PaintyThePirate - Slashdot User

Submission + - Government Study finds P2P increases CD Sales

Submitted by Vaystrem on Monday November 12, 2007 @12:11AM

Vaystrem writes: On November 2nd 2007 Canada's Intellectual Policy Directorate released a report entitled "The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada" From the abstract:

Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing. However, we find the opposite, namely that P2P file-sharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing. Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD.

The study was paid for by Public Works and Government Services Canada. Details of the contract, methodology and the original data files from the study may be found here.

Submission + - CMU wins Robot Car Challenge 2

Submitted by qeorqe on Sunday November 04, 2007 @04:38PM

qeorqe writes: Tartan Racing Team from CMU has been declared the winner of The Urban Challenge. Autonomous (unmanned)robot cars competed in tasks in an urban setting. Professional human drivers drove on the course as moving obstacles. Vehicles were penalized for violating the California driving laws, collisions, hitting the curb, and various other restrictions.

DARPA sponsored the competition. Tartan Racing Team (CMU) won the $2 million first prize with their entry "The Boss" based on a Chevy Tahoe. Stanford Racing Team won the $1 million second prize with their entry "Junior" based on a Volkswagen Passat. VictorTango (Virginia Tech) won the $1/2 million third prize with their entry "Odin" based on a Ford Escape. Junior had line honors being the first to cross the finish line. The Boss finished shortly after Junior. Because starts were staggared and penalties were applied for errors, a corrected time was used to determine the winner.

MIT's car cut off and hit Team Cornell's car during the competition. Both cars were eventually able to resume.

Congratulations to all participants and especially Tartan Racing Team. Is there any chance of The Boss leading a victory parade through the streets of Pittsburgh?

Some other coverage may be found at WIred and itwire. Earlier slashdot coverage can also be found.

Submission + - Carnegie Mellon wins DARPA Urban Challenge

Submitted by

angio

on Sunday November 04, 2007 @04:22PM

angio writes: "Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing team won the DARPA Grand Challenge, narrowly beating out competitors Stanford and Virginia Tech in a closely-watched race. Eleven finalists started the race on Saturday, with six finishing. The top three winners received $2 million, $1 million, and $500 thousand, respectively. Blow-by blow blogging of the event was covered by the register, Wired, and Popular Mechanics."

Submission + - DARPA Urban Challenge Event winners announced (darpa.mil)

Submitted by on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: The DARPA Urban Challenge Event winners have been announced. 1st Place — Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, PA 2nd Place — Stanford Racing Team, Stanford, CA 3rd Place — Victor Tango, Blacksburg, VA 6 out of 11 finalists completed the race, and MIT only crashed a couple of times — a tremendous accomplishment for the entire field! Virginia Tech had an awesome performance for an underdog team. From the DARPA Website: "Vehicles competing in the Urban Challenge will have to think like human drivers and continually make split-second decisions to avoid moving vehicles, including robotic vehicles without drivers, and operate safely on the course. The urban setting adds considerable complexity to the challenge faced by the robotic vehicles, and replicates the environments where many of today's military missions are conducted." http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

Submission + - 'Boss' Wins DARPA's Urban Challenge (tfot.info)

Submitted by

Iddo Genuth

on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:11PM

Iddo Genuth writes: "After several hours of highly eventful competition Carnegie Mellon University's robotic car team won DARPA's 2007 Urban Challenge. "Boss", as it is known, was able to complete all three main missions and 19 submissions successfully scooping gold for Carnegie Mellon and its panthers with Stanford in second place and Victor-Tango from Virginia Tech coming in third. Hundreds watched the Urban Challenge on site with thousands watching at home using DARPA's live feed as the 11 robotic cars drove, crashed (into each other and into walls) got stuck in robotic traffic jams and even passed other human driven cars as they raced towards the finish line, in what shall be remembered as the first realistic urban robotic competition."

