Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Image

Verizon Charged Marine's Widow an Early Termination Fee 489

In a decision that was reversed as soon as someone with half a brain in their PR department learned about it, Verizon charged a widow a $350 early termination fee. After the death of her marine husband, Michaela Brummund decided to move back to her home town to be with her family. Verizon doesn't offer any coverage in the small town so Michaela tried to cancel her contract, only to be hit with an early termination fee. From the article: "'I called them to cancel. I told them the situation with my husband. I even said I would provide a death certificate,' Michaela said."

Comment Re:Pfff... (Score 1) 1213

I agree with everything that you said. I was just pointing out a specific example of retraining costs associated with upgrading from one version to the next of the same software, which the GP seemed to think was a ridiculous concept. I am enjoying every minute of explaining to users that Documents and Settings is now called Users, as another example. That one is fighting 15 years of dogma for, as far as I can tell, no benefit to anyone. Perhaps lazy script writers that don't want to figure out how to deal with spaces. As for emacs, you must admit that C-x M-c M-butterfly is awesome.

Comment Re:Pfff... (Score 5, Insightful) 1213

Hundreds of employees each spending 20+ minutes to figure out where the fuck the print button went in the new version of Office, for example. No, clicking on the ball in the top corner of the screen is not even close to intuitive, and no, there isn't anyone that actually clicks on the take a tour of $new_product to find these things out. Even if they did, multiply that half hour to hour of tour across an enterprise, and it is significant.
Ubuntu

Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Review (Lucid Lynx) 567

JimLynch writes "The open source world has been eagerly anticipating the final release of Ubuntu Linux 10.04, and now it's finally here. Canonical has been working extremely hard and it shows in the quality of this release."

Comment Re:Yawn. (Score 3, Interesting) 278

I work across the street from Paine Field, the airport it took off from, and I can tell you that it was pretty exciting to us. We have nothing at all to do with the industry, and we were all still keeping an eye out for the takeoff. Something of an oddity for guys who are used to hearing/seeing dozens of planes take off every day, including a couple of liftoffs of the DreamLifter every day. How often do you get to see history first hand?

Comment Re:Visit the plant in Everett. (Score 1) 278

If you happen to have a relative that works there, they have a family tour once a year that you can go on. They let you down on the work floor for that tour, instead of just up on the catwalks. The only thing that they have running is one of the ceiling cranes spinning a plane around, so you aren't dodging anything. If you have the chance, I highly recommend it.

Comment Re:That's funny (Score 3, Insightful) 749

No, they shouldn't, but they should have the right to keep the CD in a place where a suit from the RIAA can't intentionally scratch the CD to make sure that it will not play at any time they like. The industry has never been expected to make physical products that are indestructible, but they have never been capable of destroying the product at any moment with no notice. Important difference.

Comment Re:Great timing (Score 1) 435

No kidding. I finally stepped up to a real HF rig after getting sick of my dad talking about how he worked Christmas Island with a quarter wave dipole on ten meters. At least now I get some good DXing on 20 and 40. One can only hope that we have now hit rock bottom.
Intel

High Performance Linux Kernel Project — LinuxDNA 173

Thaidog submits word of a high-performance Linux kernel project called "LinuxDNA," writing "I am heading up a project to get a current kernel version to compile with the Intel ICC compiler and we have finally had success in creating a kernel! All the instructions to compile the kernel are there (geared towards Gentoo, but obviously it can work on any Linux) and it is relatively easy for anyone with the skills to compile a kernel to get it working. We see this as a great project for high performance clusters, gaming and scientific computing. The hopes are to maintain a kernel source along side the current kernel ... the mirror has 2.6.22 on it currently, because there are a few changes after .22 that make compiling a little harder for the average Joe (but not impossible). Here is our first story in Linux Journal."
The Internet

Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown 294

secmartin writes "Researchers at Delft University warn that large parts of the BitTorrent network might collapse if The Pirate Bay is forced to shut down. A large part of the available torrents use The Pirate Bay as tracker, and other available trackers will probably be overloaded if all traffic is shifted there. TPB is currently using eight servers for their trackers. According to the researchers, even trackerless torrents using the DHT protocol will face problems: 'One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only "stumble upon success", meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.'"
Image

Thieves Take the Cake 91

Two very hungry German couriers ate a fruit cake destined for a German newspaper and in its place mailed a box of credit card data. The data including names, addresses and card transactions ended up at the Frankfurter Rundschau daily. The mix-up triggered an alarm, and police advised credit card customers with Landesbank Berlin to check their accounts for inconsistencies. Fruitcake must be different in Germany for people to want to use it as something other than a paperweight.
Classic Games (Games)

The Return of (Old) PC Graphic Adventures 93

KingofGnG writes "Though they belong to a genre already considered defunct and inadequate for the mainstream video game market, adventure games have a glorious past, a past that deserves to be remembered, and, of course, replayed. At the center of a good part of this effort of collective memory, there is ScummVM, the virtual machine which acts like an interface between the feelings and the puzzles from the good old times and the modern operating systems. As already highlighted before, the ScummVM target has grown immensely over time, going from the simple support of the 'classic' adventure games par excellence published by Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, to a range that includes virtually any single puzzle-solving game developed from the beginning of time up to the advent of the (Windows) NT platform. The last video game engine added to ScummVM within the past few days is Groovie, created by the software house Trilobyte for its first title released in 1993, The 7th Guest ."
Programming

Submission + - What every programmer should know about memory (lwn.net)

mrcgran writes: "LWN.NET has just finished publishing an excellent series about memory, by Ulrich Drepper:"What every programmer should know about memory". Wonder the difference between PC100 and PC1600? Challeges of NUMA systems, access optimizations for L1 and L2 caches? Want to write code which performs well in several memory contexts? Then this series is probably what you should read first. There is also a PDF version available from Ulrich's home page. While at it, why not do a combo grabbing a copy of Goldberg's classical paper "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating Point Arithmetic"?."

Slashdot Top Deals

New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman

Working...