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Music

Brian Eno Releases Second iPhone App 196

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oblique-strategies-ftw dept.
Brian Eno, or as he is known to many in my office, "God," has released his second iPhone App. A followup to Bloom, this one is called Trope and supposedly creates darker music. You create music by drawing shapes on the iPhone's screen.

Comment Re:Not reported != not happening (Score 0) 369

by Terminaldogma (#27675319) Attached to: Developing Battery Replacement Infrastructure For Electric Cars

they told her they'd replaced the battery and weren't charging her anything for it

Which Battery? It's my understanding that Hybrids still have a traditional 12 volt battery for the car's regular electrical systems. When I was looking at getting a Hybrid a few years back (ultimately did not end up getting one) I, like the grandparent, was unable to find any actual battery replacement stories (sans one story about a car that had a bad cell in it's pack).
NASA

Submission + - Space Shuttle Secrets Stolen for China

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of former Boeing engineer Dongfan Chung on charges of economic espionage in the theft of company trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket. Chung is a native of China and a naturalized U.S. citizen who stole secrets on behalf of China, the indictment says. According to the indictment, Chinese aviation industry representatives began sending Chung 'tasking' letters as early as 1979. Over the years, the letters directed Chung to collect specific technological information, including data related to the Space Shuttle and various military and civilian aircraft. Chung allegedly responded in one letter indicating a desire to contribute to the 'motherland,' the DOJ said. It was not immediately clear how much, if any, damage the alleged espionage did to U.S. national security but DOJ officials said the cases reflect the determination of China's government to penetrate U.S. intelligence and obtain vital national defense secrets. "Today's prosecution demonstrates that foreign spying remains a serious threat in the post-Cold War world,'' said Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security"
Music

Submission + - Vista's changes rob Creative of PC audio crown 4

Submitted by Dr. Damage
Dr. Damage writes: Creative has ruled PC sound almost since the beginning, but Vista's new audio layer changes the game by essentially killing off 3D positional audio acceleration. The Tech Report has reviewed a pair of post-Vista sound cards, with surprising results. Motherboard maker Asus saw the opening and created perhaps the best consumer-level sound card yet, the Xonar D2X, with quality components, an EMI shield, color-illuminated ports, the best objective measurements and subjective listening test scores we've ever seen, and (finally!) a PCI Express x1 connector. Could the Sound Blaster era finally be over?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Patents Frustration-Detection System (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Microsoft has patented a frustration-detection help system that would monitor your computer use and biometrics like your heart rate to figure out when you were frustrated. It could then offer to pair you up with someone else doing exactly the same thing who might be able to help you out. Interestingly, they don't appear to use speech recognition to detect abnormal levels of swear words, but that could be due to their past difficulties with speech recognition."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Poll: Favourite Slashdot Poll?

Submitted by SurturZ
SurturZ writes: I think you should have a poll "Best Slashdot Poll?" * What would you like the CIA to declassify? * Best Meme in Slashdot's First 10 Years * Favorite Sci-Fi Ship? * Favourite Poll involving CowboyNeal? etc etc I'm sure you could do a database search to work out the top five most voted for polls to put in the list
Windows

Submission + - SPAM: Microsoft wins patent suit over XP boot-up tech 1

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Microsoft defeated a major patent licensing firm in a lawsuit over technology that helps computers boot up faster Thursday. The suit asked the court to award the patent holder $2.50 per copy of Windows XP sold in the U.S. By Microsoft's account, that could have amounted to $600 million to $900 million. Microsoft argued that there are many ways to improve the boot speed of PCs and that XP uses different technology than that in the patent.
Link to Original Source
Announcements

Submission + - High-quality YouTube videos coming soon (webware.com)

Submitted by
mlauzon
mlauzon writes: "YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today, confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. Although YouTube's goal, he said, is to make the site's vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer's Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if viewers want it.

Why wouldn't they? Because the need to buffer the video before it starts playing will change the experience. Hence the experiment, rather than just a rapid rollout of this technology. On stage, he said the current resolution of YouTube videos has been "good enough" for the site untill now.

Chen told me he expects that high-quality YouTube videos will be available to everyone within three months.

Chen also confirmed that in YouTube's internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was sent. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320x240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn't going to help much."

Comment Re:that's awesome (Score 1) 506

by Terminaldogma (#21336145) Attached to: Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb
Admiral William D. Leahy - "This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives." said to president Harry S. Truman, after Vannevar Bush explained how the atomic bomb worked. One man's opinion, no matter how high in rank, does not make him right.
Media

Submission + - Major League Baseball wipes out DRM licenses 1

Submitted by cuban321
cuban321 writes:
Major League Baseball has switched DRM providers, forcing customers who bought videos from their old system to buy them again if they want to continue watching them. From one of its victims, sportswriter Allan Wood: "MLB no longer supports the DDS system that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.' ...I was told there is absolutely nothing MLB can do about these lost games. Plus, they said my purchases were all 'one-time sale' and thus 'there are no refunds.'"
Security

Submission + - Zero day Macrovision DRM exploit (yahoo.com)

Submitted by LWATCDR
LWATCDR writes: It is as simple as this. A piece of software that's only purpose is DRM/copy protection makes Windows XP and Windows Server vulnerable to a complete system take over. The name of the product is called SafeDisc. One has to wonder if it is from the author of Quickprotect of Dillbert fame?
From Yahoo news http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20071105/tc_zd/218871
"The vulnerability is in the Macrovision secdrv.sys driver on supported editions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The affected product is Macrovision SafeDisc, a copy-protection application written for Windows.
FrSRT reported on Oct. 19 that the trouble is a memory corruption error in the Macrovision Security Driver when processing user-supplied data. The vulnerability can be used by local attackers to gain so-called Ring 0 privileges and take complete control of an affected system."
Education

Submission + - Students Tracked With RFID Chips

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Hungerhill School in Edenthorpe, England has initiated a program that puts RFID chips in the student's uniforms to keep track of there whereabouts as reported by Yahoo. A group called 'Leave Them Kids Alone' is opposing the program. Security Expert Bruce Schneier blogs: "...Now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere." Another disturbing 'Think of the Children' program. At least it doesn't explode if you leave the school boundaries.
Books

Submission + - Top Ten Strangest or Cruellest Science Experiments 1

Submitted by
aalobode
aalobode writes: "The Times of London has a current story based on the review of a book by Alex Boase, Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments. There they list the top science experiments — including the one from which the book gets its name — that were conducted by otherwise sane humans who tragically or otherwise ignored the effect of their research on the subjects themselves. Nowadays, most institutions have a review board for research on human subjects which would flag most proposals that could lead to harm for the subjects, but not so in the past. See for yourself at the url http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2779808.ece?OTC-HPtoppuff&ATTR=elephants"
The Matrix

Submission + - UN warns humanity likely doomed (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Technical Writing Geek
Technical Writing Geek writes: "Everywhere you turn there's more bad news on the environment. According to a new report released by the UN, it's not just other species that are in danger, humans are too. The United Nations Environment Program has released the Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) report, and it doesn't make for happy reading.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071027-new-un-environmental-report-paints-a-very-bleak-future-for-humanity.html

How about we create an open source solution for humanity's planetary crisis, since even the UN now thinks we're going to get whacked?"

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