Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment joke is on the consumer (Score 1) 207

While 4k is technologically cool the joke again is on the consumer. As in Blu Ray "Mastered in 4k" which isn't realy 4k but "Re-mastered" and downscaled to 2k. IIRÄ they are having difficulties getting true 4k onto disc still? Then apart from the few US streaming services (available in US only TM). Sounds like another hype from the content providers to make even more money, unfortunately.

Medicine

The Light Might Make You Heavy 138

Rambo Tribble writes: "Writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers have found that sleeping with high ambient light levels may contribute to obesity (abstract). In a survey of 113,000 women, a high correlation was found between higher bedroom light levels and increased propensity to be overweight or obese. Excess light in the sleeping environment has long been known to adversely affect melatonin production and circadian rhythms. It is posited that such an interference with the 'body clock' may be behind these results. Although there is not yet enough evidence to call this a smoking gun, as one researcher put it, 'Overall this study points to the importance of darkness.'"

Submission + - After the Sun (Microsystems) Sets, the Real Stories Come Out (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: Former Sun executives and employees gathered in Mountain View, Calif., in May, and out came the "real" stories. Andy Bechtolsheim reports that Steve Jobs wasn't the only one who set out to copy the Xerox Parc Alto; John Gage wonders why so many smart engineers couldn't figure out that it would have been better to buy tables instead of kneepads for the folks doing computer assembly; Vinod Khosla recalls the plan to "rip-off Sun technology;" and more.
Sony

Wikia and Sony Playing Licensing Mind Tricks 108

TuringTest (533084) writes "Popular culture website Wikia originally hosted its user-contributed content under a free, sharealike Commercial Commons license (CC-BY-SA). At least as soon as 2003, some specific wikis decided to use the non-commercial CC-BY-NC license instead: hey, this license supposedly protects the authors, and anyone is free to choose how they want to license their work anyway, right? However, in late 2012 Wikia added to its License terms of service a retroactive clause for all its non-commercial content, granting Wikia an exclusive right to use this content in commercial contexts, effectively making all CC-BY-NC content dual-licensed. And today, Wikia is publicizing a partnership with Sony to display Wikia content on Smart TVs, a clear commercial use. A similar event happened at TV Tropes when the site owners single-handedly changed the site's copyright notice from ShareAlike to the incompatible NonCommercial, without notifying nor requesting consent from its contributors. Is this the ultimate fate of all wikis? Do Creative Commons licenses hold any weight for community websites?"

Comment Re:No. (Score 2) 200

Dell just bought Quest for $2.4 billion. Don't think they will be making any other major acquisitions so soon. Then again looking at nokia's stock price I wouldn't call it major.

Comment Rest of the world (Score 2) 886

Well America. Maybe if you pay your "IT experts" decent wages and offer them decent benefits like the rest of the world does people would be willing to work there.

Recently I had an offer at a very well known vendor in the US. With 12 years working experience plus a few important industry certifications under my belt I felt I would get a decent offer. They (HR at this company, I felt like I was talking to a wall) wanted to offer me coming from Europe, 55k USD/salary yearly, 10 days vacation a year, some crappy health insurance plan, no relocation, no yearly bonus, no overtime pay.

I told them what I make here in Europe plus benefits and the HR lady almost fell out of her chair. "Saying we cant do that." Career wise would have been an excellent opportunity. Although, the pay and benefits would have been a step back into the dark ages. I told them thanks for the offer but no thanks.

Submission + - How have Slashdotters dealt with divorce digitally?

An anonymous reader writes: I am a long time Slashdotter and currently find myself in the beginning of a divorce process. How have slashdotters dealt with dispersing of shared data, accounts and things online in such a situation? Domains, hosting, email, sensitive data backups and social media are just a few examples.
Games

Submission + - Is the game publishing model broken ? (gamasutra.com)

think_nix writes: The first debate at the Dice Summit asked this very question. Analyst Michael Pachter said, 'publishing model today is a broken system that exploits the creative talents of game developers'. Also Ars Technica quotes him again saying, 'The big publishers have mimicked the worst of Hollywood's focus on retreads and sequels'. So is the 'golden age' of gaming finally over for publishers ?

