Submission + - Demonoid - Down For Good?
NewbieV writes: "This is what the front page of Demonoid looks like this morning:
A history of the site is available in its Wikipedia entry."The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.
We have brought online a forum in order to help the community stay together. This forum is not file sharing related in any way, it's just a mean to help the community stay together — please read the forum rules before posting. You can use your Demonoid account info to log in.
Submission + - Court tosses $11 million judgment against Spamhaus
NewbieV writes: "From the NewsBlog on news.com.com.com:
"At least for now, Spamhaus, the popular British spam-blacklisting organization, won't have to cough up $11.7 million as part of a spat with an Illinois e-mail marketing company.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Thursday vacated a lower court's decision last fall to award the damages and to impose an injunction, which required the organization to cease causing any e-mail sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be "blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in any way" and to publish an apology.
Submission + - 386 Million Firefox Downloads. 96 Million Users. (zdnet.com)
NewbieV writes: "Three out of every four people who download Firefox don't use it actively. According to the Spreadfirefox website, Firefox has been downloaded over 386 million times. According to an article in the Ziff Davis blog roll, Firefox has about a 25% retention rate: half the people who download it, try it. Half of those people end up actively using it.
How to improve that retention rate? The Mozilla Foundation has a plan (which is also discussed here). What would Slashdotters recommend?"
How to improve that retention rate? The Mozilla Foundation has a plan (which is also discussed here). What would Slashdotters recommend?"
Submission + - USPTO Rejects Eolas Plug-In Patent Claims
theodp writes: "As Microsoft and Eolas work towards settling their long-running web plug-in patent lawsuit that resulted in a $521 million judgment against Microsoft and gave rise to the click-to-activate-and-use-this-control web, the USPTO has issued a non-final rejection of the patent's claims, citing the work of Pei-Yuan Wei as prior art."
Submission + - Stephen Hawking Goes ZeroG in NASA's Vomit Comet
NewsCloud writes: "The trip Slashdot described last month is complete. MSNBC reports that Cosmologist Stephen Hawking has experienced zero gravity: "Zero Gravity co-founder and chief executive officer Peter Diamandis, signaled with his fingers that the world-famous physicist went weightless eight times." Before the flight, Hawking said, "I have been wheelchair-bound for almost four decades, and the chance to float free in zero-G will be wonderful,". The article describes special precautions were taken to ensure his well-being. I thought it might kill him but I'm inspired by his accomplishment."
Submission + - Multi-touch: the future of GUIs?
malbrech writes: "Multi-touch, the wonder piece of Apple's iPhone may have a much larger future. An article in fatscompany.com describes how the genious behind Multi-touch, Jeff Han, developed the technology for large screens and gives a glimpse into the amazing potential born by the touch paradigm. There is also a fantastic video showing the use of multi-touch in various applications. Yes, reminiscences of AI become alive."
Submission + - Wii Modchip Announced
deadmantyping writes: The first modchip for the Wii, dubbed "WiiNinja", allowing the playing of backups has been announced. This comes shortly after the announcement of a method to backup Wii games. Photos of the modchip and videos of it in action were also made available by the developers. Installation requires dismantling the Wii (of course) and soldering 5 wires to the Wii's motherboard. The WiiNinja modchip will be available soon for purchase according to the developers.
Submission + - Which domain name registrar do you recommend?
Futurepower(R) writes: "GoDaddy.com, the domain name registrar, has been in the news a lot recently. Can you recommend a registrar that has better policies and fewer ads?"
Submission + - NASA Commemorates Space Shuttle Tragedies
eldavojohn writes: "Space.com is covering NASA's commemoration of the Apollo 1 crew & the last shuttle crews of both the Challenger and Columbia orbiters. The Apollo 1 crew was lost forty years ago today to a fire while testing their spacecraft on a launch pad. From the article, "While the nearly two decades separating NASA's three space disasters allowed room for the agency to grow complacent, the relatively short time between the 2003 loss of Columbia and the end of the shuttle program could avoid a repeat of such behavior.""
