Lord Fury - Slashdot User

Submission + - Computerworld eats babies. (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Lerc on Friday December 21, 2007 @05:34PM

Lerc writes: Computerworld has posted a response to people who called them on their use of the term Bricked in a recent article. They are standing beside their use of the term. It seems they support the idea of misleading headlines in order to gain reader attention arguing that the body of the article still provides accurate information. "The facts in the article are clear and straightforward, and if the headline gets the attention of one user who *won't* walk up to you Wednesday morning with a cheesed laptop, I think you'll agree the verbal slap upside the head is worth it."

Submission + - $100 laptop hits choppy waters in Nigeria (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by 00_NOP on Friday December 21, 2007 @08:04AM

00_NOP writes: The $100 laptop project seems to be running into difficulty in Nigeria where, on the one hand the education minister says: "What is the sense of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?" and yet is also revealed to be examining alternatives from Microsoft and Intel, well known for their dislike of the project.
The BBC's report also has some video from Nicholas Negroponte.
Clearly both companies see the little green box as a big threat — either because of its use of Linux or it's use of AMD hardware. With deep pockets maybe they'll be offering the Nigerians some sweeteners to look at the alternatives?

Submission + - Salt a Burger, go to Jail

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, 2007 @09:01AM

An anonymous reader writes: Apparently, in Georgia oversalting a burger can get you arrested. According to the AP http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070909/ap_on_fe_st/od d_salty_burger;_ylt=AotbWDiQVItw8JfwjhrcVvKs0NUE "A McDonald's employee spent a night in jail and is facing criminal charges because a police officer's burger was too salty, so salty that he says it made him sick." Now the question is, why did he keep eating it if it was that bad?

Submission + - Microsoft Patents Uncrackable DRM

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, 2007 @08:20AM

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has just received a little-known patent for a "Stealthy audio watermarking," which is seemingly uncrackable, since it uses spread-spectrum technology to hide its traces within music files. As the patent's abstract explains it: "The watermark identifies the content producer, providing a signature that is embedded in the audio signal and cannot be removed. The watermark is designed to survive all typical kinds of processing and malicious attacks." True, watermarking is not the same as file encrpyption. However, an end-to-end music system could use watermarking to verify ownership. Does this mean it might be time to revise the DRM scorecard?

Submission + - Earth's Largest Telescope in Danger of Shut-Down

Submitted by slashdotter on Monday September 10, 2007 @08:06AM

slashdotter writes: Earth's largest radio telescope, located in Puerto Rico, is in danger of closing for lack of money.The National Science Foundation has told Cornell University, which operates the facility, that if it cannot find $4 million in outside funding in the next three years,it will be shut down, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Submission + - US feds shun net neutrality laws

Submitted by Rob on Monday September 10, 2007 @07:29AM

Rob writes: The US Justice Department late last week balked at proposed net neutrality laws, which would prohibit network operators from charging for faster delivery of their content or favoring certain content over others. But most major internet companies, including eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, fear that the absence of net neutrality laws opens the door for a two-tiered Internet with a fast lane for those willing to pay for priority content and a slow lane in which operators could compromise services to encourage a switch to the more profitable tier.

Submission + - Halo 3 Cheaters to be Banned Till 9999 AD

Submitted by

Gary

on Monday September 10, 2007 @06:23AM

Gary writes: "Anyone trying to sneak into the closed beta a few weeks before release will get slammed with the biggest ban hammer ever! Literally, they get there accounts banned till 9999 AD, some 7,447 years after the events of Halo 3 take place. This was discovered by a 17-year-old Minnesotan who goes by the name 'Scar' the hard way. An avid gamer with a GameScore of 61,000 got kicked because he got Epsilon from a friend's friend and tried to glitch it into his account using the two controller exploit."

Submission + - Action figures vs. riot police in Singapore

Submitted by

reviewsbyp

on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:51AM

reviewsbyp writes: ""A protest action by a group of Singaporeans with Japanese anime figurines such as the 5-inch tall Ultramen, robots and monsters with placards met some real-life police in the city-state." (via Yahoo news). Check out photos of the protesting action figures (complete with mini-pickets!)

This was a protest because of the RIAA-style takedown of downloaders by anime distributor ODEX. Ironically, the Singapore courts have decided that ODEX has "no right of civil action" against illegal downloaders because they are neither the copyright holders nor exclusive licensees of the anime."

Submission + - Chicago public school's $60 million software fails

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:47AM

An anonymous reader writes: When the 380,730 students showed up for the first day of class at the Chicago Public Schools little did they know that the $60 million computer information system that records attendance would go kaput forcing the staff to resort to manual methods of taking attendance. Some students just disappeared from electronic rosters, then mysteriously reappeared by the end of the day, some teachers got the error 'out of memory' after repeated failed attempts to register student attendance.

Submission + - Today's OS User Interfaces: All Fluff, No Function (osweekly.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: OSWeekly.com brings forth a good point. Today's operating systems are all focusing on user interfaces and how to one up each other, while blatantly ignoring functionality. Why? The article continues with: "I think there needs to be a balance here. To some degree, developers and users alike must learn to place less importance on the appearance of an OS and a little more on new and improved ways of making sure painfully obvious flaws are being dealt with. To be fair, this has generally been done with some success, but lately it feels like this has been falling further and further by the wayside.

Submission + - Comcast Blocks BitTorrent (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by FsG on Friday August 17, 2007 @09:06PM

FsG writes: Over the past few weeks, more and more Comcast users have reported that their BitTorrent traffic is severely throttled and they are totally unable to seed. Comcast doesn't seem to discriminate between legitimate and infringing torrent traffic, and most of the BitTorrent encryption techniques in use today aren't helping. If more ISPs adopt their strategy, could this mean the end of BitTorrent?

Big Releases Heat Up High-Def Format War 247

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @03:13PM from the still-a-dead-heat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Choosing sides in the high-def format war becomes that much harder today, as two powerhouse movie franchises hit store shelves on opposing formats. Exclusive to Blu-ray are the first two 'Pirates of the Caribbean' flicks, while exclusive to HD DVD are two different configurations of the 'Matrix' Trilogy. So which format wins this battle? According to High-Def Digest, this one's a draw. The article has capsule reviews of the four releases ('The Ultimate Matrix Collection' & 'The Complete Matrix Trilogy' on HD DVD, and 'POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl' & 'POTC: Dead Man's Chest' on Blu-ray) with links to excruciatingly in-depth reviews. In the end the site says both sets of releases boast benchmark video and audio, but a preponderance of standard-def supplements prevent all of the above from being the perfect high-def package."

Submission + - MS Wants to Identify All Web Surfers, All the Time

Submitted by Moochman on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @02:47PM

Moochman writes: New Scientist reports on a technology Microsoft is developing to identify users based on their browsing habits. Quote: "The software could get its raw information from a number of sources, including a new type of 'cookie' program that records the pages visited. Alternatively, it could use your PC's own cache of web pages, or proxy servers could maintain records of sites visited. So far it can only guess gender and age with any accuracy," but the aim is to be able to identify name, occupation and location as well. On a related note, The Inq reports on Microsoft's plans to widen the use of its identity-verification technology CardSpace, which is built into Windows Vista and available as an add-on to XP. It's being envisioned as an identity solution for the entire internet: says Kim Cameron, pioneer of the technology, "We feel it has to solve all use cases." (Aha, so the anonymous use cases, too, eh?) One might ask, with all of this user-identification information on hand, how long will it be until the Feds come knocking on Microsoft's door asking for help? They already have.

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