wkurzius - Slashdot User

Submission + - DRM Free Comedy (gigaom.com)

Submitted by wkurzius on Tuesday December 13, 2011 @01:15PM

wkurzius writes: Comedian Louis C.K. released his new stand-up special in a unique way: online without DRM and for only $5. On the page where you can buy it, he writes "I don't really get the whole 'torrent' thing. I don't know enough about it to judge either way. But I'd just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without 'corporate' restrictions."

GigaOM has a nice write-up about what Louis C.K. is doing, along with the typical rational for distributing content without DRM.

Submission + - Cambridge puts Isaac Newton's notes online (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by nhstar on Monday December 12, 2011 @06:40PM

nhstar writes: If you're looking for a bit of light reading this holiday season, Cambridge University is here to help: they've digitized and made available online over 4,000 pages of the pioneering scientist and mathemetician Sir Isaac Newton's most important works.

"Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments," Cambridge University Library's digitization manager Grant Young told the BBC.

Submission + - Gordon Supercomputer first with all flash storage (nwlinux.com)

Submitted by

nwlinux

on Monday December 12, 2011 @05:55PM

nwlinux writes: "The Gordon Supercomputer is the world's first to have an all flash storage system. Gordon's current storage capacity site as 4 petabytes and has 100 times faster speeds than its magnetic storage counterparts."

Comment Re:Realities and Incentives (Score 1) 732

by wkurzius on Sunday March 27, 2011 @03:19PM (#35631748) Attached to: Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Work In Finance

Oh god! Only 75k a year?? Did you have to apply for welfare?

Comment Re:Realities and Incentives (Score 3, Insightful) 732

by wkurzius on Sunday March 27, 2011 @03:16PM (#35631728) Attached to: Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Work In Finance

Since you obviously value money more than anything else, let's rewrite those choices for those that are bit more progressive.

1) Start something great

2) Be part of something great

3) Fuck doing anything great and become a parasite

Submission + - Religion may become extinct in nine nations (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by wkurzius on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @08:59AM

wkurzius writes: A mathematical model by researchers shows that religion is on its way out in nine different countries.

Comment Re:non-story (Score 1) 315

by wkurzius on Friday March 04, 2011 @01:51PM (#35381550) Attached to: Apple: You Must Be 17+ To Use Opera

True, but it's a system that has led to a lot of bad PR ever since the App Store came around.

I'm sure they think parental controls are a good thing. Parents can leave the room for 5 minutes and not worry about their kid ending up on meatspin or whatever. However, it leads to all these other seemingly stupid warnings and restrictions, and if Apple decided to not use them, they would be the primary target of every angry and irresponsible parent out there.

Comment Re:non-story (Score 1) 315

by wkurzius on Friday March 04, 2011 @01:00PM (#35380860) Attached to: Apple: You Must Be 17+ To Use Opera

Wish I had mod points.

If the finger should be pointed anywhere, it's at the over litigious society that we live in. I'm sure on some level Apple is cringing that they actually have to do this to cover their asses.

Comment Re:How to train: yaay! (Score 1) 201

by wkurzius on Tuesday January 25, 2011 @12:57PM (#34995868) Attached to: Inception, The Social Network, TS3 Get Oscar Noms

The amount of advertising that this movie put out during the Olympics was offensive. I figured it had to be horrible if they were pushing it that much. Perhaps I was wrong.

Comment Re:Learn better (Score 3, Interesting) 218

by wkurzius on Monday August 02, 2010 @07:41PM (#33117766) Attached to: NAMCO Takes Down Student Pac-man Project

The reason answers exist in the back of math textbooks is not for cheating. They are there so you can check your methods and determine if you are going about things the right way.

One of my first programming experiences was making a tic-tac-toe game on the TI-83 my high school gave me. I knew the game already, I knew how it was supposed to look and work, and therefore allowed to me to concentrate on the method only. I had the answer, I just needed to figure out how to get there.

Scratch is a learning tool, aimed at elementary students, perhaps going into high school bit. Maybe the students (assuming they're students) shouldn't have posted the project online, but I encourage them to rip off every game they need to until they're comfortable enough to make their own.

Comment Buy Once, Play On Anything (Score 1) 572

by wkurzius on Wednesday May 12, 2010 @04:14PM (#32186150) Attached to: Steam Client for Mac Launches, Linux Client On the Way

I was very pleased to find that the copy of Torchlight I bought to play on Windows is available to me on OS X for no extra coin.

Submission + - Obama's Twitter Account "Hacked" (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by Oxford_Comma_Lover on Thursday March 25, 2010 @12:27PM

Oxford_Comma_Lover writes: A 24-year-old living with his mother in France was arrested for "hacking" into Obama's twitter accounts. Apparently he guesses the answer to a question related to password recovery in order to break into the accounts of famous people; he has no computer science training or financial motive. He posted screenshots to a few boards and twitter found out within a few hours, either from a tip or from noticing when someone from France logs onto twitter as the President of the United States. (He did not actually tweet as POTUS, but just wanted to show he could break into the account.)

FCC Asks You To Test Your Broadband Speeds 454

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 12, 2010 @09:51AM from the your-mileage-will-vary dept.

AnotherUsername writes "The Federal Communications Commission is asking the nation's broadband and smartphone users to use its broadband testing tools to help the feds and consumers know what speeds are actually available, not just promised by the nation's telecoms. At http://www.broadband.gov/, users enter their address and test their broadband download speed, upload speed, latency, and jitter using one of two tests (users can choose to test with the other after one test is complete). The FCC is requiring the street address, as it 'may use this data to analyze broadband quality and availability on a geographic basis' (they promise not to release location data except in the aggregate). The agency is also asking those who live in a broadband 'dead zone' to fill out a report online, call, fax, email, or even send a letter. The announcement comes just six days before the FCC presents the first ever national broadband plan to Congress. Java is necessary to run the test." Lauren Weinstein points out some of the limitations in the FCC's testing methodology.

An Early Look At Civilization V 286

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:02AM from the new-and-shiny dept.

c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."

Submission + - ABC Pulls Channels From Cablevision (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by wkurzius on Sunday March 07, 2010 @10:50AM

wkurzius writes: Cablevision and ABC have failed to come to agreement after two years of negotiations, and as a result ABC has pulled all their channels from the Cablevision lineup. The dispute is over $40 million in retransmission fees that Cablevision says they won't give to ABC. On the other side, Cablevision has been accused of pocketing $8 billion last year and not being fair to their customers.

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