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Books

Copyright Industries Oppose Treaty For the Blind 135

Posted by kdawson from the see-it-my-way dept.
langelgjm sends in a piece from Wired, which details the background of a proposed treaty to allow cross-border sharing of books for the blind — a treaty which is opposed by an almost unified front of business interests in the US, with the exception of Google. "A broad swath of American enterprise ranging from major software makers to motion picture and music companies are joining forces to oppose a new international treaty that would make books more accessible to the blind. With the exception of Google, almost every major industry player has expressed disapproval of the treaty, which would allow cross-border sharing of digitized books accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Google's chief copyright counsel believes the industry-wide opposition is mainly due to 'opposition to a larger agenda of limitations and exceptions... We believe this is an unproductive approach to solving what is a discrete, long-standing problem that affects a group that needs and deserves the protections of the international community.'"

Comment Re:Maybe it IS you. (Score 1) 8

by NEOGEOman (#30361046) Attached to: What do you do when Google screws you?

We don't sell anything online, every sale is a result of discussions and old-fashioned payments and elbow grease. Our software is configured based on discussions with the client, our training is done online one-to-one with staff in our office. Customers who reach our site can read about the software, view some screenshots etc, but will have to submit a request for demo or call us to get more info or arrange a purchase. It's a very low-volume, hands-on kind of business, and we're all just stunned to be singled out by Google without warning or recourse.

We can't help but think it's a misunderstanding or mistake, but in the wake of the big Google Silence (tm) treatment, we can't know for sure, or resolve the problem. It's frustrating: I've always defended Google's choices, and I continue to defend this one to the boss. Their business, their choice, right? If they don't want our money, they shouldn't be forced to take it if they'd rather not deal with us. I just wish they were more human in their actions. We're quite disheartened by this brusque treatment.
Google

Submission + - What do you do when Google screws you? 8

Submitted by NEOGEOman
NEOGEOman writes: I work for a small company in Australia that sells a business product developed in Canada. We've come to rely on Google's AdWords system to bring us business — the vast majority of our new customers contact us because we came up near the top of their search for inventory control software. Google just cut us off, with an automated form letter that describes all kinds of offenses that don't apply to us (except perhaps our fairly unattractive landing page) and their stern wording and lack of response seems to indicate that there's no way to appeal or even find out what we did wrong. We've been AdWords users for years, and give Google a comparatively modest $1,000+ every month. Without this source of customers, we're kind of panicking. Our Canadian head office is panicking more, since their account is still active but their business is obviously the same. They have more staff than we do, and a lot more riding on continued AdWords success. We might fail without AdWords, but we WILL fail without our parent company.

My question for Slashdot is: If you're a legitimate small business selling legitimate software and Google cuts you off with the same letter they use to kill malware purveyors (Our software's might not be world-class but malware is a bit of a stretch!) what do you do?

Comment Use BITS (Score 5, Informative) 536

by Lothar (#28530183) Attached to: Guaranteed Transmission Protocols For Windows?

Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) can be used to transfer files between windows servers. It is the technology behind Windows Update. We use it in our company to transfer files across a low bandwidth sattelite connection. Great thing is that it can automatically resume transfer after rebooting both machines. SharpBits offer a nice .NET API. You can find it here: http://www.codeplex.com/sharpbits

Comment Re:I'd Rather Drive or Take the Train (Score 2, Informative) 408

by zarkzervo (#28249203) Attached to: In the next 12 months, I expect to travel by air ...
On my last trip, I was randomly searched. I was wearing close to no metal whatsoever. (I have traveled quite a few times the last year and prepare well).

When I goth through, I took my jacket, my shoes, my laptop and my bag and got on the plane. Later, I discovered that I have taken the wrong laptop.

Why didn't anybody stop me?

Why didn't I check the laptop better when I got through? Well, it was the only laptop there, because someone else had taken my laptop.

Why didn't anybody stop him?

In practice, two people where allowed to take someones quite expensive laptop without being stopped. I was well prepared, but that didn't prevent my laptop from being stolen when I was "forced" to give up my laptop in the control.

