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Comment The RIAA vs. us (Score 1) 179

by PrefersVMS (#23284554) Attached to: Massive Increase in RIAA Copyright Notices
"The RIAA is also backing legislation in states
such as Illinois and Tennessee that would require schools that get a
certain number of notices to begin installing deep packet monitoring
equipment on their internet and intranets, according to Luker."

OK. Being the practical person that I am, who's going to pay for it?
Who's going to pay for the time, materials, and personnel necessary
to accomplish this goal? The RIAA? The University? The civil service
branch that runs each university? The students?

The RIAA wants this, they want that, they don't want to PAY for the
information they claim they need. So what's the problem? If they, as
if they were a company, wants to see particular data collected, then
they, as a company, are required to PAY for it. And that includes,
among other things, the hardware and software necessary to collect
and coallate the information, the h/w & s/w necessary to handle the data
in whatever form is necessary, and the salaries of the folks involved in said
production. As well as the legal fees to protect all of the aforementioned
data from the various laws that prohibit the collection of said data.

In other words, the RIAA MUST be held accountable for the gathering
of the data, the consolidation of the data into a database (perhaps Oracle),
the fees associated with such an enterprise for each and every school of
learning for each state. Yes, we know there is much duplication of effort,
but each effort should be separate so as to not contaminate the data of each
institution of higher learning. Yes, the RIAA MUST PAY for all of it. And
be held financially and legally accountable for the data.

I wonder how much overhead this would bring to their request? Enough to
permanently discourage such a brazen act for a very long time? Enough for
all the result of the world to enjoy this great soap opera? Enough to show
the ruling party of the RIAA how stupid they appear to be? Or enough for
the legal entities of each state/school to ask "why are you prosecuting the
downloaders as opposed to the uploaders, the REAL crime-inducing folks?
Why are you wasting OUR time, OUR resources, and causing OUR reputations
to look as bad as yours?"

I wonder.
Programming

Submission + - Indie 3D Game Engines?

Submitted by TBBScorpion
TBBScorpion writes: Questions: Which of the Indie 3D game engines are worth while? How long until Ogre3D and other open source engines catch up?

Lately I have been investigating 3D game engines. I was mostly paying attention to open source engines like Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, etc. Then I found out about cheap Indie licenses for commercial game engines like Torque Game Engine ($150), Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and the C4 Engine ($200 + free upgrades).

I found a list of top commercial and open source game engines at devmaster.net in case anyone is interested (I didn't want to take the time to list all the engines, but there are more good ones that I did not list on this page.

Here is my dilemma and question... Which of the engines are worth investing in? Buy an indie license or hold out for open source? Or start with indie and switch later if open source catches up?

Torque Game Engine 1.5 works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux but lacks modern shader support (except for something about a free modernization kit). I mostly do cross-platform software development so I like this feature.

But then there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support and the Atlas terrain paging feature and a few other nice features, but is DirectX9 based and is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?

The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but potentially more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.

The features I am hoping for are:
  • Cross-platform if possible
  • Modern shader support
  • Terrain paging system built-in
  • Model, material and animation import from Blender 3d


When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing the seem to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. Physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other Physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines? What does the slashdot community think about the topic?

Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002... so I'm ready to dive into the engine code.
Science

Polyethylene Bulletproof Vests Better Than Kevlar 345

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hard-wear dept.
teflonscout writes "When I think of bulletproof vests, the first word that comes to mind is Kevlar. Wired is running a story on Dynema SB61, a bulletproof material that is made of polyethylene. It is a higher grade of the plastic found in Tupperware. The story also mentions the recall of Second Chance bulletproof vests that were made from Zylon, a material that degraded slowly when exposed to moisture. At least one police officer was injured when a bullet penetrated his Zylon vest. Polyethylene is impervious to moisture. The first vests made from this new material are 5mm thick and can stop a 9mm bullet traveling at 1777 feet per second, which is slightly better than other top of the line vests."
Power

Submission + - Alloy of aluminum and gallium releases hydrogen

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Reuters is reporting on a method of releasing hydrogen from water by oxidizing aluminum in an alloy with gallium. The aluminum oxidizes leaving aluminum oxide, gallium and hydrogen gas in the presence of water. The Purdue scientists who discovered the effect think this may help to overcome difficulties with hydrogen storage. From the article:

On its own, aluminum will not react with water because it forms a protective skin when exposed to oxygen. Adding gallium keeps the film from forming, allowing the aluminum to react with oxygen in the water.
More details are give here."
User Journal

Journal Journal: The Real Cost of Software Unreliability

Journal by MOBE2001

According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, in 2005, over 43,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in the U.S. alone. I don't know what the number is for the entire world but it must be in the six digits. No one can fault software unreliability for those fatalities since human drivers were at fault, but what if I told you that the reason that human beings are driving cars and trucks on the road and killing themselves in the
PHP

Submission + - Pro Drupal Development

Submitted by
Michael J. Ross
Michael J. Ross writes: "If a Web site needs to be developed as quickly as possible, or it needs to support collaborative content, then usually the best approach is to use a content management system (CMS). There are many CMSs from which a Web developer could choose, including Drupal, which is considered by many to be the most powerful, extensible, and logically organized of them all. Installing Drupal and using it to create a simple site, is fairly straightforward, in part due to its relatively excellent documentation. But for much of its existence, there has been far less information available on how to extend a Drupal site with one's own modules, themes, blocks, etc. That need is now met by a new book, Pro Drupal Development.

