PipianJ - Slashdot User

Submission + - DRM Scorecard: Hackers 1000, Industry Zero 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @09:00AM

An anonymous reader writes: InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?

Journal Journal: Teaching Programming to Kids? 2

Journal by PresidentEnder on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @01:06PM

I'm an undergrad Math/CS student. One of my cousins, an exceptionally bright 11-year-old, is interested in learning to program. I'd like to give him some kind of direction; at least, more than I got: to teach him to avoid bad habits, use design patterns (OO vs procedural, especially) properly, and make sure that he stays interested. I'd like to see what Slashdot thinks: what are appropriate resources to use? Which language should I try to teach him? Are there any good books out there?

Submission + - US Dept. of Justice May Intervene to Help RIAA

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @11:55AM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In a Corpus Christi, Texas, case, Atlantic v. Boggs, where the defendant interposed a counterclaim alleging that the RIAA's $750-per-song file damages theory is unconstitutional, and the RIAA moved to dismiss the counterclaim, the United States Department of Justice has sought, and obtained, an extension of time in which to decide whether to intervene in the case on the side of the RIAA. What probably precipitated the issue is that the constitutional question was raised not just as a defense as it was in UMG v. Lindor, but as a counterclaim, thus prompting a dismissal motion by the RIAA."

Submission + - Is IE the most influential tech product? (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by

superglaze

on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @11:29AM

superglaze writes: "CompTIA has done a survey on the most influential tech products of the last 25 years (CompTIA's age, not coincidentally), and four of the top five just happen to be Microsoft products. OK, so we know Microsoft and CompTIA go way way back in their crusade against open source, but does anyone here actually agree with this list? What are the most inflential tech products, anyway?"

Submission + - Attempted IP infringement to be criminalized (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by ianare on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:32PM

ianare writes: Good news for the MAFIAA! H.R. 3155, the "Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007", has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH). In most cases, the bill appears to simply double existing penalties. One big change however, is that people could now be charged with criminal copyright infringement even if such infringement has not actually taken place. Not surprisingly, the EFF has condemned the legislation. Another of their concerns is that small changes could have big effects on casual file-sharers for a different reason: P2P users could face greater penalties for infringement after statutory damages are expanded.

Submission + - Futurama Movie Set for November 27th (tvsquad.com)

Submitted by

kevin_conaway

on Monday July 30, 2007 @11:18AM

kevin_conaway writes: "TV Squad informs us that the new Futurama movie will be available on November 27th. The show will return as a full-length high-def film sold on DVD. It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes depending on how you look at it."

Condemned 2 Trying to Avoid Manhunt 2's Fate 108

Posted by Zonk on Thursday July 26, 2007 @04:47PM from the game-must-be-approved-by-state-comrade dept.

CVG is reporting that Monolith, makers of the upcoming Condemned 2, are working with the ESRB to avoid an AO rating. As we've discussed previously, an AO ban in the states is effectively a ban on retail sales. From the article: "When asked for examples of what we might now never see in a game again, we were told, 'An example of what we cut would be putting someone's head in a vice. That was too much, you know. There are also some decapitations we've lost. But this is more Sin City than it is real world and we want people to know that this is not a real world.'"

Submission + - Do Black Webpage Backgrounds Save Energy?

Submitted by i_like_spam on Thursday July 26, 2007 @02:18PM

i_like_spam writes: The Climate Change blog at Nature Magazine describes an on-going debate about the energy savings associated with the color of the background used by high-traffic websites such as Google and the NYTimes. Some back of the envelope calculations by Mark Ontkush indicated an energy savings of 750 Megawatt hours per year if Google switched their background from white to black. Google responded by creating Blackle. However, tests by the Wall Street Journal suggest minimal energy savings. Slashdotters, who do you think is correct in this debate?

Submission + - The sad state of sound in Linux (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by Wertigon on Thursday July 26, 2007 @07:54AM

Wertigon writes: Looks like atleast one coder has been driven insane by the aggravating difficulties of getting sound to work properly in his 'nix application. Coming from his blog:

All this shows me is that ALSA is truly garbage, and a very bad idea from the ground up. If you want good sound support under Linux, the best, and sometime the only feasible option is to install the closed source OSS. With this, you always get mixing (even using the hardware mixer which ALSA doesn't always do), support for a dozen UNIX OSs, and finely tuned controls.
Perhaps it's time to go back to OSS, now that it has become Open Source again?

Submission + - Firefox gets full zoom

Submitted by

Solarius

on Thursday July 26, 2007 @05:38AM

Solarius writes: "Today, Gecko got full page zoom functionality, which is similair to Operas. Daniel Kirsch said: Eli, Roc, dbaron and all the contributors: Congratulations and a big "Thank you" for all your efforts. This was probably one of the top 10 wishes of a lot of moz developers and users. Great to see this marked as "FIXED". Cheers! You can see it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821"

Submission + - Harry Potter and a Goblin's Take on Copyright (scienceaddiction.com)

Submitted by

DevanJedi

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @10:13PM

DevanJedi writes: "Here's a passage from page 517 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : (Ron's brother Bill is warning Harry against trusting a goblin Griphook.) "You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs. [...] They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. [...] They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft." These goblins sound like our friendly neighborhood MPAA/RIAA lawyers!"

Submission + - Mozilla and Thunderbird to Split Up? (mozillazine.org)

Submitted by on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @05:26PM

An anonymous reader writes: Mitchell Baker's latest blog entry is an Email Call to Action discussing the future of Thunderbird and its role in Mozilla. Because of Mozilla's extreme focus on Firefox and the web, they feel Thunderbird isn't getting the attention it deserves, and thus that they "should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird." Three options are briefly explored: a Thunderbird foundation, a new Thunderbird subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation, and releasing Thunderbird as a community project like SeaMonkey. They're hoping to start a public discussion on Thunderbird's future, and are seeking additional ideas for how to handle this.

Submission + - Tin Foil Hats: A Collection (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @04:53PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "A man on a mission to collect as many pictures of people with tin-foil hats as possible. Why? To protect us all from mind control of course! This is what the Internet was really made for."

Submission + - Why Ruby on Rails Succeeded

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @02:36PM

Esther Schindler writes: "Whatever you think of Ruby on Rails—even if you prefer another language or development framework—you do have to admit that Rails has gained huge acceptance in a short period of time. In this CIO.com article Hal Fulton, author of The Ruby Way, explains what this programming community did right, and how others can learn from it."

Submission + - Obesity may be socially contagious (newscientist.com)

Submitted by

Maggie McKee

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @02:09PM

Maggie McKee writes: "New Scientist reports on a new study based on 32 years of data showing that obesity may be contagious: "If a friend of yours becomes obese, you have a nearly 60% higher chance of sliding into this category as well, according to the analysis. The finding has prompted researchers to call obesity a "socially contagious" disease in which a sense of what constitutes a normal body weight passes from one person to the next.""

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