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Comment Re:Not funny... (Score 1) 508

by bigdavesmith (#27418565) Attached to: Conficker Worm Strike Reports Start Rolling In

Then feel free to create your own tech blog and moderate it to the level of usage of Slashdot, then you can run it however you want. April 1st has been observed on this site since long before you had an account.

I'm not suggesting that /. not observe the apparently sacred holiday of April Fools Day. I simply wish that it was still a reliable source for news on this day. As another commenter said, it would be great to get some actual Conficker news today, and not fake joke news.
I see you've indeed been around a long time, so I'm sorry that my comment offended you enough to prompt your reply. I'm still a /. fan!

Comment Re:Yes, I received the same notice. (Score 4, Insightful) 508

by bigdavesmith (#23858175) Attached to: Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature
I wouldn't even mind paying more. The real problem with this, at least for me, is that they're basically lying to me as a customer. If I got a notice in my email that said "Hey, look, we're either going to have to charge you $3 more a month for this feature, or get rid of it because we're not making enough money." I'd be way cooler with it. Telling me they're improving my experience by ruining it is just plain treating me like an idiot, and I can get that kind of treatment just by driving down to blockbuster, which is where I'll be going September 1st if they seriously do this.
Space

"Puddles" of Water Sighted on Mars 237

Posted by Zonk from the interstellar-jackpot dept.
eldavojohn writes "Further reinforcing the theory of a wet Mars, NewScientist is reporting on what appear to be water puddles in newly taken images from the Mars rover. While these results are controversial, the assumption that these blue 'puddles' are water still has to be tested by engineers. They'll try to measure the uniform smoothness of the puddle surfaces. Analysis will also examine their apparent 'opaqueness', where in some areas observers claim to see pebbles underneath the surface of the blue areas. From the article: 'No signs of liquid water have been observed directly from cameras on the surface before. Reports last year pointed to the existence of gullies on crater walls where water appears to have flowed in the last few years, as shown in images taken from orbit, but those are short-lived flows, which are thought to have frozen over almost immediately.'"
Patents

The Dangers of a Patent War Chest 125

Posted by Zonk from the not-more-powerful-quicker-easier-the-dark-side-is dept.
Timothy B. Lee writes "I've got an article in the New York Times in which I make the case against software patents. Expanding on a point I first made on my blog, I point out that Microsoft has had a change of heart on the patent issue. In 1991, Bill Gates worried that 'some large company will patent some obvious thing' and use it to blackmail smaller companies. Now that Microsoft is a large company with a patent war-chest of their own, they don't seem so concerned about abuse of the patent system. I then describe how Verizon's efforts to shut down Vonage are a perfect illustration of Gates' fears."
Media

Anti-DRM Activists Take On the BBC 200

Posted by CowboyNeal from the doing-what's-right dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Activists from Binary Freedom Boston have launched a campaign calling on the BBC to release their content online without DRM or proprietary formats. You might remember the BBC asking us about this earlier and even though the public chose not to use DRM by a landslide, they still decided to use it. EMI and Amazon have already ditched DRM. How long before the BBC does?"
Graphics

The History of Photoshop 298

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cutting-and-pasting dept.
Gammu writes "For the past fifteen plus years, Photoshop has turned into the killer app for graphics designers on the Mac. It was originally written as a support app for a grad student's thesis and struggled to find wide commercial release. Eventually, Adobe licensed the app and has sold millions of copies." Achewood's Chris Onstad also offers a different take of how it all went down.
Security

Laws Threaten Web Security Researchers 42

Posted by CowboyNeal from the freedom-to-pry dept.
ancientribe writes "A new report from a Computer Security Institute (CSI) working group of Web researchers, computer crime law experts, and U.S. Department of Justice agents explores the effects of laws that might hinder Web vulnerability research. The report, which the group will present on Monday at CSI's NetSec conference, has some chilling findings about how fear of prosecution is muzzling some Web researchers from disclosing to Website operators security holes they find. The bad news is the laws may inadvertently hurt the ethical researchers and help the bad guys."
The Courts

TorrentSpy Ordered By Judge to Become MPAA Spy 372

Posted by CowboyNeal from the watching-the-watchmen dept.
PC Guy writes "TorrentSpy, one of the world's largest BitTorrent sites, has been ordered by a federal judge to monitor its users. They are asked to keep detailed logs of their activities which must then be handed over to the MPAA. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney responded to the news by stating: 'It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users. If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.'"
Hardware Hacking

Data Stored in Live Neurons 100

Posted by Zonk from the literal-wetware dept.
Light Licker writes "Israeli researchers have created artificial memories for the first time — in a tangle of neurons growing in the lab. Using a specific chemical they could add to the pattern of impulses in a network of the nerve cells. 'Many believe that complex patterns of neuronal firing are templates for memory, which the brain uses when storing information. Imprinting such "memories" on artificial neural networks provides a potential way to develop cyborg chips, says Ben-Jacob. These would be useful for monitoring biological systems like the brain and blood since, being human, they would respond to the same chemicals.' The new pattern lasted two days — good enough for biological RAM?"
Education

Anatomy of the Linux Kernel 104

Posted by Zonk from the a-guided-tour dept.
LinucksGirl writes "The Linux kernel is the core of a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers. In this article, the reader explores the general structure of the Linux kernel and gets to know its major subsystems and core interfaces. 'When discussing architecture of a large and complex system, you can view the system from many perspectives. One goal of an architectural decomposition is to provide a way to better understand the source, and that's what we'll do here. The Linux kernel implements a number of important architectural attributes. At a high level, and at lower levels, the kernel is layered into a number of distinct subsystems. Linux can also be considered monolithic because it lumps all of the basic services into the kernel. This differs from a microkernel architecture where the kernel provides basic services such as communication, I/O, and memory and process management, and more specific services are plugged in to the microkernel layer.'"
Music

Why Music Really Is Getting Louder 388

Posted by Zonk from the what's-that-grandpa dept.
Teksty Piosenek writes "Artists and record bosses believe that the best album is the loudest one. Sound levels are being artificially enhanced so that the music punches through when it competes against background noise in pubs or cars. 'Geoff Emerick, engineer on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, said: "A lot of what is released today is basically a scrunched-up mess. Whole layers of sound are missing. It is because record companies don't trust the listener to decide themselves if they want to turn the volume up." Downloading has exacerbated the effect. Songs are compressed once again into digital files before being sold on iTunes and similar sites. The reduction in quality is so marked that EMI has introduced higher-quality digital tracks, albeit at a premium price, in response to consumer demand.'"
Programming

Submission + - Run MapReduce Tools for Eclipse on Linux

Submitted by Adi Lane
Adi Lane writes: Simplify the creation and deployment of MapReduce programs with IBM MapReduce Tools for Eclipse, a plug-in that can runs on Linux, Windows, or any system that can run Eclipse. It uses the Hadoop open-source MapReduce framework, which enables data-intensive applications to run on large clusters of commodity hardware.
The Internet

Submission + - Movie Review Search Engine Launched

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: MovieTango.com is a brand new search engine that searches only the top movie review sites on the Internet. No more sifting through a bunch of individual web sites. All of the results are posted together in a clean and simple format. Using MovieTango.com saves me a lot of time and energy; plus I'm no longer wasting my money at theaters or on DVD rentals and having to sit through really bad movies. The URL is www.movietango.com/

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