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Social Networks

Of Catty Rants and Copyrights 339

Posted by kdawson from the you-are-not-a-lawyer dept.
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A newspaper copies a rant from a girl's MySpace page and reprints it as a 'Letter to the Editor' without her permission. Could the girl sue for copyright violation? This question provoked much more disagreement among legal experts than I expected." Read on for the details.
The Internet

Ad Networks the Laggards In Jackson Traffic Spike 176

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-else-is-new dept.
miller60 writes "Advertising networks are being cited as the major bottlenecks in performance woes experienced by major news sites during the crush of Internet traffic Thursday as news broke about the death of pop star Michael Jackson. An analysis by Keynote found that many news sites delivered their own content promptly, only to find their page delivery delayed by slow-loading ads. The inclusion of third-party content on high-traffic pages is a growing challenge for site operators. It's not just ads, as social media widgets are also seeing wider usage on commercial sites. How best to balance the content vs. performance tradeoffs?"
NASA

NASA Requests Help With Von Braun's Notes 148

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yes-actually-it-is-rocket-science dept.
DynaSoar writes "NASA is soliciting ideas from the public on how best to catalog and digitize the collected notes of Wernher von Braun. 'We're looking for creative ways to get it out to the public,' said project manager Jason Crusan. 'We don't always do the best with putting out large sets of data like this.' The PDF notes are those of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the first director of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and are typed with copious handwritten notes in the margin. According to the official request for information, NASA needs ideas on what format to use (PDF), how to index the notes, and how to create a useful database. The unique nature and historical value of the data, literally discovered in boxes six months ago, is what motivated NASA to ask the public for ideas."
Cellphones

Controversy Over San Francisco Public Transportation Data 111

Posted by Soulskill from the information-wants-to-be-expensive-sometimes dept.
paimin writes "A struggle is breaking out in San Francisco over whether the developer of a publicly-funded installation of real-time tracking for the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency has a right to control the use of data from the system. The situation is not totally clear, but this sure seems like an attempt to use patent threats to hijack public data. The city paid for the system, and the developer claims he lost money on the deal, so now he's shutting down applications like Routesy and Munitime that use data from the system unless they license the 'copyrighted' data from him."
Businesses

Hospital Confirms Steve Jobs's Liver Transplant 402

Posted by kdawson from the so-just-say-so-already dept.
CNet is reporting that the hospital where Apple's CEO reportedly got a liver transplant two months ago has now confirmed the truth of these reports. "Steve Jobs underwent his liver transplant about two months ago at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, the hospital confirmed Tuesday. Jobs, who returned to work Apple's campus in Cupertino, Calif., on Monday after a six-month medical leave, 'is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis,' according to a statement by Dr. James D. Eason, the program director of the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute. ... While Eason said the confirmation was being provided with Jobs's approval, he cited patient confidentially in saying that he could not reveal any further information on the specifics of Jobs's surgery."
Power

French Fusion Experiment Delayed Until 2025 or Beyond 272

Posted by timothy from the time-travel-will-patch-things-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The old joke is that fusion is the power of the future and always will be. But it's not looking so funny for ITER, an EU10 billion fusion experiment in France. According to Nature News, ITER will not conduct energy-producing experiments until at least 2025 — five years later than what had been previously agreed to. The article adds that the reactor will cost even more than the seven parties in the project first thought:'...Construction costs are likely to double from the 5-billion (US$7-billion) estimate provided by the project in 2006, as a result of rises in the price of raw materials, gaps in the original design, and an unanticipated increase in staffing to manage procurement. The cost of ITER's operations phase, another 5 billion over 20 years, may also rise.'"
Television

Xbox To Get Live TV and Massive VOD Update 124

Posted by Soulskill from the consoles-are-eating-the-rest-of-my-devices dept.
CNETNate writes "It's a global first for Microsoft, and massive news for Xbox owners. Redmond and the largest pay TV service in the UK — Sky, owned in part by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp — has tied a deal that brings simulcast TV, sports, entertainment shows, pay-per-view movies and back catalogue television to the Xbox 360. It's an entirely streamed service, offering no download-to-own content, and partly rivals the BBC iPlayer, which is available on UK PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Wii. The service will go live later in the year at no cost to existing subscribers, and screenshots show it fits in seamlessly with the Xbox Live interface."
Data Storage

Windows 7 Hard Drive and SSD Performance Analyzed 248

Posted by timothy from the but-compared-to-the-old-one dept.
bigwophh writes "Despite the fact that Windows 7 is based on many of the same core elements as Vista, Microsoft claims it is a different sort of animal and that it should be looked at in a fresh, new light, especially in terms of performance. With that in mind, this article looks at how various types of disks perform under Windows 7, both the traditional platter-based variety and newer solid state disks. Disk performance between Vista and Win7 is compared using a hard drive and an SSD. SSD performance with and without TRIM enabled is tested. Application performance is also tested on a variety of drives. Looking at the performance data, it seems MS has succeeded in improving Windows 7 disk performance, particularly with regard to solid state drives."
Image

Burglar Nabbed By Backup Program 98

Posted by samzenpus from the stupid-is-as-stupid-does dept.
Bruce Perens writes "A Berkeley, California, burglar engineered his own arrest, and that of his girlfriend, when he stole a laptop and used it as his personal computer. He didn't realize that the laptop had an automatic backup program, and that the photos he took were being copied to his victim's backup repository. Berkeley police recognized him, and his location, from the photos."
The Media

Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology 665

Posted by timothy from the there's-no-pleasing-some-people dept.
El Reg writes "Showing a new-found resolve to crack down on self-serving edits, Wikipedia has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology. According to Wikipedia administrators, this marks the first time such a high-profile organization has been banished for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the 'free encyclopedia anyone can edit.'"
Security

Homeland Security To Scan Citizens Exiting US 676

Posted by timothy from the subtle-messages dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The US Department of Homeland Security is set to kickstart a controversial new pilot to scan the fingerprints of travellers departing the United States. From June, US Customs and Border Patrol will take a fingerprint scan of travellers exiting the United States from Detroit, while the US Transport Security Administration will take fingerprint scans of international travellers exiting the United States from Atlanta. The controversial plan to scan outgoing passengers — including US citizens — was allegedly hatched under the Bush Administration. An official has said it will be used in part to crack down on the US population of illegal immigrants."
Bug

Ridiculous Software Bug Workarounds? 655

Posted by kdawson from the holding-your-mouth-right dept.
theodp writes "Ever get a workaround for a bug from a vendor that's so rigoddamndiculous that there has to be a clueless MBA or an ornery developer behind it? For example, Microsoft once instructed users to wiggle their mouse continuously for several minutes if they wanted to see their Oracle data make it into Excel (yes, it worked!). And more recently, frustrated HP customers were instructed to use non-HP printers as their default printer if they don't want Microsoft Office 2007 to crash (was this demoed in The Mojave Experiment?). Any other candidates for the Lame Workaround Hall of Fame?"
User Journal

Journal Journal: War on Terrorism

Journal by Boronx

Compared with a law-and-order response to 9/11, President Bush's prosecution of the war on terrorism by executive fiat is the weaker of the two.
Technology (Apple)

Journal Journal: Apple Discontinues Mail-in Repairs in the UK 2

Journal by TheRaven64
Apple have quietly discontinued their mail-in repair service in the UK. While the terms of the AppleCare agreement still state that they offer it, and on-site repair in some cases, they have closed their repair centre and are telling customers to take their machines to the nearest authorised service centre. These are few and far between in the UK; for a lot of people the nearest one is several hours away.

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