ComputerDruid - Slashdot User

Submission + - SPAM: Samsung Announces 3 New Phones in India

Submitted by

anoop

on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @01:14AM

anoop writes: "Samsung, one of the Korean company, has introduced three new touch screen handsets in India with the announcement of the Samsung Star, Samsung Star 3G and Samsung Beat DJ. With this step, Samsung has expand its touch screen handset range to seven in its basket."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Apple Push Notification

Submitted by djupedal on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @12:41AM

djupedal writes: Been told that Apple has sent an email to developers asking for volunteers to test the upcoming 3.0 feature 'Apple Push Notification', by downloading an Associated Press app for iPhone 3.0 from the iTunes store (7-day expiration redemption code provided), "...to create a high-volume test environment for our servers."

The app is to be installed on a dev device running iPhone OS beta 5 (only).

Submission + - Lend your ears to science! (ed.ac.uk)

Submitted by

MikeRozak

on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @12:26AM

MikeRozak writes: "The Blizzard Challenge is an annual online listening test run by text-to-speech (synthesized speech) researchers to help improve their technology. Around 17 research organizations were provided with 10 hours of audio recordings of single speaker. They were locked in their labs for two months, and told to produce the best synthesized voice they could from the recordings.

Two months later, the doors have been unbolted, and the researchers need your help!

Please take the time to go through the listening test at http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blizzard/blizzard2009/english/register-ER.html. You will be played examples of synthesized speech from the different research organizations, and asked to rate how good (or bad) they sound. The technology has come a long way since Stephen Hawking's synthesized voice; some of the synthesized examples are very good.

Your ratings help the researchers identify which techniques produce the most realistic voices, so that next year's text-to-speech will sound better. Improved text-to-speech helps the blind, people who lost their voice (like Stephen Hawking), those hated computerized telephone operators, and PC games! Text-to-speech can even be humorous, see http://www.idyacy.com/cgi-bin/bushomatic.cgi for a talking George Bush."

Comment But which will authors choose? (Score 1) 93

by ComputerDruid on Monday May 18, 2009 @09:49PM (#28005989) Attached to: Scribd Becomes a DRM-Optional E-Bookstore

It seems like it will be a hard choice for content owners to decide which to choose.

Those with strong opinions about copyright will choose based on their beliefs, but what about those who don't have strong beliefs? Will they choose to try to protect their work technically? Or will they choose to be more open.

It's going to be interesting to see.

Submission + - Why Facebook Wants A Virtual Currency (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

eweekhickins

on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:40PM

eweekhickins writes: "Facebook is surely developing a form of virtual currency, but it's more than a plan to smooth out revenue streams. Facebook hopes its currency will become the virtual version of the U.S. dollar, the de facto standard for in-world purchases everywhere."

Comment Re:SETI? (Score 1) 134

by ComputerDruid on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:20PM (#28004685) Attached to: Five Nvidia CUDA-Enabled Apps Tested

As of now, though, nvidia's CUDA has all of the hype, as well as a handful of applications developed for the platform.

Submission + - Law Prof to Argue Fair Use for P2P Filesharing

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:17PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Ars Technica reports that Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson plans to defend accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum by arguing that it doesn't matter if Tenenbaum copied music; such noncommercial uses are presumptively "fair" and anyone seeking to squeeze file-swappers for statutory damages is entitled to precisely zero dollars. It's a gutsy move to claim that wholesale downloads of complete copyrighted works for no purpose higher than mere enjoyment of music somehow satisfies the famous "four factor test" for fair use claims, but Nesson believes he can win over a jury. "Defendant Tenenbaum expects and plans to offer the jury evidence relating to each one of these four factors," Nesson wrote in his court filing, "just as they are articulated in the statute, with the jury to decide their meaning as they apply to the facts of his particular case." Not everyone agrees with Nesson's approach. Lawrence Lessig wrote in an e-mail to Nesson that "of course [Tenenbaum's conduct] was against the law, and you do the law too much kindness by trying to pretend (or stretch) 'fair use' excuses what he did. It doesn't." Nesson's strategy is to convince the jurors that fair use goes far beyond the description in US law and should Nesson win, he will essentially legalize the sharing of all digital goods, copyrighted or not, by noncommercial users. Given that he wants to make the case about big principles like fair use and the applicability of statutory damages--and not about whether Joel Tenenbaum did what he is accused of doing--the music industry is likely to fight even harder to ensure that Nesson's preferred outcome is not realized. "The fireworks are scheduled to begin this summer in Massachusetts federal court.""

