Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Newspaper's New Revenue Plan: Copyright Suits (wired.com)

Submitted by SpicyBrownMustard
SpicyBrownMustard writes: Wire magazine has coverage of the sudden numerous lawsuits filed by Righthaven, LLC regarding the content of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money."
The owner of the LVRJ comments on the strategy and the Las Vegas Sun has extensive coverage of each suit filed. The owner of one site has apparently settled for more than the site has made in six years. Media Matters suspects many if most of the suits may be politically motivated, and violates federal election law.
Power

Submission + - Size Matters - The Rise of Small Nuclear Plants (theoildrum.com)

Submitted by ColdWetDog
ColdWetDog writes: The Oil Drum (one of the best sites to discuss the technical details of the Macondo Blowout) is typically focused on ramifications of petroleum use and in particular, the Peak Oil theory. They run short guest articles from time to time on various aspects of energy use and policies and today they have an interesting article on small nuclear reactors with a refreshing amount of technical details concerning their construction, use and fueling. The author's major thesis:

Pick up almost any book about nuclear energy and you will find that the prevailing wisdom is that nuclear plants must be very large in order to be competitive. This assumption is widely accepted, but, if its roots are understood, it can be effectively challenged.

Recently, however, a growing body of plant designers, utility companies, government agencies and financial players are recognizing that smaller plants can take advantage of greater opportunities to apply lessons learned, take advantage of the engineering and tooling savings possible with higher numbers of units and better meet customer needs in terms of capacity additions and financing. The resulting systems are a welcome addition to the nuclear power plant menu, which has previously been limited to one size — extra large.

Submission + - Adobe Putting PDF Reader in Sandbox

Submitted by
Captain Eloquence
Captain Eloquence writes: "The next major version of Adobe’s PDF Reader will feature new sandboxing technology aimed at curbing a surge in malicious hacker attacks. The initial sandbox implementation will isolate all “write” calls on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003. Arkin believes this will mitigate the risk of exploits seeking to install malware on the user’s computer or otherwise change the computer’s file system or registry. In a future dot-release, the company plans to extend the sandbox to include read-only activities to protect against attackers seeking to read sensitive information on the user’s computer."
Social Networks

Submission + - Facebook User Satisfaction 'Abysmal,' Survey Finds (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: While Facebook is expected to announce this week that it has grabbed its 500 millionth user, the social networking site scored a 64 on the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index's scale of zero to 100. A rating of 64 might not sound so bad, until you consider that sites for filing tax forms electronically to the IRS scored better. Facebook and MySpace, which came in just below its rival with a rating of 63, were the two lowest-scoring sites out of all of them. The report noted that both sites showed 'abysmal performance.' The big winner in the social media Web site category was Wikipedia, which had a satisfaction rating of 77. YouTube came in second with a 73. This is the first year that ACSI rated social media sites. 'Facebook is a phenomenal success, so we were not expecting to see it score so poorly with consumers,' said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, which partnered to conduct the e-business survey. 'Our research shows that privacy concerns, frequent changes to the Web site, and commercialization and advertising adversely affect the consumer experience, he said. 'Compare that to Wikipedia, which is a nonprofit that has had the same user interface for years, and it's clear that while innovation is critical, sometimes consumers prefer evolution to revolution,' Freed said.

Comment Re:It's not the paywall that's failed (Score 1) 428

by Pelekophori (#32925026) Attached to: Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure

We in the UK pay for the BBC willingly because it is worth the price

Don't presume to speak for all of us in the UK. You might pay for the BBC willingly, but I'd rather not if I had a choice. However I'm coerced into doing so even if I just want to watch their competitors.

The BBC's latest theory is that I am obliged to pay them a license fee if I merely watch a video on my PC which is being streamed live (by any broadcaster/website) because that is covered by the 1949 act which established the license fee. They haven't tried to enforce that one yet but they are positioning themselves to maintain their rentseeking position if/when the traditional broadcast TV audience declines even more significantly.
The Internet

Submission + - UK Regulator to Tackle Internet Net Neutrality (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: Telecoms regulator for the United Kingdom, Ofcom, has officially brought the Net Neutrality debate (a principal of treating all internet traffic as equal) to Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland by opening a new debate into the subject. Many ISPs already use Traffic Management in the UK as a means to balance the performance of their networks so that the majority of their customers are not unfairly affected by a minority of heavy users.

However some ISPs have gone further and suggested that online video sites, VoIP and even internet search engine services should be forced to pay internet providers if they want their content to be given priority. Ofcom has expressed concern at the anti-competitive behaviour of such ideas and fears that it could suppress the quality of content from popular services.

Submission + - UK Anti-Piracy Lawyers Threaten US P2P Forum 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: TorrentFreak is reporting that ACS:Law is threatening to sue Slyck.com, one of the Internet’s oldest file-sharing forums, because they don’t like what members have written about them.
Government

Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking 794

Posted by timothy from the too-stupid-to-live-as-long-as-possible dept.
lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."
Piracy

Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down 634

Posted by kdawson from the single-point-of-well-you-know dept.
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

Microsoft Demos Three Platforms Running the Same Game 196

Posted by Soulskill from the pick-up-and-play dept.
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."
Encryption

Ubisoft's New DRM Cracked In One Day 678

Posted by timothy from the next-time-gadget-next-time dept.
Colonel Korn writes "Ubisoft's recent announcement that upcoming games would require a constant internet connection in order to play has been discussed at length on Slashdot ('The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work'). Many were of the opinion that this new, more demanding DRM would have effectiveness to match its inconvenience, at least financially justifying its use. Others assumed that it would be immediately cracked, as is usually the case, leaving the inconvenience for paying customers and resulting in a superior product for pirates. As usual, the latter group was right. Though Ubisoft won't yet admit it, Skid-Row managed to crack the new DRM less than a day after it was first released."
Image

Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-have-another dept.
Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."

Slashdot Top Deals

The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.

Close