The book was written by John K. VanDyk and Matt Westgate, both of whom are experienced computer programmers, who years earlier had created their own CMS. In their book's Introduction, they confess to discovering Drupal and its many advantages, switching over to it, and presumably abandoning further development of their own CMS. This speaks volumes about their regard for Drupal, because an individual programmer or programming team can give no greater vote of confidence for a technological product than to voluntarily end primary allegiance to a competing product that they themselves birthed and nurtured.

Pro Drupal Development was published by Apress, on 16 April 2007, under the ISBNs 1590597559 and 978-1590597552. The publisher offers a Web page on their site dedicated to the book, where the visitor will find all of the book's source code, as well as the table of contents and a sample chapter (Chapter 8 — The Theme System), in PDF format. In addition, there is a link for errata, which leads to the authors' own book site. At the time of this writing, there are three dozen entries, contributed by the authors and their readers. The authors' site also has links for downloading the source code by individual chapter, and a blog that focuses on the book.

The book's material, spanning 428 pages, is organized into 23 chapters and two appendices. Unlike the majority of technical books nowadays, this one does not have the chapters organized into labeled parts. Nonetheless, the chapters and appendices roughly fall into three categories: how Drupal works (Chapters 1, 19, and 23, and Appendix A), how to customize it (Chapters 2-18 and 22), and how to optimize your Drupal development efforts (Chapters 20-21, and Appendix B). The customization chapters cover a wide range of topics: modules, menus, databases, users, nodes, themes, blocks, forms, filtering, searching, indexing, files, taxonomy, caching, sessions, jQuery, localization, and optimization.

Each one of these topics is explored in laudable detail, with plenty of sample code and figures to illustrate the key concepts. The greatest strength of this book is the depth of its coverage, and the methodical way that the authors go about presenting the material. They are clearly quite serious about Drupal itself, and about conveying to the reader all of the knowledge that they believe is important for the reader to master. In fact, anyone attempting to read the book cover to cover might find the presentation quite dry, with no evidence of humor or even a sense of fun, unlike so many other recent programming books. On the other hand, one can argue that the value of this information alone to the reader who is equally serious about mastering Drupal, should be sufficient. Regardless, be warned that this is definitely not a book that one can read through at a fast pace, absorbing the bulk of the information. The innards of Drupal alone make it a challenging subject for dissection; learning how to modify Drupal's behavior, is even more so.

Yet if anyone is interested in mastering the inner workings of Drupal, and how to customize them, this is the book of choice. It may be a bit dry, but it is quite meaty, and the material is clearly presented. Moreover, the publisher, Apress, has done an admirable job with this title. The layout is clear; the index is substantial; and, as with their other titles, they offer two different versions of the table of contents — high-level, listing the chapter titles only, and detailed, listing the sections and subsections within those chapters.

Another aspect of this book that I applaud is the efficient use of page space, through the use of top and bottom margins that are noticeably smaller than those found in the typical computer programming book. This is especially true of the bottom margins. For instance, on page 117, the text comes within one centimeter of the bottom edges the page — something I've never seen before in a professionally printed book. At first it might strike one as sloppy, but actually should be appreciated by anyone who is tired of technical books using excessive margins for padding out a much more limited amount of information into an even greater number of pages. This is a practice that I would recommend to all other publishers, technical or otherwise.

However, the book does have some weaknesses, which is probably to be expected in any first edition. The sample source code in many cases could benefit from more use of whitespace — particularly for the PHP code. But with any code found in a book, there is always the possibility that such instances of compressed code result from a conscious decision given the limited width of the printed page. But in most such cases in this book, that reason would not be applicable.

The authors do not warn the reader that a solid understanding of PHP is needed for using the book's ideas and sample code. Near the end of the Introduction, they suggest that if the reader is new to Drupal, then he or she should read the chapters in sequence. The authors should also note that if the reader is new to PHP, then it would be better to first get up to speed on PHP before trying to digest and make use of this book. Such points might be obvious to most readers, but they should be clarified up front, perhaps in the Introduction, for the benefit of anyone browsing this title in a bookstore, and wondering if they already possess the technical know-how required by the book.

Similarly, the authors also do not mention that the book is, for the most part, only applicable to Drupal version 5, and not version 4 or earlier versions, since there have been some dramatic changes with the release of version 5. In fact, given the extent of the changes and how that would impact the utility of the book depending upon what version of Drupal the reader is using, it should be noted on the book's cover, as an increasing number of publishers are doing.

A couple of minor problems were in evidence in the first dozen pages. On page 3, the authors refer to "user 1," which is likely to confuse most readers, because it looks like a username, and would be unfamiliar to someone who has installed Drupal and created a Web site, without extensive reading of the Drupal documentation. On page 11, the authors discuss core modules, and where they can be seen listed in the administration area of Drupal. But the path that they provide, "sites/all/modules," is incorrect, because that is where user-added modules are placed, of which there are none in a default installation. (The second mention of that path, in the fourth paragraph, is correct.)

