leshert - Slashdot User

Tolkien Enterprises To Film Hobbit With Jackson? 152

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday November 23, 2006 @10:14AM from the rumors-keep-milling dept.

cyclomedia writes "TheOneRing.Net has a new scoop on the ongoing Hobbit Movie saga, sourced from elbenwald.de. Apparently the rights to make the Hobbit film fall back to Saul Zaentz 'next year.' He claims that, under their stewardship, The Hobbit will 'definitely be shot by Peter Jackson.' For the whippersnappers amongst you: Mr. Zaentz is the head honcho of Tolkien Enterprises, which originally acquired exclusive rights to productions of the LOTR and Hobbit material in 1976, prior to overseeing the Bakshi animated version of LOTR."

ICANN Grants Temporary Reprieve to Spamhaus 271

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @11:07AM from the yet-i'm-still-getting-spamalanched dept.

daringone writes "ICANN released a statement that says they "...cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name" They do, however leave the door open for the registrar that registered the domain name to then be forced to turn the lights off for Spamhaus."

Beck and Andres on Extreme Programming 321

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday September 19, 2006 @07:19AM from the not-terribly-extreme dept.

narramissic writes "In recent years, Extreme Programming (XP) has come of age. Its principles of transparency, trust and accountability represent a change of context that is good not only for software development but for everyone involved in the process. In this interview, Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres, co-authors of 'Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change,' discuss how XP makes improvement possible."

RFID-enabled Vehicles: Pinch My Ride 429

Posted by Hemos on Monday July 31, 2006 @12:36PM from the dude-where's-my-car dept.

Billosaur writes "Wired has an excellent article on the problems with the theft of RFID-enabled vehicles and how insurance companies are so over-confident in the technology, they are denying claims when such vehicles are stolen. Example: "Emad Wassef walked out of a Target store in Orange County, California, to find a big space where his 2003 Lincoln Navigator had been. The 38-year-old truck driver and former reserve Los Angeles police officer did what anyone would do: He reported the theft to the cops and called his insurance company. Two weeks later, the black SUV turned up near the Mexico border, minus its stereo, airbags, DVD player, and door panels. Wassef assumed he had a straightforward claim for around $25,000. His insurer, Chicago-based Unitrin Direct, disagreed." Their forensic examiner concluded that since all the keys were accounted for, there was no way the engine could have been started, despite the evidence that the ignition lock had been forced and the steering wheel locking lug had been damaged."

OSS on Windows the Next Big Thing? 351

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 28, 2006 @12:24PM from the don't-forget-the-tm-after-thing dept.

Lam1969 writes "Linux geeks and Microsoft have similar interests, says Computerworld: They both are interested in seeing open-source software succeed. Linux geeks admit that the open source OS isn't necessarily a better platform for important applications, and Microsoft recognizes that many of its customers are using open-source applications, and doesn't want to alienate them." From the article: "Faced with the allure of inexpensive open-source applications among its core customer base of small to midsize businesses, Microsoft has toned down its rhetoric. 'It's a myth that open-source and Windows can't work together. Customers just aren't religious about these things,' said Ryan Gavin, a director of platform strategy for Microsoft."

Possible Hole in Black Holes 495

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday July 28, 2006 @05:41AM from the through-the-looking-glass dept.

jd writes "Researchers have found what they believe may be a MECO (Magnetic, Eternally Collapsing Object) inside of a quasar. MECOs are rivals to black hole theory and involve plasmas that never reach the state of being a singularity. The most obvious differences between them are that MECOs have a magnetic field and do not have an event horizon. The problem lies in that the Universe cannot have both MECOs and black holes — it can only have one or the other. If this object truly is a MECO, then black holes do not exist. Anywhere. (Furthermore, this would require Professor Hawking to return a year's subscription to Private Eye and give Professor Thorne a year's subscription to Penthouse.) On the other hand, if this thing isn't a MECO, it's behaving very very oddly for a black hole."

Sun Says Java Source Already Available 304

Posted by Zonk on Thursday May 11, 2006 @12:31PM from the wha-when dept.

mjdroner writes "In an InfoWorld article, Java CTO James Gosling says that source code for Java has been available for 10 years. Gosling claims Java is close to an open source model, though discounts Sun joining the Eclipse Foundation. He goes on to say that Eclipse's endorsement of the standard widget toolkit destroyed interoperability, saying it's based on the windows API, making it problematic to run on other platforms."

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray - Is It All in the Name? 208

Posted by Cliff on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:45PM from the marketing-sells dept.

Z asks: "As most of you are aware, the dawn of the nex-gen format wars is fully upon us. We have all talked about it until we are Blu in the face, but there is one simple, yet important topic I have yet to see discussed. What is in a name? Now, bear with me for a second here while I explain. As much as we geeks would like to believe it, we are not going to be the ones who decide which format wins out in the end; consumers are. Now, we all know people hate change. Users already know what DVD is, and most would like to think they understand HD. But Blu-Ray? Your average Joe only wants one thing when it comes to new technology, a feeling of comfort and understanding; something I think Blu-Ray is going to have a hard time giving them. I can't help but wonder, is HD-DVD going to win out simply because people are going to be more familiar with the name? "

Comment Re:Offensive? (Score 2, Insightful) 426

by kNIGits on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:50PM (#13358109) Attached to: Video Tombstones

Exactly which tradition or long held belief that anyone might hold would this patently offend?

Although I'm not sure of the basis of it, the Australian Aborigine believes that viewing images of a dead person to be sacrilege. It is for this reason that ABC television places notices before some programs to warn Aborigines that the show may contain images of dead people.

Comment Re:personalized training (Score 4, Insightful) 202

by Daniel Quinlan on Friday March 04, 2005 @05:53PM (#11848401) Attached to: Interview With The SpamAssassin

(groan)

Someone (the author or some editor) added that comma to my sentence. My original email had no comma there. A clearer phrasing that would not tempt someone into adding punctuation would be:

[The least effective technique is] Any technique that tries to identify "good" mail with neither authentication backing it up nor some form of personalized training.

They also removed the name of the company where I work (IronPort), which struck me as a bit odd considering how my job allows me to do open source was part of the article. I think my employer deserves some kudos for that. Not to mention implying that I'm more than just one of the developers. There are eight commiters, six of them on the Project Management Committee and two of them (Justin Mason and Theo Van Dinter) write at least as much code as me.

Microsoft investing $1Billion in TCI

Posted by mojoski on Friday January 02, 1998 @01:13AM from the one-more-step-towards-ruling-the-world dept.

ZD-Net News is reporting that Micrsoft is about to announce a $1 Billion investment in Tele-Communications Inc. Looks like they might have control over the whole set-top box industry after all.. What do you think?

Is UNIX Stable?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 01, 1998 @03:44AM from the make-it-go-boom dept.

Sengan Baring-Gould sent in this link to metahtml.com. The articles discusses the results of reliability tests. It does say that the GNU software and the Linux Operating System did better then any offerings from a commercial source, but the percentages of success rates were quite disheartening.

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