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Submission + - Stallman does slides and brevity for TEDx (gnu.org)

Submitted by ciaran2014
ciaran2014 writes: Richard Stallman's long-format talks are well-known — there are videos going back to 2001 and transcripts dating back to 1986 — but he recently condensed his free software talk down to 14 minutes and set it to hand-drawn slides for TEDxGeneva (video link). He introduces with the four freedoms, as always, and then moves on to spyware, surveillance, non-free drivers, free software in schools, non-free javascript, Service as a Software Substitute and how free software is today necessary for a strong democracy. As usual, the talk is suitable for non-techical audiences.

Submission + - Core i7 5960X + X99 Motherboards Start Mysteriously Burning Up (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel's Haswell-E Eight-Core CPU and X99 motherboards just debuted but it looks like there may be some early adoption troubles leading to the new, ultra-expensive X99 motherboards and processors burning up. Phoronix first ran a story about their X99 motherboard having a small flame and smoke when powering up for the first time and then Legit Reviews also ran an article about their motherboard going up in smoke for reasons unknown. The RAM, X99 motherboards, and power supplies were different in these two cases. Manufacturers are now investigating and in at least the case of LR their Core i7-5960X also fried in the process.

Submission + - FAA Scans the Internet For Drone Users; Sends Cease and Desist Letters (governmentattic.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FAA has released a set of cease and desist letters sent in 2012 and 2013 to people operating drone vehicles for a variety of purposes including: tornado research, inspecting gas well stacks, aerial photography, journalism education, and other purposes. Drone cease and desist letters sent during 2014 are available from the FAA upon request.

Submission + - Tim Wu, Founder of Net Neutrality, is Running for Lieutenant Governor of NY (nytimes.com)

Submitted by speedplane
speedplane writes: Tim Wu, the popular Columbia Law Professor, author of The Master Switch, and the guy who coined the term Net Neutrality, is running for Lieutenant Governor of the great state of New York. He "has waged a shoestring anti-establishment campaign," that is well underway, and has even begun receiving attacks from the incumbent:

It has not always been smooth for Mr. Wu .... Surrogates for Mr. Cuomo have pounced on his admitted lack of "message discipline" for comments he made comparing net neutrality to the suffragist movement (which he says were taken out of context) and sympathizing with Airbnb (which he says is "fair game" because he has a "wait-and-see approach" to regulating start-ups).

Submission + - Deadmau5 Accuses Disney of Pirating His Music (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After Disney objected to musician Deadmau5's trademark application in the US (his logo is already properly trademarked in many other countries), a battle of trademarks and copyrights ensued. Apparently, Disney was (URL has since been disabled, as per DMCA law requires) hosting a video containing a remix of music which Zimmerman claims ownership of. Not only that, but the Deadmau5 logo was prominently displayed next to said video.

The mouse fight was on and a few hours ago Deadmau5 retaliated with a rather surprising counter attack. As it turns out, Disney is hosting a Deadmau5 video on their website, without permission.

“Disney prominently features the deadmau5 Mark next to the Infringing Video. implying a non-existent endorsement by Zimmerman,” the letter reads. “Again. we are unaware of any license allowing you the right to reproduce, distribute or otherwise exploit the deadmau5 Mark or to exploit Zimmerman’s name and likeness in connection with same.” At the time of writing Disney hasn’t complied with the request, but it seems that they have no other option than to comply. Whether it will change anything in their stance towards the DJ’s mouse ear trademark application is doubtful though.

Submission + - Bill Gates Want to Remake the Way History is Taught. Should We Let Him?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: With his Big History Project, the NY Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin reports that Bill Gates wants to remake the way history is taught (intro video). Last month, the Univ. of California system announced that a version of the Big History Project course could be counted in place of a more traditional World History class, paving the way for the state's 1,300 high schools to offer it. Still, not everyone's keen on the idea. "Is this Bill Gates's history?" asks NYU's Diane Ravitch. "And should it be labeled 'Bill Gates's History'? Because Bill Gates's history would be very different from somebody else's who wasn't worth $50-60 billion." Of the opposition to Gates, Scott L. Thomas of Claremont Graduate University explains, 'Frankly, in the eyes of the critics, he's really not an expert. He just happens to be a guy that watched a DVD and thought it was a good idea and had a bunch of money to fund it."

Submission + - Should Docker Move to a Non-Profit Foundation? (datamation.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Docker has become the new hotness in virtualization technology — but it is still a project that is led by the backing of a single vendor — Docker Inc. Is that a problem? Should there be an open-source Foundation to manage the governance and operation of the Docker project? In a video interview — Docker founder and Benevolent Dictator for Life Solomon Hykes says — No.

