liryon - Slashdot User

Comment Derivative Work from a Book in the Public Domain (Score 1) 1073

by liryon on Thursday January 06, 2011 @02:23PM (#34779950) Attached to: The Continued Censorship of Huckleberry Finn

I am perfectly fine with NewSouth Books changing words in Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn is in the public domain and therefore all are free to create derivative works from it. Once they change the words in the book, however, the work they create is no longer Huckleberry Finn. It is a derivative work of fiction based on Huckleberry Finn; it should be required to be marked and marketed as such. It is not the original book, and it's title should ambiguously confirm this fact, such that the buyer is not confused. It is in their self interest to do so; if buyers are confused as to if they are buying the original book, Huckleberry Finn, or the derivative work, they may mistakenly purchase the book they did not intend to purchase. This could cause lost sales for NewSouth Books. Given this clear information the market will determine if the original or derivative work is more popular. (One would hope the original work wins out in the market of course, for the betterment of society). If they intend to deceive the buyer by calming that the book they publish is actually Huckleberry Finn, then they should be admonished and prevented from doing so, as such actions are harmful to society.

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World 124

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday November 18, 2010 @02:59AM from the gesticulating-at-robots dept.

kkleiner writes "A student at MIT's Personal Robotics Group is going to put Microsoft's Kinect to a good use: controlling robots. Philipp Robbel has hacked together the Kinect 3D sensor with an iRobot Create platform and assembled a battery-powered bot that can see its environment and obey your gestured commands. Tentatively named KinectBot, Robbel's creation can generate some beautifully detailed 3D maps of its surroundings and wirelessly send them to a host computer. KinectBot can also detect nearby humans and track their movements to understand where they want it to go." In related but less agreeable news, "Dennis Durkin, who is both COO and CFO for Microsoft's Xbox group, told investors this week that Kinect can also be used by advertisers to see how many people are in a room when an ad is on screen, and to custom-tailor content based on the people it recognizes."

The Home-Built Dark Knight Batmobile 87

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 27, 2010 @10:49AM from the taking-the-little-jokers-to-school dept.

ElectricSteve writes "RM Auctions recently declared James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 to be 'the world's most famous car,' but there's no doubt that there is another contender for that title — the Batmobile. One thing that muddies the waters a bit is the fact that the term 'Batmobile' actually describes at least three different vehicles: the modified Lincoln Futura concept car from the '60s TV series, the vaguely Corvette-shaped 1989-and-beyond movie cars, and now the car from the most recent two movies, the military-spec Tumbler. Michigan-based movie props artist Bob Dullam really likes the Tumbler, so he did what any of us would do in his position — he built one of his own from scratch."

Submission + - Sony HDTVs To Come With Google TV Interface

Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:58PM

adeelarshad82 writes: Even though Google recently announced its own Google TV, seems like their partnership with Sony is going to make it obsolete. Google has partnered up with Sony to launch four HDTV's loaded with the Google TV interface, as well as a Google TV Blu-ray player. The company's Google TV products will be called Sony Internet TV. With the Google TV; Sony aims to provide a clean and easy way to browse the Web, watch TV, and run applications all on your HDTV. Google TV uses the true Chrome Web browser with Flash 10.1. Unfortunately though, at the moment it only has a handful of apps available but Sony said the OS will be updated in early 2011 to include the Android Market app with more options.

Submission + - U.S. Reigns As Most Bot-Infected Country (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @12:09PM

Trailrunner7 writes: The U.S. has by far the highest number of bot-infected computers of any country in the world, with nearly four times as many infected PCs as the country in second place, Brazil, according to a new report by Microsoft. The quarterly report on malicious software and Internet attacks shows that while some of the major botnets have been curtailed in recent months, the networks of infected PCs still represent a huge threat.

The data on botnets, published in Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report for the first half of 2010, paints a somewhat bleak picture of the botnet landscape. Between January and June of this year, Microsoft cleaned more than 6.5 million machines worldwide of bot infections, which represents a 100 percent increase in bot infections from the same period in 2009. This increase comes at a time when there is more attention than ever focused on the botnet problem, both by security researchers and law-enforcement agencies around the world.

Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award 286

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:25PM from the you-will-receive-your-award-between-8-and-12 dept.

ISoldat53 writes "The Consumerist has awarded Comcast the Golden Poo award for the worst company in America. From the article: 'After four rounds of bloody battle against some of the most publicly reviled businesses in America, Comcast can now run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and hold its hands high in victory — it has bested everyone else to earn the title of Worst Company In America for 2010.'"

Comment Ice Sheet (Score 1) 433

by liryon on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @04:50PM (#21496899) Attached to: Sliding Rocks Bemuse Scientists

This is not new, or news worthy. A more accepted theory than the one in the blurb is that the rocks get trapped in large ice sheets which are in turn moved by the wind. This explains why rocks that are very far away move in the same exact patterns. Its in the article, but way to not mention it in the blurb. Its still pretty neat, all in all, obligatory you tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hoiHvOeGc

Submission + - Internet Radio to be killed by the RIAA

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Monday March 19, 2007 @05:22PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Just got this in the mail from Tim Westergren, Pandora's CEO: "I'm writing today to ask for your help. We've had a disastrous turn of events recently for internet radio: Following an intensive lobbying effort on the part of the RIAA, an arbitration committee in Washington DC has just dramatically increased the fees internet radio sites must pay to the record labels — tripling fees and adding enormous retroactive payments! Left unchanged by Congress, this will kill all internet radio sites, including Pandora. Tomorrow afternoon there is an important U.S. Senate hearing on the future of internet radio."

This issue has started to get blog coverage: http://gigaom.com/2007/03/05/webcaster-royalty-rat es-go-up/ and http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007 /03/the_vast_potent.html

If you live in the US, please contact your local Congressman now!

Please note that I have no Pandora affiliation except as a very happy user."

Feed News: Game Industry-2 Penny Arcade-0 (penny-arcade.com)

From feed by pennyarcadefeed on Monday March 19, 2007 @04:32PM

Gabe: Our ping pong match against Microsoft Casual Games did not go so well. We won two of our seven rounds but in the end it wasn"t enough. So our trail of tears through the video game industry continues. Our next match is against Amaze I believe. I had a line about how they will be amazed at the beating they receive but it seems premature now.

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