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Submission + - Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Myths

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "This Tech ARP guide/article was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk drive (HDD) that are still being propagated in many forum discussions. Although many articles have covered these topics, it is apparent that hard drive urban legends are still more popular than the simple truth. Here are the basics and examined some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them..."
Movies

Submission + - Shrek 3 & Linux (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "We know the first Shrek used Linux & that rendering Shrek takes a lot of computers. But recently, Linux has played a larger and larger role for Shrek development. Enter the popular Linux Maya commercial package for 3-D modeling employed by Dreamworks Animation Studios for the latest Shrek release. Over 1,000 Linux developer desktops went into the recent movie's production (and over 3,000 server CPUs!). Be sure to peruse the section entitled "The Linux Pipeline" that describes a lot how the process worked: "Each frame is assigned to a different node of the renderfarm by grid software (using Platform LSF, a commercial Linux package), so that many frames can be output simultaneously. The frames are edited into a movie using Avid software (not on Linux). Early in the process, hand-drawn storyboard images are scanned, and a scratch audio track is edited together creating a rough video representation of the movie. As each sequence is completed, it replaces the rough storyboard footage, building the fully rendered movie scene by scene.""
The Courts

RIAA Accused of Extortion & Conspiracy 373

Posted by Zonk from the this-is-new-oh-in-court dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in a Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, has filed counterclaims accusing the RIAA record labels of conspiracy and extortion. The counterclaims (pdf) are for Trespass, Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030), Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201), Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523), and Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. 559.72 et seq."
Music

Guitartabs.com Suspends Under Legal Pressure 348

Posted by kdawson from the not-another-mpaa dept.
Music publishers are stepping up their campaign to remove guitar tablature from the Net. Recently Guitartabs.com received a nastygram from lawyers for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. These organizations want to stretch the definition of their intellectual property to include by-ear transcriptions of music. Guitartabs.com is currently not offering tablature while the owner evaluates his legal options.
Google

Submission + - Inside Google's Black Box

Submitted by
Pcol
Pcol writes: "Google's "ranking algorithm" — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user's question is crucial part of Google's inner sanctum, a department called "search quality" that the company treats like a state secret. Google recently allowed a reporter from the New York Times to spend a day with Google Fellow Amit Singhal and his search-quality team who explained how every week they make about a half-dozen major and minor changes to the vast nest of mathematical formulas that power the search engine. Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages than PageRank. The system, involving more than 200 types of information, are what Google calls "signals." Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years. Increasingly, Google is using signals that come from its history of what individual users have searched for in the past, in order to offer results that reflect each person's interests. "People still think that Google is the gold standard of search," says John Battelle, author of "The Search," a book about Google. "Their secret sauce is how these guys are doing it all in aggregate. There are 1,000 little tunings they do.""
Biotech

Human Blood May Contain A Cure For AIDS 309

Posted by Zonk from the that-would-be-quite-convenient dept.
Lisandro writes "German scientists at the University of Ulm have identified a natural ingredient of human blood that prevents the HIV-1 virus from from infecting immune cells and multiplying. The molecule, which they call virus-inhibitory peptide (VIRIP), promises new types of effective treatment for HIV in the future. 'Tweaks to its amino acid components boosted its anti-HIV potency by two orders of magnitude. Tests also showed that some derivatives of the molecule are highly stable in human blood plasma, and non-toxic even at very high concentrations. A synthetic version of VIRIP also proved effective at blocking HIV, excluding the possibility that some other factor was responsible. VIRIP targets a sugar molecule which HIV uses to infect a host cell. '"
Privacy

Submission + - Elderly people could be electronically tagged

Submitted by petermp
petermp writes: Elderly people suffering from dementia could be electronically tagged.
UK Science minister Malcolm Wicks suggested that such tagging technology, which is already used to track convicted criminals on early release from prison, could also help a family caring for an elderly relative.
Full story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/19/elderly_de mentia_tag/
What is the next step ?
Security

Submission + - $10,000 offered in Hack a Mac Competition

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Both SecurityFocus and ZDNet are reporting that the competition at CanSecWest to 0wn a fully patched mac book just got a little more interesting. As previously reported on SD, TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative pays for vulnerability discoveries. They are offering $10,000 to the first successful remote compromise, and will report the issue to Apple after the competition. So far it seems, no one has successfully hacked a Mac yet.
Software

Submission + - What's the best Speech Recognition today?