Comment Re:Major Issues (Score 1) 277

by NEOGEOman (#28217359) Attached to: Opera 10 Benchmarked and Evaluated

It seems that some of your issues are limited to your specific installation. I've been using 9, switching to 10 only with the release of Beta 1, and I don't have most/any of the problems you describe:

Slashdot works fine, and has for a while, though it certainly suffered when they started working on this .js-heavy relaunch a few months back. Loads fine, scrolls fine, responds quickly. It's far better with 10 than with 9. Opera works fine with gmail and g-maps as well, at least for the recent past. Interestingly, google recently broke their regular search page with the live-search thingy: I can no longer edit the terms in a results page and hit ENTER, I have to TAB-ENTER or use the mouse. The same bug exists in 10.

As a fix, you might try a clean install (losing your precious profile data, sadly) or try it on another machine, as your OS may have something installed that causes trouble (like, say, microsoft products, heh)

Best Way To Build A DIY UAV? 259

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the please-include-armament-instructions dept.
Shojun writes "I am very interested in building my own UAV. Not just one that can fly around happily, but one that I can program to say, take photos every second as it does a barrel roll under a bus (ok, that part may be a pipe dream). I have enough embedded programming experience — it's the hardware which I'm uncertain about. I can go the kit way, and then build the remaining stuff, or get some Dollar Tree Foam boards and build it all. I'm in favor of ease, however. Once the plane is built, buying a dev board seems like a possibility, but I wonder whether it's overkill. Alternatively, if there was a How-to-build example on the net for such an activity that I could adapt, to the degree that I could then program in even completely hardcoded flight instructions, I can certainly take it from there. Thoughts? Has anyone here tried something like this before?"
Software

World's "Fastest" Small Web Server Released, Based On LISP 502

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the more-tools-in-the-tool-belt dept.
Cougem writes "John Fremlin has released what he believes to be the worlds fastest webserver for small dynamic content, teepeedee2. It is written entirely in LISP, the world's second oldest high-level programming language. He gave a talk at the Tokyo Linux Users Group last year, with benchmarks, which he says demonstrate that 'functional programming languages can beat C.' Imagine a small alternative to Ruby on rails, supporting the development of any web application, but much faster."
Sci-Fi

Don't Panic, It's Towel Day! 164

Posted by CmdrTaco from the he's-just-this-guy-ya-know dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Today, as every May 25th, geeks all over the world celebrate Towel Day and carry a towel in honor of Douglas Adams. The popular author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy died in 2001 at the age of 49, but his work lives on. According to the book, a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Hence its symbolic role in this celebration. This year, for the first time as far as we know, Towel Day is being supported by the British publisher of Adams' books, who organizes a photo competition."
PC Games (Games)

Using 1 Gaming Computer For 2 People? 424

Posted by timothy from the quite-a-replacement-ratio dept.
True Vox writes "My fiance and I have recently taken interest in City of Heroes (she's currently got a character on my account). She's got a cute little netbook, but nothing nearly powerful enough for a 5-year-old MMORPG, let alone if we take interest in Champions Online! I am reticent to buy a new gaming computer simply for what amounts to a passing phase. Has anyone had any experience using one computer to control two monitors with two sets of input devices (e.g. two keyboards and two mice, or one keyboard, one mouse, and a 360 gamepad, perhaps)? I have seen one solution that might work, but not much information from users that I can find. In short, does anyone have any experience with setups like this?"
Movies

Original Cast On Board For Ghostbusters 3 444

Posted by timothy from the hi-there-sigourney dept.
bowman9991 writes "Dan Aykroyd reveals that all the original cast have now signed on for Ghostbusters 3, including Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Apparently Bill Murray, who holds a one-fifth controlling interest, was very reluctant at first, not even willing to read a third draft of Aykroyd's script. Aykroyd would like to see Ivan Reitman or Harold Ramis direct, wants to introduce a 'new generation' of Ghostbusters, and believes they could be filming the new Ghostbuster movie by winter."

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