not-admin - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Ho-hum (Score 1) 81

by not-admin on Sunday May 17, 2009 @01:24PM (#27987413) Attached to: DIY Microprocessor Sound Level Meter Demoed At MIT

It was probably designed this way because it wasn't actually MIT designed... It's an "educational" kit sold by some random, non-affiliated vendor that wants high-schoolers to buy it and "learn about electronics."

Comment Re:A little knowledge is a dangerous thing (Score 1) 81

by not-admin on Sunday May 17, 2009 @01:21PM (#27987383) Attached to: DIY Microprocessor Sound Level Meter Demoed At MIT

It's neither "fun" nor "interesting" when your design is 8 times as complicated and expensive as one that works, and yours is neither stable, accurate, hi-fi, or immune to temperature changes, power supply noise or electrical interference.

Yes it's fun to mess around with parts and get them to do something, anything. But this is not an example of any kind of sane engineering. I assume most people going into $95,000 debt to attend MIT intend to try to be useful engineers. This item on your resume is a quick ticket to Palookaville.

Because, obviously, a company that pays MIT money to have their product advertised to a bunch of high-schoolers visiting MIT must be representative of the actual education MIT students get. MIT wasn't even INVOLVED with the creation of this thing, and they definitely aren't bragging about it -- this is just a great example of a slashvertisement

Submission + - Entire Transcript of RIAA's Only Trial Now Online (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Sunday December 28, 2008 @12:56PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The entire transcript of the RIAA's 'perfect storm', its first and only trial, which resulted in a $222,000 verdict in a case involving 24 MP3's having a retail value of $23.76, is now available online. After over a year of trying, we have finally obtained the transcript of the Duluth, Minnesota, jury trial which took place October 2, 2007, to October 4, 2007, in Capitol Records v. Thomas. Its 643 pages represent a treasure trove for (a) lawyers representing defendants in other RIAA cases, (b) technologists anxious to see how a MediaSentry investigator and the RIAA's expert witness combined to convince the jurors that the RIAA had proved its case, and (c) anybody interested in finding out about such things as the early-morning October 4th argument in which the RIAA lawyer convinced the judge to make the mistake which forced him to eventually vacate the jury's verdict, and the testimony of SONY BMG's Jennifer Pariser in which she 'misspoke' according to the RIAA's Cary Sherman when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing'. The transcript was a gift from the 'Joel Fights Back Against RIAA' team defending SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston, Massachusetts. I have the transcript in 3 segments: October 2nd (278 pages(PDF), October 3rd (263 pages)(PDF), and October 4th (100 pages)(PDF)."

Comment Re:Full Human Equivalence (Score 1) 148

by not-admin on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @09:04PM (#23579731) Attached to: U.S. Plan For "Thinking Machines" Repository

It seems that computers with a capacity equivalent to human brains will be developed in the next twenty years or so.

OK. I know, this prediction has been made before, but now it's for real, because the hardware capacity is well within the reach of Moore's law. To build a cluster of processors with the same data-handling capacity of a human brain today is well within the range of a mid-size research grant.

An equivalent prediction is made, and explained in more detail, in Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near" -- some of which is available as a preview on Google Book Search.

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16, 2007 @05:59PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Archive is beind sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to "opt in" before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search.

Viacom vs. YouTube - Whose Side Are You On? 353

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 15, 2007 @05:25PM from the i-vote-for-adam-ant dept.

DigitalDame2 writes "Lance Ulanoff of PCMag believes that the Viacom and YouTube lawsuit is a bad idea because it has the potential to damage the burgeoning online video business; instead, it could work with the millions of people who are currently viewing Viacom content on YouTube. On the other side, Jim Louderback, an editor-in-chief of PCMag says that Lance doesn't know what he's talking about: with all the content available online for free, Viacom can kiss those investments goodbye. YouTube is actively filtering, actively allowing uploads, and making money off of the content that's been uploaded. The courts will find that Viacom has been wronged, that Google has not done enough to protect the rights of copyright holders, and that Google owes Viacom reparations. Whose side are you on?"

Kuiper Belt Collision Found; Possible Comet Source 68

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 15, 2007 @04:39PM from the we-really-must-visit-one-day dept.

siglercm writes "Astronomers have detected the remnants of an ancient collision in the Kuiper Belt, the region of bodies found outside of our solar system. The massive impact between a nearly Pluto-sized body and one half as large created a 'collisional family' of objects; this is the first such family identified in the Kuiper Belt. The largest body produced may cross Neptune's orbit in the distant future, but it's possible that smaller objects created by the smash-up have already fallen into the inner solar system as comets."

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