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DRM

Submission + - UK law change to allow digital copying (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: Making digital copies of music, films and other copyrighted material for personal use is to be made legal for the first time under government plans.

It has previously been illegal in the UK to rip songs from a CD to a digital player or transfer eBooks, music, films and games from one device to another.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said the move was "not only common sense but good business sense".

"Bringing the law into line with ordinary people's reasonable expectations will boost respect for copyright, on which our creative industries rely," he said.

"We feel we have struck the right balance between improving the way consumers benefit from copyright works they have legitimately paid for, boosting business opportunities and protecting the rights of creators."

Submission + - First Radeon HD 8000M GPU benchmarked (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: As Slashdot noted earlier this week, AMD has a new line of mid-range Radeon GPUs aimed at notebooks. The chips are based on the Graphics Core Next microarchitecture, and they're slated to show up in systems early next year. While the initial report was limited to specification details, the first review of the Radeon HD 8790M is now out, complete with benchmark data from the latest games. The 8790M is about 35% smaller than its 7690M predecessor but offers substantially better gaming performance across the board. Impressively, the new chip has similar power draw as the outgoing model under load, and its idle power consumption is slightly lower. Notebook makers should have no problems making the switch. However, it is worth noting that this new mobile GPU exhibits some of the same frame latency spikes observed on desktop Radeons, including in games that AMD itself has sponsored.
Power

Submission + - Atmospheric Vortex Engine creates tornadoes to generate electricity (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Tornadoes generally evoke the destructive force of nature at its most awesome. However, what if all that power could be harnessed to produce cheaper and more efficient electricity? This is just what Canadian engineer Louis Michaud proposes to achieve, with an invention dubbed the “Atmospheric Vortex Engine” (or AVE). It works by introducing warm air into a circular station, whereupon the difference in temperature between this heated air and the atmosphere above creates a vortex – or controlled tornado, which in turn drives multiple wind turbines in order to create electricity. The vortex could be shut down by simply turning off the source of warm air.

Michaud’s company, AVEtec Energy Corporation, reports that the system produces no carbon emissions, nor requires energy storage to function, and that further to this, the cost of energy generated could potentially be as low as US$0.03 per kilowatt hour.
Apple

Submission + - Apple Kills a Kickstarter Project (venturebeat.com) 1

Submitted by Nerdfest
Nerdfest writes: Venturebeat is reporting that:

Edison Junior, the technology and design lab behind the POP portable power station, is returning the full $139,170 in funding it received from Kickstarter backers to develop the device. Unfortunately, Apple has refused to give the project permission to license the Lightning charger in a device that includes multiple charging options.

“We are pissed,” Edison Junior CEO Jamie Siminoff told me on the phone today. “I think they are being a bunch of assholes, and I think they’re hurting their customers.”
Math

Submission + - Juggling by the Numbers

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The BBC News' Laura Gray reports on a juggling notation system developed in the 80's called Siteswap (aka Quantum Juggling and Cambridge Notation) and how it has helped jugglers discover and share thousands of new tricks. Frustrated that there was no way to write down juggling moves, mathematician Colin Wright and others helped devised Siteswap, which uses sequences of numbers to encode the number of beats of each throw, which is related to their height and the hand to which the throw is made. 'Siteswap has allowed jugglers to share tricks with each other without having to meet in person or film themselves,' says James Grime, juggling enthusiast and math instructor for Cambridge University. Still unclear on the concept? Spend some time playing around with Paul Klimek's most-excellent Quantum Juggling simulator, and you too can be a Flying Karamazov Brother!
Linux

Submission + - Learn Linux The Hard Way (nixsrv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Author of Learn Python Te Hard Way and other works, Zed Shaw, has released a free interactive beta of Learn Linux The Hard Way; a web-based virtual Linux environment which introduces the command line and other essential Linux concepts in 30 exercises. Of course, my first entry was rm -rf /* which only produced a stream of errors. Missing vim, nano, etc., I amused myself by entering other commands and creating a few files — appending to them with "echo "*" > text.txt, etc. I wish I had discovered something like a long time ago.

