Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

Submission + - Bill Gates voted IT's most influential person

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Bill Gate, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell rank one, two, and three in a list of the most influential people in IT over the past 25 years. The list was compiled by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a tech trade group with 22,000 members. The poll got 473 votes, mostly from people who have worked in the tech industry for at least three years. Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, was selected by 84% of the participants. Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple, was selected by 73% of those taking the poll. Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell, got the nod from 53% of CompTIA voters. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, made the list with 47% of the vote, tying for fourth place with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Strangely absent from the list is anyone responsible for pushing the computer gaming envelope.
Toys

Submission + - Jenkem Users Group (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
Anti-Globalism
Anti-Globalism writes: "We are tired of struggling in darkness against the blindness of a society that will not see our truth. Behind every Jenkem addict there is a person like you and me who deserves compassion. Long cast to the corners of our society that not even our drug treatment programs will address, Jenkem use is growing as people discover the joys of this 100% natural* and safe hallucinogen. It is easy to manufacture and if you do it well, pleasurable. Jenkem use comes to us from Africa, from which came jazz and blues and hip-hop and most of the culture of our modern time, and is a gift from the gods for those of us who are sick and tired of drug dealers, cops and synthetic highs. Join the 100% natural* revolution and reach out to a Jenkem user. Cast down the tired taboos of a dying society, and open your mind to the wonders of nature's drug... Jenkem

The Jenkem mailing list is for Jenkem users, families of Jenkem addicts, and Jenkem users who want to know the secrets of Jenkem cultivation, safe use, Jenkem recipes and how to have clandestine Jenkem parties.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jenkem

* depends on what you eat to produce the Jenkem.

WTF LOL"
The Courts

Submission + - Hans Reiser Trial Update (wired.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "The Hans Reiser trial ended its second day today and the developments have been interesting. The prosecutor is alleging that Reiser convinced his son to help cover up Hans murdering Tina. Some of the most suspicious evidence against Hans arose at the very end of the day: "Hora ended the day's session by telling jurors that the defendant's small Honda Civic went missing for two weeks, until authorities discovered it after a lengthy manhunt two weeks after Nina Reiser vanished. "When they looked inside the car, it's missing the front passenger seat," Hora said. "It's gone. It's not there." In an impromptu news conference outside court, defense attorney DuBois said Reiser had removed the seat because his client was in financial straits and was living in the 1988 vehicle." Hopefully the real murderer of Nina can be found and convicted."
Businesses

Submission + - Silicon Valley - the new Detroit? (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The San Jose Mercury News is speculating about Silicon Valley's potential for becoming the Detroit of a future electric car industry. Among the valley's strengths is an ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments and develop new business models, something that the Big Three can hardly be accused of. On the downside, it's a capital-intensive business and isn't like raising $40 million and having an IPO. Apparently there are five companies in the valley already pursuing electric car technology, most notably Tesla.

Last week's announcement by Shai Agassi, a former SAP executive based in Palo Alto, that he's raised $200 million for a company that will try to revolutionize the electric car industry is the latest sign of this region's growing role in one of the hottest sectors of the automotive industry.
Google

Submission + - Man WrongIy Imprisoned After Google IDs Him 3

Submitted by DrEnter
DrEnter writes: A man in Bangalore, India was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for 50 days after being misidentified as the individual who posted images deemed insulting to a revered historical figure. The Indian police asked for, and Google provided, the IP address of the user which was then given to the ISP Airtel, who misidentified it as belonging to someone it didn't. That someone than spent the next 50 days in jail (including 3 weeks AFTER the real individual was caught). Disturbingly, when questioned if the authorities provided a court order or merely asked for the anonymous poster's info., Google was hazy about the answer, only saying that they complied with Indian law.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - How-to Turn Your Xbox 360 into a Media Extender

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: It's easier than you think to turn your Xbox 360 into a media extender, "a device connected to your home entertainment center that dishes up photos, music, and videos from a computer on the same network." Joel Durham Jr. takes readers step-by-step into the process(es) involved.
Programming

Submission + - Half a Century of Crappy Computing (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the article:

