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

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.

Comment Re:Um.... (Score 1) 430

Only if you don't understand the definition of a placebo.

I was thinking the same thing. Did they fully explain that by "placebo" and "no active ingredients" it means that they are taking something with no medicinal value? If you don't gather from the explanation that the pills should have no effect on you, then it's still a placebo (in the intended sense).

Input Devices

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World 124

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."
Movies

The Home-Built Dark Knight Batmobile 87

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."
Google

Submission + - Sony HDTVs To Come With Google TV Interface

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.
Botnet

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

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.

Comment Been on tickets for a while (Score 1) 636

I remember seeing this on a ticket years ago. There were two boxes, one indicating that a radar gun was used, the other saying that the person was visibly speeding. I'm surprised it's taken this long to come up honestly. Though I was under the impression it was to get people who were obviously driving much faster than the speed limit, not for minor speeding.

Businesses

Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award 286

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 Bound to happen (Score 2, Interesting) 335

As OS X becomes more popular it's pretty much inevitable that people will *want* AV on their computers. Be it from the paranoid to the clueless who "heard from a friend of a friend that Macs are insecure" -- or just someone playing it safe -- a move like this would make sense to ease consumer fears. Yes, they already sell AV products from third-parties, but in the same way Windows has its own set of security tools this is Apple's way of showing that you don't just have to trust them, they're actively involved in proving the safety of their product.

Space

New Paper Offers Additional Reasoning for Fermi's Paradox 774

KentuckyFC writes "If the universe is teeming with advanced civilizations capable of communicating over interstellar distances, then surely we ought to have seen them by now. That's the gist of a paradoxical line of reasoning put forward by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. The so-called Fermi Paradox has haunted SETI researchers ever since. Not least because if the number of intelligent civilizations capable of communication in our galaxy is greater than 1, then we should eventually hear from them. Now one astrophysicist says this thinking fails to take into account the limit to how far a signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. Factor that in and everything changes. Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years, ten times longer than Earth has been broadcasting, and has a signal horizon of 1,000 light-years, you need a minimum of over 300 communicating civilizations in the Milky Way to ensure that you'll see one of them. Any less than that and the chances are that they'll live out their days entirely ignorant of each other's existence. Paradox solved, right?"
Portables (Apple)

Should Apple Open Source the iPhone? 379

An anonymous reader writes "Given the OpeniBoot project is just a breath away from getting Android onto the iPhone, maybe Apple should consider opening up the platform. This post has five reasons, but I think there are far more. Without open source, Apple will find itself in the same position as today's Microsoft in seven years."
Programming

Avoiding Mistakes Can Be a Huge Mistake 268

theodp writes "No doubt many will nod knowingly as they read Paul Graham's The Other Half of 'Artists Ship', which delves into the downside of procedures developed by Big Companies to protect themselves against mistakes. Because every check you put on your programmers has a cost, Graham warns: 'And just as the greatest danger of being hard to sell to is not that you overpay but that the best suppliers won't even sell to you, the greatest danger of applying too many checks to your programmers is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for you.' Sound familiar, anyone?"

Comment Ice Sheet (Score 1) 433

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

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