samzenpus - Slashdot User

Submission + - An Independent Film Producer Confronts Piracy In A Unique Way (filmmakermagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06, 2012 @05:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: Producer Matt Compton says he knew the feature he produced — a “thinking man’s horror film,” Midnight Son — would eventually be pirated. “I always knew the film would end up on the torrent sites,” he writes in an email, “and that there would be nothing I could do about it." But he wasn’t prepared for his film to show up three weeks before the film was commercially available. When that happened, Compton decided to speak to the pirates directly by posting on The Pirate Bay. I asked him a few questions about his experience in the high seas of filesharing.

Submission + - NASA Releases HiRISE Images of Curiosity's Descent (nasa.gov)

Submitted by gcnaddict on Monday August 06, 2012 @03:17PM

gcnaddict writes: NASA released content from the MRO HiRISE imager taken during the descent of the Curiosity Rover. Among the most notable artifacts are the images themselves as well as a diagram showing the exact location of the rover relative to NASA's target.

Submission + - MSL Landing Timeline: What to Expect Tonight (ieee.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05, 2012 @04:01PM

An anonymous reader writes: When the Curiosity rover lands on Mars later tonight, she'll be executing a complex series of maneuvers. JPL will be relying on the Mars Odyssey orbiter to relay telemetry back to Earth in time-delayed real-time, and if all goes well, we'll be getting confirmation on the success (or failure) of each entry, descent, and landing phase, outlined in detail here.

Submission + - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Hits Primetime (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Goat_Cheese_Pizza on Monday July 30, 2012 @02:16PM

Goat_Cheese_Pizza writes: Word on the Intertubes (I picked the Washington Post) is Joss Whedon's musical masterpiece, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, will air on CW's primetime lineup on October 9th. I've always wanted to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog with commercials! Thanks, CW!

Submission + - The US turns a blind eye to SILEX, a dangerous new enrichment technology (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by __aaqpaq9254 on Monday July 30, 2012 @01:10PM

__aaqpaq9254 writes: Scott Kemp has a disturbing look at SILEX, a new technology that "happens to be well suited for making nuclear weapons." There are many disturbing aspects the this article, not least that the NRC, which is required to consider the critical question of proliferation, has so far punted when it comes to examining that question. "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has refused to consider the proliferation risk in its decision to issue a license for the first commercial SILEX facility, despite a statutory obligation to do so. Only a few weeks remain for Congress to intervene."

Comment Re:Censored Slashdot Post (Score 2) 264

by samzenpus on Monday July 30, 2012 @09:49AM (#40817331) Attached to: Will Real Name Policies Improve Comments?

Normally we try not to feed the trolls but since this has started to pop up in comments, here's Soulskills response to this tired accusation when it was brought up on Reddit last week. http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/wzmdu/censored_slashdot_post_describes_in_explicit/c5hzate. Or you could read the FAQ about why we don't post a story. The relevant part being:
Could you explain why my submission was declined?

This is harder than it sounds. We try to select the most interesting, timely, and relevant submissions, but can only run a fraction of those submitted; there are probably as many reasons for stories to get declined as there are stories. Think positive: read our submissions guidelines for some hints about increasing the chances that we'll run yours.

Submission + - Asteroid Crashes Likely Gave Earth Its Water (space.com)

Submitted by Diggester on Sunday July 15, 2012 @06:38AM

Diggester writes: Asteroids from the inner solar system are the most likely source of the majority of Earth's water, a new study suggests.

The results contradict prevailing theories, which hold that most of our planet's water originated in the outer solar system and was delivered by comets or asteroids that coalesced beyond Jupiter's orbit, then migrated inward.

Submission + - Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome? (linuxinsider.com)

Submitted by dgharmon on Saturday June 30, 2012 @02:03PM

dgharmon writes: The Command Line Interface has its uses, acknowledged Mobile Raptor blogger Roberto Lim, "but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via CLI; keep it as an option or you can take it out all together. "If it is there, it should just be there for the IT people or tech support to use when you encounter a problem."

