mpbrulz - Slashdot User

Submission + - New CO2 Sucker Could Help Clear the Air (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @09:21AM

sciencehabit writes: Researchers in California have produced a cheap plastic capable of removing large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. Down the road, the new material could enable the development of large-scale batteries and even form the basis of "artificial trees" that lower atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in an effort to stave off catastrophic climate change.

Submission + - Report Condemns Japan's Response to Nuclear Accide (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

mdsolar

on Monday December 26, 2011 @03:50PM

mdsolar writes: ""From inspectors who abandoned the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday.""

Submission + - Israeli Spyware Sold to Iran 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Monday December 26, 2011 @01:06PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Bloomberg reports that Israeli trade, customs and defense officials say they didn't know that systems for performing “deep- packet inspection” into Internet traffic, sold under the brand name NetEnforcer, had gone to a country whose leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Allot Communications Ltd., an Israel-based firm which reported $57 million in sales last year, sold its systems to a Randers, a Denmark-based technology distributor where workers at that company, RanTek A/S, repackaged the gear and shipped it to Iran. The sales skirted a strict Israeli ban that prohibits “trading with the enemy,” including any shipments that reach Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Although Allot officials say they had no knowledge of their equipment going to Iran and are looking into RanTek’s sales, three former sales employees for Allot say it was well known inside the Israeli company that the equipment was headed for Iran. ““Israel considers Iran quite possibly its greatest threat, and so the Israeli government would come down very strong against any company that exported to Iran,” says Ira Hoffman. “Iran is also considered by the U.S. as one of its most strategic threats.” Israeli lawmaker Nachman Shai has called for a parliamentary investigation and the country’s Defense Ministry has begun to examine the report."

Submission + - Warner Bros sued for pirating Louis Vuitton tradem (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Sunday December 25, 2011 @06:38PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "You have to love a case where Warner Brothers, copyright maximalist extraordinaire, gets sued for "piracy", in this case for using a knock-off Luis Vuitton bag in a recent movie. This lawsuit has been described as "awkward" for Warner; I have to agree with that characterization. Louis Vuitton's 22-page complaint (PDF) alleges that Warner Bros. had knowledge that the bag was a knock-off, and went ahead, and used it, anyway. Apparently Warner Bros. takes IP rights seriously only when its Warner's IP rights that are involved."

Submission + - The Looming E-Book Library Lending Battle (nytimes.com)

Submitted by smitty777 on Sunday December 25, 2011 @03:37PM

smitty777 writes: The NY Times is running a piece on the tug of war between publishers and librariesfor e-book lending. With the In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books "without friction is not a sustainable business model for us". For example, Harper Collins claims in this corporate statement that unlimited lending would lead to a decrease in royalties for both the publisher and the writers. The NTY author further states that "To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser." Their current solution is to limit the number of readings to 26 before a book license must be renewed.

In the other corner are the libraries, who are happy that e-books are luring people back to libraries, bringing with them desperately needed additional funding. With e-book sales going extremely well this year and the introduction of more capable e-readers, this debate is likely to get worse before it gets better. The Guardian also has an interesting related piece on the pricing practices of the Big Six publishers.

Submission + - Forbes: Manufacturing unprofitable to China. Bring (forbes.com)

Submitted by N!NJA on Saturday December 24, 2011 @09:05PM

N!NJA writes: My favourite fact of this past year was the proof that China makes almost nothing out of assembling Apple‘s iPads and iPhones. It’s a favourite because it speaks so directly to one of the great political arguments going on in both the US and the UK. I refer, of course, to this very strange idea that both countries would get (even) richer if only they would do more manufacturing. [...] If you want lots of jobs and lots of high paying jobs then you’re not going to find them in manufacturing. They’re where the money is, in the design, the software and the retailing of the products, not the physical making of them. Manufacturing is just so, you know, 20th century.

Submission + - Study finds online cheating is contagious (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by Freddybear on Saturday December 24, 2011 @03:23PM

Freddybear writes: A study of online gamers in the Steam community finds that those who are friends with cheaters are more likely to begin cheating themselves.

"First up, cheats stick together. The data shows that cheaters are much more likely to be friends with other cheaters.

Cheating also appears to be infectious. The likelihood of a fair player becoming labelled as a cheater in future is directly correlated with this person's number of friends who are cheaters. So if you know cheaters you are more likely to become one yourself. Cheating spreads like flu through this community.

