buddyglass writes "The majority of Slashdot readers are no doubt appreciative of Linux in the general sense, but I suspect we all have some application or aspect of the platform that we wish were more stable, performant, feature-rich, etc. So my question is: if you were able to devote a 'significant' number of resources (read: high-quality developers) to a particular app or area of the kernel, and were able to set the focus for those resources (stability, performance, new features, etc.), what application or kernel area would you attempt to improve, and what would aspect you focus on improving?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xeni Jardin:

Scott Beale points to this video, inspired by a classic Monty Python sketch.

LIVE, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Hipster Olympics! Brought to you by POYKPAC Sports.

Xeni Jardin:

Scott Beale points to this video, inspired by a classic Monty Python sketch.

LIVE, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Hipster Olympics! Brought to you by POYKPAC Sports.

JosefAssad writes "In a decision centering around a question of a violation of the Artistic License, a San Francisco court has denied an injunction against Matthew Katzer in the favor of Robert Jacobsen of the JMRI project. Importantly, the decision makes the point that the Artistic License is a contract, an interpretation that the Free Software Foundation has been keen to avoid as a legal stance. The JMRI project has a page up with the legal background and developments."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cory Doctorow: Hurrah! The first episode of season two of The IT Crowd has aired and it's already available for download!

The IT Crowd is the nerd sitcom about sysadmins from Graham Linehan, creator of the convulsively, piss-yourself funny Father Ted. The US adaptation of it that NBC picked up is reportedly not so hot, but I loved the Brit version and was immensely pleased when it got picked up for a second season.

Channel 4, the show's homebase, has a ridiculous DRM-based web-viewing option, but I can't get that to work (though I live in London, I'm travelling in Australia, which means it won't let me get access to the show, and even if I could get at it, it won't play on Linux). Lucky for me -- and you -- intrepid fans of the show have already put episode one online on a variety of torrent servers, and I'm downloading it now with eager anticipation.

Season two, episode one is called "The Work Outing."

Pirate Bay torrent, Eztvefnet torrent, Mininova torrent

IMBD info about the episode (Thanks, Sebadog, David and Clay!)

See also:
Season 2 of the IT Crowd announced
The IT Crowd -- the geek comedy I've been waiting for all my life

(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant to Season One of The IT Crowd, and I live with a Channel 4 commissioner))

Update: Chirag's put together this handy streaming page for all the old episodes!

Cory Doctorow: Hurrah! The first episode of season two of The IT Crowd has aired and it's already available for download!

The IT Crowd is the nerd sitcom about sysadmins from Graham Linehan, creator of the convulsively, piss-yourself funny Father Ted. The US adaptation of it that NBC picked up is reportedly not so hot, but I loved the Brit version and was immensely pleased when it got picked up for a second season.

Channel 4, the show's homebase, has a ridiculous DRM-based web-viewing option, but I can't get that to work (though I live in London, I'm travelling in Australia, which means it won't let me get access to the show, and even if I could get at it, it won't play on Linux). Lucky for me -- and you -- intrepid fans of the show have already put episode one online on a variety of torrent servers, and I'm downloading it now with eager anticipation.

Season two, episode one is called "The Work Outing."

Pirate Bay torrent, Eztvefnet torrent, Mininova torrent

IMBD info about the episode (Thanks, Sebadog, David and Clay!)

See also:
Season 2 of the IT Crowd announced
The IT Crowd -- the geek comedy I've been waiting for all my life

(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant to Season One of The IT Crowd, and I live with a Channel 4 commissioner))

An anonymous reader writes "At the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference in San Diego, two Israeli professors, Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, have demonstrated a new method to shrink images. The method is called 'Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing' (PDF paper here) and it figures out which parts of an image are less significant. This makes it possible to change the aspect ratio of an image without making the content look skewed or stretched out. There is a video demonstration up on YouTube."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stony Stevenson notes a NYTimes story on labor unrest caused by high-tech privacy concerns. One organization of taxi drivers plans a 48-hour strike, while another opposes any such action. "One taxi group plans to strike from 5 a.m. Sept. 5, through 5 a.m. Sept. 7, in opposition to New York City's requirement that all cabs be equipped with GPS technology beginning Oct. 1... saying GPS infringes on drivers' privacy... The Taxi and Limousine Commission passed a rule stating that all New York City cabs must have touch-screen display panels, credit card readers, and GPS beginning this year. Many taxis already are equipped with the technologies, which allow passengers to get news, route data, and other information. The TLC claims that the technology will not be used to invade drivers' privacy but will provide real-time maps and help passengers recover lost property."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RailGunSally writes "I am a (strictly technical) member of a large *nix systems admin team at a Fortune 150. Our new IT Management Overlord is a hardcore bean-counter from hell. We in the trenches have been tasked with providing 'metrics' on absolutely everything from system utilization to paper clip recycling. Of course, measuring productivity is right up there at the top of the list. We're stumped as to a definition of the basic unit of productivity for a *nix admin. There is a school of thought in our group that holds that if the PHBs are simple enough to want to operate purely from pie charts and spreadsheets, then we should just graph some output from /dev/random and have done with it. I personally love the idea, but I feel the need for due diligence, so I put the question to the Slashdot community: How does one reasonably quantify admin productivity?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

