mehgul - Slashdot User

Submission + - No closed video drivers for next Ubuntu release

Submitted by

lisah

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @04:41PM

lisah writes: "Ubuntu's next release, Feisty Fawn, is due out in April and, according to company CTO Matt Zimmerman, proprietary video drivers failed to make the cut for the default install. Zimmerman told Linux.com that although, the software required for Composite support is not ready for prime-time and therefore will not be included in Feisty, Ubuntu hasn't given up entirely on the inclusion of video drivers in future releases. '[T]he winds aren't right yet. We will continue to track development and will revisit the decision if things change significantly.' Ambiguous or not, the decision to exclude proprietary drivers for now should satisfy at least some members of the Ubuntu Community. In other Feisty Fawn news, the Board also decided to downgrade support for Power PC due to a lack of funding."

RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" 271

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @03:45PM from the record-keeping dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has sent out a letter to the ISPs telling them to stop making mistakes in identifying subscribers, and offering a 'Pre-Doe settlement option' — with a discount of '$1000 or more' — to their subscribers, if and only if the ISP agrees to preserve its logs for 180 days. Other interesting points in the letter (PDF): the RIAA will be launching a web site for 'early settlements,' www.p2plawsuits.com; the letter asks the ISPs to notify the RIAA if they have previously 'misidentified a subscriber account in response to a subpoena' or become aware of 'technical information... that causes you to question the information that you provided in response to our clients' subpoena'; it notes that ISPs have identified 'John Does' who were not even subscribers of the ISP at the time of the infringement; and it requests that ISPs furnish their underlying log files, not just names and addresses, when responding to RIAA subpoenas."

Submission + - The State of Video Connections

Submitted by

mikemuch

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @03:12PM

mikemuch writes: "Joel Durham provides a nice rundown on what's happening in video interfaces as we leave VGA behind and move through DVI flavors, visit HDMI along the way, and look forward to UDI and DisplayPort."

Submission + - Study finds P2P has no effect on legal music sales

Submitted by

MBrichacek

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:52PM

MBrichacek writes: "A new study in the has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe. The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves."

Submission + - Building a silicon brain

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:31PM

prostoalex writes: "MIT Technology Review reports on Stanford scientists replicating the processes inside the human brain with silicon: "Kwabena Boahen, a neuroengineer at Stanford University, is planning the most ambitious neuromorphic project to date: creating a silicon model of the cortex. The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons. Groups of neurons can be set to have different electrical properties, mimicking different types of cells in the cortex. Engineers can also program specific connections between the cells to model the architecture in different parts of the cortex.""

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