GenKreton - Slashdot User

Submission + - DRM to end Ghetto Latte at Starbucks?

Submitted by

AlHunt

on Sunday January 28, 2007 @09:19PM

AlHunt writes: "The University of Chicago Faculty Blog draws a parallel between DMCA, DRM and Ghetto-latte at Starbucks.
From the blog:

So now we have the natural question: what are the limits of free milk? That is, Starbucks provides free milk so that customers who want to add milk to their coffee can do so. (Is it fair to call this the permitted use or intended use?) Customers know their optimal coffee/milk ratio and can best achieve that by doing it on their own. Unlike the DMCA and DRM, which imposes technological limits on how content can be used, Starbucks has no simple way to control how "free" milk is used at Starbucks. But Starbucks obviously could take a number steps to limit the use of free milk, including posting signs or refusing to facilitate the arbitrage by selling drinks only in cups of the right size.

Apparently this is a hot topic over at Starbucks, too."

Submission + - Canadian Phone Company to Sell Porn

Submitted by westcoaster004 on Sunday January 28, 2007 @08:49PM

westcoaster004 writes: Telus, Canada's second-largest telecommunications carrier has decided to start selling pornography to its cellular subscribers. The service will allow subscribers with mobile browsers to purchase both photographic and video adult-oriented content from Telus. Telus decided to introduce the service after noticing that there existed a certain "segment of the population that is interested in that content" from review of the mobile web browsing habits of their subscribers. They are the first telecommunications company in Canada to offer such content.

Vendor Intel's New Chip: You can Never Be Too Thin

Submitted by OSTG Marketing Dept. on Sunday January 28, 2007 @06:57PM

Intel announced a new chip technology: Penryn , the first to use the 45-nanometer generation of transistors. The chips, a thinner version of the latest Core Duo chips, will be ready later this year. " The amount of processing power each one holds is impressive. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter; 400 million of these transistors will be able to fit on a chip that's half the size of a postage stamp, say the reports. It's not just the

Submission + - Will Ruby on Rails survive?

Submitted by

palmerj3

on Sunday January 28, 2007 @05:57PM

palmerj3 writes: "As a Ruby on Rails developer, I have to wonder if Ruby on Rails will survive. With Java becoming open-source, and other MVC frameworks such as DJango and CakePHP, I wonder if Ruby on Rails will be able to compete much longer. Ruby is notoriously slow and Ruby on Rails' lack of database connection pools make running Rails apps difficult. I personally love the powerful, compact expressions and 'readable' syntax that a RoR application allows. I'd like to ask the Slashdot community how the Ruby language and Ruby on Rails framework should grow in order to stay competitive in the enterprise world."

Submission + - Doom fans petition Raven for GPL Hexen source

Submitted by

sfraggle

on Sunday January 28, 2007 @05:57PM

sfraggle writes: "Doomworld is reporting about a group of Doom enthusiasts petitioning Raven to GPL the source code to Heretic and Hexen. Although the source code was released several years ago, the license is so restrictive as to be next to useless. Now over 30 programmers working with projects derived from the Doom source have drafted an open letter to Raven in the hopes of getting the source finally re-released under the GPL. The letter is backed by a petition signed by over 300 people."

Submission + - ENLIGHTENMENT needs your help!

Submitted by

xsst4

on Sunday January 28, 2007 @05:45PM

xsst4 writes: "Enlightenment needs your help! They need a to get this story to reach the home page so that they can get the donations thats they need. Please help us by donating here!

"Why donate?