Submitted by StonyCreekBare
StonyCreekBare writes: A client wants to build a kiosk system intended to interact with the user entirely via speech. Speech Recognition is absolutely key to the success of the project, so an excellent speech recognition engine is absolutely key to success.

Key requirements are Speaker Independence, and a large vocabulary, with a great deal of flexibility for recognizing arbitrary speech. The system needs to interact with arbitrary speakers on a walk-up basis.

I have built a reasonable "Proof-of-concept" prototype using an L&H / Windows based system. I was quite pleased with the overall performance of the system, and believe an optimized system could do even better. My goal is not so much to improve the recognition performance (although there is room for improvement), as to improve the system reliability and to have more control at the system level.

There seems to be two candidates to supply the system. Microsoft and Nuance.

The Microsoft Speech SDK has the unfortunate circumstance of being innately wedded to Windows, and all the other viable systems (such as L&H, and Viavoice) seem to have been acquired by Nuance. Microsoft's system seems to require a lot of training to perform well, which is unacceptable. At least the L&H system is truly speaker independent. I would greatly prefer to use a Linux or BSD solution, if viable, so that requires a *nix compatible solution.

I have seen some other systems, mostly proprietary systems for telephony applications. e.g. Sprint, to name one. I hear about other systems such as Sphinx from Carnegie Mellon, and a system from Phillips, both of which I do not know much about and do not know anyone actually using.

What are Slashdot users experiences with the various systems available? Have I overlooked any good candidates? What is the "bleeding edge" in reliable speech recognition? Am I going to be forced to use Windows?

-Stony
Security

Submission + - Dangerous Worm

Submitted by
R65guy
R65guy writes: "Computerworld is reporting on a nasty new worm that has recently started circulating. It contains a copy of the "Storm Trojan" rootkit in a deceiving wrapper. I've gotten two copies of it already in my personal Email this morning."
The Internet

Submission + - Women outnumber men online; Men watch videos more.

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "EMarketer (seen on Digg) reports that women outnumber men online, and it's likely to stay that way. Females now constitute an undeniable majority of the United States/U.S. Internet population. It also reports that there will be an estimated 97.2 million female Internet users ages 3 and older in 2007, or 51.7% of the total online population. In 2011, 109.7 million U.S. females will go online, amounting to 51.9% of the total online population... On a related story, Shacknews mentions MSNBC's story on how women prefer the remote over the mouse when it comes to watching videos even though they outnumber men in cyberspace. It says only 66 percent of women are watching videos online compared to 78 percent of men..."
Links

Submission + - Public Toilets Database with Maps and Locations

Submitted by
William
William writes: "A publicly accessible database has been set up at www.publictoilets.org . You can search for public toilets in 19 countries and find out information that includes the address, Googlemaps and detailed information about the facility as well as geographic coordinates. A user can submit comments and enter new locations. There is a wiki, forum and mailing list linked from the main page of the database with information related to public toilets. It is hoped that public exposure to this resource will add to it's content and help expand coverage.

For more information contact:
wstan@publictoilets.org

or go to:

www.publictoilets.org"
Media

Submission + - Why Web Apps Can Never Replace Desktop Apps

Submitted by
tooger
tooger writes: "Matt Hartley from MadPenguin.org writes why web apps can never replace desktop applications for a variety of reasons. These reasons include from privacy to reliability. He writes, "With services like GMail that are too anxious to give us free access to e-mail storage, the offering for file storage is still fairly laughable. And that's not even considering the sheer bandwidth that is needed to make huge file transfers. Then there is the matter of privacy. Some of you may point out that the data stored on your hard drive is not of any real consequence, but I would disagree. It is more than probable that a skilled, disgruntled employee of the company you trust with your data could run away with key data you entrust to sell off your personal information."

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