Submission + - CMU takes the Urban Challenge $2m prize (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by pacopico on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:03PM

pacopico writes: CMU has taken first place in the Urban Challenge robotic car race sponsored by DARPA, according to this story in The Register, which looks like the first account. For winning, Carnegie Mellon grabbed $2 million, while second place Stanford took $1 million and third place Virginia Tech won $500,000. CMU lost to Stanford in the previous race. But, in this year's contest, the robots had to battle it out on an urban course, competing with other robot vehicles and stunt driver, as opposed to the desert race in 2005.

Submission + - Isohunt.com taken down by ISP

Submitted by

PaintyThePirate

on Wednesday January 17, 2007 @01:02AM

PaintyThePirate writes: "Bittorrent search engine Isohunt.com and tracker Torrentbox.com have been taken down by their ISP, US-based Serverbeach.com. The forced outage likely the result of an ongoing lawsuit originated by the MPAA, as previously covered on Slashdot. The owners of Isohunt state, "We will be back in operation once we sort out this mess with our ISP, or we get new hardware ready from our new ISP"."

Submission + - Blu-ray Refutes Claims of Porn Ban...

Submitted by

thefoxtrot

on Wednesday January 17, 2007 @12:58AM

thefoxtrot writes: " The Blu-ray Disc Association is speaking out against charges that the org is shunning adult video distributors from releasing content on Blu-ray. "The BDA welcomes the participation of all companies interested in using and supporting the format, particularly those from the content industry," said the BDA's Gordon. "We look forward to working with any content providers interested in providing their audience with [the] best possible high definition home entertainment experience." Analysts say that the pornography industry, which generates an estimated $57 billion in annual revenue worldwide, could play an influential role in increasing high-def adaption rates and — especially if forced to choose sides — could help determine an ultimate victor in the high-def format wars."

Submission + - 10 people fired over Wii radio contest

Submitted by Skadet on Wednesday January 17, 2007 @12:49AM

Skadet writes: 10 people have been fired in the aftermath of the tragic death of one of the contestants for Sacramento radio station 107.9 The End's "Hold your Wee for a Wii" promotion (first covered on Slashdot here).

From TFA:

The hosts of KDND-FM's "Morning Rave" — who go by the on-air names Trish, Maney and Lukas — were fired a day after the station announced it was suspending the show and investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Jennifer Lea Strange. [...] John Geary, vice president and general manager of KDND parent company, Entercom/Sacramento, made the announcement Tuesday in an e-mail to reporters.

"Effective immediately, the 'Morning Rave' program is canceled and ten employees are no longer with the station."

A company spokesman, Charles Sipkins, confirmed the three DJs, as well as two other on-air personalities, "Carter" and "Fester," were among those fired. Five other employees who worked on the "Morning Rave" also were let go. All 10 were fired, the spokesman said, for violating terms of their employee agreements.

I used to work at a corporately owned radio station (full disclosure: not for Entercom, KDND's owner. I was a techie in radio in a previous life). But I can tell you from experience that most of the people fired were most likely not responsible for this event. At my station group, no events happened without the express consent of #1, the station manager, and #2, the promotions director. They're the ones ultimately responsible. So why isn't John Geary the one getting the boot? Is this just an example of Corporate America scapegoating the peons? What if you had been commissioned by your boss to write code that ended up being a danger? Would you be culpable, or your boss?

Submission + - How do you advocate Linux in 5 mintues?

Submitted by xtracto on Saturday January 13, 2007 @06:25PM

xtracto writes: I just returned from buying certain Linux magazine. While looking at the "Computing" stand in the library and right after I grabbed a copy of the Linux magazine a guy asked me if I used Linux, after that, the made told me he had tried to use Linux but that he found it difficult. I told him the first things that came to my mind, this is, that it depended on the distribution (to what answered that he tried using Kubuntu). I recommended him to look for a Linux User Group near his hometown (he told me he was not from nearby). What would you tell this kind of people?, Not so long ago a relative who is completely computer illiterate started talking about Linux (to my surprise) but the general thought is that "it is harder than Windows". What do you people say to advocate Linux, in very few words, considering people that tried to use it before or people that has never used it?

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