farjumper - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Speed Gamers raise over $18 000 for Autism 1

Submitted by

Levonn Lawrence

on Monday July 20, 2009 @05:33PM

Levonn Lawrence writes: "Moving in to day 4 of 7, TSG (The Speed Gamers) continue to play a Final Fantasy marathon for an unusual reason. The reason being... Charity. The guys at TSG are playing through every main Final Fantasy game from one to twelve, over a period of 7 days in hopes or raising $20 000 for ACT Today (Autism Care and Treatment). ACT is a charity helping to financially support families effected by Autism. The marathon started 6pm CST, Friday, July 17th, 2009 and is going until Friday, July 24th 2009. So far they've raised over $18 000 (not a typo) and they're only 70 hours in. Stop by and donate, message, and give them all the support you can. http://www.thespeedgamers.com/"

Submission + - Futurama cast to be... recast? 3

Submitted by

Svippy

on Friday July 17, 2009 @05:07PM

Svippy writes: "According to reports surfacing on the Internet, the Futurama is going to be recast. Futurama as we know it, might not turn out as what we would like to know it. However, some are sceptical whether it is purely a stunt to reduce the salaries of the voice actors. Fox would certainly not be above this kind of thing."

Submission + - Swedish ISP Deletes Customer ID Info (thelocal.se) 1

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Thursday April 16, 2009 @12:47PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A Swedish internet service provider, Bahnhof, has begun deleting customer identification information in order to prevent its being used as evidence against its customers under Sweden's new legislation against copyright infringement via peer to peer file sharing. According to this report on 'The Local', it is entirely legal for it to do so. The company's CEO, Jon Karlung, is identified as 'a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on April 1st', and is quoted saying that he is determined to protect the company's clients, and that 'It's about the freedom to choose, and the law makes it possible to retain details. We're not acting in breach of IPRED; we're following the law and choosing to destroy the details.'"

Submission + - Why IT Won't Power Down PCs (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Thursday April 16, 2009 @11:53AM

snydeq writes: "Internal politics and poor leadership on sustainable IT strategies are among the top reasons preventing organizations from practicing proper PC power management — to the tune of $2.8 billion wasted per year powering unused PCs. According to a recent survey, 42 percent of IT shops do not manage PC energy consumption simply because no one in the organization has been made responsible for doing so — this despite greater awareness of IT power-saving myths, and PC power myths in particular. Worse, 22 percent of IT admins surveyed said that savings from PC power management 'flow to another department's budget.' In other words, resources spent by IT vs. the permanent energy crisis appear to result in little payback for IT."

Comment Re:6 digits need love too (Score 1) 1582

by farjumper on Wednesday April 01, 2009 @12:25PM (#27419403) Attached to: Slashdot Launches User Achievements

Meh, I'm fine with 5 being the max. Makes it seem more exclusive and epeenish.

Comment Re:6 digits need love too (Score 1) 1582

by farjumper on Wednesday April 01, 2009 @10:45AM (#27417013) Attached to: Slashdot Launches User Achievements

Might as well add 7 through infinity, too.

Jimmy Wales Faces Allegations of Corruption 289

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday March 05, 2008 @02:44PM from the he's-no-jimmy-james dept.

eldavojohn writes "The SFGate site has up an article noting that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is facing allegations from multiple quarters accusing him of abusing his power. Several people apparently claim he used the foundation to pay for personal expenses, including reimbursement for a $1,300 dinner for four at a Florida steakhouse. Accusations have also been made indicating that he edited the Wikipedia entry of political commentator Rachel Marsden, a woman he was seeing, at her request. In the case of that allegation, Wales replied that 'I acted completely consistently with Wikipedia policy. I did the right thing: I passed along my work to date for other editors to deal with, and I recused myself from the case.'"

Submission + - RIAA protests Oregon AG discovery request (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Thursday December 13, 2007 @05:29PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics, in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. See The Oregonian, December 1, 2007 ("UO suspects music industry of spying") and p2pnet, November 29, 2007 ("RIAA may be spying on students: Oregon AG"). Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf)"

Submission + - Congress Creates Copyright Cops (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Thursday December 06, 2007 @05:08PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the "PRO IP" Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, "films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year," though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion. However, even with the support of most of the top members of the House Judiciary Committee, the bill may require more work before it passes: USIPER needs a cooler acronym that doesn't sound like a combination of usurper and Lucifer."