Lastly, when the book is opened up to any of the pages not near the center, the book immediately flops closed. The use of lay-flat binding is strongly urged, for future editions of this book and all others that Apress offers.

Despite these weaknesses — all of which are fixable — Pro Drupal Development is strongly recommended for any PHP programmer who wants a truly in-depth look at how Drupal works and how to make the most of it.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter."
Science

New Form of Matter Melds Lasers, Superconductors 113

Posted by kdawson from the polariton-superfluid dept.
sterlingda writes "Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers and superconductors. The work introduces a new method of moving energy from one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam like that from a laser. The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as 'polaritons' that have been trapped and slowed using a technique similar to that used to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate. The work is published in the May 18 issue of Science (subscription required to read beyond the abstract)."
Education

What Can 4-yr-olds Understand About Science? 192

Posted by Cliff from the show-n-tell-extreme dept.
dr.karl.b asks: "My 3 and a half year old son is in Kindergarten. Here in Germany that includes 3 to 6 year olds. He is supposed to explain what his parents' occupations are. I am a scientist, and despite all the advice I have received saying he can't understand what I do, I am determined to try. I study self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation. We have several cool labs in my institute, like robot-arm motion simulators and full-immersion virtual reality set-ups. We can easily compete with amusement parks for wow-factor, but I have 2 questions: How can I explain my work to my son? How can I invite his class (3-6 yr olds) to our institute to have them learn AND have fun, rather than ONLY have fun?"
Power

US Gasoline Prices Spur Telework 512

Posted by kdawson from the moving-bits-not-atoms dept.
coondoggie writes "The price of gasoline may finally be changing the way many people commute and communicate. Anecdotal evidence says teleworkers are growing rapidly as a direct result of the cost of driving. The article links a survey indicating that in Q1 2007 the 19 largest US cable and telephone providers (representing about 94% of the market) acquired over 2.9 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers, to a total of about 56.2 million. That can be attributed in part to more employees taking advantage of telework programs, experts say. Just this week the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust task force opened the first of a series of hearings on the oil industry. Its chairman noted that gasoline prices have soared well above $3 a gallon and asked, 'How did we get into this mess?'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Indian retailers raided by Microsoft

Submitted by
slashthedot
slashthedot writes: "Microsoft caught some Indian retailers selling pirated copies by sending a dummy customer asking for a copy of Windows to be installed on their PC. The retailers say Microsoft products are too highly priced for Indian market, so many people won't be interested in buying original copies at that price. They even go on to say they are promoting MS software in this way.
One retailer was heard saying:
"Since we are are not charging anything extra for installing the software, it means that we are actually not trading in pirated software. For us this is just a sewa (selfless act) that we are offering to our customers. Besides, the pricing of their operating systems is way too high for the Indian markets."

More here "
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux Training

Submitted by Spritzer
Spritzer writes: I work for a rather large corporation with multiple divisions around the world. Nearly all user computers in the company are Windows systems, and there is no plan to move to Linux in the future. However, a good many of our products are now designed to run on Linux systems for security and stability purposes. Obviously, the design/development teams are knowledgeable in the use of Linux operating systems.Unfortunately my field service teams are not, and their is no in-house training program. This has begun to affect our ability to provide efficient, quality service to customers when in the field.

What training services have you used in the past to get people trained in the basics of using? I'd prefer to stay away from online, self-paced courses and get my people some hands on training with an instructor.
Privacy

Submission + - Bill bans NSA eavesdropping

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government. Now Bush can pry into your private communications only under terms of FISA.

The ACLU noted that, despite many recent hearings about "modernization" and "technology neutrality," the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them."
Censorship

PC World Editor Returns, CEO Demoted 118

Posted by Zonk from the nice-guys-don't-have-to-finish-last dept.
k1980pc writes "In a nice twist to the recent discussion on Slashdot, PC World editor Harry McCracken has returned to the magazine. In turn, Colin Crawford has been removed as PC World's CEO, where 'he will be responsible for driving IDG's online strategy and initiatives in support of our web-centric business focus' ... safely out of the way of the magazine editors. McCracken was pleased to return to his position: 'I'm thrilled to be back with the PC World team. IDG is a company I've loved working for over the past 16 years, and one with a remarkable history of enabling editors to serve our customers--the millions of people who depend on our content online and in print.'"
It's funny. Laugh.

Lawsuit Invokes DMCA to Force DRM Adoption 332

Posted by Zonk from the interesting-legal-tactic dept.
TechnicolourSquirrel writes "Forbes.com informs us that the company Media Rights Technologies is suing Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real Networks for not using its DRM technology and therefore 'failing to include measures to control access to copyrighted material.' The company alleges that their refusal to use MRT's X1 Recording Control technology constitutes a 'circumvention' of a copyright protection system, which is of course illegal under the Digital Millenium Copryight Act. I would say more, but without controlling access to this paragraph with MRT's products, I fear I have already risked too much ..."

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