Submission + - 2012 another record-setter, fits climate forecasts (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by Layzej
Layzej writes: Fox News reports: In 2012 many of the warnings scientists have made about global warming went from dry studies in scientific journals to real-life video played before our eyes. As 2012 began, winter in the U.S. went AWOL. Spring and summer arrived early with wildfires, blistering heat and drought. And fall hit the eastern third of the country with the ferocity of Superstorm Sandy. Globally, five countries this year set heat records, but none set cold records. 2012 is on track to be the warmest year on record in the United States. Worldwide, the average through November suggests it will be the eighth warmest since global record-keeping began in 1880 and will likely beat 2011 as the hottest La Nina year on record. America's heartland lurched from one extreme to the other without stopping at "normal." Historic flooding in 2011 gave way to devastating drought in 2012. But the most troubling climate development this year was the melting at the top of the world. Summer sea ice in the Arctic shrank to 18 percent below the previous record low.
These are "clearly not freak events," but "systemic changes," said climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute in Germany. "With all the extremes that, really, every year in the last 10 years have struck different parts of the globe, more and more people absolutely realize that climate change is here and already hitting us."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Do coding standards make a difference? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Every shop I've ever worked in has had a "Coding Style" document that dictates things like camelCase vs underscored_names, placement of curly braces, tabs vs spaces, etc... As a result, I've lost hundreds of hours in code reviews because some pedant was more interested in picking nits over whitespace than actually reviewing my algorithms. Are there any documents or studies that show a net productivity gain for having these sorts of standards? If not, why do we have them? We live in the future, why don't our tools enforce these standards automagically?
Windows

Submission + - Animated Rant about Windows 8 from former tech journalist. (youtube.com)

Submitted by
Funksaw
Funksaw writes: "Back in 2007, I wrote three articles on Ubuntu 6, MacOSX 10.4, and Windows Vista which were all featured on Slashdot. Now, with the release of Windows 8, I took a different tactic and produced an animated video. Those expecting me to bust out the performance tests and in-depth use of the OS are going to be dissapointed. Whilt that was my intention coming into the project, I couldn't even use Windows 8 long enough to get to the in-depth technical tests. In my opinion, Windows 8 is so horribly broken that it should be recalled."

Submission + - Atmospheric Vortex Engine creates tornadoes to generate electricity (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tornadoes generally evoke the destructive force of nature at its most awesome. However, what if all that power could be harnessed to produce cheaper and more efficient electricity? This is just what Canadian engineer Louis Michaud proposes to achieve, with an invention dubbed the âoeAtmospheric Vortex Engineâ (or AVE) — is this possible for real ?
Linux

Submission + - GarageGames Starts IndieGoGo Campaign to Port Torque 3D to Linux (indiegogo.com)

Submitted by
iamnothing
iamnothing writes: "GarageGames is heading to IndieGoGo to port Torque 3D to Linux! The campaign is centered around hiring a dedicated developer or team to port Torque 3D to Linux. The primary target is Ubuntu 32bit with other flavors of Linux as stretch goals. All work will be done in the public eye under our Github repository under the MIT license.

Check out the campaign!"
The Military

Submission + - DARPA's Headless Robotic Mule Takes Load Off Warfighters

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "If robots are ever really going to carry the equipment of US soldiers and Marines, they're going to have to act more like pack animals. Now Terri Moon Cronk reports that DARPA’s semiautonomous Legged Squad Support System — also known as the LS3 — will carry 400 pounds of warfighter equipment and walk 20 miles at a time also acting as an auxiliary power source for troops to recharge batteries for radios and handheld devices while on patrol. “It’s about solving a real military problem: the incredible load of equipment our soldiers and Marines carry in Afghanistan today,” says Army Lt. Col. Joseph K. Hitt, program manager in DARPA’s tactical technology office. The robot’s sensors allow it to navigate around obstacles at night, maneuver in urban settings, respond to voice commands, and gauge distances and directions. The LS3 can also distinguish different forms of vegetation when walking through fields and around bushes and avoid logs and rocks with intelligent foot placement on rough terrain (video). The robot's squad leader can issue 10 basic commands to tell the robot to do such things as stop, sit, follow him tightly, follow him on the corridor, and go to specific coordinates. Darpa figures that it's illogical to make a soldier hand over her rucksack to a robotic beast of burden if she's then got to be preoccupied with "joysticks and computer screens" to guide it forward. "That adds to the cognitive burden of the soldier," Hitt explains. "We need to make sure that the robot also is smart, like a trained animal.""

