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Comment Re:How much is your time worth (Score 1) 837

by Zaffle (#27736151) Attached to: Handmade vs. Commercially Produced Ethernet Cables

Oy vei! Does anybody use T568A these days? I thought that was pretty much phased out?

Wikipedia answers:

TIA/EIA-568-B specifies that horizontal cables should be terminated using the T568A pin/pair assignments, "or, optionally, per [T568B] if necessary to accommodate certain 8-pin cabling systems." Despite this instruction, many organizations continue to implement T568B for various reasons, chiefly associated with tradition (T568B is equivalent to AT&T 258A). The United States National Communication Systems Federal Telecommunications Recommendations do not recognize T568B.

Eg - you are old and out of date - T568A is the correct, current standard.

Comment Mailman (Score 1) 489

by Zaffle (#25173885) Attached to: Good Email For Kids?

We used mailman, but in theory any mailing list software will do.
We created a non-archived moderator approved single subscriber mailing list called our_childs_name@our_domain. Then created a real mailbox called secret_mailbox@our_domain, then setup ACLs in the mailserver to deny anyone but localhost from delivering to secret_mailbox. Then subscribed the secret_mailbox to the mailing list. My wife and I are moderators of the list. When a new email comes in, we get an emailing notifying us theres a message, one click opens the approval page, and one click forwards the mail on, or drops it.

Done and done, all free software and it took only a few minutes with an already working mail server.

If you don't have your own mailserver, then I guess it gets more tricky :)
Social Networks

MySpace Joins OpenID Coalition 272

Posted by timothy from the inflection-point-perhaps dept.
the4thdimension writes "MySpace has joined a coalition of other big-name e-services in support of OpenID. If you aren't familiar with the OpenID coalition, they are a group that seeks to allow users to create a single account/password set to be used on a number of services. Such services already signed up include: Google's Blogger, Wordpress, AOL, Yahoo, Vox, LiveJournal, and others." Reader gbjbaanb adds a link to the BBC's coverage and points out that MySpace's 100 million users would mean nearly a doubling of the approximately 120 million OpenID accounts now in use, writing: "Initially support is to use MySpace OpenIDs as providers only — i.e. you cannot logon to MySpace with an OpenID created elsewhere, but that policy will change in the future. This should help to make OpenID the de-facto login mechanism for the Internet, now if only Microsoft would support it, there are plenty OSS OpenID libraries available."
Cellphones

iPhone's Development Limitations Could Hurt It In the Long Run 452

Posted by Soulskill from the my-way-or-the-iway dept.
ZDOne writes "Apple might have finally come around to allowing third party developers to create applications for the iPhone, but only up to a point. ZDNet UK claims Apple is leaving itself vulnerable to the competition and to a loss of lustre by blocking background tasks on the device. The author notes, 'Perhaps it doesn't trust application designers or users very much. Perhaps it wants the best software for itself, where it can limit what it can do in order not to upset its telco friends. Whatever the reason, it reflects badly on Apple. The iPhone is not an iPod; it's a smartphone connecting to a universe of fast-changing data on behalf of innovation-hungry users. The sooner it stops pretending to be a 1981 IBM PC, the better it will be for everyone.'"
Patents

Multi-Channel Communication Patent Up For Sale 97

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-say-prior-art dept.
OTDR alerts us to the latest software patent stupidity in the news as patent number 6,418,462, "methods allowing clients to perform tasks through a sideband communication channel, in addition to the main communication channel between a client and server," snubs its nose at AJAX, ftp, and decades of prior art and goes on sale next month in San Fransisco. "Singled out are AJAX mashups including Google Maps and Gmail, and Microsoft 'Live'... Also in the frame are Amazon's S3 and EC2 and clusters from Microsoft, VMware, and Oracle. eBay's Skype, Napster, and Microsoft's Groove are also listed as potentially infringing on the patent in P2P."
Businesses

Submission + - Skype Stole My Credit

Submitted by
Syphtor
Syphtor writes: "Recently found out that after 180 days if I don't use some of my Skype Credit (which I paid for), I lose it. They don't refund it, they keep the money. I've logged my complaints with Skype, and am hopeful of getting it back, but it does raise the question for these kind of 'buy credit' businesses. How long is reasonable for them to keep your credit open? 180 days? I think that's bad, obviously Skype disagrees."
Google

Google Admits to Using Sohu Database 209

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cut-and-paste dept.
prostoalex writes "A few days ago a Chinese company, Sohu.com, alleged Google improperly tapped its database for its Pinyin IME product, stirring controversy on whether two databases were similar just due to normal research process. Today Google admitted that its new product for Chinese market 'was built leveraging some non-Google database resources.' 'The dictionaries used with both software from Google and Sohu shared several common mistakes, where Chinese characters were matched with the wrong Pinyin equivalents. In addition, both dictionaries listed the names of engineers who had developed Sohu's Sogou Pinyin IME.'"
Movies

DSL Gateways to Fight Piracy by Marking Video 337

Posted by CowboyNeal from the movie-dna-testing dept.
Stony Stevenson wrote with an article about home gateway devices being set up to identify video pirates. The article reads: "Home gateway manufacturer Thomson SA plans to incorporate video watermarking technology into future set-top boxes and other video devices. The watermarks, unique to each device, will make it possible for investigators to identify the source of pirated videos. By letting consumers know the watermarks are there, even if they can't see them, Thomson hopes to discourage piracy without putting up obstacles to activities widely considered fair use, such as copying video for use on another device in the home or while traveling to work."

Every Vista Computer Gets Its Own Domain Name 388

Posted by kdawson from the roadblocks-to-rollout dept.
c_forq writes, "According to APC magazine, every new Windows Vista computer will be given its own domain name to access files remotely. There is a catch though: to use it one must be using IPv6. Is the push for Vista also going to be the push finally to switch everything from IPv4 to IPv6?" Microsoft, meanwhile, is trying to convince businesses to adopt both Vista and Office 2007 at once. An analyst is quoted: 'In all likelihood, enterprises will tie deployment of both Vista and Office 2007 with a hardware upgrade cycle.' His reasoning is that it will be easier for companies to handle one disruption to IT systems than two. Or three.

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