Sippan - Slashdot User

Comment Optimism/pessimism (Score 1) 348

by Sippan on Monday August 24, 2009 @05:09PM (#29178087) Attached to: Swedish Authorities Attempt Pirate Bay Shutdown

This is going to replace the "glass half empty/glass half full" thing.

I'm from the country that spawned The Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party, and voted the latter into the European Parliament!

...not from that country that screwed The Pirate Bay over in a corrupt trial with a biased judge and started to indirectly censor them by taking down arbitrary ISPs...

Comment Hooray. (Score 1) 200

by Sippan on Monday April 20, 2009 @11:55AM (#27646991) Attached to: Skin-Based Display Screens From Nanotech Tattoos

Finally I can have BSOD all over my face. I also look forward to having this on my tombstone: "I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST DEAD PIXEL!"

Comment Re:End of an era? (Score 1) 128

by Sippan on Saturday April 18, 2009 @03:43AM (#27624491) Attached to: Swedish Museum Puts Pirate Bay Server On Display

It is your belief that nobody would buy books from Amazon if they could get free digital books from a user-friendly file sharing website? And as a result, people would stop writing books? That must be why iTunes Music Store is such a failure, and why Amazon has had to abandon their film sections because of The Pirate Bay. And as a result, people have stopped making music and films.

Comment Re:Beyond words... (Score 2, Insightful) 2661

by Sippan on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @03:04AM (#18764061) Attached to: Many Dead In Virginia Tech Shooting

As much as I am against the right to bear arms in principle, and I thank God we have gun control laws in this country (Sweden) it's hard not to realize that in the US, the situation is completely different. The reason there are fewer gunshot deaths here is not only that we have gun control, it's that we've had gun control since forever. The US, on the other hand, has been a nation of guns for so long that there's no way you could possibly do anything about it now. You simply could not impose gun control on America now, because there are so very many people and so very many guns, outlawing them now would have no effect.

I think the problem can't be fixed by laws, it has to come from the people. Every person who simply doesn't get a gun, is a person who is less likely to accidentally shoot himself, or snap one day and take it to his school to kill everyone, or have his kids find it and hurt themselves. If everyone would just realize that and stop being so obsessed with guns, maybe one day the problem would have reduced to a level where it could be tackled.

But it'll never happen because they are so obsessed with guns. It seems people don't even realize that it is a problem. Instead of blaming the guns, they blame poor security or the nutjob who did it. Guess what, we have extremely poor security here in Sweden. We don't have metal detectors at my university, or even some sort of card required to enter the buildings, any madman with five rifles under his overcoat could walk right into the school at any time and shoot everyone!! But that's never happened. And we have nutjobs here, too! One of the most widely reported Swedish nutjobs recently was a guy who snapped and drove a car at 60 miles per hour through a pedestrian precinct full of people. How many people died again? Oh, 2. If he'd had a gun instead of a car? Not 2.

Ocean Floor Crust Wound to Be Explored 148

Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 04, 2007 @04:40PM from the journey-to-the-top-of-the-earth dept.

eldavojohn writes "A group of scientists are disembarking right now to study an open gash in the ocean floor where earth's mantle lays exposed without any crust covering it. The scientists describe this as the result of the mantle moving too quickly for the crust to keep up. Either that, or the mantle was never covered by the crust and just has always been like this. From the article, 'Regardless of how they formed, the exposed mantle provides scientists with a rare opportunity to study the Earth's rocky innards. Many attempts to drill deep into the planet barely get past the crust.'"

German Police May Not Break Into a Suspect's PC 123

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 05, 2007 @05:33PM from the no-peeking dept.

hweimer writes to tell us that a ruling in Germany's Supreme Court has made it illegal for the police to secretly hack into a suspect's computer. While some hailed this as a victory for civil rights, Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble is expected to push for changes in the legal framework to allow police hacking.

iPhone Lawsuit Put On Hold For The Moment 72

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 02, 2007 @12:41PM from the show's-over-folks-go-on-home dept.

SoulReaverDan writes "The recent lawsuit between Cisco and Apple on the iPhone trademark has taken an interesting turn. Cisco and Apple have agreed to a temporary truce, to allow Apple time to respond to the lawsuit (and, one assumes, avoid more legal fees). The article goes on to mention Apple's claim that several companies are using the iPhone name, which dovetails nicely with a great blog entry over on ZDNet. Alan Graham lays out a search of various websites, showing that not only is Cisco not the only one using the iPhone name, they're trying to use it just a little too hard. The image of the CIT300 (note this is NOT the CIT400 that Cisco is suing Apple for at all) on Amazon has the iPhone logo, but it lacks the logo on the Linksys website or on CDW's website."

