joe user jr - Slashdot User

Submission + - DownLoad HD Movie In One Second - IBM Optical Chip

Submitted by

happylucky

on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @04:33AM

happylucky writes: "IBM Scientists unveiled a new optical transceiver chipset that will allow you to download a full length HD movie in about a second. I dont know about you, but even high-speed internet just seems too slow sometimes. The company plans on integrating these chips into printed circuit boards. The transfer rate is an astounding 160 Gigabits per second (or 160 billion bits of information in a single second). One chip measuring 3.25 by 5.25 millimeters in size (that is smaller than a dime) can handle 4 million simultaneous telephone conversations. That is one conversation between every two New York City residents."

Submission + - NetTunes: the new Napster

Submitted by on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @12:22AM

An anonymous reader writes: PC World of New Zealand has an interesting article about a new music sharing service called NetTunes.
From the article:

Recording industry attack lawyers are no doubt being readied after the emergence of a new and apparently legal form of music sharing. Called NetTunes, it's basically a mutual fund for music.

Copyright law has always allowed you to lend CDs to friends. NetTunes simply extends your friendship network to encompass all other registered users.

The concept is deliciously simple. You spend most of your life not playing a particular song — meaning another of your new friends is free to play it. And if there happens to be 20 or 2,000 copies of that particular track on NetTunes, then the chances of any one copy being available to play right now is very high.

The beta service is currently a free registration, so get in quick. It's Windows only for now (though the software works perfectly under Wine on Linux), and a Mac version's on the way.
NetTunes website

Submission + - Progress on the Aritficial Brain

Submitted by Iron Condor on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @07:50PM

Iron Condor writes: The German magazine Der Spiegel has an article about the progress on the largest simulation of a part of a brain on the planet — with first interesting snippets and an outlook on the future (including, so the researchers hope, a simulation of a full human brain). Notable quote:

A project this ambitious would have been ridiculed a few years ago. "Today we have the computers we need," says biologist Henry Markram, 44, the project's director. "And we know enough to begin."

Submission + - Score: IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326

Submitted by

The Peanut Gallery

on Thursday March 15, 2007 @05:36PM

The Peanut Gallery writes: "After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO's "mountain of code" is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files, like errno.h, which probably aren't copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities, aren't owned by SCO in any event, and which IBM has at least five separate licenses for, including the GPL, even if SCO actually owned those lines of code. In contrast, IBM is able to point out 700,000 lines of code, which they have properly registered copyrights for, which SCO is infringing upon if the Court rules that it has, in fact, repudiated the GPL. If this were a game show, I suspect SCO would be complaining that their buzzer wasn't working right about now."

Submission + - Critical flaw in current Firefox discovered

Submitted by HuckleCom on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:52AM

HuckleCom writes: F-Secure has a blog post regarding the latest version of Firefox and a vulnerability that allows malicious javascript code to manipulate any of your cookies.

From the Blog: "There's a new bug reported in the way Firefox handles writes to the 'location.hostname' DOM property. The vulnerability could potentially allow a malicious website to manipulate the authentication cookies for a third-party site."

From what I can recollect, this seems to be the first vulnerability discovered in the actual current version of Firefox — at least for a good long time.

Submission + - Skype BIOS Access due to DRM, Stops Doing It

Submitted by

ghoti

on Friday February 09, 2007 @09:36AM

ghoti writes: "As reported on /., Skype was recently found to read the BIOS, and there was much speculation as to the reasons. It turns out that it's due to DRM, and Skype blames a their new "Extras Gallery" plug-in manager. They have since upgraded that one to at least not access the BIOS anymore. The bad aftertaste of DRM and big-brothering remains, though."

Submission + - Carbon Nanotubes For Non-Volative Computer Memory

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @02:13AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the University of California have developed telescoping carbon nanotube memory which is non-volatile and may offer the possibility of atomic-scale computer data storage that would replace both RAM, FLASH RAM, and hard drive storage in the next few cycles. The URL is http://www.physorg.com/news89986583.html.

