Submission + - What is Fair Use in the Digital Age?
Hugh Pickens writes: "Rick Cotton, general counsel of NBC, and Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law school, continue their debate about copyright issues and technology on Saul Hansell's blog at the New York Times discussing Fair Use of commercial music and video as the raw materials for new creations. Cotton says that content protection on the broadband internet is really not a debate about fair use The fact that users can "take three or four movies and splice together their favorite action scenes and post them online does not mean that these uses are fair. There needs to be something more — something that truly injects some degree of original contribution from the maker other than just the assembly of unchanged copies of different copyrighted works." Wu's position is that "it is time to recognize a simpler principle for fair use: work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original, is fair use. This simple concept would bring much clarity to the problems of secondary authorship on the web." This is a continuation of the previous discussion on copy protection."
Submission + - Hushmail giving 'The Man' your private PGP keys 1
teknopurge writes: "Apparently Hushmail has been providing information to law enforcement behind the backs of their clients. Billed as secure email because of their use of PGP, Hushmail has been turning over private keys of users to the authorities on request. Yet another reason to use private hosting."
Submission + - The last DC power grid shutdown in NYC (nytimes.com)
cell-block-9 writes: Today the section of the old Edison DC power grid will be shutdown in Manhattan. I guess Tesla finally won the argument.
Submission + - knitting with DNA in a microscope... (nat.vu.nl)
Joost van Mameren writes: "By grabbing the ends of DNA with laser beams, one can make DNA do very unusual things. It is even possible to put a loop in a DNA molecule and slide it along a second DNA molecule, even though DNA and proteins are much too small to see with a microscope!
Researchers of VU University, Amsterdam, use so-called "optical tweezers" to grab plastic beads with a diameter of only a thousandth of a millimeter, that are visible under a microscope. The beads are caught in the focal point of a focused laser-beam. By sticking the ends of two DNA molecule to such beads, they can bend, twist and stretch the DNA anyway they like.
The website provides a little video demonstrating their DNA gymnastics."
Journal SPAM: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise 20
One Nato figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik." American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine sailed within viable range fo
Submission + - Fedora 8 officially released (arstechnica.com) 1
Cat in the Hat writes: Fedora 8 has been officially released. Ars Technica has a run-down of what's new in Fedora 8, including the PulseAudio sound daemon, Nodoka visual style, and a new authentication system. 'Another major change in Fedora 8 is the new PolicyKit authentication system that makes authority escalation more secure. Instead of providing root access to an entire program when it needs higher privileges, PolicyKit makes it possible to isolate individual operations that require higher privileges and put them into system services that can be accessed through D-Bus. Another advantage of PolicyKit is that it will give administrators more control over which users and programs have access to individual operations that use escalated privileges.'
Submission + - Chefs as Chemists
circletimessquare writes: "Using ingredients usually relegated to the lower half of the list of ingredients on a Twinkies wrapper, some professional chefs are turning themselves into magicians with food.
Ferran Adrià in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England have been doing this for years, but the New York Times updates us on the ongoing experiments at WD-50 in New York City. Xanthan Gum, agar-agar, and other hydrocolloids are being used to bring strange effects to your food. Think butter that doesn't melt in the oven, foie gras you can tie into knots, and fried mayonaise. Time for a snack."
Submission + - Shell gas station customers can pay by fingerprint 2
Carnth writes: The biometric devices, made by a San Francisco-based company called Pay By Touch, are one part of a technological trifecta Shell is rolling out at its gas stations. Customers will be able to initially scan their fingerprints at a kiosk inside the gas station and can link payment information either at the store or online.
In addition, gas station attendants are testing hand-held wireless devices that allow full-service customers to pay electronically at their car window.
"I think it scares people," said Debbie Britton, a store manager. "They're more confused about the whole system. Some of them say, 'Well, now the FBI can find me.'"
Shell said it will not share personal information of Pay By Touch customers with third parties, and it still offers traditional forms of payment for those uncomfortable with the system.
