edbob - Slashdot User

How to Convert Your HD-DVD Discs to Blu-Ray 275

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 20, 2008 @04:58PM from the but-what-about-how-to-do-it-on-linux dept.

eldavojohn writes "Are you one of the few who boarded the HD-DVD Titanic ship headed to the bottom of ocean to join BetaMax? Fret no longer, friend, simply convert those and pretend like you never invested in the wrong technology! All you need is a Windows machine with a fast processor, an HD-DVD drive, a Blu-Ray burner, 30GB of free disk space, at least, though 40GB or more is recommended and an internet connection to download the software! Or you can sit and be the crazy guy who continues to argue that HD-DVD is the superior technology whether it's true or not."

Submission + - Time running out for public key encryption

Submitted by holy_calamity on Thursday September 13, 2007 @11:06AM

holy_calamity writes: Two research teams have independently made quantum computers that run the prime-number-factorising Shor's algorithm — a significant step towards breaking public key cryptography. Most of the article is sadly behind a pay-wall, but this free blog post nicely explains how the algorithm works.

Submission + - TV Torrents: When 'piracy' is easier than purchase

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13, 2007 @11:04AM

An anonymous reader writes: NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of Apple's customers who have Macs or iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content. They join Linux users, and people outside western markets whose only method of watching The Daily Show is to turn to illegal downloads. Online media stores such as iTunes, Amazon and Walmart have never been able to compete with the pirates on price, or freedom and flexibility — as the content they sell is typically wrapped in restrictive DRM. The one advantage that legal purchase offered was ease of use. CNET looks into the issue, and discovers that with mature open-source media players such as Miro supporting BitTorrent RSS feeds, it is actually trivially easy for users to subscribe to their favorite shows. Want to wake up to the latest episode of The Colbert Report, Top Gear or any of hundreds of TV shows automatically downloaded and waiting for you? CNET offers an easy three step guide.

Submission + - Radio Frequencies help burn salt water (yahoo.com)

Submitted by vg30e on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @10:41PM

vg30e writes: It seems that scientists have used radio frequencies and salt water to create a high temperature hydrogen flame. I am not sure if the power input is more than the heat produced, but this could open the possibility of new types of non fossil fuel power based on the availability of the raw materials.

Submission + - New Way to Patch Defective Hardware

Submitted by brunascle on Tuesday April 10, 2007 @10:52AM

brunascle writes: Researchers have devised a new way to patch hardware. By treating a computer chip more like software than hardware, Josep Torrellas, a computer science professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, believes we will be able to fix defective hardware by a applying a patch, similar to the way defective software is handled. His system, dubbed Phoenix, consists of a standard semiconductor device called a field programmable gate array (FPGA). Although generally slower than their application-specific integrated circuit counterparts, FPGAs have the advantage of being able to be modified post-production. Defects found on a Phoenix-enabled chip could be resolved by downloading a patch and applying it to the hardware. Torrellas believes this would give chips a shorter time to market, saying "If they know that they could fix the problems later on, they could beat the competition to market."

Submission + - Ian Murdock joins SUN

Submitted by

RLiegh

on Monday March 19, 2007 @04:58PM

RLiegh writes: "In an entry on his Weblog, Ian Murdock announced that he is joining Sun Microsystems as their chief operating platforms officer which, as he put it in his opensolaris post "basically means I'll be in charge of Sun's operating system strategy, spanning Solaris and Linux." In all likelihood one of his first priorities will be "closing the usability gap" between Solaris and Linux. Of course, being the founder of Debian -the operating system which forms the base of knoppix and Ubuntu- Ian Murdock needs no introduction to even casual slashdot readers."

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