Submission + - Inside the Lucasfilm datacenter
passthecrackpipe writes: "Where can you find a (rhetorical) 11.38 petabits per second bandwidth? It appears to be inside the Lucasfilm Datacenter. At least, that is the headline figure mentioned in this report on a tour of the datacenter. The story is a bit light on the down-and-dirty details, but mentions a 10 gig ethernet backbone (adding up the bandwidth of a load of network connections seems to be how they derived the 11.38 petabits p/s figure. In that case, I have a 45 gig network at home.) Power utilisation is a key differentiator when buying hardware, a "legacy" cycle of a couple of months, and 300TB of storage in a 10.000 square foot datacenter. To me, the story comes across as somewhat hyped up — "look at us, we have a large datacenter" kind of thing, "look how cool we are". Over the last couple of years, I have been in many datacenters, for banks, pharma and large enterprise to name a few, that have somewhat larger and more complex setups.
It used to be so that the the SFX industry had the largest, coolest, hottest technology around. Is this still the case?"
It used to be so that the the SFX industry had the largest, coolest, hottest technology around. Is this still the case?"
Submission + - The Amazon Uncertainty Principle
elstaqub writes: Amazon.com apparently has books that are both in-stock and out-of-stock at the same time, and ships them in a way that ships in both the past and future. Apparently they have some very clever quantum mechanics working in their order processing department.
In early January I ordered a book called "Groovy In Action" from them, which they claim is "In Stock". But after I ordered, I noted that the delivery estimate slipped to March 21-23, 2007.
I figured that it just really wasn't in stock — it was a small glitch of some kind in their huge system. But when I tried to cancel the order on the web, its status was "Shipping Soon — We are preparing these items for shipment and this portion of your order cannot be canceled or changed."
Well, I've heard of slow shipping, but I figured that NOBODY could be that slow. So I sent them a note asking what was going on.
Here's what I got back:
In early January I ordered a book called "Groovy In Action" from them, which they claim is "In Stock". But after I ordered, I noted that the delivery estimate slipped to March 21-23, 2007.
I figured that it just really wasn't in stock — it was a small glitch of some kind in their huge system. But when I tried to cancel the order on the web, its status was "Shipping Soon — We are preparing these items for shipment and this portion of your order cannot be canceled or changed."
Well, I've heard of slow shipping, but I figured that NOBODY could be that slow. So I sent them a note asking what was going on.
Here's what I got back:
Unfortunately, I can't cancel your order for the item "Groovy in Action" because it's already in the shipping process.
I have researched your order and see that it has entered the shipping process . We were able to ship your package in advance of the date estimated on our web site. Your actual ship date is March 18, 2007. We have prepared in advance to ship your order, so we expect your order will arrive within March 21, 2007 — March 23, 2007 or you will get before.
I have researched your order and note that it has been shipped via USPS. There is no tracking number available for this service.
So, they aren't shipping for two months, but they won't let me cancel the order. Aren't there laws against this kind of thing?
I have researched your order and see that it has entered the shipping process . We were able to ship your package in advance of the date estimated on our web site. Your actual ship date is March 18, 2007. We have prepared in advance to ship your order, so we expect your order will arrive within March 21, 2007 — March 23, 2007 or you will get before.
I have researched your order and note that it has been shipped via USPS. There is no tracking number available for this service.
Submission + - Search with your voice
An anonymous reader writes: Acccording to this report, Music social networking site midomi.com is showcasing a new search technology that allows you to search for music by singing, whistling or humming a few bars of a song to identify the track. The search engine technology was even able to correctly identify songs sung by the writer, who is says he is a hopeless singer.
Submission + - Microsoft wanted to "whack" Dell
pboyd2004 writes: According to emails obtained in Iowa's antitrust case against Microsoft. Microsoft wanted to "whack" Dell over their Linux sales. "We should whack them, we should make sure they understand our value," wrote Paul Flessner, a senior vice president in Microsoft's server applications unit. The email exchange can be found here.
Submission + - Court Documents Show Microsoft's Tiger Envy
phillymjs writes: "PC Pro is reporting on another juicy e-mail nugget from the Sent Items of Jim Allchin, (nyud link, PDF) courtesy of Iowa's Comes v. Microsoft trial. It's a lengthy e-mail conversation from late June, 2004 — in which several Microsofties ooh and ahh over features of the yet-unreleased Mac OS X 10.4. IMHO the award for best quote goes to Lenn Pryor, who said, 'It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.'"
