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Crime

Thief Returns Stolen Laptop Contents On USB Stick 352

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-been-a-pleasure-being-your-victim dept.
While it's true that Sweden is responsible for unleashing IKEA and ABBA on humanity, not everything they produce is terrible. Their thieves are some of the most considerate in the world. An unnamed professor at Umeå University received a USB stick with all his data after his laptop was stolen. From the article: "The professor, who teaches at Umeå University in northern Sweden, was devastated when ten years of work stored on his laptop was stolen. But to his surprise, a week after the theft, the entire contents of his laptop were posted to him on a USB stick. 'I am very happy,' the unnamed professor told the local Västerbottens-Kuriren newspaper. 'This story makes me feel hope for humanity.'"
Music

Spotify Releases a Linux-Only Client Library 96

Posted by timothy from the you-and-you-and-definitely-not-you dept.
f0rk writes "Spotify, a popular music streaming service, has just recently released libspotify. An official, binary-only, only for subscribers, library to 'enable and inspire you to build some really cool stuff.' The first release only has support for x86-32 Linux, the only major platform Spotify does not run on. It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope someone will use their restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client."
The Military

40 Years Ago, the US Lost a Nuclear Bomb 470

Posted by kdawson from the chrome-dome-down dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "A BBC investigation has found that in 1968 the US abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland after a nuclear-armed B52 crashed on the ice a few miles from Thule Air Base. The Stratofortress disintegrated on impact with the sea ice and parts of it began to melt through to the fjord below. The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons on board detonated without setting off the nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew. The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been 'destroyed' and while technically true, investigators piecing together fragments from the crash could only account for three of the weapons. Investigators found that 'something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary.' A subsequent search by a US submarine was beset by technical problems and, as winter encroached and the ice began to freeze over, the search was abandoned. 'There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components,' said a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. 'It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them.'"

Comment Re:Who really benefits? (Score 5, Funny) 240

by Anonymous Coward (#23451288) Attached to: Dag Wieers Scoffs at Coordinated Linux Release Proposal

try this lot [microsoft.com]. Their disto still seems fairly popular though

Tell me about it, been trying to get this one working for ages. Firstly, my friend tells me it's only available on bittorrent, instead of just downloading it from their site. Which is a bit weird, but whatever.

Where I'm really having trouble is with the package manager. How do I add a software repository in that add/remove programs thing? It doesn't seem to mention what type of packages are compatible with it either. Am guessing RPM or DEB, but which is it, maybe someone could enlighten me?

To be honest, I'm about to give up on this Windows thing, it's just not ready for the mainstream.

Comment The nice way of having ads on online videos... (Score 1) 134

by Warod (#22761710) Attached to: Google's New Patent on Commercial Breaks
Didn't read the patent text but my idea about having ads on online video without disturbing the watchers would be something like this:

1. Short ad at the end of the video.
2. Ads by user input as in showing ad video or flash-style animations while user has paused the video.
3. Allowing video uploader to mark where they'd like to have ad content on their work.
4. If keeping the time limits on videos, adding possibility for uploader to make video sequences out of them and show the ads when moving from clip to another.

That's about it. Anything else and I'd get annoyed when watching the video or having ads on my production published through the service. So, now I just have to hope that Google really have "Do no evil" with them on this.
Media (Apple)

Submission + - iPhone SDK rules block Skype, Firefox, Java. (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Apple's iPhone software development kit is already drawing complaints due to the strict terms of service. Voice over IP apps like Skype that attempt to use the cellular data connection will be blocked. Competing web browsers Firefox and Opera are forbidden. Even Sun is now backpedaling on its recent announcement of a java port, noting that there are some legal issues. Critics are already comparing Apple's methods to Comcast's anti-net neutrality filtering, and Microsoft's Netscape-killing antitrust tactics. Could Apple face government regulators? CNET has more.
United States

Submission + - Helium crisis approaching (stltoday.com)

Submitted by
vrmlguy
vrmlguy writes: "In ten years, the National Helium Reserve will be depleted, according to an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. An article in Science Daily echoes the concern, quoting Dr. Lee Sobotka, of Washington University in St. Louis: "Helium is non-renewable and irreplaceable. Its properties are unique and unlike hydrocarbon fuels (natural gas or oil), there are no biosynthetic ways to make an alternative to helium. All should make better efforts to recycle it." On Earth, Helium is found mixed with natural gas, but few producers capture it. The US created a stockpile in 1925 for use by military dirigibles, but stopped stockpiling it in 1995 as a cost-saving measure."
Idle

Invisible Rope 1

Posted by samzenpus from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
samzenpus writes "I find most 'prank' type videos boring. This one however has just right amount of clever in it and nobody falls off something or gets punched in the face."
Security

Submission + - Turn in a software pirate, collect $500 1

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is offering consumers up to $500 for reporting software counterfeiters who sell their goods on online auction sites like eBay. Under the plan, anyone who unwittingly buys fake software from an online fraudster can receive up to $500 if they report the scam. SIIA said the program is a "don't get mad, get even" approach to stopping software piracy. It's "a way for unsuspecting buyers to get even with auction sellers who rip them off," said SIIA VP Keith Kupferschmid. The campaign, launched December 13, is slated to run through January 30, 2008.
Businesses

Submission + - The Epic Battle between Microsoft and Google 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "There is a long article in the NYTimes well worth reading called "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" about the business strategies both companies are pursuing and about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based cloud and about 2,000 companies are signing up every day for Google Apps, simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft's lucrative Office business. Microsoft faces a business quandary as they to try to link the Web to its desktop business — "software plus Internet services," in its formulation. Microsoft will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups but it is "unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating." David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, "a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.""
Music

Submission + - How do you find new non-RIAA music? 4

Submitted by burgundysizzle
burgundysizzle writes: Hey this is /. (almost) everyone hates the RIAA and a lot of people say that they don't buy anything from the companies that are part of that trade group. What alternatives do you use or more importantly what methods do you use to discover alternative sources of music?

I use http://www.sellaband.com/ (some free legal music available) and http://www.amiestreet.com/ (new music is free and most music really cheap) to find new music, but I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting places to discover new music. Tell me about your experiences and any other interesting places you get new music from (that's inexpensive and legal).
Music

Submission + - Pirate Bay Facing A More 'Old Fashioned' Pressure (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Jety
Jety writes: "Ars Technica has an article reporting that The Pirate Bay is facing legal pressure from a new front. A wealthy musician with a track record for going head-to-head with record labels and little kids is now joining the queue to take a legal swing at TPB. What I find particularly interesting about this article is the description of the "camera-toting investigators following [The Pirate Bay admins] around in cars marked with Danish plates."

This sort of borderline-harassment raises an interesting question: with billions of dollars on the line, and the 'pure evil' of those who stand to lose it, how long will it be before someone takes a page from the Tony Soprano playbook and TPB headquarters mysteriously burns down or one of the admins has an 'unfortunate accident'? Though the question strikes me as a bit sensationalistic, a part of me marvels that it hasn't happened already."
Space

Submission + - Incredible Holmes Comet grows bigger than the sun (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Sun is no longer the largest object in our solar system. The recently visible-to-the-naked-eye Holmes comet has achieved that distinction today. The comet has a larger gas and dust cloud known as the coma, and consequently it has a larger diameter than the sun according to astronomers at the University of Hawaii. Scientists don't seem to have a guess as to how big it will ultimately become. The Holmes coma's diameter on Nov. 9 was 869,900 miles (1.4 million kilometers), based on measurements by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. The sun's diameter, stated differently by various sources, is about 864,900 miles (1.392 million kilometers). http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21947"

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