AtomicJake - Slashdot User

Submission + - LOTR Actor Slays Amazon 1-Click Patent

Submitted by

theodp

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @05:56AM

theodp writes: "A reexam initiated by Lord of the Rings motion capture performer Peter Calveley's do-it-yourself legal effort has prompted the USPTO to reject 21 of the 26 Amazon 1-Click Patent claims. A USPTO Examiner found a 1995 Newsweek article on Digicash submitted by Calveley sufficient to quash a number of the claims, while many others were rejected in light of an e-shopping patent flagged by Calveley. Interestingly, additional claims were rejected by the Examiner in light of a TV remote control patent that was deemed to be unsuitable 1-Click prior art (for not being specific to the Web) in a contest run by the Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos-bankrolled BountyQuest (Amazon last year testified to Congress that the contest failed to find prior art for Bezos' patent). Unfortunately, the action is non-final, so Amazon's high-priced law firm will get another chance to crush Calveley's PayPal-financed effort."

Submission + - Amazon EC2 Open to All

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @05:16AM

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon just announced that the beta program for their EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) service is now open to all developers. They also seem to have added new instance types. It appears that you can now get the equivalent of an 8-core machine. Is cloud computing for the masses finally here?

Submission + - The truth about image stabilization

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @03:52AM

An anonymous reader writes: Image stabilization is the biggest feature in digital cameras right now, but is it the cure all that camera manufacturers would like us to believe? This feature looks at the different types of image stabilization, how they work and what side effects they can cause. http://www.trustedreviews.com/digital-cameras/review/2007/10/15/Image-Stabilisation-The-Good-The-Bad-And-The-Noisy/p1

Submission + - BBC iPlayer moves to Flash, goes cross-platform. (madowney.com)

Submitted by

l-ascorbic

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @03:29AM

l-ascorbic writes: "The Beeb's free catch-up download service has been widely criticised for being Windows-only, relying on Microsoft DRM. The BBC governors ordered that it should be cross-platform as soon as possible. Seems they've opted for Flash, meaning iPlayer will be available for Mac and Linux by the end of the year."

Submission + - Dutchconsumer boycott against Windows Vista.

Submitted by rootnl on Friday October 12, 2007 @03:00AM

rootnl writes: Here in The Netherlands the Dutch Consumer bond is calling for a consumer boycott consumer boycott against Windows Vista.

The Dutch Consumer Bond (Consementenbond) is an organization that tests products for quality and safety. Recently they had an internet poll about the problems experienced with Windows Vista. About 4200 complaints were submitted of which 59% is software problems, 46% hardware peripheral problems, 34% complaints about bad performance and computer crashes, 17% about network problems, especially wireless networks and 12% complained about long startup times.

The results were publicly published and subsequently picked up by the press. Microsoft was not very happy about this and complained about the fact that they (Consementenbond) published the information instead of dealing directly with Microsoft.

Last Thursday, the two parties had a meeting to discuss the problems resulted from the poll. In the meeting, the Consumer bond insisted that Microsoft must help consumers having problems with Vista by offering Windows XP. Microsoft refused with a big no. Because of this, the Consumer bond is calling a consumer boycott against Windows Vista.

Microsoft Netherlands will issue a press statement today about the actions of the Consumer bond.

Submission + - Ajax standardization and the new SDK

Submitted by BoredStiff on Friday September 21, 2007 @11:33AM

BoredStiff writes: In Joel Spolsky latest column titled "Strategy Letter VI", Joel draws a parallel between the direction Lotus took 1-2-3 in the late 80's, and the direction Google is heading with Gmail, and how the forces that caused Lotus to lose control of the spreadsheet market will play out once again on the web. Joel suggests that these forces will be driven largely by a new SDK developed by some yet unknown startup, and precompiled javascript. This new SDK will ultimately compile down to native JavaScript, and will contain a huge library with all kinds of clever Ajax interoperability features that allow applications to "cut and paste, mash, sync and play drums nicely with one another", i.e. deliver a consistent user interface so that disparate web-based applications can work together. He goes on to suggest that Ajax apps written in this new SDK will eventually run in new versions of browsers that support cached, compiled JavaScript and how this new SDK will relegate Gmail to a legacy Ajax app.

Submission + - RIAA Targets New Colleges, Still Avoids Harvard

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Friday September 21, 2007 @11:02AM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Billboard reports that the RIAA has filed its eighth round of "early settlement" letters to twenty-two colleges. Continuing its practice of avoiding Harvard, the RIAA's new round does not include any letters to that institution, where certain law professors have counseled resistance to the RIAA and told the RIAA to "take a hike". The unlucky institutions on the receiving end of the 403 new letters include Arizona State University (35 pre-litigation settlement letters), Carnegie Mellon University (13), Cornell University (19), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (30), Michigan State University (16), North Dakota State University (17), Purdue University — West Lafayette and Calumet campuses (49), University of California — Santa Barbara (13), University of Connecticut (17), University of Maryland — College Park (23), University of Massachusetts — Amherst and Boston campuses (52), University of Nebraska — Lincoln (13), University of Pennsylvania (31), University of Pittsburgh (14), University of Wisconsin — Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Stevens Point, Stout and Whitewater campuses (62)."