In order to provide better services to our users, the Enlightenment team would like to ask that the Enlightenment user community pull together and help us raise funds for a new server. We are therefore requesting donations so that we may purchase our own dedicated server. If you would like to contribute to the Enlightenment project, but can't code, this is a great way to help out. We would like to thank our current hosting provider, the cAos Foundation , who have generously donated access to their CVS services. Long-time Enlightenment users are probably well aware of some of the service issues we've experienced in recent years. The CVS services improved considerably with the move to our current provider, but the web site has remained with SourceForge. The restrictive permissions have prevented us from providing many of the services to our users that we feel are necessary. Services such as integrating CVS content with the website, bug tracking, wiki access, and reasonable CMS services are simply too difficult to provide with the access levels available on SourceForge. In addition, external CMS access to SourceForge has proven to be unreliable and very slow. As a result, the website has gone relatively unmaintained for months, much of the content has moved to edevelop.org and get-e.org, and hosted copies of API documentation have not been updated to reflect significant changes which are documented in CVS. These issues hurt the projects image, discourage new users, and frustrate existing users. We feel a dedicated server is the best way to address these issues with the level of quality expected from this project. As a last note, we would like to extend our thanks to the people who have already donated the current funds of $1600 to the Enlightenment project. Your charity has not been forgotten, and your donations will be applied towards the server fund. ""

Submission + - Cancer Cured?

Submitted by

Todamont

on Sunday January 28, 2007 @01:02AM

Todamont writes: "Here's the deal. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada found a cheap and easy to produce drug that kills almost all cancers. The drug is dichloroacetate, and since it is already used to treat metabolic disorders, we know it should be no problem to use it for other purposes.

Here's the big catch. Pharmaceutical companies probably won't invest in research into DCA because they won't profit from it. It's easy to make, unpatented and could be added to drinking water. Imagine, Gatorade with cancer control.
(link here)"

Submission + - Indoor air filtration products

Submitted by

alshithead

on Sunday January 28, 2007 @12:43AM

alshithead writes: "Products abound making many claims of improving indoor air quality. My wife and I have a need to provide the best possible air environment for our four pet parrots and the many foster birds (two to six at any given time) that reside temporarily in our home. Parrots (Psittacines) and birds in general, require a better quality of air than we do, hence the "canary in a coal mine". Birds have been used for centuries to monitor air quality and alert us humans to environmental dangers.

We are considering purchasing a device of some kind to help condition the air quality within our home. Stand alone devices and devices that tie into our HVAC are under consideration. Several of our parrots (Congo African Grey, Moluccan Cockatoo, Goffin's Cockatoo) naturally generate a fair amount of very fine dust/dander. This is potentially harmful to other parrot species, especially macaws. Reducing the danger of bacterial growth and infection is also a concern. We also have a Doberman, two chihuahuas, and a foster chihuahua. Despite our menagerie, we manage to keep a fairly clean house. The desire to do even better by improving our indoor air quality leads us to look for options in addition to regular vacuuming and changing our HVAC filter weekly instead of monthly.

Under consideration are HEPA, negative ion generation, and ozone generation. HEPA filters seem to require more maintenance as they trap everything (including bacteria) and need frequent cleaning. Negative ion generation seems to cause particles to attach themselves to surfaces and therefore additional action needs to be taken to remove the particles from the environment. Ozone generation is touted by many products but the US EPA seems to state there is no benefit in reducing bacteria or odors without generating levels that are dangerous to people, pets, and plants (http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html). There are multiple products that use any one or multiple combinations of the three.

Have any fellow Slashdotters out there needed to modify their environment's air quality for biological reasons and if so, how?"

Submission + - Starting a career in science at 38?

Submitted by A Science Nostalgic on Sunday January 28, 2007 @12:25AM

A Science Nostalgic writes: I'm 38, have a succesful career as a software developer but feel the all-too-similar enterprise apps are boring my brains out and I'm intensely missing the world of science (which I didn't pursue in favor of programming when I got my engineering degree). Now I'm contemplating looking for a job in research, but fear the age and the lack of "exercise" with math and physics would pose an understandable handicap. If I study math seriously I can realistically shed the "rust" in a year, maybe two, but I still fear I'll be considered too old for research. I graduated abroad so I don't have any old contacts at the local universities (there are a few in my city). I checked their job boards, they have no positions just in s/w development which I could use as an entry point. Do the Slashdot readers have any experience with such a career change? Is it feasible at all to get into science once you approach 40? I feel my brain is still alive and kicking and years of debugging have taught me a few things about investigating causes and correlations — useful skills in research.

