RoboOp - Slashdot User

Feed Record Store Owners Blame RIAA For Destroying The Music Industry (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Friday April 06, 2007 @01:53PM

It's not like it hasn't been said many times before, but it's nice to see the NY Times running an opinion piece about the RIAA from a pair of record store owners which basically points out how at every opportunity, the RIAA has made the wrong move and made things worse:

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it's not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

Also, it's not every day that you see a NY Times piece use the word "boneheadedness" to describe the strategy of an organization. At this point, this story has been so obvious for so long, it's worth asking why anyone (well, mainly policy makers in DC) still bother listening to the RIAA. If you could have scripted out the worst possible strategy to damage your own industry, I don't think you could have planned anything worse than what the RIAA has actually done.

Feed News: Microsoft changes tune on selling DRM-free songs (macworld.com)

From feed by macworldfeed on Friday April 06, 2007 @01:52PM

Microsoft plans to follow Apple and sell DRM-free songs online from EMI and other labels.

Feed Feature: Apple TV: Accessories you'll need (macworld.com)

From feed by macworldfeed on Friday April 06, 2007 @01:52PM

Looking to get your Apple TV up and running? Jonathan Seff goes over the add-ons you'll need for hooking up and enjoying Apple's digital device.

Feed Nanogenerator - Electricity from Ultrasonic Waves (pheedo.com)

From feed by thfeed on Friday April 06, 2007 @12:32PM

Could provide electricity for microscopic machines by harvesting energy from its environment

Submission + - Turkish Assembly Votes Censoring of Web sites

Submitted by

unity100

on Friday April 06, 2007 @12:02PM

unity100 writes: "Cnn has some piece of news about recent a development in turkey, where turkish assembly, totally in lieu with turkey's commitment to european union membership and european ideals, have voted to have sites that "insult" Turkish Republic founder M.Kemal Ataturk censored from entire Turkish population.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/06/turkey .youtube.ap/index.html"

Grey Markets Compared - PS3 vs. Wii 82

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 05, 2007 @11:29AM from the comparative-shopping-for-next-gen-swag dept.

Kotaku has a follow-up feature to their earlier look at the declining PS3 market on EBay. Post author Michael Fahey has now gone back and looked at Ebay sales, comparing the PS3 and the Wii. Unlike the sharp dips and spikes the PS3 market has suffered, the price seems to be fairly constant for the Wii console. From the article: "Considering the small window that the PlayStation 3 auctions had to turn a truly amazing profit, prospectors would have been better off in the long run purchasing a couple of Wiis, which have maintained an average profit margin of 45-50% since preorders became available. Definitely not a windfall, but a much more financially sound investment in the long run. Unfortunately these launches weren't about being sound financially. They were about betting on the big bucks, and the majority of the PS3 prospectors out there played the tables and lost."

Voice Over IP Under Threat? 148

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 05, 2007 @10:11AM from the keeping-phone-calls-expensive dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The IT Observer is discussing the possible scary future of Voice over IP targeted viruses, and what that could mean for the consumer. The article discusses the likelihood that VoIP is going to become even more popular, and the damage that a targeted 'flash virus' could perpetrate in a very short amount of time. From the article: 'Let's imagine a scenario that could become commonplace in the near future: A user has an IP telephony system on his computer (both at home and at work). In his address book on the computer there is an entry, under the name Bank, with the number 123-45-67. Now, a hacker launches a mass-mailing attack on thousands or millions of email addresses using code that simply enters users' address books and modifies any entry under the name Bank to 987-65-43. ... If any of these users receives a message saying that there is a problem in their account, and asking them to call their bank (a typical phishing strategy), they may not be suspicious, as they are not clicking on a link in an email ... If they use their VoIP system to call the bank, they will be calling the modified number, where a friendly automated system will record all their details. ' "

Dark Corners of the OpenXML Standard 250

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 04, 2007 @11:54PM from the dared-to-comply dept.

Standard Disclaimer writes "Most here on Slashdot know that Microsoft released its OpenXML specification to counter ODF and to help preserve its market position, but most people probably aren't aware of all the interesting legacy code the OpenXML specification has brought to light. This article by Rob Weir details many of the crazy legacy features in the dark corners of OpenXML. As it concludes after analyzing specification requirements like suppressTopSpacingWP, 'so not only must an interoperable OOXML implementation first acquire and reverse-engineer a 14-year old version of Microsoft Word, it must also do the same thing with a 16-year old version of WordPerfect.'"

Which Text-Based UI Do You Code With? 211

Posted by Cliff on Thursday January 04, 2007 @09:42PM from the ain't-nothin'-wrong-wit-curses dept.

JHWH asks: "I've been asked to design and implement a management software system with text based user interface as the replacement of an older one running on AS/400. Despite my attempts towards a web UI, the customer is actually willing to have a text based UI. The main reasons are the need for a very low bandwidth and the ability to run on serial terminals. All this in the 21st century! Host systems will be Linux, the language will be C or C++. I already thought about the use of text based browsers like lynx or links. So now I have to wipe the dust away from my ncurses manual, or can Slashdot suggest something more effective?"

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