Davis Freeberg - Slashdot User

Submission + - DHS Wants Mozilla To Disable Mafiaafire Plugin (wordpress.com)

Submitted by

Davis Freeberg

on Thursday May 05, 2011 @12:55PM

Davis Freeberg writes: "The Department of Homeland Security is hard at work again, protecting the industry from websites that the big studios don't want you to see. This time they're targeting the Mafiaafire plugin by asking Mozilla to disable the addon at the root level. Instead of blindly complying with the government's request, Mozilla has decieded to ask some tough questions instead. Unsurprisingly, when faced with legitimate concerns about the legality of their domain seizure program, the DHS has decided to clam up."

Comment Re:What Monopoly (Score 1) 206

by Davis Freeberg on Wednesday June 03, 2009 @03:26PM (#28199719) Attached to: Money For Nothing and the Codecs For Free

This argument isn't about consumers being able to choose, it's about competition. Microsoft is taking a piece of an industry through eminent domain. The developers who are impacted by this are the same ones who built the codecs and filters for linux.

Comment Re:More on Streaming? Interview? (Score 3, Interesting) 206

by Davis Freeberg on Wednesday June 03, 2009 @03:12PM (#28199555) Attached to: Money For Nothing and the Codecs For Free

Good suggestion, It would be interesting to see what other people would be interested in. I'll ask if he has any interest and hopefully he'll be open to fielding some questions.

Submission + - Money For Nothing and The Codecs For Free (davisfreeberg.com)

Submitted by Davis Freeberg on Wednesday June 03, 2009 @09:31AM

Davis Freeberg writes: In an in depth discussion on the codec industry, CoreCodec CEO and Matroska Foundation board member Dan Marlin shares his thoughts on the growing popularity of the MKV container, confusion in the marketplace between X.264/MKV and DivXHD and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player. His interview offers a behind the scenes look at an important piece of technology that is helping to power the P2P movement. It also raises the prickly question of whether or not Microsoft is abusing their OS monopoly, in order to rein in competition within the codec industry.

Submission + - Defendant must tell government his password (volokh.com) 1

Submitted by

sohp

on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @08:46PM

sohp writes: "Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, reports are out that the case of a man who invoked the 5th amendment when asked to supply the password to decrypt his hard drive to allow police to search for child pornography has a new development. A judge has overturned the original magistrate's decision allowing the defense and has ordered Sebastien Boucher to supply the prosecutors with a decrypted hard disk. Note that the order is not that he produce the key — just that he provide an unencrypted copy."

Submission + - Superguns Helped Defeat Spanish Armada

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @12:07AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "With the discovery last year of the first wreck of an Elizabethan fighting ship off Alderney in the Channel Islands, thought to date from around 1592, marine archeologists are revising their ideas on how the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Replicas of two cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. Elizabeth's "supergun", although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travel across the deck and out the other side. Tests on cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck also suggest the ship carried guns of uniform size, firing standard ammunition. "Elizabeth's navy created the first ever set of uniform cannon, capable of firing the same size shot in a deadly barrage," says Marine archaeologist Mensun Bound from Oxford University adding that Elizabeth's navy had worked out that a few big guns were less effective than a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once. "[Elizabeth's] navy made a giant leap forward in the way men fought at sea, years ahead of England's enemies, and which was still being used to devastating effect by Nelson 200 years later.""

Submission + - First Evidence of Supernovae Found in Ice Cores (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Monday February 23, 2009 @07:08AM

KentuckyFC writes: "Supernovae in our part of the Milky Way ought to have a significant impact on the atmosphere. In particular, the intense gamma ray burst would ionise oxygen and nitrogen in the mid to upper atmosphere, increasing the levels of nitrogen oxide there by an order of magnitude or so. Now a team of Japanese researchers has found the first evidence of a supernova's impact on the atmosphere in an ice core taken from Dome Fuji in Antarctica. The team examined ice that was laid down in the 11th century and found three nitrogen oxide spikes, two of which correspond to well known supernova: one event in 1006 AD and another in 1054 AD which was the birth of the Crab Nebula (abstract). Both were widely reported by Chinese and Arabic astronomers at the time. The third spike is unexplained but the team suggest it may have been caused by a supernova visible only from the southern hemisphere or one that was obscured by interstellar dust."

Submission + - Strange globs could signal water on Mars (nationalgeographic.com)

Submitted by Joshua.Niland on Sunday February 22, 2009 @07:38AM

Joshua.Niland writes: Strange globs seen on the landing strut of the Phoenix Mars lander could be the first proof that modern Mars hosts liquid water. Images from the robotic craft show what appear to be liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander's leg over the course of a Martian month.

Just when is NASA going to fix that leaking roof on the backlot? ;-)

Submission + - 1-Click Smacked Down Again as Reexam Languishes

Submitted by

theodp

on Saturday February 21, 2009 @06:11PM

theodp writes: "Pressed on Amazon's 1-Click patent, then-USPTO Chief Q. Todd Dickinson got testy: "I make this challenge all the time. If you're aware of prior art out there that invalidates a patent that is existing, file a re-examination. We'll be happy to take a look at it." Really? It's been 3+ years since unemployed actor Peter Calveley submitted prior art that triggered a USPTO reexamination of the 1-Click patent. Still no "final answer" from the USPTO. To put things in perspective, 1-Click inventor Jeff Bezos once proposed a three-year lifespan for patents (later retracted), let alone patent reexams. In the meantime, other patent examiners have repeatedly smacked down 1-Click — the latest (non-final) rejection was issued on Feb. 10th with Sandra Bullock's help."

Submission + - Netflix To Offer Streaming Only Service Plans (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Saturday February 21, 2009 @02:42AM

MojoKid writes: "Debates are raging as to what the future of movie distribution will look like. There are those who claim that physical discs like DVDs, Blu-ray, and whatever format will eventually supplant Blu-ray, will always deliver a superior viewing experience versus anything that will be available via streaming. Pundits on the other side of the debate, say that as broadband's footprint continues to expand and quality is improving. Interestingly, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, is siding firmly with the latter camp and it would even appear that Netflix is gearing up to move all of its eggs from the mail-distribution basket to the online streaming basket. Hastings indicated that perhaps as soon as later this year or sometime in 2010, Netflix might start offering online-streaming-only subscription plans beyond just its current Starz plan."

Comment Sorry Server Down - Link To Article (Score 5, Informative) 540

by Davis Freeberg on Thursday January 03, 2008 @09:29PM (#21904102) Attached to: HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix

Sorry everyone /. was a little too powerful for my hosting company and they won't let me up my quota. If anyone knows of any webhosting companies that can handle the /. effect, I'm in the market for a new one. In the meantime, here is a link to another copy of the article in case you would like to read it. If someone can get Commander Taco to update it in the main article, I would appreciate it. Thanks for all the support and I hope that you don't hate me too much for making the mistake of buying Vista and DRM movies. Sometimes you have to experience how crappy DRM is first hand, in order to realize how much value it strips from your content.

Submission + - TiVo Awarded Patent For Password You Can't Hack

Submitted by

Davis Freeberg

on Friday May 11, 2007 @02:26AM

Davis Freeberg writes: "TiVo has always been know for thinking outside of the box, but this week they were awarded an unusual patent related to locking down content on their hard drives. According to the patent, they've invented a way to create password security that is so tough, it would take you longer than the life of a hard drive, in order to figure out. They could be using this technology to prevent the sharing of content or it could be related to their advertising or guide data, but if their decryption technology is really that good, it's an interesting solution for solving the problem of securing networks."

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