I remember being elated back in the early 80s when event-driven programming became popular. At the time, I took it as a hopeful sign that the computer industry was finally beginning to see the light and that it would not be long before event-driven, reactive programming was embraced as the universal programming model. Boy, was I wrong! I totally underestimated the capacity of computer geeks to deceive themselves and everyone else around them about their business. Instead of events and signals, we got more function calls; and instead of elementary reactions, we got more functions and methods. The unified approach to software construction that I was eagerly hoping for never materialized. In its place, we got inundated with a flood of hopelessly flawed programming languages, operating systems and CPU architectures, a sure sign of an immature discipline.
Google

Submission + - gPhone imminent, open (neowin.net)

Submitted by
Technical Writing Geek
Technical Writing Geek writes: "While Google will provide many of the services which will come on the phone — such as its search, Maps, YouTube, and Gmail services — the platform on which those applications are built will be completely open, right down to the operating system itself. This is a dramatic shift from what is available currently. Most carriers and phone manufacturers lock most of the code down, making it relatively difficult to build new applications without either deals with the carriers or manufacturers themselves.

Only Microsoft offers anything close to what Google is going to do, through Windows Mobile.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/10/31/possible-google-phone-within-2-weeks"
Communications

Submission + - New GPS Navigator shows Traffic Jams Ahead

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New York Times is running an article on Dash Express, a new navigation system for automobiles that not only receives GPS location data, but broadcasts information about its travels back to Dash over a cellular data network where it is shared with other users to let them know if there are slowdowns or traffic jams on the road ahead and propose an alternate route. The real benefit of the system isn't apparent until enough units are collecting data so Dash distributed over 2,000 prototype units to test drivers in 25 large cities. The continuous two-way reporting lets the system measure how fast traffic travels on a given road, and use that information to compile a highly detailed and accurate database of traffic information so Dash units can warn each other through the network the second they hit a traffic slowdown."
The Military

Submission + - Robot Cannon Kills 9, Injures 14 (wired.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An auto-targeting, auto-reloading cannon goes out of control during a South African military drill — killing 9 soldiers, and wounding 14 more. Officials can't figure out whether to blame jammed hardware, software glitches... or the start of the robot uprising. One thing's for sure: it's not the first time robo-weapons have started acting dangerously odd.
Robotics

Submission + - Robotic Cannon Looses Control, Kills 9, 14 Wounded 1

Submitted by
TJ_Phazerhacki
TJ_Phazerhacki writes: "A new high tech weapon system demonstrated one of the prime concerns circling smarter and smarter methods of defense last week — an Oerlikon GDF-005 went wildly out of control during live fire test exercises in South Africa, killing 9. Scarily enough, this is far from the first instance of a smart weapon "turning" — the biggest concern seems to be finding the glitches in the system instead of reconsidering automated arms altogether. Sarah Connor, where are you?"
Spam

Submission + - Two Spammers Given Five Years for Porn Spam (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "In an Arizona case, two porn spammers were given five years each in prison. From the article, "Over nine months in 2004, Kilbride, Schaffer and an associate transmitted more than 600,000 spam messages, according to court documents. They were paid commissions based on the number of people who accessed the websites via the spam. Kilbride and Schaffer tried to make it seem as if they were sending messages from abroad by logging in to servers in Amsterdam. But those messages originated from Phoenix, prosecutors said. They were also ordered to forfeit $1.3m." Good to have them stopped but as always the real question is whether five years imprisonment for each of them is a little harsh. The case started on June 5th."
The Media

Submission + - Hurricane Expert Calls Gore Theory "Ridiculous (smh.com.au) 5

Submitted by DrWho520
DrWho520 writes: ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Slightly unclear on the concept... (pasadenastarnews.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: In an article in the Pasadena Star-News about online fraud, our law-enforcement friends caution us about the dangers of the Internet:

"I don't think the public knows how bad things have gotten," said Kathryn Showers, head deputy district attorney of the High Technology Crimes Division. "For example, there is a practice called `war ganging' where if someone has a wireless laptop, they can come and park outside your home, and if you don't have a router on the system to protect transmissions, they can monitor what you are doing and use your IP address to commit crimes."

So, disturbed by this but enlightened, I went out and bought a nice Ryobi 1/4" router at Home Depot, and as soon as I figure out how to plug it into my PC, I'm sure my DSL transmissions will be safe from war gangers committing any crimes.

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Close