Slashback: Futurama, Shattering, Footage

Slashback items tonight include a hopeful picture of the Futurama future, good news for Ziff-Davis fans worried about bankruptcy, video-release updates for two films reviewed on Slashdot, and more -- read on for the details.

This would be reason enough to have cable. MrChubble writes: "Seems that futurama isn't as dead as previously believed. Here is a quote from a someone's experience at ComicCon: "Julie Schwartz Slide Oddball Comics Show (Hilarious as usual), and at the FUTURAMA panel they showed a preview of a forthcoming episode in which Fry, Leela and Bender become super-heroes. One thing they didn't mention at the panel, was the news that FUTURAMA would be joining Cartoon Network's ADULT SWIM in the near future." Is this too good to be true?"

We have semi-successfully identified a potential security problem ... Jim Driggers writes: "You guys recently had an article on how to escalate one's security status on a Win32 machine. The article included a link to a download called shatter.exe. My Norton antivirus says it contains the beavuh virus. I don't have IIS 5, so it is not a worry for me, but I thought you guys should know."

Actually, it shouldn't be a worry for anyone: apparently, the shatter.exe file triggers some anti-virus software, but according to several readers this is a false alarm.

How to win friends and influence people. In response to this posting ("Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers"), Declan McCullagh writes: "FYI I've placed the congressional letter to Attorney General Ashcroft here: Also see this analysis from last summer on why P2P piracy violates the federal No Electronic Theft act: 'Duncan Frissell on why Napster users are federal felons'."

Up against the wall (of videos). An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the film Revolution OS finally makes it to a small screen near you. First copies available at HP booth at LinuxWorld, San Francisco.

It includes footage from LinuxWorld '99 in San Jose where Stallman accepts the "Linus Torvalds Award" from the hand of Linus and proceeds to talk about why Linux should be called GNU/Linux". This is a treasure."

In addition, for the skateboard-inclined, note that Dogtown and Z-Boys is finally out on DVD, too.

Slimmer and trimmer like I ought to be. prostoalex writes "The rumors of Ziff Davis filing for Chapter 11 can just stay rumors, as company claimed it achieved a compromise with bondholders on financial restructuring. Recently ZD has been shutting down a sleuth of print publications including Yahoo! Internet Life, Family PC, Expedia Travels, Interactive Week, eShopper and Smart Business. It is still a publisher of eWeek, PC Magazine, CIO Insight, ExtremeTech and other computer and gaming magazines."

Comments

Futurama rumors

[anotherone]

Not a chance... in TV guide a while ago it said that the cartoon costs Fox around $1,000,000 an episode. And Cartoon Network recently shitcanned Mission Hill due to $400,000 an ep figures. They like cheap shows like Sealab and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (two of the best shows on TV right now IMHO) better.

Rumors are usually just that, rumors... remember that Invader Zim/Hot Topic thing a while back? More bullshit. Why does /. even publish this stuff, I'm thinking that a single email would clear it up.

ACK! Glad I don't do napster (et al)...

[killthiskid]

Taken from http://www.politechbot.com/p-02305.html, posted there by Duncan Frissell.

The $1K limit applies to the retail value of the product. Let's apply the law to Napster as an over reaching prosecutor might.

1. The average CD costs $12 and contains 18 songs (assumed for illustrative purposes). Each song is therefore worth $0.66.
2. One thousand dollars divided by sixty-six cents equals 1515 songs.
3. If one values songs by the price of CD singles, it takes even fewer songs (500) since those go for about $2/song.
4. So any Napster user who made 1515 (or perhaps fewer) songs available was knowingly infringing copyright law and trafficking in copyrighted materials with a retail value of more than 1000. As the US argued in its AMICUS CURIAE in A&M v. Napster "When a Napster user makes the music files on his or her hard drive available for downloading by other Napster users, he or she is distributing the files to the public at large." See http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/napsteramicus.ht ml
5. Likewise, a Napster user who just downloads songs is arguably "distributing" copyrighted works (to himself) since it is his command, generated by his computer, that grabs the song. So once he passes 1515 songs in 180 days, he's (arguably) a felon.

Time for a new slashdot poll: How many slashdotters are fedral felons due to their file sharing activities? The person closest to guessing the correct quantity without going over wins a get out of jail free card, curtousy of John Ashcroft! Yeah!

About Invader Zim

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know what's going on with Invader Zim?
If anything, I wish Cartoon Network would take a look at acquiring it from Nickelodeon.

The "problem" with Futurama

[geekoid]

is that it is subtle, very subtle. I'm surprised at the number of post that don't find it funny.

It is completly nerdsville, and I love.
they make programming reference, engineering references, sci-fi references, and modern culture references.
How many people would have the guts to put this on the air:
"that happened in 2506...just after the second coming of christ"?
I paraphrased the year.
in the last episod I saw it had:
A marriage between Iron chef and Soylent green.
A styx reference(group not river)
Homophobic reference from a robot.
Wraith of Kahn joke.
poisoning
revenge
a frame up
destruction of a ship(in a bottle)
secret code(granted, they're in every episode)
Its one of the few shows that I don't understand why it is NOT 'embraced' by slashdot, yet Buffy is.

I suspect its because the first generation gamers/video game players/star wars people are getting old, and this generation is trying to glom onto anything they can call a product of there generation.

I guess I'll have to start all my conversations with "Back in my day..." ;)