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Submission + - Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Anonymous? (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by MoldySpore
MoldySpore writes: If anyone has tried to get to The Pirate Bay in the last 24 hours, they have most likely been met with a timeout. As an article on TorrentFreak notes, only a week ago The Pirate Bay scolded Anonymous for it's attack on ISP Virgin Media, and now the site is currently the victim of a DDoS attack that is effectively keeping people from viewing the site. There is a lot of speculation as to whether this is retaliation from Anonymous, the work of an agency such as the RIAA and their associates, or an anti-pirate company such as PiratePay.

Comment Why? (Score 1) 2

by klchoward (#36403578) Attached to: Cow cloned to produce human milk
Why do this? 1) The last time I looked around there were plenty of ACTUAL human females on this planet to provide ACTUAL breast milk, and 2) with so many women using formula now , instead of breast milk, where is the market for this?
Technology

Submission + - Russian Lie Detector ATM (popsci.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Apparently the Russians are starting to add lie detectors to their ATMs in an attempt to prevent identity theft and bad withdraws. It appears to use GSR responses to questions like "Do you have any outstanding loans?". Let the Soviet Russia comments begin!
Japan

Submission + - Experimental "Smart Town" To Be Built In Japan (popsci.com)

Submitted by
StormDriver
StormDriver writes: "Basically, Fujisawa SST is envisioned as a bottom-up approach to energy efficiency--a green village built from scratch with modern green technologies rather than less-efficient older tech. Panasonic wants to use it as a template for other larger communities in Japan and elsewhere. If all goes as planned, Fujisawa SST will start receiving residents in March of 2014 and finish filling up its houses by 2018."

Submission + - Zediva Fights Back Against MPAA (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by MoldySpore
MoldySpore writes: When Zediva burst onto the streaming scene earlier this year, they managed to do something nobody else was doing. Navigating around the copyright law they found a way to stream rental movies not currently available on other services, because they were still inside the DVD sales window, and filled a role not currently part of the competitions services. The service grants a "rental" of the physical movie to the user, who is then able to stream it over the internet, usually with the option to re-rent after played. By having it be a rental service, they were able to avoid some of the legalese associated with streaming movies outside of that sales window. Needless to say the MPAA was not pleased. But instead of making nice with the MPAA, Zediva has decided to fight back in the form of expensive legal heavy-hitters from " elite San Francisco law firm, Durie Tangri", which has forced the MPAA to hire their own team of expensive legal ninjas.

Zediva argues what most technologically informed people would when looking at this service: that they are essentially a rental service who are renting physical media, and providing the DVD player and a very long cable to the renters' TV. They are able to do this while providing the same function that the traditional brick and mortar stores do during the DVD sales window: a place for people to watch rental movies that were just released on DVD. The only difference is that you don't have to physically walk into a shady video store and pick it up because they stream that DVD for you that you just rented. It is a clever interpretation of the copyright law, and will certainly have some impacts on future streaming cases.

Comment Passion for science outweighs the pay (Score 1) 694

by klchoward (#35933218) Attached to: Why Science Is a Lousy Career Choice
People with a true passion for a science don't get into it for the money...they study science because they love it. Any one else is kidding themselves. On the other hand though...I am a scientist (meteorologist) working for a contractor for the US govt and I make a decent wage (enough to pay my insane school loans), work very flexible hours, and am hands on with the science every day...even when it doesn't always seem like it. If I didn't love my job I wouldn't have it...I would do something easy, like everyone else.
Books

Submission + - Tech-Unfriendly Cafes Say No Kindles Allowed

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: At the risk of pulling-a-Groupon, I have a dream that one day my children will not be judged by their e-readers, but by the content of their character. The NY Times' Virginia Heffernan complains that many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads. Evidently, she says, too many coffee shops have had their ambience wrecked when itinerant word processors with laptops turn the tables into office space. Full-dress computers are one thing, says Heffernan, but banning devices the size of books is going too far, and it's anathema to the character and history of cafes. By contrast, Starbucks offers free, one-click, unlimited wireless service to their patrons, making it in Heffernan's eyes 'a flawed franchise that is squarely in the public good.'
Movies

