Snowdog - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Mac OS X? (Score 1) 180

by Snowdog on Friday October 16, 2009 @03:48PM (#29772193) Attached to: Affordably Aggregating ISP Connections?

I think what you're referring to is link aggregation in OS X, which allows you to bond two ethernet ports together under one IP address to double the possible bandwidth in and out of the machine. Since it deals only with combining devices internally, it's probably not useful in this situation.

Under OS X there are also "aggregate devices" for combining incoming audio streams into a single virtual device for multichannel recording, but that seems even less applicable.

Comment Slashdot Editors Now Trolling? (Score 0, Flamebait) 475

by Snowdog on Monday August 03, 2009 @04:03PM (#28932357) Attached to: Apple Tries To Gag Owner of Exploding iPod

The headline on this article is blatantly misleading. A gag order is issued by a court after legal proceedings, and if Apple had tried to get a gag order against this girl and her family, that would indeed have been newsworthy. What Apple did do was to offer the girl a refund for her dead iPod (which they had no obligation to do, as it was out of warranty and there was no clear evidence that Apple was at fault), and as part of the standard paperwork that goes with such an offer it specifies that the girl and her family would in turn not try to use the refund as evidence of wrong-doing on the part of Apple. For a more complete analysis, see:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/03/apple-most-assuredly-not-slapping-family-with-gagging-order-ov/

The Times seriously misreported this story (apparently for the sake of sensationalism to sell papers), and now Slashdot is feeding the fire. :P

Comment Re:Autoduel (Score 1) 1120

by Snowdog on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:16AM (#28852953) Attached to: Which Game Series Would You Reboot?

It'd be a revival rather than a reboot, but I would buy a new version of Autoduel in a second. It offered an outstanding balance between freedom of action and goal-oriented play, and who doesn't love driving around in a car loaded with cool weapons?

Comment Re:Reminds me of a Heinlein story.... (Score 1) 213

by Snowdog on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @04:29PM (#28458029) Attached to: Steorn's "Free Energy" Jury Comes Back To Bite Them

The Gods Themselves was written by Isaac Asimov, while Waldo was written by Robert Heinlein. There isn't any connection between the two other than the fact they are both classic works written by legendary SF authors.

The story Waldo is most notable as the source of the term waldo to refer to remote manipulators (AKA telemanipulators).

The Great Ethanol Scam 894

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 25, 2009 @07:50PM from the don't-even-think-about-switch-grass dept.

theodp writes "Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."

Finding a Personal Coding Trifecta 188

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 17, 2009 @04:30PM from the benadryl-cocoa-and-a-down-comforter dept.

jammag writes "For Seinfeld's George Constanza, his dream of the ideal moment was having sex while watching TV and eating a pastrami sandwich. He called this Nirvana state 'The Trifecta.' Developer Eric Spiegel adapts this concept of Nirvana to the act of writing your best possible code. He examines all (or most) of the possible things that might contribute to the 'The Trifecta' for developers — food, beverages, time of day. Spiegel also describes his personal Trifecta."

Mississippi Passes Law To Ban Traffic Light Cameras 629

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @10:50AM from the guess-i-know-where-i'll-go-to-run-red-lights dept.

DaGoatSpanka writes with news that Mississippi Governer Haley Barbour signed a bill into law on Friday which instituted a ban on automated cameras that would snap pictures of motorists when they ran red lights. "The new law says the two cities that already have the cameras, Jackson and Columbus, must take them down by Oct. 1. Other cities and counties are banned from starting to use them." We've discussed situations in the past where cities looked at such cameras as "profit centers," and even tampered with their traffic light timing to catch more motorists. Now, in Mississippi, the contractors who installed the cameras are unhappy, since they received a cut of the ticket revenue generated by the cameras. However, lawmakers overwhelming voted to get rid of them (117-3 in the House, 42-9 in the Senate), because "the cameras were an invasion of privacy and their constituents thought they had been unfairly ticketed."

Rights Groups Speak Out Against Phorm, UK Comm. Database 102

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @10:07AM from the noted-and-logged-at-our-secure-servers dept.

MJackson writes "The Open Rights Group (ORG) has issued a public letter to the Chief Privacy Officers (or the nearest equivalent) for seven of the world's largest website giants (including Microsoft and Google), asking them to boycott Phorm. The controversial Phorm system works with broadband ISPs to monitor what websites you visit for use in targeted advertising campaigns. Meanwhile, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has issued a new report slamming the UK government's plans for a Communications Database. This would be designed to intercept and log every UK ISP user's e-mail headers, website accesses and telephone history. The report warns that the public are often, 'neither served nor protected by the increasingly complex and intrusive holdings of personal information invading every aspect of our lives.'"