Finally, being labelled as a cheat seems to significantly affect social standing. Once a person is labelled as a cheat, they tend to lose friends. Some even cut themselves off from friends by increasing their privacy settings."

Submission + - Crowdsourced List of SOPA Supporters (google.com) 2

Submitted by Fraser Cain on Friday December 23, 2011 @07:59PM

Fraser Cain writes: GoDaddy listened to reason, and reversed their position on SOPA. Here's a crowd sourced list of every other company supporting SOPA with web address, Twitter feed, contact emails and phone numbers.

Perhaps they should be contacted to find out if they still fully support SOPA, or have changed their mind.

Submission + - Taliban Seizes and Burns PCs, Cell Phones to Stop (cellular-news.com) 1

Submitted by

retroworks

on Friday December 23, 2011 @07:56PM

retroworks writes: "As translated from Central Asia Online, Cellular News reports that militants from South Waziristan set ablaze about 300 cellular phones and a number of computers in Wana because the devices were allegedly used to spread obscene materials. Prior to taking the action, they gave everyone fair warning with "leaflets". 300 cell phones down, 5 or 6 billion to go. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/15/business/main6209772.shtml"

Submission + - New smartphone with forked version of Android from (xda-developers.com)

Submitted by

cortex

on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:55PM

cortex writes: "XDA developers is reporting on a the release of a new smart phone, which runs a forked version of Google's Android operating system.

"Dell and Baidu, the Chinese search giant with over 80% marketshare in its home-country, unveiled the Streak Pro on Tuesday (via Computerworld). The device has a 4.3 AMOLED screen with 960×540 resolution and packs a 1.5 GHz dualcore Qualcomm processor. Most notably, however, is the operating system it runs: a forked Android version dubbed Baidu Yi, which replaces Google’s services with those of Baidu."

How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?"

Submission + - NASA to Investigate Mysterious 'Space Ball' (ibtimes.com) 1

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:47PM

redletterdave writes: "In mid-November, a hollow space ball fell from the sky and crashed into the earth in Namibia, the African nation situated above South Africa and west of Botswana and Zimbabwe. Authorities recovered the extraterrestrial sphere in a grassy village north of Windhoek, the country's capital. The hollow ball, which appears to be made of "two halves welded together," has a rough surface, a 14-inch diameter and measures 43 inches around. The strange globe created a crater 13 inches deep and almost 12.5 feet wide, but was found almost 60 feet from the landing spot. Paul Ludik, the police forensics director investigating the case, says the dense ball weighs 13 pounds and is made of a "metal alloy known to man." NASA and the European Space Agency will both help investigate the strange occurrence."

Submission + - Best kit for a home media server? and preferred fo 2

Submitted by parkejr on Thursday December 22, 2011 @07:17PM

parkejr writes: I started off building a media library a few years ago with an old PC running ubuntu. Folders for photos, ogg vorbis music from my CD collection, and x264 encoded mkv movies. I have a high spec machine for encoding, but over the years I've moved the server to a bigger case, with 8 TB of disk capacity, and reverted back to debian, but still running with the same AMD Semperon processor and 2Gb RAM. It's working well, it's also the family mail server, and the kids are starting to use it for network storage, and it runs both llink and twonkyserver, but my disks are almost full, and there are no more internal slots. The obvious option to me is to add in a couple of SATA PCI cards, to give me 4 more drives, and buy an externally powered enclosure, but that doesn't feel very elegant. I'm a bit of an amateur, so I'd like some advice. Should I start looking at a rack system? Something that can accomodate say 10 3.5" drives (I'm thinking long term, and some redundancy)?. Also, what about location — I could run some cat6 to the garage and move it out of the house, incase noise is an issue. Finally, what about file format, file system, and OS/software. I'm currently running with ext3 and debian squeeze. Happy with my audio encoding choice, but not sure about x264 and mkv. I'd also consider different media server software too. Any comments appreciated

Comment Love SNK, hate Gamespot "writers" and "editors" (Score 1) 143

by mpbrulz on Sunday February 15, 2004 @09:04PM (#8289944) Attached to: GameSpot Recaps 25-Year History of SNK

After reading 39 pages of Gamespot coverage on SNK, it is safe to say that while we love the games, the garbled, translated-from-Japanese storylines of some SNK releases are better written than this article. Please, Gamespot--write for the fans, but do it coherently and edit it for clarity before publishing.
-m

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