, automatic transcoding for devices (smartphones, tablets, consoles), and a version of uTorrent Remote that lets you manage your torrents from anywhere and download the completed files. For now uTorrent Plus is an invite-only beta test, but when it launches it will cost $25 per year."

Submission + - An Interview With Jobs During Exile From Apple (digg.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Thursday October 06, 2011 @04:32PM

Lucas123 writes: As part of a computer industry oral history project, in 1995 Computerworld performed an extensive interview with Steve Jobs, then head of NeXT Computer. Jobs talked openly about his life and work during from his early years — when he says he's sure that except for a few key adults 'I would absolutely have ended up in jail' — to how he felt about Apple in the mid-'90s — 'The Macintosh will die in another few years [under John Sculley]' — to his predictions about the Internet.

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:52PM from the i-for-one dept.

likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Comment AS/NZS 3112 (Score 2, Informative) 711

by jase001 on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @04:10PM (#28858041) Attached to: Favorite type of electical wall socket?

For the people who live in the Pacific we use AS/NZS 3112.

Pixar's Next Three Films Will Be Sequels 379

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:03PM from the low-hanging-fruit-is-the-first-to-rot dept.

brumgrunt writes "Should we be worried? As Pixar, with Up, once more proves itself to be home to some of the most original and daring blockbusters on the planet, the news that its next three films are likely to be sequels — with the confirmation of Monsters, Inc. 2 — gives cause for concern. Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?"

Submission + - Secret US List of Civil Nuclear Sites Released (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn on Tuesday June 02, 2009 @09:18PM

eldavojohn writes: Someone accidentally released a 266 page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use. While some ex-officials and experts don't find it to be a serious breach, the Federation of American Scientists are calling it a "a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs." The document contains information about Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia while the opinion seems to be split on whether it's a harmless list or terrorist risk. One thing is for sure, it was taken down after the New York Times inquired to the Government Accountability Office about it.

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