Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Transportation

Japanese Begin Working On Space Elevator 696

thebryce writes "From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier. Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible."
The Internet

Comcast Discontinues Customers' USENET Service 327

An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has discontinued its provided usenet service, once provided to all its high speed customers. First with the cap put on its customers several years ago on amount of traffic provided as part of the customer high-speed package, as of September 16, the service is no longer provided. Without fanfare, this bastion of the internet is being removed from the mainstream."

Comment Re:Abandonware (Score 1) 388

Are you saying that discontinued products should be made available for free or that they should be open-sourced?

I can't speak for clang_jangle, but I believe that software should be required to ship with buildable source if it is to qualify for copyright protection. It would be the software/copyright analogue of the disclosure required for patents. It would go some way to mitigating the problems caused by copyright as it is applied to software, abandonware being one of them.

Should we bundle brushes and paint with every painting in order for it to be a copyrighted work?

Linux Business

Think Tank Report On the State of Open Source 110

AlexGr writes to recommend an account of a meeting a couple of months back of representatives from more than 100 software companies discussing the state of open source software. The outcome is outlined in a 16-page report, 2007 Open Source Think Tank: The Future of Commercial Open Source (PDF). Among the surprising conclusions: participants noted a growing similarity in methods between open source and proprietary software development. They predicted some kind of convergence, where the best of both approaches gets adopted in each camp.
Communications

Submission + - Comcast CEO shows off superfast modem

Gary writes: "Comcast CEO dazzled cable industry audience by showcasing a super quick modem, using a technology called DOCSIS 3.0, it was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity enabling a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems."

Feed Wikipedia bot-swarm foretells snooker result (theregister.com)

Self-editing Borg collective takes control of hive mind

The online hive-mind jumbleshop Wikipedia continues to amaze. The Web 2.0 consensus reality has now begun to edit itself without human input - indeed has gone so far as to allow automated bots to overrule humans.


Firefly Fans Fight Back Against Universal 294

Gossi writes "What happens when a film studio and a fanbase get into bed? Fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly, and the movie by Universal Studios — Serenity — are not amused. After being encouraged to viral market Serenity, the studio has started legal action against fans (demanding $9000 in retroactive licensing fees in one case and demanding fan promotion stop), and going after Cafepress. The fans response? Retroactively invoice Universal for their services."

Slashdot Top Deals

The trouble with opportunity is that it always comes disguised as hard work. -- Herbert V. Prochnow

Working...