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Submission + - Mark Cuban: Facebook Is Driving Away Brands - Starting With Mine (readwrite.com)
Two weeks ago Cuban tweeted out a screen grab of an offer he'd received from Facebook. The social network wanted to charge him $3,000 to reach 1 million people. Along with the screen grab, Cuban wrote, "FB is blowing it? This is the first step. The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site.""
Submission + - Best 32-bit System In 2012 (microsoft.com)
Submission + - Why dissonant music sounds 'wrong' (nature.com) 1
There has long been thought to be a physiological reason why at least some kinds of dissonance sound jarring. Two tones close in frequency interfere to produce 'beating': what we hear is just a single tone rising and falling in loudness. If the difference in frequency is within a certain range, rapid beats create a rattling sound called roughness. An aversion to roughness has seemed consistent with the common dislike of intervals such as minor seconds.
Yet when cognitive neuroscientist Marion Cousineau of the University of Montreal in Quebec and her colleagues asked amusic subjects (who cannot distinguish between different musical tones). to rate the pleasantness of a whole series of intervals, they showed no distinctions between any of the intervals but disliked beating as much as people with normal hearing.
Instead the researchers propose that harmonicity is the key. Notes contain many overtones — frequencies that are whole-number multiples of the basic frequency in the note. For consonant 'pleasant sounding' intervals the overtones of the two notes tend to coincide as whole-number multiples, whereas for dissonant intervals this is no longer the case.
The work suggests that harmonicity is more important than beating for dissonance aversion in normal hearers (abstract)."
Submission + - Windows Head Leaves Microsoft
Submission + - Oracle makes Red Hat kernel changes available as broken-out patches (oracle.com)
This comes in response to a policy change Red Hat had operated in early 2011 with the goal of undercutting Oracle and other vendor's strategy of poaching RedHat's customers. The Ksplice team says they've doing the work they're now making available since the policy was implemented; they claim to be now making it public because they "feel everyone in the Linux community can benefit from the work".
For Ksplice, we build individual updates for each change and rely on source patches that are broken-out, not a giant tarball. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to take the right patches to create individual updates for each fix, and to skip over the noise — like a change that speeds up bootup — which is unnecessary for an already-running system. We’ve been taking the monolithic Red Hat patch tarball and breaking it into smaller commits internally ever since they introduced this change.
At Oracle, we feel everyone in the Linux community can benefit from the work we already do to get our jobs done, so now we’re sharing these broken-out patches publicly.
Submission + - Flash Player Update Forces Installation of Google Toolbar (adobe.com) 4
Submission + - Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft With Immediate Effect (microsoft.com)
Submission + - 15 year jail sentence for pirating movies. (torrentfreak.com) 1
Submission + - In Mississippi: 15 Year Jail Sentence For Movie and Music Copyright Infringement (torrentfreak.com)
Says the RIAA: "[This] highlights the fact that the individuals engaging in these activities are frequently serial criminals for whom IP theft is simply the most convenient and profitable way they could steal from others."
Frequently serial criminals? 15 years? I wonder how much of his sentence can be attributed to his priors rather than to other factors...
Submission + - km-range shit thrower being developed in New Zealand (bbc.co.uk)
The 76-year-old "known anti-royalist" was ordered to stay at least 500 metres (550 yards) away from the royal couple (BBC)
Very obviously therefore, the Republican (sense: anti-imperialist, e.g. Brutus Senior or Junior ) campaigner is working out how to throw shit from significantly more than 500m away.
I can think of two [edit : three] credible technologies : a trailer-mounted trebuchet ; a shit-atomiser sited over 500m upwind and producing a miasma blowing downwind ; or a remote-controlled plane fitted with a real-time camera and a shit-dispenser.
Can Slashdot come up with better suggestions for assisting this vital free speech task?
As a corollary, the mechanism for dispensing shit from the model plane needs a name. Preferably a "backronym", such as an "ADAM — Automated Dispenser of Aerial Manure" or a JAMIE
Submission + - First Release of AresEd: an Open Source 3D Game Creation Toolkit (google.com)
I'm also looking for developers who are interested in helping me develop this project. Please contact me if you are interested."
Submission + - Africa makers get energy from pee (makerfaireafrica.com)
A group of African students built a small generator where with
1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.
It's not 100% clear how much energy you can get out of that liter (you insensitive Imperial clod) though.
It's also not 100% clear whether the main aim of the setup is to purify water or to generate energy thanks to electrolysis.
In any case either aim would be a great thing in a continent like Africa. And the whole world as well.
Submission + - Cyber Weapon Friendly Fire: Chevron Hit by Stuxnet (informationweek.com)
"'Escaped' continues to be a puzzling term when applied to a virus that relied on numerous Microsoft zero-day vulnerabilities and propagation vectors," said Sean McBride, the director of analysis for Critical Intelligence, in a SANS newsletter. "On the other hand, if your system was not the single underground facility in Iran that Stuxnet was intended to disrupt, the infection was benign. Such collateral damage is part of the price industry gets to pay for — what was then — two more years of Iran [being] without a nuclear weapon.""
Submission + - Watch Live Australia Total Solar Eclipse Online Video Stream (ufo-blogger.com)
Submission + - Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft (computerworld.com)
Submission + - Microsoft's Sinofsky out after Windows 8 launch
Submission + - Micron Associates, Elderly woman who botched religious fresco demands royalties (goodreads.com)
Cecilia Gimenez, who is in her 80s, made headlines across the world after attempting a DIY restoration that left the 19th century fresco of Christ at her local church in Borja resembling a monkey.
The altered image of Ecce Homo – Behold the Man – became an internet sensation and sent thousands of curious sightseers to the Sanctuario de Misericordia to laugh at her handiwork.
Authorities threatened to sue Mrs Gimenez for her unauthorised attempt, which she insisted had been carried out with only good intentions because the painting was in need of repair.
But popularity for the modified masterpiece grew with even budget airline Ryanair offering cheap deals to nearby Zaragoza airport encouraging “pilgrims” to visit the work that was quickly dubbed “Ecce Mono” – Behold the Monkey.
An internet petition to keep the repair job garnered widespread support and seizing an opportunity to swell its coffers, the church began levying a 4 euro (£3) entrance fee on visitors, earning 2,000 euros in the first four days.
Continue Reading:
http://micronassociates.net/hi-TECH/2012/09/21/elderly-woman-who-botched-religious-fresco-demands-royalties/