Submission + - CAPTCHA broken - thanks to a virtual stripper (bbc.co.uk) 3
Dynamoo writes: "A few months ago there was some speculation that spammers had managed to break the security CAPTCHA for many webmail systems and were using them to spread viruses and junk email. The problem was that no-one could actually demonstrate a mechanism to defeat the security code.
However, an novel approach has been documented by the BBC, suggesting that a virtual stripper application may be partly to blame. The woman in the application progressively undresses if the user types in the correct CAPTCHA code.. a code that is actually being generated by the Yahoo! mail security check. The application itself is a trojan, dubbed TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by Trend."
However, an novel approach has been documented by the BBC, suggesting that a virtual stripper application may be partly to blame. The woman in the application progressively undresses if the user types in the correct CAPTCHA code.. a code that is actually being generated by the Yahoo! mail security check. The application itself is a trojan, dubbed TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by Trend."
Submission + - Is Video RAM a good swap device?
sean4u writes: I use a 'lucky' (inexplicably still working) headless desktop PC to serve pages for a low-volume e-commerce site. I came across a gentoo-wiki.com page and this linuxnews.pl page that suggested the interesting possibility of using the Video RAM of the built-in video adapter as a swap device or RAM disk. The instructions worked a treat, but I'm curious as to how good a substitute this can be for swap space on disk. In my (amateurish) test, hdparm -t tells me the Video RAM block device is 3 times slower than the aging disk I currently use.
What performance do other slashdotters get? Is the poor performance report from hdparm a feature of the hardware, or the Memory Technology Device driver? What do slashdotters use to measure swap performance?
What performance do other slashdotters get? Is the poor performance report from hdparm a feature of the hardware, or the Memory Technology Device driver? What do slashdotters use to measure swap performance?
Submission + - GPS III to No Longer Have Selective Availability (defenselink.mil) 2
Cobalt Jacket writes: The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that Selective Availability (SA) would "no longer be present in the next generation of GPS satellites." (referring to GPS III) Existing satellites have had the feature disabled by President Clinton since 2000, but SA can be activated at any time. SA was one of the principle stated reasons for the European Union and European Space Agency's backing of the Galileo program. This will not affect the GPS IIF spacecraft which will be launched over the next few years, though it is unlikely that SA will ever be utilized on those satellites.
Submission + - Memory, handset makers back faster flash standard (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: "Rivals like Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Micron Technology Inc., STMicroelectronics, Spansion Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. are all supporting a Universal Flash Storage specification. The new standardized format should up performance flash cards. "For example, access time for a 4GB 90-minute high-definition movie would be cut from three minutes to a few seconds, according to officials at Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology.""
Submission + - Bilingualism slows down Alzheimer's/Dementia
Dee writes: "From the article: "Bilingual people typically develop dementia about four years later than those who only speak one language, a research team from York University in Toronto and other institutions said.
The research was conducted on 184 patients with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia undergoing treatment at the Memory Clinic at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain in Toronto. Researchers analyzed various data on patients including their academic background and occupation. "
This seems like the best motivation I've come across for learning a second language, and it makes sense when you think about it. What with your brain needing to parse information between two seperate formats, just straight up thinking to yourself in different languages seems like it would exercise your grey matter. Maybe it's time to start trying to get the grandparents to learn French!"
This seems like the best motivation I've come across for learning a second language, and it makes sense when you think about it. What with your brain needing to parse information between two seperate formats, just straight up thinking to yourself in different languages seems like it would exercise your grey matter. Maybe it's time to start trying to get the grandparents to learn French!"
Submission + - Lost Moon landing tapes discovered
de_smudger writes: For years 'lost' tapes recording data from the Apollo 11 Moon landing have been stored underneath the seats of Australian physics students. A recent search has uncovered them.
Recorded on telemetry tapes, they are said to be the best quality images of the landing (unconverted slow scan TV) yet to be seen by a public still fascinated by the early space race. These tapes were mislaid in the early 1980s on their way to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Recorded on telemetry tapes, they are said to be the best quality images of the landing (unconverted slow scan TV) yet to be seen by a public still fascinated by the early space race. These tapes were mislaid in the early 1980s on their way to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