Comment Tied to a card (Score 5, Insightful) 134

by ComputerDruid on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:07PM (#28004531) Attached to: Five Nvidia CUDA-Enabled Apps Tested

What I don't understand is why people hype a technology that is tied to a specific manufacturer of card. If nvidia died tomorrow, we'd have a fair amount of code thats no longer relevant, unless there was some way to design cards that are CUDA-capable but not nvidia.

Also worth noting that I'd completely forgotten CUDA even ran on windows, as I've only heard it in the context of linux recently.

Submission + - Scribd Becomes DRM-Optional E-Bookstore

Submitted by

Miracle Jones

on Monday May 18, 2009 @05:34PM

Miracle Jones writes: "In an effort to compete with Amazon and Google, the document-hosting website Scribd will now be letting writers and publishers sell documents that they upload. They will be offering an 80/20 profit-sharing deal in favor of writers, and will let writers charge whatever they want. Additionally, Scribd will not force any content control (although they will have a piracy database and bounce copyrighted scans) and will let writers choose to encrypt their books with DRM or not. This is big news for people in publishing, who have been seeking an alternative to Amazon for fear that Amazon is amassing too much power too quickly in this brand new marketplace, especially after Amazon's announcement last week that they will now be publishing books in addition to selling them."

Submission + - Google Earth as a game engine for ship simulation (planetinaction.com) 1

Submitted by

dinther

on Monday May 18, 2009 @05:28PM

dinther writes: "Today the program "Ships" has been released. "Ships" is a significant program because it is the first serious application that uses Google Earth as a game engine. In "Ships" you take control of a a selection of ships and drive them around the world (If you have that much time) Building games around Google Earth is now viable thanks to the ever increasing detail in Google Earth. Technically the Google Earth browser plugin has proven to be quite a capable platform to work with. Go and check out this review http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2009/05/fantastic_free_google_earth_game_sh.html or try it yourself here http://www.planetinaction.com/"

Submission + - 50% of Electricity Generated by Wind Scenario (olino.org)

Submitted by jeroen8 on Monday May 18, 2009 @05:19PM

jeroen8 writes: Would a "50% of electricity generated by wind scenario" work in North America by 2030? In the article A North American Wind Energy Scenario of Neil Howes, who has recently retired from his position as an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, a rough cut estimate of what might be required to make such a transition in about 20 years time can be found. Most proposals that are being made rely on a very big increase in carbon free energy, both to charge electric vehicles (EV's) and to replace oil and natural gas (NG) presently used for hot water and space heating. In this article, he lays out a path by which 50% of North American energy might come from wind by 2030, including replacement of a large share of oil and natural gas use by electricity.

Submission + - requesting records in non-MS formats (whatdotheyknow.com)

Submitted by winston on Monday May 18, 2009 @03:27PM

winston writes: "Your original request of 11 January requested data collected from TRU (formerly TAC) and TFR spreadsheets, held in a database by the Department. You required disclosure, in a non-proprietary electronic format"

"the CD I have received contains an encrypted file, "DE381002.exe". In order to execute this file and decrypt the contents, it would be necessary to purchase a piece of proprietary software known as Microsoft Windows "

"the associated encrypted data .. have appeared on the whatdotheyknow.com website .. meaning that this data is available to anyone with a machine running Microsoft Windows, anywhere in the world."

Submission + - Wolfram Alpha - A Highly Impressive Scientific Com (techieblues.com)

Submitted by tsuvik on Sunday May 17, 2009 @10:42PM

tsuvik writes: http://www.techieblues.com/internet/wolfram-alpha-a-highly-impressive-scientific-computation-engine/

Submission + - Protein deficiency behind 25% of schizophrenia (theage.com.au)

Submitted by kcscarp on Sunday May 17, 2009 @09:52PM

kcscarp writes: The Age reports that scientists from the Mental Research Health Institute in Parkville, Australia have discovered that a form of schizophrenia is linked to a lack of certain proteins in the brain's lining. The discovery is being compared to the discovery that type 1 and type 2 diabetes were separate diseases requiring different treatments. The group's research shows that 25 per cent of people who have schizophrenia have lost 80 per cent of a protein in their brain known as muscarinic M1 receptor. The discovery was made by examining the brain tissue of deceased patients. The next phase of the research will involve using neuro-imaging to identify living people with this form of schizophrenia.

Submission + - Swedish State-Owned Media Freeze Pirate Party Out

Submitted by Anonymous Swedish Pirate on Sunday May 17, 2009 @07:57PM

Anonymous Swedish Pirate writes: Swedish state-owned SVT (Swedish Television) held a telecast this evening on the coming EU elections. The hot debate topic was file sharing and the repressive legislation passed this year by the current government. Yet strangely every major political party was invited except the Pirate Party. Rick Falkvinge is furious. People are writing to SVT to protest. Considering SVT is government owned it's not hard, according to some, to guess why the Pirate Party was excluded.

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