Comment Hellbanning (Score 1) 167
What you're referring to is known as Hellbanning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning) and is used on various sites. I'm mostly familiar with it from Hacker News which employs it.
Comment Re:Mountain out of a molehill. (Score 1) 705
It's a bit more than that. From the article: "Instead, Lacy called on a state licensing agency, the N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, to investigate Cox." The article mentions this could lead to a misdemeanor.
So to use your analogy, it's more like if you got out of your car and a random passerby complained that it wasn't properly parked, so you responded by reporting him for impersonating a police officer.
Comment Re:Isn't that kinda like saying... (Score 1) 217
That it's already out there isn't his defense against the lawsuit itself, but rather against the immediate takedown of his site to prevent damage to sony. He's saying no further damage will be done by leaving it up, therefore the takedown before the judge hears arguments from both sides should be denied.
Submission + - Cook's Magazine Apologizes - Sort of. 3
taco8982 writes: Cooks Source has published a statement in response to the uproar over claiming the web is public domain a couple of weeks ago. While it does contain an apology, I'll leave it to individual readers to determine how apologetic it actually is.
Research Shows How Deaf Cats' Brains Re-Purpose Auditory Centers 100
An anonymous reader writes "Deaf or blind people often report enhanced abilities in their remaining senses, but up until now, no one has explained how and why that could be. Researchers at the University of Western Ontario, led by Stephen Lomber of The Centre for Brain and Mind, have discovered there is a causal link between enhanced visual abilities and reorganization of the part of the brain that usually handles auditory input in congenitally deaf cats. The findings, published online in Nature Neuroscience, provide insight into the plasticity that may occur in the brains of deaf people."
Submission + - Google to Shut Down 411 service (blogspot.com)
taco8982 writes: After 3 years of providing free directory assistance in exchange for voice samples, Google has announced plans to shut down the GOOG-411 service, in order to focus on "speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages."
Comment Re:Gambling with your home is a bad bet (Score 1) 2058
With regard to #5, I'm not sure where that information came from. South Fulton, TN and Fulton, KY are essentially the same city, split it two by the state line. Everything I've seen relating to this has indicated they were located in South Fulton, which would be in Tennessee (though, obviously I can't speak to where the firehouse is actually located).
The Ethics of Selling GPLed Software For the iPhone 782
SeanCier writes "We're a small (two-person) iPhone app developer whose first game has recently been released in the App store. In the process, we've inadvertently stepped in it, bringing up a question of the GPL and free software ethics that I'm hoping the Slashdot community can help us clear up, one way or the other. XPilot, a unique and groundbreaking UNIX-based game from the early/mid nineties, was a classic in its day, but was forgotten and has been dead for years, both in terms of use and development. My college roommate and I were addicted to it at the time, even running game servers and publishing custom maps. As it's fully open source (GPLv2), and the iPhone has well over twice the graphics power of the SGI workstations we'd used in college, we decided it was a moral imperative to port it to our cellphones. In the process, we hoped, we could breathe life back into this forgotten classic (not to mention turning a years-old joke into reality). We did so, and the result was more playable than we'd hoped, despite the physical limitations of the phone. We priced it at $2.99 on the App store (we don't expect it to become the Next Big Thing, but hoped to recoup our costs — such as server charges and Apple's annual $99 developer fee), released the source on our web page, then enthusiastically tracked down every member of the original community we could find to let them know of the hoped-for renaissance. Which is where things got muddy. After it hit the App store, one of the original developers of XPilot told us he feels adamantly that we're betraying the spirit of the GPL by charging for it."
Read on for the rest of Sean's question.
Submission + - RubyOnRails.org Domain Registration Lost 1
Tyler Larson writes: "It seems that official Ruby On Rails website (rubyonrails.org) has turned into a parked advertising page. The WHOIS record for the domain lists the registrant as "Next Angle", administered by "BuyDomains.dk LLC". David Heinemeier Hansson filed two years ago for a trademark on the phrase "ruby on rails," and he may or may not be able to use it to reclaim the associated domain name. It seems clear, however, that if BuyDomains has legitimately taken ownership of the domain--which currently has a Google PageRank of 7/10--they will not let it go without either a drawn-out fight or a very large payment.
For many organizations, their domain name has become their identity. What precautions do you take to make sure it doesn't get taken from you? What sort of contingency plan can you implement in the case that it does?"
For many organizations, their domain name has become their identity. What precautions do you take to make sure it doesn't get taken from you? What sort of contingency plan can you implement in the case that it does?"
NASA To Announce Module Name On Colbert Show 201
olddotter noted that NASA's Facebook page says "NASA's newest module for the International Space Station will get a new name on April 14. The agency plans to make the announcement with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Sunita 'Suni' Williams on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.' The program will air at 11:30 p.m. EDT."
Comment Re:So like CADIE said I should come here and say h (Score 1) 1582
Poor Dr. Norvig. I hope Dr. Russell is there to help get him through this.
Comment Re:I'm the only one that thinks this is a good ide (Score 1) 346
To extend your analogy, having to carry around the extra weight and volume for both engines kills your gas mileage on the street and causes it to accelerate and handle like a school bus on the track.
Comment Re:What am I missing here??? (Score 5, Informative) 168
I think what you're missing is spelled out fairly effectively in the linked declaration.
EMI sued MP3Tunes not for redistributing their IP, but for linking to locations that did. More specifically, they required not only that they remove specific links to specific songs as they had done initially, but that they remove links to every EMI song in existence claiming that they had not authorized ANY of their songs to be distributed online.
MP3Tunes declined to do this and was sued. This, however, gives examples of several places where EMI HAD authorized their songs to be distributed as MP3s and thus not every link to every song they own is an infringing link.
"Crowd Farm" to Collect Energy? 357
Cain writes to mention that a couple of MIT students would like to harness the mechanical power of large groups of people. "A Crowd Farm in Boston's South Station railway terminal would work like this: A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed beneath the station's main lobby. The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current."
Submission + - MIT: "Crowd Farm" to collect energy (mit.edu)
Cain writes: "Two graduate students at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning want to harvest the energy of human movement in urban settings, like commuters in a train station or fans at a concert.
The so-called "Crowd Farm", as envisioned by James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, would turn the mechanical energy of people walking or jumping into a source of electricity."
The so-called "Crowd Farm", as envisioned by James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, would turn the mechanical energy of people walking or jumping into a source of electricity."
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