Mindragon - Slashdot User

Submission + - Kindergartens ordered to pay copyright for songs (dw-world.de)

Submitted by BBird on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @06:53PM

BBird writes: Deutsche Welle reports — up until this year, preschools could teach and produce any kind of song they wanted. But now they have to pay for a license if they want children to sing certain songs.

Submission + - New Yeast Strain Doubles Biofuel Production (sciencedaily.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @06:47PM

An anonymous reader writes: A team of researchers has developed a new strain of yeast that could make the production of biofuels two times more efficient by breaking down an elusive sugar chain present in plant stems called xylose. Up until now, two processes have been used to break down all of the sugars contained in plants — one for simple sugars and one for complex sugars. This new yeast has the ability to break down simple and complex sugars at once, making the production of biofuels faster and yielding more end product.

Submission + - IBM Makes A Super Memory Breakthrough 3

Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @06:24PM

adeelarshad82 writes: IBM says they have made a significant leap forward in the viability of "Racetrack memory," a new technology design which has the potential to exponentially increase computing power. This new tech could give devices the ability to store as much as 100 times more information than they do now, which would be accessed at far greater speeds while utilizing "much less" energy than today's designs. In the future, a single portable device might be able to hold as much memory as today's business-class servers and run on a single battery charge for weeks at a time. Racetrack memory works by storing data as magnetic regions (also called domains), which would be transported along nanowire "racetracks." Instead of forcing a computer to seek out the data it needs, as traditional computing systems do, the information would automatically slide along the racetrack to where it could be used.

Submission + - Why Teach Programming with BASIC (kickstarter.com) 3

Submitted by

chromatic

on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @05:09PM

chromatic writes: "To answer the perennial question "How can we teach kids how to program?", we created a web-based programming environment. As we began to write lessons and examples, we surprised ourselves. Modern languages may be powerful and useful for writing real programs, but BASIC and Logo are great languages for demonstrating the joy of programming."

Submission + - Stephen Fry Security Whoopsie Leads to Prank (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @02:12PM

An anonymous reader writes: Hoppity-skippety technology commentator of all our hearts Stephen Fry has made a regrettable security blunder. After filming in Oxford at the famous Bodleian Library yesterday, the enthusiastic luvvie was granted a reader's card – a rare privilege, as normally access to the archives is granted only to members of Oxford University (Fry went to Cambridge himself). "I'm now a reader! *faints at the honour and glory of it all* Thanks @BodleianLibs" tweeted the excited thespian. He even went so far as to post a photo of his new library card on his website to prove it. Unfortunately, according to our informants, Fry neglected to change his password from the default setting.

Comment This is the 21st century for Frak's sake (Score 5, Insightful) 762

by Mindragon on Friday December 17, 2010 @04:13PM (#34591784) Attached to: Stargate Universe Cancelled

How many more? How many more uncompleted series, idiotic product placements and other Brainwashing Network TV Executive decisions are we going to face before we finally get away from the middle man? I’m probably going to disconnect my DirecTV box now because there really isn’t anything left to watch on network TV. The networks keep eliminating anything resembling creative content and continue to deprive America of some of the finest writings out there. How much longer do we have to wait before enough of us get together to form an online media company that works? I’ve got a nice monitor / computer setup. For what it costs of DirecTV for one year, I could afford a very nice Computer / Monitor setup. And if I’m patient enough to time-shift my TV, I could do the same for online content. The model would be extraordinarily affordable if folks were to band together. One million regular viewers of a TV series on network TV is laughable. One million regular viewers of online content is a smash hit. Add in some micro currency ($0.99 cents a month / viewer) and for twelve million a year, anyone certainly could put together a creative and production team that works. I don’t know why Network TV folks don’t take content and put it in web only mode if it works better. For example, SGU and Caprica maybe is a better model for the online universe. That is where the audience is anyway. So put ads up on TV saying “Exclusively online”. If viewer-ship rises enough on the web then maybe transition it back to TV. Why the hell does everything need to be TV centric anymore? This is the 21st century for frak’s sake.

Comment Re:Bonded VPNs - Mikrotik (Score 1) 180

by Mindragon on Friday October 16, 2009 @04:18AM (#29766511) Attached to: Affordably Aggregating ISP Connections?

Two Mikrotik routers would also work very well (http://www.mikrotik.com). You can pick up the whole thing for about $250-$300 for two of 'em and set it all up inside of about 15 minutes a piece. They're extremely reliable and the 4.0 release includes all kinds of fancy things that you can do to monitor, automatically fail over links and more.

Comment :Head Asplode: (Score 5, Funny) 321

by Mindragon on Sunday May 31, 2009 @12:32PM (#28158979) Attached to: Obama DoJ Goes Against Film Companies

NewYorkCountryLawyer said:
Well here's a story that could make us skeptical and/or cynical about our skepticism and/or cynicism.

It's way too early on a Sunday morning and/or afternoon for me to ponder and/or grok the in and/or out of the and/or in that sentence.

Source Control For Bills In Congress? 300

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @11:49PM from the real-subversion dept.

grepya writes "An article in Slate talks about the sneaky way a major change in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill was made by (possibly) a Congressional staffer without even his boss knowing about it. (The change increased the power of the Executive at the expense of the other two branches of government.) Now, I write software for a large and complex system containing millions of lines of code and I know that nobody could slip a single line of code into my project without my knowledge. This is because everything that goes into the build goes into a source control system, and email notification is generated to interested parties. This is for a body of work that affects perhaps a few hundred thousand people at most (our company and the combined population of all our customer organizations). Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?"

Feed ITunes Glitches Remain on Vista (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @11:12PM

Want to corrupt your iPod? Use it with Microsoft's new operating system. Apple concedes that its music software still isn't compatible with all versions of Vista. By the Associated Press.

Submission + - All-time Best Arcade Games You've Never Played

Submitted by TomSlick on Friday January 12, 2007 @03:06PM

TomSlick writes: Harold, posting at Fanpop, found himself dissatisfied with the same old "Best Video Games" lists, and decided to put together a true list of all time greatest arcade games. His inclusion of Heavy Barrel, Gyruss, and Xybots, makes this one of the greatest lists ever published. As he says, "These are the games that, had I room, I would purchase and rebuild for a home arcade, as I wouldn't get tired of playing any of them."

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