lemkepf - Slashdot User

Attractive Open Source Search Interfaces? 65

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 13, 2010 @03:22PM from the you'll-have-this-ansi-terminal-and-like-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that manages an online database for the political market. We add to this DB daily with updates from a variety of sources and our customers then search through this content via our Solr/Lucene search engine. My problem is, our search interface is a little, well, basic and I would love to know if there are any feature-rich open source alternatives out there. The only one I can find is Flamenco, and while that seems strong on categorisation, that seems to be about the height of it."

Netflix Will Delay Renting New WB Releases 418

Posted by kdawson on Thursday January 07, 2010 @04:47PM from the times-they-are-a-changin' dept.

DesertBlade tips the news that Netflix will delay renting new releases from Warner Brothers for 28 days, and adds "Luckily I am so far behind in my movie watching that I will probably never catch up anyway." "It's part of a strategy by several studios to create staggered releases of DVDs so that the most profitable transactions are available first and cheaper rental options take effect further down the road. The move could be copied by other studios, forcing consumers to wait nearly a month if they want to rent popular movies from Netflix. ... The studio is hoping that the four-week window will push consumers interested in watching movies at home to buy the DVDs or pay a premium to rent them from stores like Blockbuster or from Internet and cable video-on-demand services. Warner Bros. already imposes a 28-day window on $1-a-night kiosk firm Redbox."

The Broken Design of Microsoft's "Fix it" Tool 165

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 06, 2009 @11:52AM from the teething-problems dept.

$luggo writes "Curious about MS Fix It, I recently went hunting in the MS knowledge base for articles that provide the new EZ-button. After locating on few, I decided to click the button to download the Microsoft Installer package containing the executable and/or files that automatically enable the DVD Library feature in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate — on my XP Media Center. 'Surely, MS will use some scripting, HTTP User-Agent sniffing, or even Genuine Windows validation to verify that I am running Vista,' I thought. It did not and I canceled the download when I received the prompt to save the file. So, I wonder: is there a Fix-it for Fix it? Because I can easily imagine someone doing what I did without scrolling to the bottom of the KB article and verifying that the article applies to their OS/version. This is a great example poor design. Why not simply use the download approach that other articles / fixes / service packs use, whereby the user must select the appropriate OS?"

Dropped Shuttle Toolbag Filmed From Earth 389

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 23, 2008 @06:49PM from the that's-insane dept.

cathector writes "An article at spaceweather.com reports that the toolbag dropped during Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's spacewalk has been recorded on film from earth: 'When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away, mission controllers probably figured they'd seen the last of it. Think again. Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario. "It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter as it passed by the 4th magnitude star eta Pisces," he says. Spaceweather's satellite tracker is monitoring the toolbag.'" The actual loss of the bag was filmed, too; reader Kagura links in a comment on the original story to this YouTube clip of the bag's escape.

Submission + - Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Models

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02, 2007 @03:11PM

An anonymous reader writes: Techdirt has a cool post up that doesn't just explain why DRM is bad, but gives a really interesting economic explanation for why DRM cannot create successful new business models. Since the RIAA and MPAA keep insisting that DRM will create new business models, it's useful to see an argument for why that's basically impossible.

Comment Good Podcasts (Score 1) 90

by lemkepf on Friday March 24, 2006 @01:52PM (#14989708) Attached to: Good Podcasts and Podcatchers?

I listen to a few...

The Signal; A podcast about Firefly and Serenity.
http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/

TWIT; Basically Leo Laporte and his crew talk about tech stuff for an hour.
http://www.twit.tv/

Slice of SciFi; for all the science fiction news you could shake a stick at.
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/

FireflyTalk is good too...
http://fireflytalk.libsyn.com/

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