Tron: Legacy — Too Much Imagination Required? 429

Posted by Soulskill from the who-needs-it-when-we-have-cgi dept.
MoldySpore writes "Stepping back from the positive and negative reviews of the new Tron sequel, Tron: Legacy (which has so far amassed over $111,000,000 world-wide), something occurred to me after seeing the movie and reading the numerous reviews. It seems many of the reviews, and perhaps the reviewers themselves, can be split into two categories: those who saw the original Tron when it came out and can put the new movie in context, and those who either watched Tron recently to prepare for the sequel or never saw it and jumped right into the new movie." Read on for the rest of MoldySpore's thoughts.
Movies

Submission + - Tron: Legacy - Too Much Imagination Required? 5

Submitted by MoldySpore
MoldySpore writes: Stepping back from the positive and negative reviews of the new Tron sequel, Tron: Legacy (which has so far amassed over $111,000,000 dollars world-wide), something occurred to me after seeing the movie and reading the numerous reviews. It seems many of the reviews, and perhaps the reviewers themselves, can be split into two categories: Those who saw the original Tron when it came out and can put the new movie in context and those who either watched Tron recently to prepare for the sequel and/or never saw it and jumped right into the new movie.

While nostalgia plays an important role in any franchise's resurrection, technology has come so far in the last 28 years since the original release of Tron in 1982, it would seem the human imagination regarding technology has become somewhat disenchanted. Back in 1982, most anyone who saw the original Tron (or a few years after as it garnered "cult classic" status) was captivated, not just by the amazing computer generated graphics of the time, but about the possibility of a world inside a computer system, where programs walk around and interact with each other like humans, where bits and bytes are interactive things you could touch and see, and artificial intelligence was something to be feared (in the form of the MCP) rather than embraced.

For the new movie, most of my friends were born in the 80's, and the ones that saw the original Tron were much more open to the storyline than the ones who never saw the original or who watched it only recently to prepare for watching the new movie. While they all agreed the CG and 3D was amazing, they felt the story was "unimaginative" or "run-of-the-mill". Also, any younger people not born in the 80's, such as my younger sister who is very tech savvy herself, seemed to dismiss the plot and characters completely instead speaking only of the quality of the graphics and the music. I believe this speaks to how the human race has grown out of it's own imagination when it comes to technology since it entered the digital age. Young people can't see passed the fact that there isn't a world inside the computer, programs are just tools to be used by humans, and artificial intelligence is something discussed on a daily basis and should be embraced.

I'd be interested to hear what the Slashdot community's experiences and feelings have been about the new movie and it's effect on the people who went and saw it. Imagination is something uniquely human and has always played an important part in our ability to look passed our current limitations. With negative reviews of the new movie often referencing the "...sub-moronic script that feels like it was written by people who had never used a computer...", has some of this been lost now that digital technology is part of our daily lives? Does this signal a movement towards humans becoming indifferent to technological advances, and by association, the hindering of outside-the-box thinking when it comes to technology?

Comment Scientific research still getting funded (Score 2, Informative) 599

by klchoward (#28294837) Attached to: Why Isn't the US Government Funding Research?
Even though some scientific funding has been hurt recently the government is still funding scientific research (i.e., my own funding). I know for a fact that the NSF (National Science Foundation) is sending out more funding since they received bailout/recovery money from the government. Global warming research is one of the most important that needs to continue to be funded. Hands down it's the most important area that needs to be realized...we're talking about saving our world! Green technologies go along with this...more research into solar energy, biofuel, etc.

Comment FORTAN alive and kicking in meteorological world (Score 2, Insightful) 794

by klchoward (#28294671) Attached to: Should Undergraduates Be Taught Fortran?
A resounding YES to undergrads being taught FORTRAN. I am a graduate student in Meteorology and FORTRAN is alive and kicking in the meteorological community. It is a vital part of many of our programs and models. Perl and Cshell are also very important but I wouldn't be able to do major parts of my thesis without the aid of FORTRAN. The undergrads at my graduate school are required to take FORTRAN (especially if they are in the met program) and they use it in their upper-level core classes. I wish I'd taken the FORTRAN class at my undergrad so I wouldn't have had to catch up during my thesis. Knowing FORTRAN definitely helped me grasp other languages faster.

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