koi88 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Did 'crowdsourcing' impede Fossett search?

Submitted by

netbuzz

on Wednesday November 07, 2007 @07:33PM

netbuzz writes: "The much-publicized participation of 50,000 amateur searchers using Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" project may have been more than futile, it may actually have gotten in the way of professionals trying to find Steve Fossett's airplane, according to an officer in the civil air patrol. "In hindsight, I wish (they) hadn't been there," she says at the very bottom of a Wired story that otherwise focuses on the feelings of the virtual searchers that they may have been wasting their time. Believers in the wisdom of crowds sometimes forget that even the best-intentioned of them can be unruly.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21640"

Submission + - Microsoft Tries To Patent Saying 'Goodbye' (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by

Techdirt

on Wednesday November 07, 2007 @04:51PM

Techdirt writes: "Among Microsoft's latest patent applications is apparently one that is for adding an automatic "goodbye" message when someone leaves an instant messaging chat. Apparently, Microsoft's patent folks have never used IRC. Hopefully, someone at the Patent Office has, however, and will recognize the prior art."

Submission + - Universal Music Classics and Jazz goes DRM-free (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07, 2007 @03:16PM

An anonymous reader writes: With little fanfare seems Universal in the UK has made its classical and jazz catalog available DRM-free (Guardian story: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2206558,00.html actual site: http://www.classicsandjazz.co.uk/). That's 1000s of albums from what looks like a decent range of classical / jazz labels (Verve, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon etc.). Is this the beginning I hope?

Whose Laws Apply On the ISS? 344

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 07, 2007 @03:13PM from the well-mine-do-of-course dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Whose laws apply if astronauts from different countries get into a fight, make a patentable discovery, or damage equipment belonging to another country while on the International Space Station? According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ratified by 98 nations, states have legal jurisdiction within spacecraft registered to them. When the space station was assembled from modules supplied by the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA), partners rejected an initial proposal that US law should prevail throughout the space station. "It was agreed that each state registers its own separate elements, which means that you now have a piece of the US annexed to a piece of Europe annexed to a piece of Japan in outer space, legally speaking," said Dr Frans von der Dunk of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at the University of Leiden. So what happens if a crime is committed in space? "If somebody performs an activity which may be considered criminal, it is in the first instance his own country which is able to exercise jurisdiction," Dr. von der Dunk added."

Submission + - Douglas Adams alive and well at Microsoft... (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Oh my goodness... on Wednesday November 07, 2007 @03:00PM

Oh my goodness... writes: Ever wonder why Microsoft's interfaces suck so, so badly? Here's a description that the main Microsoft interface fellow is giving at Standford.

I swear this description was written by Douglas Adams — there is no way to directly look at the text, it's like an optical illusion of nonsense.

In the old days of Microsoft, this guy wouldn't have lasted a week.

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