Interview With "Switcher Girl" Ellen Feiss 351

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:08AM from the half-of-my-paper-was-gone dept.

Ed over in Accounting writes in with a Macinstein interview with Ellen Feiss, an Internet cult figure of a bygone era. Back in 2002, in the heyday of Apple's "Switcher" ads, the 14-year-old Feiss garnered a bit more than 15 minutes of fame. Her Switcher ad became an instant classic — partly because of the widespread belief that she was stoned while filming it, which she says was not the case. In the interview Feiss, who is now a college student with one movie behind her, talks about pseudo Internet fame, drugs, and acting. She says she's still using the same G4 she had when the ad ran. Nostalgia bonus: the ad is embedded at the end of the interview.

Who Killed the Webmaster? 334

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 29, 2007 @03:57AM from the smoking-guns dept.

XorNand writes "With the explosive growth of the Web in the previous decade, many predicted the birth of a new, well-paying, and in-demand profession: the Webmaster. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I'm left wondering: Who killed the Webmaster?"

The Partnership That Could Have Changed Everything 167

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 20, 2007 @02:57PM from the better-than-the-zune dept.

DesertBlade writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, at one point, Microsoft had considered an Apple/iPod partnership before it released its own MP3 player. Microsoft was apparently displeased with MP3 players partnerships they had already made, notably the Creative and Dell models. This information came from court documents introduced in an antitrust lawsuit from Iowa. From the article: 'Microsoft had been working with partners on music devices for at least a year before Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 and catapulted to a dominant position in the market. Microsoft and its partners failed to come up with compelling hardware and had difficulty getting software to properly connect music collections on computers with their devices.' If this Apple/Microsoft partnership was formed how would this have changed the Microsoft and Apple dynamics?"

NASA May Have Killed The Martians 238

Posted by Zonk on Sunday January 07, 2007 @11:09PM from the that's-a-big-oopsie dept.

Sneakernets writes "CNN reports that NASA may have found life on Mars via the Viking space probes in 1976-77, but failed to recognize it and killed it by accident. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a geology professor at Washington State University, says that Mars microbes that the space probes had found were possibly drowned and baked by accident. Other experts said the new concept is plausible, but more work is needed before they are convinced. From the article: 'A new NASA Mars mission called Phoenix is set for launch this summer, and one of the scientists involved said he is eager to test the new theory about life on Mars. However, scientists must come up with a way to do that using the mission's existing scientific instruments, said NASA astrobiologist and Phoenix co-investigator Chris McKay.'"

5 Strangest Materials 196

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday January 03, 2007 @06:52PM from the you-too-can-be-a-jesus-lizard dept.

MattSparkes writes to tell us that NewScientist recently posted a quick look at five interesting materials with some very strange properties. There are liquids you can walk on, liquids that will escape containers by creeping up the sides, and magnetic liquids that can easily show you the shape of magnetic fields. The story also offers video links to display some of more amazing properties described.

New iPod Owner Onslaught Overwhelms iTunes 395

Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 28, 2006 @03:18PM from the drowning-in-white-plastic dept.

Billosaur writes "In the post-Christmas rush to power up and use their new iPods, an onslaught of downloaders brought iTunes to its knees, according to CNN. Monday and Tuesday saw users posting message after message about slow downloads and the iTunes site denying them entry. The heavy traffic was apparently more than the system could bear, what with the large numbers of people receiving iPods and iTunes gift cards. Perhaps Apple was underestimating just how successful they were going to be?"

George Orwell Was Right — Security Cameras Get an Upgrade 499

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday December 26, 2006 @01:34AM from the big-brother-would-be-proud dept.

Jamie stopped to mention that Bloomberg is reporting on a recent addition of speakers to public security cameras in Middlesbrough, England. From the article: "`People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars."

WarGames Sequel Now Filming 439

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @05:11PM from the lights-camera-domain-grab dept.

iluvcapra writes "This news is a little late, but on November 20th WarGames 2: The Dead Code began filming in Montreal. (I only became aware of the new production when I read that MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com for his domain name.) The film will be produced and distributed by MGM — distributor of the original WarGames — and directed by Stewart Gillard, director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, the team behind the original film, are not involved. The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer."

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