Submission + - College Textbook Recommendation for Web Dev Class? (acu.edu)

Submitted by PHPNerd
PHPNerd writes: I'm a college computer science professor. Next semester I'll be teaching Web Development 2. Due to how quickly the web is changing, every year I have to find a new book (though some years I don't even use one). Last year I used HTML5 For Web Designers by the good people at A List Apart. I used it because it's short, easy to understand, and covers essential pieces of HTML5. Any suggestions on good textbooks or web resources focusing on bleeding-edge HTML5 and CSS3?
Earth

Submission + - Coral Reefs Could Be Decimated by 2100 (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as possible. It may even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, say with massive tree-planting efforts or machines.
Security

Submission + - Taking Sense Away: Confessions of a Former TSA Screener (wordpress.com)

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes: TSA gets discussed on Slashdot from time to time, usually negatively. Have you ever wondered about the TSA screeners' perspective? Taking Sense Away is a blog, allegedly written by a former TSA screener, offering insider perspectives on TSA topics. For example, there's the Insider's TSA Dictionary, whose entries are frequently about the code screeners use to discuss attractive female passengers (like 'Code Red,' 'Fanny Pack,' and 'Hotel Bravo'). Another posting explains what goes on in private screening rooms, which the author claims is nothing compared to screener conduct in backscatter image operator rooms. Apparently what happens in the IO room stays in the IO room. Today's posting covers how TSA employees feel about working for 'a despised agency'. For many the answer is that they hate working for 'the laughing stock of America’s security apparatus,' try to hide that they work for TSA, and want to transfer almost anywhere else ASAP.
Google

Submission + - Why Google hired Ray Kurzweil (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nataly Kelly writes in the Huffington Post about Google's strategy of hiring Ray Kurzweil and how the company likely intends to use language translation to revolutionize the way we share information:

"Google Translate is not just a tool that enables people on the web to translate information. It's a strategic tool for Google itself.
The implications of this are vast and go beyond mere language translation. One implication might be a technology that can translate from one generation to another. Or how about one that slows down your speech or turns up the volume for an elderly person with hearing loss? That enables a stroke victim to use the clarity of speech he had previously? That can pronounce using your favorite accent? That can convert academic jargon to local slang? It's transformative. In this system, information can walk into one checkpoint as the raucous chant of a 22-year-old American football player and walk out as the quiet whisper of a 78-year-old Albanian grandmother."
Encryption

Submission + - This $299 Tool Cracks BitLocker, PGP, And TrueCrypt Disks In Real-Time 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Russian firm ElcomSoft on Thursday announced the release of Elcomsoft Forensic Disk Decryptor (EFDD), a new forensic tool that can reportedly access information stored in disks and volumes encrypted with desktop and portable versions of BitLocker, PGP, and TrueCrypt. EFDD runs on all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as well as Windows 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The price tag isn’t outrageous, but EFDD will still set you back a solid $299.
United Kingdom

Submission + - UK Government to relax laws on digital copying (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
ChristianCooper
ChristianCooper writes: "BBC News reports today that making digital copies of "music, films and other copyrighted material for personal use" will be permitted under new legislation to be proposed by the UK Government. It would still not be permitted to pass these personal copies to friends or family, etc.

Since the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988, the restriction on copying literary, musical, dramatic or artistic works was extended to "storing the work in any medium by electronic means" — this had the side effect of including activities such as ripping CDs onto portable music players, or transferring files between e-readers."

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