Goodbye Star Trek Dot Com

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Top Stories Gleaned from SLASHDOT.ORG http://slashdot.org/
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Startrek.com Shutting Down
Posted by kdawson on Monday December 17, @04:36AM
from the could-have-offered-it-to-fandom dept.
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Filed Under: Sci-Fi
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Curlsman writes to let us know that the fan site startrek.com, operated for 13 years by CBS, is being shut down and its staff laid off. Is this site worth a write-in campaign? From the (perhaps final) post: "Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team. Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately. We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years. If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them."
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Apache: Yahoo Becomes Apache Platinum Sponsor
Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @10:08PM
from the confluence-of-interests dept.
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Filed Under: Yahoo!
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jschauma writes "Yahoo published a press release announcing that it has become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. In their company blog, Yahoo points out their particular interest in the Apache projects Lucene and Hadoop, and that they have hired Doug Cutting, creator of both projects and VP at Apache. (Lucene powers the search on Wikipedia; Yahoo also provides hosting capacity to Wikimedia.)"
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Linux: BBC iPlayer Welcomes Linux (and Macs)
Posted by kdawson on Monday December 17, @07:51AM
from the audi-vox-populi dept.
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Filed Under: Television
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h4rm0ny writes "After previously limiting their iPlayer to only the Windows platform (as we discussed earlier here and here), the BBC's content is now available to UK-based users of Linux and Mac OSX. From their site: 'From today we are pleased to announce that streaming is now available on BBC iPlayer. This means that Windows, Mac and Linux users can stream programs on iPlayer as long as their computer has the latest version of Flash. Another change is that you do not have to register or sign in any more to download programs...' It seems that the BBC have listened to people who petitioned them for broader support and an open format. Well, Flash isn't exactly open, but its a lot more ubiquitous than Windows Media and Real Player formats."
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Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future
Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @04:47PM
from the send-in-the-clouds dept.
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File Under: Businesses
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Hugh Pickens writes "There is a long article in the NYTimes, well worth reading, about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the Web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based 'cloud.' Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business — 'software plus Internet services,' in its formulation. 'Microsoft will embrace the Web while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable,' according to the article. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by startups, and it is 'unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating.' David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, 'a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.' Microsoft used to call this 'cutting off their air supply."
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Your Rights Online: Time Warner Wins Ohio-Wide Cable Franchise
Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @02:48PM
from the bye-bye-local-access dept.
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Filed Under: Networking
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An anonymous reader writes "Time Warner Cable has received a state-wide franchise agreement in Ohio. Time Warner's agreement covers 260 communities in 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, for 10 years. AT&T was the first to earn a state-wide franchise contract, after a law was passed in September that allowed operators to negotiate a single state-wide agreement. In the past operators negotiated franchise agreements at the local level."
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Science: Converting Light into Sound
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 16, @11:50AM
from the do-you-see-what-i-hear dept.
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Filed Under: Communications
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prostoalex writes "Researchers at Duke are trying to solve the problem of speeding up fiber-optic connections by converting light into sound, then converting it back into light. From the Nature News article: 'To get the information from the acoustic wave out again, a third light pulse, the 'read' pulse, is sent in. When it reaches the part of the fibre being affected by the acoustic wave, the light scatters in such a way as to regain the information that was left behind by the initial pulse. The newly-formed data pulse leaves the fibre, resuming the journey in the same direction as the original pulse, taking the same information with it.'"
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