Submission + - NASA looking for a few good astronauts (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @11:53AM

coondoggie writes: "NASA today said it is accepting applications for the 2009 Astronaut Candidate Class. Those selected could fly to space for long-duration stays on the International Space Station and missions to the moon and who knows maybe Mars. To be considered, a bachelor's degree in engineering, science or math and three years of relevant professional experience are required. Typically, successful applicants have significant qualifications in engineering or science, or extensive experience flying high-performance jet aircraft — a requirement that might slim the field some. Teaching experience, including work at the kindergarten through 12th grade level, is considered qualifying. Educators with the appropriate educational background are encouraged to apply. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19669"

Submission + - Secure servers - NOT

Submitted by RockDoctor on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @06:15AM

RockDoctor writes: A salutary reminder of the ineffectiveness of firewalls and Bastille-hardened routers against some forms of computer crime : a forensic computing analysis company in Britain had a server full of case records and data for anti-terrorism cases. It was stolen. Physically stolen.

The article goes on to make a number of points about the actual level of security in the computer forensics business in the UK, which wouldn't really surprise anyone. But that they can lose a server is a good reminder to make sure of one's physical security as well as one's electronic security. Recent Slashdot stories have covered employees picking up virus-laden USB sticks in car parks, and a multitude of laptop thefts, as well as the weaknesses of some lock designs against picking. Is this story making an argument that ALL sensitive data should be stored under encryption, not just what goes onto laptops.

Submission + - Germany's New Computer Crime Law not that Bad (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @05:50AM

hweimer writes: "Being a German and publishing exploit code from time to time, I am directly affected by the new computer crime law. However, as I try to explain in a recent blog post reports of the death of German security research is slightly exaggerated. The written rationale behind the law gives a less bleaker picture."

Submission + - Chemical Desalination of Seawater? 1

Submitted by amper on Friday August 10, 2007 @12:09PM

amper writes: I've been studying seawater desalination products for use on board small yachts and life rafts, and the commonly available reverse osmosis devices are both highly expensive and difficult to operate. The only real alternative to a desalination pump for emergency use is carrying as much fresh water as possible, but this idea is not without its own problems. Is there some chemical process that could be easily packaged in a manner similar to the iodine and chlorine tablets that are sold for fresh water purification that would remove excess salts from seawater? What I envision is some chemical or combination of chemicals that would cause the sodium chloride, and possibly other salts or contaminants, to precipitate out of the solution so the now fresh water can be decanted.

Journal SPAM: Slashdot Limerick 5

Journal by stoolpigeon on Friday August 10, 2007 @12:03PM

Today's xkcd is a limerick about slashdot:

I used to find slashdot delightful,
But my feelings of late are more spiteful;
My comments sarcastic
The iconoclastic
Keep modding to plus five (insightful)

But you really ought to go see it in all its stick figure goodness.

Submission + - DNS rebinding hack bypasses security

Submitted by

rs232

on Friday August 10, 2007 @11:45AM

rs232 writes: ""the attack investigated by Stanford — known as domain-name service (DNS) rebinding — could send and receive data from the local network, completely bypassing the firewall"

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11481"

Submission + - NASA Global Warming Data Shown to be Flawed (dailytech.com)

Submitted by

ubermiester

on Friday August 10, 2007 @11:26AM

ubermiester writes: "The Daily Tech science blog reports on a recent correction made by NASA to it's global climate data. Apparently the algorithm NASA was using the crunch raw climate data suffered from a Y2K bug that skewed the numbers. The operators of climateaudit.org were forced to reverse engineer the algorithm after NASA's James Hansen (best known for his claims of White House censorship) refused to share it. NASA has since admitted to the error and republished the numbers. The changes result in a 1-2% downward correction in overall warming trends. 1934 also surpasses 1998 as the warmest year on record and 5 of the top 10 warmest years in the 20th century occur before WWII."

Submission + - Guy Creates iPhone from Scratch, Better than Real (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10, 2007 @10:48AM

An anonymous reader writes: Only in Japan: 'It may look, feel, shine and even taste like an iPhone. But believe it or not, this is not an iPhone. As you can see in the step-by-step gallery, a guy -frustrated by the fact that the iPhone is not available in Japan- built his own from scratch. Sure it doesn't work, but it's exactly like the real thing. In fact, it's even better.' Unlike the iPhone, this one is made of real aluminum. It amazes me to see the tools he used and the level of perfection he managed to get. You gotta admire the perfect craftmanship.

Slashdot Top Deals