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Comment Re:Does it do custom folders? (Score 4, Interesting) 193

by batdragon (#44667919) Attached to: Calibre Version 1.0 Released After 7 Years of Development

So far you had to import all of your files into calibre, it can't reference external files. So it is pretty much unusable for importing larger existing libraries, and you get locked in.

For me, I think this is a feature.

It ensures that no matter what plugins / convertors / bugs calbre has at the time, your original files don't get mucked up. So you can merge records, mess about with meta data, and not have to worry about losing anything.

The copies that are imported into calibre's own library folder are just that: plain copies. I don't get your point about "locked in". You're as locked in as you were with your original files. The directory layout may be different, but nothing gets obfuscated.
Robotics

When Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence? 979

Posted by samzenpus from the I'm-afraid-I'm-smarter-than-you-dave dept.
destinyland writes "21 AI experts have predicted the date for four artificial intelligence milestones. Seven predict AIs will achieve Nobel prize-winning performance within 20 years, while five predict that will be accompanied by superhuman intelligence. (The other milestones are passing a 3rd grade-level test, and passing a Turing test.) One also predicted that in 30 years, 'virtually all the intellectual work that is done by trained human beings ... can be done by computers for pennies an hour,' adding that AI 'is likely to eliminate almost all of today's decently paying jobs.' The experts also estimated the probability that an AI passing a Turing test would result in an outcome that's bad for humanity ... and four estimated that probability was greater than 60% — regardless of whether the developer was private, military, or even open source."
Government

James Murdoch Criticizes BBC For Providing "Free News" 703

Posted by timothy from the you-don't-trust-the-gov't-to-report-news-fairly? dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a 'dominant' BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it 'incredibly difficult' for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. 'It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,' says Murdoch. 'The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.' In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US." Note that James Murdoch is the son of Rupert Murdoch.
The Internet

Australian ISPs Soon To Become Copyright Cops 183

Posted by timothy from the classic-multitasking dept.
srjh writes "In the Australian Federal Government's latest assault on the internet, draft legislation has been released that allows network operators to intercept communications to ensure that their networks are being 'appropriately used.' Such legislation is particularly important given the interference of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy in a recent copyright lawsuit against iiNet, one of the largest ISPs in the country. Conroy called prominent filtering opponent iiNet's inaction over copyright infringement 'stunning,' whereas iiNet claimed that it would be illegal under current Australian law to intercept its users' downloads. While this latest legislation appears to be a concession of that point, the government is said to be watching the case closely and along with attempts to introduce a three-strikes law in Australia, it appears the law will be changed if the government dislikes the outcome of the case. The internet villain of the year just continues to earn his title."
Operating Systems

World's First Formally-Proven OS Kernel 517

Posted by Soulskill from the wait-for-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Operating systems usually have bugs — the 'blue screen of death,' the Amiga Hand, and so forth are known by almost everyone. NICTA's team of researchers has managed to prove that a particular OS kernel is guaranteed to meet its specification. It is fully, formally verified, and as such it exceeds the Common Criteria's highest level of assurance. The researchers used an executable specification written in Haskell, C code that mapped to Haskell, and the Isabelle theorem prover to generate a machine-checked proof that the C code in the kernel matches the executable and the formal specification of the system." Does it run Linux? "We're pleased to say that it does. Presently, we have a para-virtualized version of Linux running on top of the (unverified) x86 port of seL4. There are plans to port Linux to the verified ARM version of seL4 as well." Further technical details are available from NICTA's website.
The Media

Murdoch Says, "We'll Charge For All Our Sites" 881

Posted by timothy from the subverting-the-dominant-paradigm dept.
Oracle Goddess writes "In what appears to be a carefully planned suicide, Rupert Murdoch announced that his media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape. 'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,' Murdoch said."
Games

Which Game Series Would You Reboot? 1120

Posted by Soulskill from the star-control-please dept.
Franchise reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, and the trend is starting to creep into the games industry as well. The Guardian's games blog is running a story discussing a few examples and pondering likely candidates for future reboots. Quoting: "If anything, the concept of the reboot makes more sense in the videogame sector than it does in movies. For a start, games are complex entities, with each new iteration in a familiar series adding many, many hours of fresh narrative content. Entering, say, the Zelda, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Dragon Quest or Metal Gear worlds at this stage must be massively intimidating — even if the developers go to great lengths to make each entry work as a singular, self-contained entity within the canon. Also, videogames are going through a paradigm shift in terms of popular appeal at the moment. The faithful audience of young males has been joined by new demographics brought in by the Wii, PC casual games, and now the iPhone. Many of these people may be vaguely aware of long-running game brands, but won't have a clue about the key characters, sign post events and basic gameplay mechanisms." So, which series (or individual title) would you like to see rebooted?
Games

Ubisoft Working On a New Anti-Piracy Tool 377

Posted by Soulskill from the surely-to-be-welcomed-with-open-arms dept.
Ubisoft recently revealed that their game sales have seen a 50% drop over the past quarter, blaming the overall market slowdown and piracy (particularly on the DS) for the low numbers. They also announced that four of their games, including Splinter Cell: Conviction and Red Steel 2, would be delayed until 2010. The company's CEO, Yves Guillemot, now says they are working on a new anti-piracy tool that should be ready by the end of 2009. He didn't offer any details about how it would be implemented.
Security

40 Million Identities Up For Sale On the Web 245

Posted by kdawson from the big-fat-target dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Highly sensitive financial information, including credit card details, bank account numbers, telephone numbers, and even PINs are available to the highest bidder. The information being traded on the Web has been intercepted by a British company and collated into a single database for the first time. The Lucid Intelligence database contains the records of 40 million people worldwide, mostly Americans; four million are Britons. Security experts described the database as the largest of its kind in the world. The database is in the hands of Colin Holder, a retired senior Metropolitan police officer who served on the fraud squad. He has collected the information over the past four years. His sources include law enforcement from around the world, such as British police and the FBI, anti-phishing and hacking campaigners, and members of the public. Mr. Holder said he has invested £160,000 in the venture so far. He plans to offset the cost by charging members of the public for access to his database to check whether their data security has been breached."
The Media

Google Will Star In New Dow Jones News Model 95

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the free-will-find-a-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Dow Jones is getting set to launch a new aggregator, akin to Google News, which will charge Web users for access to high-quality journalism. 'The Journal is one of the many newspapers you might buy in one place and with one payment [...] Watch for it,' said Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton. However, rather than posing a threat to Google News, Andrew Keen, author and entrepreneur, says the aggregator will use Google as a critical partner. The only people who should be worried about this new model, says Keen, 'are all those lucky consumers who, over the last 15 years, have been getting their news for free.'"
Data Storage

Enthusiasts Convene To Say No To SQL, Hash Out New DB Breed 423

Posted by timothy from the sql-like-a-pig dept.
ericatcw writes "The inaugural NoSQL meet-up in San Francisco during last month's Yahoo! Apache Hadoop Summit had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party. Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain's heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of burdensome, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data, reports Computerworld."

Comment Re:Voluntary (Score 1) 231

by batdragon (#25982439) Attached to: Technical Specs Released For Aussie Net Filtering

Ok. Seems that we're in violent agreement. :)

The way I read your comment, "so long as it remains voluntary", it sounded like you thought there were currently plans to *keep* it voluntary.

Just wanted to make sure no-one was in any doubt there are no such plans at the moment.

Apologies for misinterpreting.

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