Submission + - My Child Will One Day Be Your Child's Leader (cbsnews.com) 1

Submitted by

Vulcan195

on Sunday June 24, 2012 @10:05AM

Vulcan195 writes: "Would you let your 3-yr play with a real saw? You would if you were a parent in Switzerland. Suzanne Lucas (a US mom residing in Switzerland) writes about the contrasts between the US and Swiss ways of instilling wisdom. She writes: "Every Friday, whether rain, shine, snow, or heat, my 3-yr old goes into the forest for four hours with 10 other school children. In addition to playing with saws and files, they roast their own hot dogs over an open fire. If a child drops a hot dog, the teacher picks it up, brushes the dirt off, and hands it back." She suggests that such kids grow up and lead the ones who were coddled (e.g. US kids) during their early years."

Submission + - Details of the Second Controversial Mutant Bird Flu Study Finally Published (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21, 2012 @05:56PM

An anonymous reader writes: The second of the two controversial bird flu studies once considered too risky to publish in fears that they would trigger a potentially devastating global influenza epidemic was published Thursday.

The study describes how scientists created H5N1 virus strains that could become capable of airborne transmission between mammals. Scientists said that the findings, which had been censored for half a year, could help them detect dangerous virus strains in nature.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6088/1534.full

Submission + - Inexplicable stellar disk (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by Coisiche on Monday June 18, 2012 @11:00AM

Coisiche writes: A star has been found with an over-sized debris ring that's difficult to reconcile with current star system models. I expect that there will be a natural phenomenon behind it but just once I want to see "artificial" as the only explanation for something like this.

Submission + - Google Reveals 'Terrorism Video' Removals

Submitted by jones_supa on Monday June 18, 2012 @09:19AM

jones_supa writes: Google has revealed it removed about 640 videos from YouTube that allegedly promoted terrorism over the second half of 2011 after complaints from the UK's Association of Chief Police Officers. The news was contained in its latest Transparency Report which discloses requests by international authorities to remove or hand over material. YouTube had also rejected many other state's requests for action. Overall, Google summed it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011. From those, it said 68% of the orders were complied with. Google added that it had received a further 546 informal requests covering 4,925 items, of which it had agreed to 43% of the cases. The BBC article lists some examples of videos that were either terminated or allowed to stay.

Submission + - Researchers Find Methods for Bypassing Google's Bouncer Android Security (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Monday June 04, 2012 @02:22PM

Trailrunner7 writes: Google's Android platform has become the most popular mobile operating system both among consumers and malware writers, and the company earlier this year introduced the Bouncer system to look for malicious apps in the Google Play market. Bouncer, which checks for malicious apps and known malware, is a good first step, but as new work from researchers Jon Oberheide and Charlie Miller shows, it can be bypassed quite easily and in ways that will be difficult for Google to address in the long term.

Oberheide and Miller, both well-known for their work on mobile security, went into their research without much detailed knowledge of how the Bouncer system works. Google has said little publicly about its capabilities, preferring not to give attackers any insights into the system's inner workings. So Oberheide and Miller looked at it as a challenge, an exercise to see how much they could deduce about Bouncer from the outside, and, as it turns out, the inside.

Oberheide and Miller set up some fake Google accounts and began submitting apps to Google Play, the new name for what was originally called the Android Market. They wanted to get a sense of the kind of environment that Google uses to analyze apps, see what weak spots the system may have and then look for methods to use them to bypass Bouncer entirely. One of the apps that they submitted contained some functionality that called out to a server that the researchers controlled once it was in the Bouncer environment. The app gave them a remote shell on the system and the ability to issue commands and see what was happening as Bouncer was analyzing the app.

Amazon Patents Electronic Gifting 164

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 31, 2012 @08:09AM from the all-your-gifts-are-belong-to-us dept.

theodp writes "Simply giving your mother an e-book for her birthday could constitute patent infringement now that the USPTO's gone and awarded Amazon.com a patent on the 'Electronic Gifting' of items such as music, movies, television programs, games, or books. BusinessInsider speculates that the patent may be of concern to Facebook, which just dropped a reported $80 million on social gift-giving app maker Karma Science."

Submission + - IT Desktop Support To Be Wiped Out Thanks To Cloud Computing (lazytechguys.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30, 2012 @05:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: Tech industry experts are saying that tech jobs with desktop support in the Information Technology department will be declining sharply thanks to cloud computing. Why is this happening? A large majority of companies and government agencies will rely on the cloud for more than half of their IT services by 2020, according to Gartner’s 2011 CIO Agenda Survey.

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