Slashdot

alx5000 writes "In an interview conducted last week with Consumer Eroski (link in Spanish; Google translation), the father of Tetris Alexey Pajitnov claimed that 'Free Software should have never existed,' since it 'destroys the market' by bringing down companies that create wealth and prosperity. When asked about Red Hat or Oracle's support-oriented model, he called them 'a minority,' and also criticized Stallman's ideas as 'belonging to the past' where there were no software 'business possibilities.'"

electricbern writes "Scientists have accidentally discovered how to reverse memory loss by stimulating a specific part of the hypothalamus. Good news for people with Alzheimer's and those who just forgot where they left the car keys."

Ace writes "What are the best programs to keep track of all the IP addresses of incoming and outgoing connections that are connecting to your computer? I've been using firewall software but lately I've discovered strange anomolous connections to .ru sites that I can't explan (and I've run virus scan, have firewall, etc). I'd really like to find a package that logs a list of all sites, their IP's, etc (incoming and outgoing) and which program is doing it. I'd like not to have to reformat but it's looking likely."

An anonymous reader writes "Physicists at the Bhavnagar University in Gujarat, India have trapped light in a nano-soup concoction. The chance discovery could pave the way for lab-on-a-chip devices for processing optical information. As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light."

blahplusplus writes "I've had a lot of ideas kicking around for developing new input devices for the last few years that I'm now thinking about making real. Now the problem is I'm not sure exactly how to go about prototyping it and what I should use to prototype them, for now I've drawn sketches and used special model-paste that is similar to papermache just to work out any kinks. For anyone that has experience in designing input devices or peripherals, what exactly would I need or where should I look to get going? Also what books do for USB interfacing and USB and/or interface progamming? Is this something I can do myself or not?"

Wired's Game|Life blog has up a post pointing out a surprise from Nintendo: a cute voting application now available on your Nintendo Wii. Unannounced and easy to understand, Everybody Votes appears to be attempting to gain a gestalt view of the Wii-owning population. The app gives you several multiple choice questions to answer, and allows you to submit your own. Chris Kohler hopes that this might be the beginning of downloads for small, entertaining programs Nintendo fans may have never otherwise seen. "If you've ever been to an E3 or read about Nintendo's booth, you know that they often show little demos or applications that never get released. Well, with Wii, it seems that we might actually start seeing those little experiments thrown out to the public. Since Nintendo as a game developer uses this first-prototype-something-fun style of design, we could see all kinds of things that ordinarily wouldn't ever make it out of Nintendo headquarters." I personally hope we get a full-fledged version of the conducting game that Miyamoto used to demo the system at last year's E3.

hausmasta writes "This tutorial describes how to scan emails for image spam with FuzzyOCR. FuzzyOCR is a plugin for SpamAssassin which is aimed at unsolicited bulk mail containing images as the main content carrier. Using different methods, it analyzes the content and properties of images to distinguish between normal mails (ham) and spam mails. FuzzyOCR tries to keep the system load low by scanning only mails that have not already been categorized as spam by SpamAssassin, thus avoiding unnecessary work.

http://www.howtoforge.com/fight_image_spam_with_fu zzyocr_spamassassin"

An anonymous reader writes "The server at http://rose.makesad.us/ provides one new frozen rose photo everyday, using an innovative python application to automatically select "sad" frozen rose photos from Flickr. It has already been noticed by livejournal. Perhaps this is a new sign, pointing towards content aggregation sites that automatically grade their content based on emotions evoked?"

An anonymous reader writes "As if it wasn't enough to have fingerprint scanners on laptops, Toshiba has put them on two of its latest smart phones. The Toshiba G500 and G900 feature fingerprint scanners on the back of the handsets, allowing users to access their phone by simply sliding their finger over the scanner. This is supposed to provide a better level of security than using a code of some sort. Of course it also means that someone is more likely to chop your hand off if they desperately want your data."

Red Herring tackles the rush into virtual space, talking about the MMOG goldrush and the business consequences World of Warcraft has had on the games industry as a whole. Though sometimes it doesn't seem to fully understand the difference between a single player game and a Massive one, the article still touches on a number of important points. Lots of folks are looking to cash in on WoW's success, and they're importing or licensing every Massive game they can find to get on the bandwagon. "The problem is that no one knows what the next WoW killer will look like. Creating a hit video game, which combines strong characters, a compelling story, and top-notch production values, is part art and part inexact science. Making a hit game can be much more difficult than producing an Oscar-winning movie. After all, the hit video game must be compelling enough to keep players coming back for more." Even if a lot of their conclusions are odd, and they call Puzzle Pirates silly, it's worth a look. What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?

markmcb writes "Few may know, but there is a new way to increase your refund when you submit your 2006 return: the 'Telephone Tax Refund.' Essentially, the federal government realized it was improperly taxing Americans on their long distance phone service and now it's giving those taxes back. The difficulty, however, is determining how much to give back. The government claims it has taken the work out of it for you by offering a standard refund amount based on the number of exemptions claimed, but this article describes how taking the alternative route of actually calculating the amount paid can significantly increase your refund. Read on if you like money ... or if you just don't like being 'tricked by Uncle Sam' (as the article puts it)."

IowaState! writes "http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070215/20070214006257.html ?.v=1

I am not a writer so Ill leave the blurb to you guys, but a interesting little story about the worldwide total electrical cost of data centers as studied by AMD and some scientists as a few national labs in the US."

Cylotech writes "Cylo Technology from Sydney, Australia has developed a unique rotating mouse which has 3D input capabilities as well as allowing super-smooth scrolling, jog wheel and knob-twiddling par excellence.

The 3style mouse was exhibited in prototype form at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where it caused a minor sensation, with a couple of commercialisation deals in the wings following the show.

The mouse is the brainchild of Industrial Design graduate and User Interface Designer Laurence Crew who has been working on the project full time since late 2005, founding Cylo along the way. According to Laurence, "Although it is a tough road being a small startup in this game, the response along the way has been fantastic and this has helped to keep the momentum going".

The mouse is expected to be on the market around late 2007 somewhere in the $100 range.

See www.cylo.com.au/products.html including a newly uploaded demo video via YouTube."

An anonymous reader writes "Investigative journalism is dead in America.

The news media in a democracy is supposed to act as a guardian of the public interest and as a watchdog on the activities of government. Judging by the media cheerleading before the invasion of Iraq, we know that is no longer the case.

A good way to judge how much the American media cares about what the American public thinks is to try to submit a story idea or news tip anonymously to any major news web site. The Internet is the most popular and easy to use media in history. Every major news organization has a web site and they put out what they consider to be their product. What they don't do is listen. Not a single major news organization web site is set to accept anonymous news tips from the public. Not one. A few small town papers do and I applaud them for their courage. Some of the independent sites like Drudge Report do. But not ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN. Not Time or Newsweek. In fact, I can find no major publication that does.

What are the news media afraid of? Has the government or their corporate owners pressured them to always be able to identify their sources? Are they afraid that some tips may make the entrenched powers look bad? The American news media is deaf to the Internet and laughs at protecting anonymity.

For all the glamour of the media protecting "Deep Throat" from being identified, that is a very rare case and it happened a long time ago. In today's media, Deep Throat's DNA would have to be on file with the NSA before the NY Times would listen to him.

Slashdot, I'm glad you're one of the few that still does accept a story idea without knowing the author. Keep fighting the good fight."