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Submission + - Slysoft (of AnyDVD fame) closes after increased international pressure by AACS (myce.com)

Submitted by jlp2097
jlp2097 writes: It looks like the recent activities by Hollywood studios and the AACS LA finally led to the closing of Slysoft Inc, creator of the popular AnyDVD HD tool for creating personal backups of BluRay/DVD/etc. Slysoft Inc's website confirms the closing due to "recent regulatory requirements". The final nail in the coffin has also been confirmed with slightly more details in their forum: "this is final. Slysoft is gone."

Sad to see them go — it looks like legitimate buyers of BluRays will now have to find other sources for backing up their property to HTPCs and NASes.

Submission + - Japan Considers Treating Bitcoin As Real Money (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Regulators in Japan are considering officially recognising bitcoins and other digital currencies as valid methods of payment. The Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA) is in the process of deciding whether to make legislative revisions to regulation that currently regards virtual currencies as objects rather than traditional forms of payment. Under the new proposal, consumers will be able to purchase goods and services using bitcoin and other digital currencies, and also use them as an alternative to legal tender through purchases or trades. The new definition will be submitted during the current session of the Diet, Japan’s legislature, which concludes on 1st June this year.

Comment Re:brick and mortar is an assett (Score 1) 203

by jlp2097 (#50789701) Attached to: Walmart Plays Catch-Up With Amazon

As a European, what's Walmart? But seriously, let me give you some more global perspective - besides UK, Japan, China and South Africa there is not really much of a Walmart presence outside of North and South America. They will never catch up to Amazon, which is present just about everywhere in the world.

Amazon has the hell optimized out of their logistics and again, is present just about everywhere. There is not really much of an advantage (besides storefront locations) that Walmart has.

Submission + - Mozilla Encoder improves JPEG-compression

Submitted by jlp2097
jlp2097 writes: As reported by Heise (german), Mozilla has introduced a new jpeg encoder called mozjpeg. Mozjpeg promises to be a "production-quality JPEG encoder that improves compression while maintaining compatibility with the vast majority of deployed decoders". The Mozilla Research blog states that Mozjpeg is based on libjpeg-turbo with functionality added from jpgcrush. They claim an average of 2-6% of additional compression for files encoded with libjpeg and 10% additional compression for a sample of 1500 jpegs from wikipedia — while maintaining the same image quality.
Math

Euler's Partition Function Theory Finished 117

Posted by Soulskill from the that-was-quick dept.
universegeek writes "Mathematician Ken Ono, from Emory, has solved a 250-year-old problem: how to exactly and explicitly generate partition numbers. Ono and colleagues were able to finally do this by realizing that the pattern of partition numbers is fractal (PDF). This pattern allowed them to find a finite, algebraic formula, which is like striking oil in mathematics."
Firefox

Mozilla Flips Kill-Switch On Skype Toolbar 284

Posted by Soulskill from the take-a-time-out-until-you-can-play-nice-with-the-other-kids dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Whenever Skype is installed or updated, it automatically installs the Skype Toolbar add-on for Firefox. Unfortunately, the add-on causes serious performance problems, slowing down some operations by a factor of 300 and is one of the top causes for Firefox crashes. As a result, Mozilla has decided to 'soft-block' the add-on, effectively killing it on all Firefox installs unless the user intentionally re-enables it. Given the extreme popularity of Skype, this has ramifications for millions of users."
Google

Google Fires Back About Search Engine Spam 270

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-not-me-it's-you dept.
coondoggie writes "The folks at Google are taking issue over spam and the quality of Google searches, which some claim has gone down in recent months. Today on Google's official blog, Principal Engineer Matt Cutts said, 'January brought a spate of stories about Google’s search quality. Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse. The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and comprehensiveness. Today, English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English.' Cutts also explained that the company has made a few significant changes to their method of indexing."
Medicine

Woman's Voice Restored After Larynx Transplant 246

Posted by Soulskill from the wonder-if-she-sounds-like-herself dept.
mvar writes "A woman in the US is able to speak for the first time in 11 years after a pioneering voicebox transplant. Brenda Jensen said the operation, which took place in California, was a miracle which had restored her life. Thirteen days after the surgery she said her first words: 'Good morning, I want to go home.' It is the first time a larynx and windpipe have been transplanted at the same time (image) and only the second time a larynx has ever been transplanted. In October, surgeons at the University of California Davis Medical Center removed the larynx, thyroid gland and 6cm of the trachea from a donor body. In an 18-hour operation, this was transplanted into Ms. Jensen's throat and the team connected it to her blood supply and nerves. Thirteen days later, she was able to speak her first croaky words and is now able to talk easily for long periods of time."

Comment Re:Sad news for the web (Score 2) 336

by jlp2097 (#34852236) Attached to: Opera Supports Google Decision To Drop H.264

Why would it "probably" be as patent encumbered as h.264?

Dark Shikari, a developer of x264, made an extensive analysis of WebM / VP8. Here is his summary regarding patents and VP8 (for details read the blog):

Finally, the problem of patents appears to be rearing its ugly head again. VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents. It’s quite possible that VP8 has no patent issues, but until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be cautious. Since Google is not indemnifying users of VP8 from patent lawsuits, this is even more of a potential problem. Most importantly, Google has not released any justifications for why the various parts of VP8 do not violate patents, as Sun did with their OMS standard: such information would certainly cut down on speculation and make it more clear what their position actually is.

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