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Data Storage

Submission + - Hard drive prices drop as PC demand rises (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Arashtamere
Arashtamere writes: Prices are dropping on notebook and desktop hard drives as demand for PCs and consumer electronics skyrocket. Competition from flash memory and increased shipment of PCs and consumer electronics are driving down prices and fueling demand for hard disk drives, according to a survey released by iSuppli this week. Average pricing of notebook hard drives tumbled, falling to US$53 in the third quarter of 2007, from $86 in the same period during the previous year. Desktop hard drive prices fell to $51 in the third quarter of 2007, compared to $52.75 the previous year, according to the survey. Overall, about 134 million hard drives shipped in the third quarter of 2007, compared to 114 million the previous year, a 21 percent year on year increase, iSuppli found. The most popular notebook hard drives were in the 100G-byte range, which carried an average price of $50. Low-cost desktop PCs, especially in Asia, shipped with cheap US$40 80G-byte hard drives that brought down the average selling price of desktop hard drives.
Google

Submission + - Ballmer rips on Android: just "a press release (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by Bergkamp10
Bergkamp10 writes: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to shoot Google's new mobile platform down in flames at a press conference in Tokyo. Ballmer called Android a mere 'press release' at present, and suggested the mobile platform market was 'Microsoft's world'. Ballmer dodged requests to comment on specifics of the Android software platform, preferring instead to highlight the successes of the Windows Mobile platform which he said is on 150 different handsets and is available from over 100 different mobile operators. "Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it's hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile]," Ballmer said. "Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world," he added.
Privacy

Submission + - AT&T whistleblower: NSA collecting everything (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Sean
Sean writes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 7, 2007; Page D01

His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002 when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency to an office of AT&T in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, nearly caused him to fall out of his chair. The documents, he said, show that the NSA gained access to massive amounts of e-mail and search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecommunications providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network at a facility in San Francisco and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.
Privacy

Submission + - CinemaNow and Sonic Try DVD Copying

Submitted by leander22
leander22 writes: Digital entertainment download service CinemaNow has announced a partnership with Sonic Solutions' QFlix, to develop a system which enables burning of protected DVDs that promise to be identical to those available off the shelf, with one very big catch.
CinemaNow holds protection of DVD copyrights high in its list of priorities. It had previously offered a download-and-burn service, though copied discs intentionally included a kind of defect that was supposed to protect against further copies. That defect defeated those copies to the extent that they did not even play on many DVD players.
Businesses

Submission + - Chinese Companies on Layoff Spree to Evade New Law (sina.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Various media reports that many large Chinese companies, including Huawei Technologies (in English) and Walmart China (in Chinese,) are on a spree of massive layoff and rehiring in order to evade new and tougher labor law taking effect on January 1, 2008.

More than 7,000 loyal employees of Huawei, China's largest private telecom gear maker based in the southern city of Shenzhen, have quit in exchange for the chance to work for the company again.

The mass resignation triggered by the company management started last month. Many legal experts believe it was an irresponsible decision to exploit a legal loophole before the Labor Contract Law takes effect on January 1 next year.

Under the new law, employees can sign open-ended labor contracts if they have worked for the same company for 10 or more years in a row.

Huawei employees who have been serving the company for at least eight years, including founder Ren Zhengfei, will soon sign new contracts, lasting one to three years, but may have to leave when they expire.

To encourage them to accept the new arrangement, Huawei worked out a compensation scheme based on length of service, salaries and bonuses. The total cost of the package is expected to reach 1 billion yuan ($134 million).

"I can't understand why Huawei has taken such an unwise step," You Yunting, a lawyer with JoinWay Law Firm in Shanghai, said.