Comment Re:Jackpot (Score 1) 617

But the law only applies if somebody is doing it on purpose. Mistakes are not "unfair trade practices". Sending you something other than what you DID ask for, if it is a mistake, is not an intent to defraud you and so the unsolicited merchandise law does not apply. You see?

It appears that it is you who don't know the Unsolicited Merchandise law.

Quote USPS ... throw out unwanted items or if you like it "finders keepers"

http://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_tech_021.htm
Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

Posted by samzenpus from the take-a-look dept.
A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
Technology

Festo's Drone Dragonfly Takes To the Air 45

Posted by samzenpus from the little-flyer dept.
yyzmcleod writes "Building on the work of last year's bionic creation, the Smart Bird, Festo announced that it will literally launch its latest creation, the BionicOpter, at Hannover Messe in April. With a wingspan of 63 cm and weighing in at 175 grams, the robotic dragonfly mimics all forms of flight as its natural counterpart, including hover, glide and maneuvering in all directions. This is made possible, the company says, by the BionicOpter's ability to move each of its four wings independently, as well as control their amplitude, frequency and angle of attack. Including its actuated head and body, the robot exhibits 13 degrees of freedom, which allows it to rapidly accelerate, decelerate, turn and fly backwards."
The Media

What Does It Actually Cost To Publish a Scientific Paper? 166

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the one-trillion-dollars dept.
ananyo writes "Nature has published an investigation into the real costs of publishing research after delving into the secretive, murky world of science publishing. Few publishers (open access or otherwise-including Nature Publishing Group) would reveal their profit margins, but they've pieced together a picture of how much it really costs to publish a paper by talking to analysts and insiders. Quoting from the piece: '"The costs of research publishing can be much lower than people think," agrees Peter Binfield, co-founder of one of the newest open-access journals, PeerJ, and formerly a publisher at PLoS. But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. They say that their commercial operations are in fact quite efficient, so that if a switch to open-access publishing led scientists to drive down fees by choosing cheaper journals, it would undermine important values such as editorial quality.' There's also a comment piece by three open access advocates setting out what they think needs to happen next to push forward the movement as well as a piece arguing that 'Objections to the Creative Commons attribution license are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible.'"
Cloud

One In Six Amazon S3 Storage Buckets Are Ripe For Data-Plundering 79

Posted by samzenpus from the ripe-for-the-picking dept.
tsamsoniw writes "Using a combination of relatively low-tech techniques and tools, security researchers have discovered that they can access the contents of one in six Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets whose owners had them set to Public instead of Private. All told, researchers discovered and explored nearly 2,000 public buckets, according to Rapid 7 Senior Security Consultant Will Vandevanter, from which they gathered a list of more than 126 billion files, many of which contained sensitive information such as source code and personal employee information. Researchers noted that S3 URLs are all predictable and public facing, which make it that much easier to find the buckets in the first place with a scripting tool."
Power

Submission + - New process that takes the energy from coal without burning it (osu.edu)

Submitted by
rtoz
rtoz writes: "Ohio State students had come up with a scaled-down version of a power plant combustion system with a unique experimental design--one that chemically converts coal to heat while capturing 99 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction.

Typical coal-fired power plants burn coal to heat water to make steam, which turns the turbines that produce electricity. In chemical looping, the coal isn't burned with fire, but instead chemically combusted in a sealed chamber so that it doesn't pollute the air.

This new technology, called coal-direct chemical looping, was pioneered by Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of Ohio State's Clean Coal Research Laboratory"

Comment Megan wouldn't know design even if it bit her ass (Score 1) 370

by r_batty_00 (#40655765) Attached to: Why Is Wikipedia So Ugly?

Megan Garber is being destroyed in the comment section of The Atlantic. There are nearly 50 comments... all of them pointing out how clueless she is about design, how Wikipedia is actually well laid out, that she doesn't know what an empirical truth is , etc...

Oddly enough, Wikipedia has some interesting info on The Atlantic-

        "In 2010, The Atlantic posted its first profit in the last decade... was the result of a cultural
          transfusion, a dose of counterintuition and a lot of digital advertising revenue."

It has already been suggested in the comments that she may be nothing more than a comment troll.

If you found Megan's article to be insightful, be sure to read her similarly penetrating articles:

          Taco Bell vs. Old Spice: The Twitter War That Wasn't
          Here Are 10 GIFs That Will Restore Your Faith in GIFs
          'New York Times' + Buzzfeed = OMG

Comment Re:Common Objections to this work (Score 1) 199

Slashdot of 10 years ago would have had a lively debate about the ethics of your experiments and the pro/ con of animal experiments used in education. Sadly, you can see many of the comments have devolved into first posts, Nazi comparisons and knee-jerk animal rights propaganda. Some of us old timers would have been thrilled to be able to probe neural activity in advanced biology (in addition to fetal pig dissection ). Don’t take the negative comments too personally, were not the Slashdot we one were.

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