Dealing With a Copyright Takedown Request? 547

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @12:01AM from the define-fair-use-and-give-two-examples dept.

George Maschke writes "I recently received a takedown notice from a corporate lawyer demanding that I remove a post on my Web site's message board. It purportedly lists the first 75 of 567 questions on the MMPI-2 paper-and-pencil psychological test. It seems to me that such posting of a limited amount copyrighted material for discussion purposes on a public-interest, non-profit Web site falls within the scope of the fair use exemption of US copyright law. I have thus declined to remove the post. I believe that the corporation in question is seeking to chill public discussion of its test, which applicants for employment with many governmental agencies are required to complete. I would be interested in this community's thoughts on the matter."

Botnet Worm Targets DSL Modems and Routers 272

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 23, 2009 @08:12PM from the new-vector dept.

CoreDuo writes "The people who bring you the DroneBL DNS Blacklist services, while investigating an ongoing DDoS incident, have discovered a botnet composed of exploited DSL modems and routers. OpenWRT/DD-WRT devices all appear to be vulnerable. What makes this worm impressive is the sophisticated nature of the bot, and the potential damage it can do not only to an unknowing end user, but to small businesses using non-commercial Internet connections, and to the unknowing public taking advantage of free Wi-Fi services. The botnet is believed to have infected 100,000 hosts." A followup to the article notes that the bot's IRC control channel now claims that it has been shut down, though the ongoing DDoS attack on DroneBL suggests otherwise.

Colbert Wins Space Station Name Contest 471

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 23, 2009 @07:25PM from the unintended-consequences dept.

As we speculated a couple of weeks back, it has come to pass. Reader mknewman writes to tell us that comedian Stephen Colbert has won the vote to have his name immortalized (or at least until it crashes) as the moniker on NASA's newest addition to the International Space Station. We can but wonder what NASA will do now. "NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, 'The Colbert Report' to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday."

Tim Bray On the Future of the Web 46

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 23, 2009 @06:40PM from the bet-hedging dept.

snitch writes "In a recent interview at QCon SF 2008, Tim Bray talks about why he is not convinced with the buzz surrounding Rich Internet Applications and shares his ideas on Cloud Computing. He also expresses his opinion regarding the debate REST vs. WS-* and the future directions web technologies will be taking. Bray also addresses the way web technologies are affected by the current economic turmoil and gives his insight into which paradigms he sees going forward in these challenging times."

Comment Re:QuestHelper (Score 1) 344

by Snowdog on Monday March 23, 2009 @03:08PM (#27302197) Attached to: Blizzard Asserts Rights Over Independent Add-Ons

As an added bonus, offer some sort of special add on to donation users only

These specific things are not permitted - in general, I can't tie *anything* UI-mod-related to money, in any form.

While you can't tie functionality directly to donations, and you can't ask for donations in-game, what you can do is offer additional functionality (e.g. extended quest tips) that in part depends on people going somewhere (like your website) where you can ask for donations.

Many people alt-tab between WoW and a web browser while playing quite frequently, and I'm sure would be happy to do so if it enhances the functionality of an add-on like QuestHelper. Asking people to donate when they alt-tab out to your web site certainly fits within Blizzard's new policies.

Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA 785

Posted by timothy on Sunday March 22, 2009 @02:22PM from the similar-to-the-old-boss dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Obama Administration's Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old. Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision — rather than the Supreme Court's more recent decisions involving punitive damages — was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages. Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file. Interestingly, the Government brief asked the Judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial. Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument that had been made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments that had been made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief. Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA; does this filing confirm those fears?"

Blizzard Asserts Rights Over Independent Add-Ons 344

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday March 21, 2009 @11:18AM from the at-least-there's-no-wow-app-store dept.

bugnuts writes "Blizzard has announced a policy change regarding add-ons for the popular game World of Warcraft which asserts requirements on UI programmers, such as disallowing charging for the program, obfuscation, or soliciting donations. Add-ons are voluntarily-installed UI programs that add functionality to the game, programmed in Lua, which can do various tasks that hook into the WoW engine. The new policy has some obvious requirements, such as not loading the servers or spamming users, and it looks like an attempt to make things more accessible and free for the end user. But unlike FOSS, it adds other requirements that assert control over these independently coded programs, such as distribution and fees. Blizzard can already control the ultimate functionality of add-ons by changing the hooks into the WoW engine. They have exercised this ability in the past, e.g. to disable add-ons that automate movement and facilitate 'one-button' combat. Should they be able to make demands on independent programmers' copyrighted works, such as forbidding download fees or advertising, when those programmers are not under contract to code for Blizzard? Is this like Microsoft asserting control over what programmers may code for Windows?"

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