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Input Devices

Submission + - Do Consumer Grade Motion Capture Suits Exist?

Submitted by Ilsundal
Ilsundal writes: I've always been interested in 3D animation, and presently the only way I know how to achieve this is with Poser and a mouse. I've scoured the web for information on motion capture suits, and it appears that although they are available, you typically get the typical "please contact us" spiel, which can only means it's way out of my budget. Does such a thing as consumer grade motion capture suits exist for amateurs and hobbyists?
Software

Submission + - An Interview with DivX CEO Jordan Greenhall

Submitted by
Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk writes: "Davis Freeberg had the opportunity yesterday to interview DivX CEO Jordan Greenhall. As one of the most popular codecs in the P2P world, DivX allows you the ability to put a high quality 2 hour movie on a DVD and is one of the more popular file formats for pirated content. Greenhall talked about his relationship with the MPAA, Disney and the studios, their controversial relationship with the open source community and XviD, and a lightening round about the personal technology that he uses among other things. http://davisfreeberg.com/2006/12/14/divx-in-the-po st-convergence-world-an-interview-with-divx-ceo-jo rdan-greenhall/"
Spam

Submission + - Postal Service delivering holiday ... spam?

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Maybe it's part of a plan to lighten the holiday load on mail carriers, but a pair of longtime anti-spam activists report that they have been spammed by the United States Postal Service. What's clear is that the e-mail in question violates the spirit and language of CAN-SPAM. What's not clear is whether the USPS is responsible for upholding the letter of the law.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9717 "
Databases

Submission + - Datamining Orkut

Submitted by
pity_me_I_use_access
pity_me_I_use_access writes: "Here's the deal. I'm a management type who used to be a techie. The project I'm working on requires me to mine information about members of my organization off orkut. Specifically, we're only interested in learning which members of our organisation are fans of other members of our organisation. i.e. The Member — Member.Fan relationship. Since orkut requires people to log in, the simple perl scripts I use won't work (and I'm not half the techie I used to be, so I can't make it work now). I'd like to know if there's an easy way to pull this off. Beware, the database we're using (if you can call it that) is MS Access 2003.

If there happens to be a readymade solution to this problem, my team and I will dance at the wedding of whoever suggests it. We do have limited perl skills, so minor scripting should not be a problem."
Microsoft

Submission + - Allchin: I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for MS

Submitted by jcoleman
jcoleman writes: Computerworld has confirmed a 2004 email in which Jim Allchin, Windows development chief, stated, "I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft." Ouch. He attempts to excuse his comment in his blog. The email surfaced in the Iowa antitrust trial.
Movies

Submission + - World's first jail sentence for BitTorrent piracy

Submitted by
Rob T Firefly
Rob T Firefly writes: "Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reports on what seems to be the world's first case of a BitTorrent movie pirate being sent to jail. After losing his appeal against a November 2005 conviction, Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as "Big Crook," has begun serving a prison sentence for making the films "Daredevil," "Miss Congeniality," and "Red Planet" available for download via BitTorrent. His appeal was based on the fact that he did not profit from the piracy.

From the article:
[Appeals Judge] Beeson noted [convicting magistrate] MacIntosh, in handing out the sentence, was fully aware of the noncommercial nature of the case, but measured the seriousness of the case by the harm done to the moviemakers — not by the gain made by the offender. Chan, and those in the chatroom, "were aware of the possible criminal implications of uploading films to the system," Beeson wrote.

She also noted the sentence was already drastically reduced, from a maximum of four years, to three months, in order "to reflect the novelty of the conviction."
"
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia fundraiser starts tomorrow, with a twist

Submitted by David Still
David Still writes: Starting on December 15 and for the next four weeks, the Wikimedia Foundation will be holding a fundraiser to cover the costs of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, and other projects run by the non-profit organisation. Unlike previous fundraisers (the most recent of which raised nearly US$400,000 in December 2005) this one will feature matched gifts sponsored by a number of companies. This would mean that the total donations for specific days of the drive would potentially be doubled by the additional sponsorship of numerous companies.
Software

Submission + - Photo ID badge system for Linux?

Submitted by cvoltz
cvoltz writes: Is anyone aware of any software which runs under Linux which provides a photo ID badging system? Many solutions exist for Windows but I haven't seen any which run under Linux nor have I found any which are Open Source. I need to find a program (FOSS or commercial, but FOSS is preferred) which allows an image to be sized and cropped into a template which contains things like the person's name and a barcode for the employee ID so it can be printed onto an ID card (e.g., Office Depot 150-346).
Programming

Submission + - Resources for teaching C to high schoolers?

Submitted by
mctk
mctk writes: "I'm a high school teacher who, disappointed with the lack of computer science in school, has promised to teach a few motivated students programming after school. As a enthusiastic novice with three semesters of C under my belt and a few side projects worth of experience, I feel competent yet ignorant. I would really appreciate suggestions for resources on C that are written to be accessible to high school students and contain lots of ideas for activities. Perhaps you've had success with a series of books that spans beginner to advanced? Do you have any activities you would recommend? How would you map a student's first year of coding? I welcome any and all suggestions. And while we're on the subject, is there a brace style that is most standard in the industry?"
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux Kernel To "Ban" Non-GPL Modules By 2

Submitted by Bootsy Collins
Bootsy Collins writes: In a discussion today on the LKML, Greg Kroah-Hartman has agreed with opinions in favor of having the Linux kernel load only GPL-tagged modules, and has put forward a patch which will start warning users loading "tainted" modules into the kernel that such loading will no longer be possible in kernels released after 1 January 2008. The intent is to give companies time to GPL their modules, release hardware specifications so that others can write GPL'ed modules, or otherwise respond to the restriction. Later in the discussion, Linus Torvalds has voiced his opposition to this move.
Patents

Submission + - Patents: Open or Closed?

Submitted by kpw10
kpw10 writes: The online access to US patent data has seen significant changes recently with the release of Google's patent search as well as the beta launch of the All Patents Initiative search interface. For the first time, these tools allow public search access to US patents issued since 1790 — current search tools offered by the USPTO only allow searching back to 1976. In addition to allowing search access the All Patent Initiative, operated by a consortium of business and academic interests, intends to address the needs of bulk users of patent data. Currently those wishing to access data about the patent collection in its entirety for analytical purposes, such as examining trends innovation, must either purchase data from the USPTO or other commercial providers — an unfortunately and surprisingly common problem with public datasets. In some respects these two system mirror the ideological differences between Google's book scanning project and the Internet Archive's Open Library. Each provides access to a vast public domain dataset — one by effectively making it property of a corporation and the other by distributing digital ownership to the public. Perhaps this is a trend?

Comment The turnaround of IBM (Score 4, Interesting) 232

by iota (#15887246) Attached to: How the IBM PC Changed the World
What the IBM 5100 really represents, in retrospect, is the beginning of the turnaround for IBM in the minds of the public. It's difficult to think of another example of a company so large and so universally despised eventually becoming the (mostly) developer friendly company it is today.

By allowing their teams to skirt the system occasionally, we've seen truly open hardware (PowerPC) availablity, open source contributions, free training seminars for developers, etc. The 5100 was the first great example of the success that a little rule-breaking can bring to the company.

IMO, it was exactly that product and the example that it was to IBM internally that allowed IBM to do the one thing no one was entirely sure it would be able to do in the age of personal computers -- survive.

My hat's off to the improvements IBM has made in the last 25 years, and I hope that those lessons won't be forgotten over the next 25 years.

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