Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Sci-Fi

Forry Ackerman Dead At 92 83

Posted by kdawson from the famous-monsters-wave-bye-bye dept.
rrohbeck was one of several readers to note the passing of Forrest J. Ackerman at the age of 92. Ackerman, who coined the term sci-fi in 1954, has been called the 'world's biggest fan.' Over a long career he acted as literary agent for Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, Hugo Gernsback, and L. Ron Hubbard; he published Ray Bradbury's first short story in a fan magazine in 1938. Ackerman wrote over 2,000 articles and short stories, including, oddly enough, lesbian fiction in the 1940s. In recent years, mounting health bills forced him to sell his home, the 'Ackermansion,' and most of the 300,000 items of memorabilia it stored.

Comment Re:Someone will greasemonkey it. (Score 1) 508

by Spril (#23859259) Attached to: Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature

How would an addon deal with Netflix's pending deletion of hundreds, if not thousands, of disc ratings for each profile?

Netflix is going to take entire families and give them a single ratings and recommendation pool. "Because you liked 'Teletubbies' and 'Aliens', here's our suggested film..."

The only way around that would be to create a plugin that lets you delete every one of your ratings, and then re-create a different set, whenever a different user wants to log in. Hmm... if someone did that, maybe Netflix would notice the load on their servers wasn't so bad with profiles!
Movies

Submission + - Netflix drops Profiles feature, angers users (netflix.com)

Submitted by SoapBox17
SoapBox17 writes: Netflix is getting rid of one of it's main website features: the ability to have multiple users associated with one account, each with its own movie queue, movie ratings, and user settings. The e-mail sent to customers claims it will "help improve the website", but it seems to be an obvious attempt to extort money from customers by making them pay for the features they are currently getting for free.

Text of the e-mail:

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008. Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out. While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.
Movies

Submission + - Netflix Killing Profiles Feature (netflix.com)

Submitted by Retief
Retief writes: Today I received an email from Netflix stating:



We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

This FAQ on Netflix' site confirms it.

This is beyond disappointing; I've been using this feature for years. And I spent a couple years wishing for it before that.

Is this about improving the website, or improving the bottom line, by forcing people in the same household to open separate accounts to keep separate queues?
The Internet

Submission + - Netflix removes major feature - Profiles (netflix.com)

Submitted by Kasracer
Kasracer writes: Netflix just sent out the following e-mail to their subscribers:

"Just got this email — " We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008. Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main..."
I used this feature extensively with my girlfriend and to remove it will make managing our movies exceedingly difficult.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - 2008 Kinetic Sculpture Race: Engineering Meets Art (kineticbaltimore.com)

Submitted by
YetAnotherName
YetAnotherName writes: "None other than Tom Jones has got the scoop on the 2008 Race of the annual Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race, a challenge where teams combine artistic skill, engineering prowess, personal endurance, and a healthy dose of humor to drive bizarre amphibious contraptions across 21 km (13 mi) of road, mud, and water. Extensive photos detail the winners of various categories — and, of course, the return of perennial team 'Fifi'. Other entrants included team 'Running with Scissors', 'Otter Chaos', and '99% Chimp' (who won the Best Bribes award for bribing the race judges the best, of course)."
Security

The DRM Scorecard 543

Posted by samzenpus from the guess-who's-ahead dept.
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - How to test wifi?

Submitted by grilled-cheese
grilled-cheese writes: I'm working for a growing university's IT department and we are growing more and more concerned with our wireless network. While we have managed to feel pretty good about our security solution, we don't have a good method for planning, analyzing, and troubleshooting our existing infrastructure as it grows. How would you go about troubleshooting your wifi problems, or surveying the current setup? Is there a published standard for wifi coverage or utilization? What would be some important factors in your wifi planning such as Signal-Noise-Ratio and Multipath?
Biotech

Submission + - Hanging with fat people will make you fat too.

Submitted by lottameez
lottameez writes: Pretty interesting article in the Washington Post (Registration Required) describing how social networks can promote obesity. From the article:

"The study, involving more than 12,000 people tracked over 32 years, found that 'social networks' play a surprisingly powerful role in determining an individual's chances of gaining weight, transmitting an increased risk of becoming obese from wives to husbands, from brothers to brothers and from friends to friends."

Basically the article says that if you hang out with fat people, you're more likely to let yourself go since it's socially acceptable within that group.

Now...let's go get that donut!

Slashdot Top Deals

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

Close