BlueMerle - Slashdot User

Submission + - RIAA Could Disappear? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by BlueMerle on Friday January 11, 2008 @01:40PM

BlueMerle writes: From the Not-A-Chance-In-Hell department at ARS comes a story that EMI is disappointed with RIAA and ultimately they (RIAA) may disappear. From the article:

Is the RIAA as we know it about to disappear? As rumors continue to swirl that EMI will pull its funding from music trade groups like the RIAA and IFPI, an IFPI spokesman tells Ars that the group is in the middle of a major internal review of its operations.

Don't hold your breath!

Comment Re:Better check the details (Score 1) 305

by BlueMerle on Monday December 31, 2007 @06:16PM (#21870394) Attached to: Australian Government To Mandate Internet Filters

At any rate, I think it's so trivial to get around that I doubt anyone actively trying to circumvent it has any problems whatsoever. Though I suppose it migth keep a few people from ending up somewhere they didn't intend to...

I think that is the crux of the matter. I can certainly understand why grandma doesn't want to see kiddie porn. So, voluntary filtering - opt in - is fine. But mandatory is, to my way of thinking, a slippery slope to say the least!!

Submission + - Airlines planning to filter, censor in-flight 'Net

Submitted by BlueMerle on Monday December 24, 2007 @04:46PM

BlueMerle writes: Another example of the Man trying to keep us down!!

Airlines around the world are gearing up to offer in-flight broadband for passengers, but overblown fears could make it less sweet than it should be. The fears, and why we don't buy them.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071224-airlines-planning-to-filter-censor-in-flight-net-access.html

Submission + - Nuke Lab + Supercomputers = Truth Behind Tunguska (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by malachiorion on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @08:14PM

malachiorion writes: It's no Roswell, but the Tunguska event, a June 30, 1908, explosion that cleared an 800-sq.-mi. swath of Siberian forest, remains a hot topic for the X-Files set. Was it a UFO crash? An alien weapons test? Now, Sandia National Laboratories has released its own explanation for the event. Using supercomputers to create a 3D simulation of the explosion, the Department of Energy-funded nuke lab determined that Tunguska was, indeed, the result of a relatively small asteroid. Even if you don't care in the slightest, the terrifying simulation videos are well worth checking out.

Submission + - Nanotube-Excreting Bacteria Allow Mass Production (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by

Invisible Pink Unicorn

on Friday December 07, 2007 @05:59PM

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Engineers at the University of California, Riverside have found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria — a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices. According to the lead researcher, 'We have shown that a jar with a bug in it can create potentially useful nanostructures.' This is the first time nanotubes have been shown to be produced by biological rather than chemical means. This research began when they observed something unexpected happening while attempting to clean up arsenic contamination using the metal-reducing bacterium Shewanella. In a process that is not yet fully understood, the bacterium secretes polysacarides that seem to produce the template for the arsenic-sulfide nanotubes. These nanotubes behave as metals with electrical and photoconductive properties useful in nanoelectronics. The article abstract is available from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Submission + - Google purges thousands of suspected malware sites (itnews.com.au) 1

Submitted by

Stony Stevenson

on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @06:37PM

Stony Stevenson writes: "In response to a concerted effort by cyber criminals to infect the computers of Google users with malware and make them unwitting partners in crime, Google has apparently purged tens of thousands of malicious Web pages from its index. Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software, noted that many search results on Google led to malicious Web pages that expose visitors to exploits that can compromise vulnerable systems. Sunbelt published a list of search terms that returned malicious pages, the result of search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns by cyber criminals to get their pages prominently ranked in Google — Sunbelt refers to this as "SEO poisoning."

Let's hope Google has done its research and hasn't purged legitimate sites."

Submission + - Review: Sony's flash-based notebook (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Monday November 26, 2007 @05:55PM

Lucas123 writes: "Computerworld's Rich Ericson reviewed Sony's first all flash-based laptop, which carries a whopping $3,200 price tag. Ericson says the laptop runs incredibly fast, with an average data transfer rate of 33.6MB/sec and great battery life. But, the laptop is also limited to certain uses. While lending itself to travel, the small capacity of its hard drive doesn't make it a real competitor for a main PC workhorse. "While there's a lot to like [about the VAIO TZ191N notebook], there's only very limited uses for which I'd recommend this system. The best features — its size and the flash drive — are also its biggest limitations.""

Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies 210

Posted by Zonk on Friday November 09, 2007 @05:43PM from the bad-day-for-leaving-people-alone dept.

G'Quann writes "Starting next year, all communication providers in Germany will have to store all connection data for six months. This includes not only phone calls but also IP addresses and e-mail headers. There had been a lot of protest against the new law, but it was ignored by the government. Quoting: 'The content of the communications is not stored. The bill had been heavily criticized. Privacy [advocates] had organized demonstrations against the bill in all major German cities at the beginning of this week. In October there had already been a large demonstration with thousands of participants in Germany's capital Berlin. All opposition parties voted against the bill. Several members of the opposition and several hundred private protesters announced a constitutional complaint.'"

New Startup Hopes to Slay the Botnet

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 05, 2007 @07:25PM from the saint-nemean-and-the-botnet dept.

eldavojohn writes "How do you identify Botnet traffic on your network? Well, the problem with current commercial technologies is that they generate too many false positives. But a new startup name Nemean Networks hopes to solve all that by building signatures of traffic at many different levels of the network stack. 'Finding the proper sensitivity threshold for NIDS sensors has always been a problem for network and security administrators. Lower the threshold and some attacks get through the signature screening; raise it too high and false positives flourish. Nemean attempts to find the proper balance by gathering traffic sent to a honeynet to build signatures based on weighted data. The numerical weights are entirely subjective and based on the creators' expertise. The data is then clustered and fed through an algorithm to determine threat levels and develop signatures.'"

Submission + - In Depth: Apple's Leopard leaps to new heights (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw on Thursday October 25, 2007 @04:58PM

jcatcw writes: Computerworld begins its Week of Leopard, and first in-depth review and image gallery, with a question: Is it worth the wait? Answers include Yes: it trumps Vista, of course; the Finder, Quick Look and Cover Flow provide better functionality and eye candy; Time Machine is the biggest undelete ever and the restore function is one of the coolest things we've ever seen; it has iChat (bonus pic of CW Editor); and has lots of updates under the hood. Or the answer might be no if you're lacking in the hardware, software or guts departments. And finally, if you live a cave, here's an FAQ.

Submission + - Verizon offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by BlueMerle on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @04:59PM

BlueMerle writes: Verizon offers 20Mbps both ways for current FiOS customers. Cable companies sweating like a whore in church.

In a huge win for both medical imaging and BitTorrent porn, 20Mbps symmetrical connections are now available over Verizon's fiber optic FiOS network.

Journal Journal: 6th Circuit strikes down 2257 age verification for pornsites 359

Journal by arbitraryaardvark on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @04:31PM

How Appealing reports that a court has struck down age verification requirements for porn sites, as a First Amendment violation.
While the average slashdot user has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the net.
The age verification requirements of U.S.C. Title 18, Section 2257 were yet another attempt to regulate to death what the government can't outright prohibit. The re

Submission + - FTC to look at P2P - Again! (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by BlueMerle on Monday October 22, 2007 @03:32PM

BlueMerle writes: If you thought that Comcasts traffic shaping of P2P data was bad, wait till the FTC gets their hands on it!

The committee has a bee in its collective bonnet about the issue of data security, and believes that P2P users across the country are inadvertently leaking private information and financial records into the tubes.

Solar Cells Crystallized Out of Molten Silicon 83

Posted by kdawson on Saturday October 13, 2007 @03:49PM from the news-to-us dept.

Hot Toddy sends in a link to a story up on Digital World Tokyo about a more efficient process for manufacturing solar cells. It involves dropping molten silicon from a height of 14 m; surface tension causes tiny spheres 1 mm in diameter to form; the silicon crystallizes in the 1.5 seconds of free-fall. The spheres can be mounted on surfaces of any shape. They capture light from many directions, increasing their solar efficiency. Kyosemi is the company behind the Sphelar technology. Some of the pages on this site date to 2003 and the status of most listed Sphelar products is either "under development" or "engineering sample is available."

Stem Cells Change Man's DNA 171

Posted by Zonk on Friday October 05, 2007 @05:21PM from the oh-man-science-is-weird dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After receiving umbilical cord stem cells to replace bone marrow as treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Greg Graves temporarily had three different sets of DNA. Eventually, one of the two sets of cells transplanted into his bone marrow took root, leaving him different DNA in his blood from the rest of his body: 'If you were to do a DNA test of my blood and one from my skin, they'd be different,' Graves said. 'It's a pretty wild thing.'"

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