crdlb - Slashdot User

Submission + - TV delays drive viewers to piracy

Submitted by Astat1ne on Saturday February 24, 2007 @09:56PM

Astat1ne writes: The Register has a story about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing with overseas-produced series and how it is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. From the story: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series', Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first run series' first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months." According to the article, the situation is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website and are turning to unauthorised means to get copies of their favorite shows.

Submission + - Firefox 3 to support offline apps

Submitted by thinkingpen on Monday February 19, 2007 @11:41AM

thinkingpen writes: Read/Write web is carrying an interesting story about Firefox 3. From the article — "An interesting tidbit came out of the recent Foo Camp New Zealand (which unfortunately I wasn't able to attend). Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla, who is based in NZ but drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox, spoke about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This is significant because you'll be able to use your web apps — like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc — in the browser even when offline. I deliberately mentioned all Google web apps there, because of course this plays right into Google's hands." Now thats web 3.0 ?

Submission + - JetBlue's Windows Infrastructure Crashes

Submitted by hawks5999 on Monday February 19, 2007 @06:28AM

hawks5999 writes: JetBlue's reservation and communication systems have been down for 5 days leaving thousands of passengers stranded and stockholders seeing red. It was almost exactly 4 years ago that JetBlue trumpeted it's reliance on Windows to help it see black. From a 2003 news.com article:

So we marched down the road of the Windows platform. We don't have any Unix; we don't have an AS/400; we don't have any mainframes — we don't have anything outside of Windows. There has been tremendous cost savings. ...everything's Windows. Every technician that works on a server works on a Windows server. Every technician working on a desktop works on a Windows desktop. That's quite a bit easier than other flavors of desktops or OS/2 or whatever else is out there.
I guess they didn't look at redundancy or reliability in their cost equation...

Submission + - Google uses Google Docs to mix Linux, Windows

Submitted by

kripkenstein

on Monday February 19, 2007 @04:00AM

kripkenstein writes: "According to a quoted intern's comment during the recent Ubucon at Google NY, Google uses Google Docs & Spreadsheets internally and thus avoids document interoperability issues between Windows and Linux PCs:

A funny moment near the beginning was when we were asking a Google intern questions. Apparently only the engineers all get Ubuntu on their machines, and other staff have windows because it's "easier." Somebody asked how they deal with interoperability between OO.o and MS Office, and he said "Well, you know we have this product called Google Docs..."
I guess in the case of Google itself, using Google Docs & Spreadsheets means you are still saving your data in-house. Also interesting in the quote is that Google engineers apparently use Ubuntu, while other staff use Windows."

Feed New Weapon in Web War Over Piracy (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Monday February 19, 2007 @12:12AM

Content-recognition software could address a major entertainment industry concern— songs and videos being posted on the Web without permission.

Submission + - Robert Adler, co-inventor of TV remote, dead at 93

Submitted by

yroJJory

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @11:34PM

yroJJory writes: "Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote, Robert Adler, has died. Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

In a May 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Adler recalled being among two dozen engineers at Zenith given the mission to find a new way for television viewers to change channels without getting out of their chairs or tripping over a cable.

Adler also was considered a pioneer in SAW technology, or surface acoustic waves, in color television sets and touch screens. The technology has also been used in cellular telephones.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch screen technology, on Feb. 1."

Submission + - GPL click-through licenses?

Submitted by Kuciwalker on Sunday February 18, 2007 @10:47PM

Kuciwalker writes: It seems that every other open-source program I download includes the GPL as a click-through license during the install. What's the point of this? If the GPL is a distribution, not use license then I don't do anything by agreeing to it during installation. Are we just so acclimated to clicking "yes" to an EULA, or are there valid legal reasons it's put there?

Submission + - Search for New Autism Genes

Submitted by

iuvasago

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @09:37PM

iuvasago writes: "The largest search for autism genes to date, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has implicated components of the brain's glutamate chemical messenger system and a previously overlooked site on chromosome 11. Based on 1,168 families with at least two affected members, the genome scan adds to evidence that tiny, rare variations in genes may heighten risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). [Read More] from Physorg.com"

Submission + - MSN Messenger banner ads distributing malware

Submitted by on Sunday February 18, 2007 @07:11PM

An anonymous reader writes: The malware commonly known as Winfixer aka Errorsafe is being distributed via MSN Messenger banner advertisements. This has been reported to secure@microsoft.com and they and the MSN ads team are investigating. Report here: http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2007/ 02/18/591493.aspx

Submission + - Blender 2.43 released - with Google SOC tools

Submitted by

LetterRip

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @07:08PM

LetterRip writes: "Blender 2.43 the free 3d animation suite has been released. There are a number of amazing new features including sculpting (which was supported by Googles Summer of Code) — you can now sculpt huge poly counts (6.5 million!) on Linux; fast 3D texture painting and numerous animation tool improvements."

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