null-und-eins - Slashdot User

Submission + - Gawker Media Traffic down 25% since redesign (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 04, 2011 @03:55PM

An anonymous reader writes: A few weeks ago, Gawker Media disputed reports that its traffic had plummeted due to the redesign recently implemented across its blog network. And Gawker boss Nick Denton had even recently made a cash bet that the relaunch wouldn't cost him page views.

But at Thursday's paidContent conference, Denton acknowledged that his numbers have in fact suffered due to the makeover, which abandoned the standard reverse-chronological scroll of blogs for a more traditional layout in which a single story dominates the homepage.

Submission + - The Traveler's Dilemma (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14, 2008 @05:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: Now that the airlines are done with it, your suitcase looks like a gorilla stomped on it. The antique vase you'd packed so carefully is smashed.

Never fear, the airline representative reassures you. The airline will reimburse you for the value of the vase. You just have to agree on what it's worth, and the representative has a scheme to figure it out. One of your fellow passengers, it turns out, had an identical vase, which is now identically smashed. Each of you will say what you think the vase is worth, between $2 and $100. If the two prices are the same, the representative will assume you're telling the truth. If the values differ, he'll figure the lower value is accurate and reimburse each of you that amount — with a $2 bonus for "honesty" for the lower bidder and a $2 penalty for the higher one.

What will you say the vase is worth?

Believe it or not, according to game theory, you're best off bidding $2. But of course, no one is dumb enough to do that. The question is, how does game theory need to be patched up to make it give the right predictions? Someone has a new proposal. Instead of assuming our opponents are selfish and rational (as game theory traditionally does), we assume that different people behave with different personae. The approach has the potential to solve many other game theory paradoxes, too.

Submission + - Video Lecture Recording? 2

Submitted by ComputerScientist on Sunday December 14, 2008 @07:31AM

ComputerScientist writes: I am looking for solutions to capture lectures and conference presentations on video without big setups and specially trained staff. Lectures are mostly given using projected slides (PPT, Keynote — no need to capture an experiment in a physics class). In most cases it would be good enough to capture the sound, projected slides, and a small inset showing the speaker. Its obvious that projected slides and the speaker must be captured separately and mixed. Apple Keynote lets you record sound during a slide presentation but this is more for people producing a video at home; I am looking to capture live events.

Commercial solutions (Apreso, Panopto) are often based on Flash or Silverlight. I am a little worried about the longtime availability of these and would prefer to save the output in a common video format. On the downside, this would preclude presenting viewers severals views and letting them choose the most appropriate one. Given the increasing popularity of video podcasts and iTunes U, I would expect open source solutions but haven't found them yet and would be also interested to hear about your experience with commercial setups.

Submission + - Cornell University FPGA Class Projects (cornell.edu)

Submitted by Matt on Saturday December 13, 2008 @07:23PM

Matt writes: The new crop of Cornell University ECE 5760 projects are online at http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ece576/FinalProjects/. Some really cool projects, as well as the previous two years worth of projects on the site as well.

Submission + - New Method to Detect and Prove GPL Violations (uni-sb.de)

Submitted by qwerty on Saturday August 25, 2007 @10:46AM

qwerty writes: A paper at the upcoming academic conference Automated Software Engineering presents a new method to detect code theft and could be used to detect GPL violations in particular. While the co-called birthmarking method is demonstrated for Java, it is general enough to work for other languages as well. The API Benchmark observes the interaction between an application and (dynamic) libraries that are part of the runtime system. This captures the observable behavior of the program and cannot be easily foiled using code obfuscation techniques, as shown in the paper. Once such a birthmark is captured, it can be searched for in other programs. By capturing the birthmarks from popular open-source frameworks, GPL-violating applications could be identified.

Submission + - How to Properly Clean your LCD Screen

Submitted by

[Geeks Are Sexy]

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @01:16PM

[Geeks Are Sexy] writes: "You've probably seen some of those expensive LCD cleaning solutions in computer stores right? Think you need those to properly clean your screen? The answer to this is : absolutely not. Mixing up your own cleaning solution is very easy and will actually save you quite a few bucks. Here's an article showing you how to clean your LCD screen with home products."

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