Submission + - Microsoft Revokes an OOXML Promise (groklaw.net) 1

Submitted by

640 Comments Are Enough for Anyone

on Thursday December 06, 2007 @04:17PM

640 Comments Are Enough for Anyone writes: "Microsoft is going back on one of their promises concerning OOXML. While they originally promised, and got some to vote for OOXML, based on the premise that the ISO would take control of the standard if it were approved, Microsoft is now reversing that position and keeping near-full control over OOXML with the EMCA. This is significant because the EMCA is the group that originally rubber-stamped OOXML, and it seems unlikely that they will correct the problems when they were the ones who hid the 662 comments in individual PDFs on a password-protected website earlier this week, and the ECMA group working on OOXML is Microsoft controlled. In Microsoft's new plan, the ISO would only be allowed to publish lists of errata and would be unable to make OOXML compatible with existing ISO standards, while the EMCA would be the one to control any new versions of the standard."

Submission + - Chinese Moon Photo Doctored, Craters Moved (msn.com) 1

Submitted by

mytrip

on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @12:22PM

mytrip writes: "A controversy over last week's photo of the lunar surface, allegedly from China's lunar spacecraft Chang'e, appears to be resolved. It's real but it isn't. An expert says the photo's resolution shows that it is of recent origin. However, for some inexplicable reason, someone on Earth edited the photo and moved a crater to a different location.

Some dogged sleuthing by a fellow space blogger has tracked down the truth behind the controversial first photo from China's moon orbiter.

In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.

The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north.

The mission's chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, told the Beijing News that a new crater had been spotted on the Chang'e imagery — a crater that didn't appear on the U.S. imagery. Lakdawalla determined that crater in question it wasn't exactly new — instead, it appeared to be a crater that had been moved from one spot on the picture to another spot slightly south."

Submission + - One Last Ride for Hubble

Submitted by necro81 on Tuesday December 04, 2007 @02:20PM

necro81 writes: The NY Times has an in-depth piece describing an upcoming shuttle mission to make a final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope. After the Columbia accident and the scheduled shuttle decommission in 2010, additional service trips to the telescope were off the table. The resulting hew and cry from scientists, legislators, and the public forced NASA to reconsider. Next August, if all goes well, Atlantis will grab Hubble, replace its aging gyros, attempt to revive the Advanced Camera for Surverys, install a new camera and spectrograph. The telescope could then continue doing science well into the next decade.

Submission + - The New Facebook Ads: Another Privacy Debacle? (concurringopinions.com)

Submitted by

privacyprof

on Thursday November 08, 2007 @05:52PM

privacyprof writes: "Facebook recently announced a new advertising scheme called "Social Ads." Instead of using celebrities to hawk products, it will use pictures of Facebook users. Facebook might be entering into another privacy debacle. Facebook assumes that if people rate products highly or write good things about a product then they consent to being used in an advertisement for it. But such an assumption is wrong. When Facebook created a system that notified people's friends about new changes to people's profiles, the result was outrage. Facebook thought that there wasn't a privacy problem since the information was public. But as I argue in my book, The Future of Reputation,, Facebook didn't understand that privacy amounts to much more than keeping secrets — it involves controlling accessibility to personal data. With Social Ads, Facebook is again misunderstanding privacy — just because people say positive things about a product does not mean that they want to be used to shill it. People whose images are used in an advertisement without their consent might be able to sue under the tort of appropriation of name or likeness: "One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy." Restatement (Second) of Torts 652C."

Submission + - Enthusiast System Architecture Launched By NVIDIA (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Monday November 05, 2007 @07:21PM

MojoKid writes: "NVIDIA has just introduced a new open-industry standard for real-time monitoring and control of PC power supplies, chassis, and water cooling systems. Dubbed ESA, which stands for Enthusiast System Architecture, the company hopes the standard will be adopted across the industry. A new wave of ESA compliant hardware that can be monitored and controlled via a standard interface could ensue, like smart health-monitoring power supplies and other components, that would increase system stability and reliability."

Submission + - MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Friday November 02, 2007 @01:07PM

jfruhlinger writes: "JavaScript has become a crucial part of Websites built on AJAX underpinnings, which makes the upcoming revision to the ECMAScript standard crucial for the future of the Web. But in today's browser environment, no one vendor can impose an update path — which may set things up for a nasty conflict. A fight is being fought on blogs between Mozilla Chief Technology Officer (and creator of JavaScript) Brendan Eich, who wants to the new ECMAScript standard to be a radical upgrade, and Chris Wilson, architect of MS's IE team, who would rather keep JavaScript as is and put new functionality into a brand-new language."

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