krewemaynard writes to let us know that Microsoft has been having major problems with its WGA servers since at least Friday evening. Quoting Ars: "Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service... The Microsoft WGA Forums are full of problem reports, and Microsoft WGA Program Manager Phil Liu has acknowledged that there is a problem, and that MS is investigating."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

qwerty writes "A paper to be presented at the upcoming academic conference Automated Software Engineering describes a new method to detect code theft and could be used to detect GPL violations in particular. While the co-called birthmarking method is demonstrated for Java, it is general enough to work for other languages as well. The API Benchmark observes the interaction between an application and (dynamic) libraries that are part of the runtime system. This captures the observable behavior of the program and cannot be easily foiled using code obfuscation techniques, as shown in the paper (PDF). Once such a birthmark is captured, it can be searched for in other programs. By capturing the birthmarks from popular open-source frameworks, GPL-violating applications could be identified."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the fourth year running Gabe and Tycho are throwing the mother of all gamer parties. This year it's located in the downtown area of the Emerald City, and though just one of the three days of panels, game demos, and nerdcore is completed, there's much to discuss. Read on for impressions from a first-time PAX-goer of the best nerd ticket in the city, with details on the Wil Wheaton Keynote, the first PA Q&A session, and a plenty of information on the duo's game On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xeni Jardin: UPDATE, 2:10pm PST: Looks like MSFT has fixed the immediate problem with WGA, for now: Link. But the product is still, as they say, defective by design. (Thanks, Marius)

- - - - - - - - - -

BB reader David McBride says,

DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today.

The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation -- except possibly those with volume license keys -- is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in. Installations which are flagged as counterfeit switch to a "reduced functionality mode" which results in features like Aero and DirectX being disabled.

So far, the only public response from Microsoft has been indirectly via their technical support forums, where a user has posted the following snippet from an email he received from MS's technical support address:

Thank you for your response.

I’m sorry to inform you that the Windows Genuine server might be down for few days. I have escalate the issue to our Genuine team, kindly try to validate again on Tuesday 28 Aug 2007.

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Technical Support.

Link.

Update, 12:03pm PT: David McBride says,

Phil Liu, the WGA Program Manager has responded on the Microsoft forums to say, effectively, "we know, we're taking it seriously and we're working on it."

I understand the frustration you all are going through. I'm investigating the issue right now.

I guarantee that we're working on this issue right now. For folks wondering, MACHINES ARE NOT SHUTTING DOWN with reduced functionality.

I guarantee that I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep - whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep. My goal is to identify a FIX for this issue - afterwards get you all what you are looking for, an explanation and cause.

The message from the Supportability team will be addressed appropriately as well. I encourage folks to keep an eye out on these forums.

I promise I will have an explanation and resolution as soon as humanly possible.

-Phil Liu @ Microsoft
Program Manager, WGA

Link. This is also not the first time that this has happened.

Reader comment: Thomas Hruska says,

Here's a possible explanation for what happened, spanned across two blog entries over the past 24 hours: one, two.

Xeni Jardin: BB reader David McBride says,

DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today.

The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation -- except possibly those with volume license keys -- is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in. Installations which are flagged as counterfeit switch to a "reduced functionality mode" which results in features like Aero and DirectX being disabled.

So far, the only public response from Microsoft has been indirectly via their technical support forums, where a user has posted the following snippet from an email he received from MS's technical support address:

Thank you for your response.

I’m sorry to inform you that the Windows Genuine server might be down for few days. I have escalate the issue to our Genuine team, kindly try to validate again on Tuesday 28 Aug 2007.

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Technical Support.

Link

theodp writes "In response to Beloit College's 10th Annual Mindset List, which takes a stab at describing the worldview of the incoming Class of 2011 (grew up with bottled water; have always had the World Wide Web), Valleywag's Nick Douglas presages The Mindset of the Class of 2029 (have always been able to use a cell phone on a plane; 'Lord of the Rings' looks fake and the effects are laughable)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We have just updated our Canon EOS 40D Preview with a gallery of sample images taken with a pre-production camera. We had aimed to do this earlier this week but have been at the whim of the 'British summer'. Results so far seem to be encouraging, you must however bear in mind that this is an early camera and results from the final production units may differ. Please treat our gallery server with respect and only download full size originals when absolutely necessary.

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government's $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software's icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.