Submission + - NIDA "vandalizes" their wikipedia entry

Submitted by

on Friday January 26, 2007 @07:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: Not really censorship, but more like spreading of propaganda, Politico reports That the Drug War Warriors at NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) tried to alter their wikipedia entry, trying to remove anti drugwar sentiment and outside links. Wikipedia categorized the changes as vandalism and reverted the entry to original. NIDA tried again, this time more gradually....

Submission + - A Theory of Everything that Applies to Everything?

Submitted by culcha2 on Friday January 26, 2007 @07:40PM

culcha2 writes: Why can't we have a Theory of Everything that actually applies to everything? David Fell of Oxford Brookes University states, "Physicists will never discover the Theory of Everything only a Theory of Everything for Physics, which will be too specialised to be able to be applied to the common aspects of life." A Theory of Everything that does not make sense to everyone implies that the universe is inaccessible and undemocratic. Flucidity Theory is the only known effort in recent years to attempt to describe everything in plain English. Why haven't scientists been working harder at this? If physicists come up with an ultimate theory that cannot be used across all disciplinary fields, would it really be a Theory of Everything?

British Police Identify Killer in Radiation Case 235

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 26, 2007 @07:36PM from the hercule-poirot-to-the-white-phone-please dept.

reporter writes "According to a front-page story by The Guardian, British authorities have identified Andrei Lugovoi to be the murderer who used radioactive pollonium-210 to kill Andrei Litvinenko. The British government will ask Moscow to extradite Lugovoi. The Guardian states: 'Associates of the dead man have repeatedly accused President Vladimir Putin's government of being behind his murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects. While it is known that detectives believe they have uncovered evidence pointing to Mr Lugovoi's involvement, it is not clear whether they have established a motive for the murder'"

Submission + - Microsoft patents BlueJ

Submitted by

Yremogtnom

on Friday January 26, 2007 @07:30PM

Yremogtnom writes: "From Michael Kölling's Blog: "This is my attempt at catchy headline writing. But the truth isn't far off. It really should have said: Microsoft applies for patent for core BlueJ functionality. And that's really true. After blatantly copying BlueJ (without reference or attribution), Microsoft have now filed for patent for the functionality they knowingly copied from us. Why? To sue us out of the market? To make us pay? Who knows. Sad fact is that this could destroy BlueJ."

If you don't know, BlueJ is an Interactive Environment for teaching Java."

Submission + - Does every posting have to be a question?

Submitted by gregger on Friday January 26, 2007 @07:27PM

gregger writes: The growing trend for Slashdot posts appears to be that you must end your headline with a question mark. At least 63 posts in January 2007 have been posed as questions. Now, why is that? Are people afraid of making a statement?

Submission + - Financial Analyst: Second Life is a Pyramid Scheme

Submitted by

Petey_Alchemist

on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @02:36AM

Petey_Alchemist writes: "Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag is carrying a story about Second Life being a new spin on the old pyramid scheme.

The article, which consists mostly of selections from the report of financial consultant Randolph Harrison, suggests that not only are most people deceived about the amount of money they can make in Second Life, but also about how easily they can withdraw it.

From the report:

"Like the paid promotion infomercials that run on CNBC, sadly SecondLife is a giant magnet for the desperate, uninformed, easily victimized. Its promises of wealth readily ensnare those who can least afford to lose their money or lives to such scam in exactly the same way that real estate investor seminars convince divorcees with low FICO scores to buy houses sight unseen with no money down.

Even some corporations have dedicated marketing budgets to creating a presence in SecondLife. While few will shed a tear for the frivolousness of these companies' spending, such adds a false legitimacy to SecondLife. Interestingly, no legitimate, real world corporation has earned net profit from SecondLife activities.

That's because there are but a very tiny handful that profit off of the SecondLife economy. A handful of casino owners, large scale virtual land flippers, and brothel owners are responsible for nearly all of the real money extracted from the game. And they continue to attract new recruits to the bottom of the pyramid.""

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