Submission + - Using the Wiimote to DJ

Submitted by

Tony

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @01:24AM

Tony writes: "Here's a site about a DJ (DJ !, or "DJ Shift-1") using two Wii-motes to control his DJ setup on his PC. He says: "As much of a gimmick this looks like, it really works like a charm." And "Don't think of this as much DJing with video game controllers, but the birth of DJing with WIRELESS DJ controls." He's got a couple videos on his site demonstrating his setup. Yet another original use of the wireless Wii controllers."

Submission + - Proposal Would Ban Talking and Walking...

Submitted by

detex

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @12:24AM

detex writes: ""A state senator from Brooklyn, NY said on Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation that would ban people from using an MP3 player, cell phone, Blackberry or any other electronic device while crossing the street in either New York City or Buffalo." This is ridiculous. So now you get a ticket if you listen to your ipod and walk? I thought they were designed to jog with. hmmm http://www.wnbc.com/news/10948106/detail.html"

Submission + - 19 Coutries File OpenXML Contradictions

Submitted by

Excelcia

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @12:16AM

Excelcia writes: "The deadline for filing contradictions on the Microsoft OpenXML ISO bid, and the results are in. A total of 19 countries have filed, comprising most of the free world, although the United States seems to be absent from the list. From Andy Upgrove's Blog on the subject:

This may not only be the largest number of countries that have ever submitted contradictions in the ISO/IEC process, but nineteen responses is greater than the total number of national bodies that often bother to vote on a proposed standard at all ... All in all, not a very auspicious start for OOXML. And not one that augers well for a very fast Fast Track experience. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft deals with this slap in the face.
"

Submission + - QEDWiki

Submitted by Adi Lane on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @07:21PM

Adi Lane writes: Take advantage of QEDWiki, an emerging mash-up maker technology that provides Web users and developers with a single Web application framework for hosting and developing Web 2.0 applications. Business users can quickly and easily create their own Web applications without depending on software engineers.

Submission + - UK Standards Institute Contradicts OOXML Fasttrack

Submitted by podmf on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @12:33PM

podmf writes: It looks like recent lobbying in the UK may result in a more rigorous vetting process for the proposal to make OOXML an ISO standard. The ISO's UK, The British Standards Institute, has issued a contradiction.

Submission + - GPS for cyclists?

Submitted by antifoidulus on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @12:05PM

antifoidulus writes: As an avid cyclist but someone who gets lost frequently, I have always wanted a GPS system like some of my friends have in their cars. But I wasn't sure that I could find soemthing that was accurate enough for cyclists as well as something that wouldn't tell me to go on a highway when it was obviously unsafe. However, as always technology has marched forwards and there seem to be several handheld units that are accurate enough for cyclists. Some seem to be a very fancy(and somewhat expensive) bike computers without much navigation aid, others seem to be navigation aides with a bit of bike computer tacked on. Have any slashdotters ever used a GPS on their bike? If so, what kind? My ideal GPS would have maps for both North America and Europe(and maybe Japan as well). Any suggestions?

Submission + - QEMU Accelerator driver GPL'ed

Submitted by Jack on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @11:07AM

Jack writes: This driver, aka KQEMU, provides near-native performance when the guest and host architectures are identical (emulation of x86 guest on x86 host for instance). Without it the guest system remains desperately slow under QEMU.
While QEMU has always been open source, providing a free alternative to VMWare, KQEMU was previously distributed separately under a proprietary license. It is now available under the GPL version 2.
The announce on the developer's site is rather laconic and does not mention any specific reason for this change, but the recently discussed release of an open source edition of VirtualBox (which lacks important features, notably USB support and shared folders) may well have been an incentive to it.

Submission + - Movie Piracy Claims Mostly Fiction

Submitted by

Justin Primus

on Monday February 05, 2007 @10:55AM

Justin Primus writes: "Michael Geist's weekly column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) dismantles recent claims that Canada is the world's leading movie piracy haven. The article uses the industry's own data to demonstrate that the assertions about movie camcording and its economic impact are greatly exaggerated and that the MPAA's arguments about Canadian copyright law are misleading. I particularly liked how Geist dug up the fact that the MPAA itself says that there have only been 179 camcorded movies over the past three years out of the 1,400 that the Hollywood studios released."

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