You added that open-ended contracts did not necessarily mean the employees had jobs for life.
Privacy

Submission + - Online Credit Card Scam Exposed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An exposé was recently published, revealing a widely used, but little known online scam being used by companies such as Web Loyalty Reservation Rewards. The writer is not alone in getting scammed by the company. What makes everything even more interesting is that now the company has responded, with the usual white washing and meaningless statements. Evidently the scam works by offering you a "cash back reward" or other similar sounding deal. When you click to claim it, it takes you to a page from which you have to opt-out of a recurring monthly charge. The sad thing is, the company you *DID* want to buy from has already given them your credit card information by this point, making it hard to avoid the charges from this scam.
Power

Submission + - A new way to make water -- and fuel cells

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "You probably know that it is easy to combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water. After all, this chemical reaction is known for more than two centuries. But now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have discovered a new way to make water. As states the UIUC report, 'not only can they make water from unlikely starting materials, such as alcohols, their work could also lead to better catalysts and less expensive fuel cells.' But be warned: don't read the technical paper itself. It could win an obfuscated contest — if such a contest existed for scientific papers. But read more for additional references and excerpts of the most incredible abstract I've read in years."
Books

Submission + - Geeks and God (catholicnews.com)

Submitted by Jonathan Stott
Jonathan Stott writes: If you're a long-time slashdot reader, you know by now that any time the subject of God comes up, a crowd of Richard Dawkins wanna-be's kicks in because, as everyone knows, "science and religion are incompatable." Guy Conolmagno SJ, an astronomer with a PhD in planetary science from MIT, has written a new book God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion in which he talks to his fellow scientists and engineers and discovers that while "techies look at religion differently than most folks," most scientists were either believers or agnostics looking for answers. So what do you believe in?
Media

Submission + - BBC's Linux figures innacurate (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
ddrichardson
ddrichardson writes: "Following an earlier story, BBC's Ashley Highfield has changed his mind on the number of Linux users accessing the BBC's website. It would appear to be more like 36,600 and 97,600. Interestingly, he hasn't changed position:

We'll try and get a more accurate picture: over 30 thousand Linux users is a not insubstantial number, but we do have to keep this in context with the vast majority of users who use either Windows or Macs to access bbc.co.uk.
"
Security

Submission + - Norton AntiVirus makes Mac OS X less secure.

Submitted by NAVwatch
NAVwatch writes: Symantec has known about a vulnerability in NAV for more than nine months now that allows any local program on Mac OS X to gain root access without any of the usual password prompts Mac OS X presents for gaining super-user access thus allowing worms to be installed undetected. Attempts to get Symantec to simply fix permissions on their application directories have largely resulted in Symantec saying other vendor's have insecure software too.
Security

Submission + - IRS issues e-mail scam alert (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The IRS today warned the Internet community of a new scam e-mail that appears to be a solicitation from the IRS and the U.S. government for charitable contributions to victims of the recent Southern California wildfires has been making the rounds. In some cases in an effort to appear legitimate, the bogus e-mails include text from an actual speech about the wildfires by a member of the California Assembly. A link in the e-mail, when clicked, sends the e-mail recipient to a Web site that looks like the IRS Web site, but isn't. They are then directed to click on a link that opens a donation form that asks for personal and financial information. The scammers can use that information to gain access to the e-mail recipient's financial accounts. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21468"
Networking

Submission + - Active Directory and Linux guide (techtarget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While a growing number of organizations have embraced and adopted Linux, now they confront increasing demand for integrated, multiplatform networks. Many administrators have chosen Microsoft Active Directory (AD) — which integrates Linux and Windows systems into the same network — as a central authentication and authorization service. This guide offers information on how to create a cross-platform environment with AD and Linux.
Programming

Submission + - First broad empirical comparison: Java, Perl, PHP (plat-forms.org)

Submitted by
LutzPrechelt
LutzPrechelt writes: "In the Plat_Forms contest, 9 teams of 3 professional developers each implemented the same set of requirements within two days; three each using Java, Perl, or PHP, respectively — there were not enough applications from teams using ASP.NET, Python, or Ruby. The solutions were evaluated against many criteria over the course of five months at Freie Universität Berlin. Most important result: Only few consistent differences between the platforms were found; people differences matter more than technology differences. Other results include: The most complete solution was built by a Java team, the PHP teams were most consistently productive, the cleanest security results were found for the PHP solutions(!), the Perl solutions had the smallest code. These and other results, illustrated by plenty of graphical charts, are discussed in a detailed report."

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