Submission + - India ministers caught watching porn in parliament (reuters.com)

PolygamousRanchKid writes: Three Indian politicians from a morally conservative party, including a women's affairs minister, resigned on Wednesday after being caught watching pornography on a mobile phone during a session of state parliament. News channels broadcast footage showing Karnataka state Minister for Cooperation Laxman Savadi sharing a porn clip with his colleague C.C. Patil, the minister for women and child development, while sitting in the state assembly. The owner of the phone, state Minister for Ports, Science and Technology Krishna Palemar, also quit.

The three men said they did not want to cause any embarrassment for their party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules the state and is in opposition at a national level.

Submission + - DC Comics copyright suit over replicated Batmobile (wired.com)

think_nix writes: Wired reports of U.S. District Judge Ronald S. W. Lew siding with DC Comics in the federal copyright court case against Gotham Garage owner Mark Towle. DC claims Towle of selling "unlicensed replica vehicle modification kits based on vehicle design copyrights from plaintiff’s Batman property, including various iterations of the fictional automobile, the Batmobile." Lew noted that, "DC Comics pleads sufficient facts to support its allogations. Although , generally copyright law does not apply to “useful articles” such as autos."

Submission + - Pirate Bay Changes TLD to Avoid Domain Siezure (torrentfreak.com)

slaad writes: After the court case against the founders of The Pirate Bay was concluded today, the operators of the site quickly moved to change their domain name from .ORG to the Swedish .SE. A Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak that this move was made to prevent the US authorities from seizing the domain, which is a serious risk now the court case has completed.

Comment Re:I can't see the blog. It's blacklisted! (Score 5, Informative) 175

I've never been affected first-hand by government censorship of websites, but when I clicked on the piratebay.se link to read his blog entry, I just got:

For those who are behind censored networks, here is original blos post from this taken from http://thepiratebay.se/blog/204

Year of the storm

2012 is the year of the storm.

The Pirate Bay will reach an age of 9 years. Experiencing raids, espionage and death threats, we're still here. We've been through hell and back and it has made us tougher than ever.

The people running the site has changed during the years. No sane human being would put up with this kind of pressure for 8 years in a row. An insane hobby that takes time from our families, our work (sorry boss) and our studies.

What binds us all together is a strong belief that what we do is good. That it is something we one day can tell our grandchildren about with pride. People from all over the world confirm this. We read testimonials from people in Syria longing for freedom, thanking us for what we provide. We receive more than 100 visits daily from North Korea and we sure know that they need it. If there's something that will bring peace to this world it is the understanding and appreciation of your fellow man. What better way to do that than with this vast library of culture?

With this said, we hear news from our old admins that they have received a verdict in Sweden. Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday.

But what enrages us to our inner core is that the system, the empire, the governments, are still allowed to try to boss you and us around with one law crazier than the other. Do you think they will stop with SOPA/ACTA/PIPA? They will not. Because you won't stop sharing those files. Because we will not stay down. Because no one can turn back time. Together, we are the iron that hardens with each strike.

In this year of the storm, the winners will build windmills and the losers will raise shelters. So flex your muscles, fellow pirates, and give power to us all! Build more sites! More nets! More protocols! Scream louder than ever and take it to the next level!

Posted Today 09:11 by The Pirate Bay

Best regards,

The 'free' internet

Cloud

Submission + - Vmware, a falling giant? (arstechnica.com)

Lashat writes: According to Ars Technica "A new survey seems to show that VMware's iron grip on the enterprise virtualization market is loosening, with 38 percent of businesses planning to switch vendors within the next year due to licensing models and the robustness of competing hypervisors."

What do /.ers say about moving away from what is IMHO the most stable and feature rich vm architecture available? Full disclosure:I am not clear on how the licensing has changed since that is not my department.

Comment Re:GNOME Survey (Score 3, Interesting) 315

I really hope the input from the phoronix survey gets forwarded to the GNOME devs. Especially the comment field. I am also excited to see the results as a whole. How many are really still holding onto their 2.x installs like myself? Using GNOME for about 10 years now and am looking for a decent replacement for 2.32 (or until gentoo gets rid of 2.x)

I don't want to put all the GNOME devs in one basket but after what they pulled with the 3 release , I refuse to use it. It just appears they they keep getting more and more out of touch. After reading things like thisand for laughs this one too.

Slashdot Top Deals

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

Working...