Mith - Slashdot User

Submission + - John C. Dvoraks switch story.

Submitted by raffe on Friday July 27, 2007 @04:54AM

raffe writes: Hell froze over! John C. Dvorak, long time hater of the mac now likes it."I have no plans to move to the Mac platform for my personal use. That said, I have noticed that I've been recommending the machine to friends and neighbors when they want to know what kind of system they should buy."

Submission + - Dell blocks installation of standard components 1

Submitted by

Loh Phat

on Friday July 27, 2007 @04:15AM

Loh Phat writes: "Hardware vendors voiding warranties or not providing support is a standard caveat across the industry, but yesterday Dell showed that withholding a $5 part is more important that future sales or bad press.

Our company purchased a Dell PowerEdge 3250 (Dual CPU Itanium) less than two years ago (still under warranty BTW) for cross platform development (yes, our customers demand support for that platform). So we purchased a unit with a single drive in a two drive system.

Its spec sheet specifies U320 SCSI drive support — a standard. See for yourself http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedg e/en/3250_specs.pdf

So when we wanted to add storage we purchased a standard U320 compatible drive and went to install it, however when we pulled the hot-swap drive sled out we noticed that it lacked mounting facilities for the drive; it curiously didn't match the existing sled in the occupied bay. They are 99% identical except for the lack of facility to actually attach a drive.

During a call to Dell "support" it seems that a year ago (a year after we bought the server and before the warranty expires) they stopped selling the drive sled capable of mounting a drive as a separate component — you can only get them, wait for it, attached to a Dell SCSI drive.

So it seems that it's OK to advertise the compatibility with industry-standard components, you just can't use them. With no pre-sales caveat that you will not be allowed to install anything standard unless it comes from Dell. Funny, the drive sled has its own part number H7206 but Dell *refused* to sell it to me.

The term "bait-and-switch" comes to mind. I'm all for caveat emptor, but a full declaration of terms is not unreasonable.

I don't mind having the freedom to be denied service or support of using non-vendor supplied parts (well, I do actually but I least know that before I buy) but in this case I'm physically prevented from doing so after the purchase.

So the question remains: are there grounds to file an anti-trust or some other complaint with the State regarding this deceptive business practice?

Regardless, they're now off the vendor list (actually I inherited the server as I would have selected another vendor in the first place). Good forward thinking there guys."

Submission + - German court: No P2P IP lookup for music industry (heise.de)

Submitted by RichiH on Friday July 27, 2007 @01:45AM

RichiH writes: German news site heise.de reports (Babelfish) that a court in Offenburg rejected the state attorney's request to get the private data of a file sharer because it was 'obviously unreasonable'. 'Based on logic', the study speaking of 5 billion traded files per year in 2001 and 2002 which the music industry in Germany often cites can not apply as the user in question uploaded only a single song that the music industry knows of. The court also said that many p2p users are not aware that the programs automatically starts hidden and mandatory upload of files it has access to, so that, unless proven otherwise, the person in question did not upload anything on purpose. Furthermore, the court said that the claim of high damages does not hold water as a song typically costs less than a Euro and 'at a price of 0, someone who will not even spend a single cent will still want to get a product', citing a study that shows no negative impact of p2p on revenues. Finally, the court said that the music simply wants the data of the person in question so it can sue them in civil court and that it did not have any right to the data trying 'via several tens of thousands of criminal charges' to 'get at information the law is explicitly keeping from them'. Several state attorneys said, under strict promise of anonymity, that they would now try to get similar rules so that they 'dedicate their time to more severe crimes'. Go ahead, tag this one 'haha' :)

Submission + - Microsoft Relying on Linux?

Submitted by josmar52789 on Thursday July 26, 2007 @11:06PM

josmar52789 writes: As it turns out, a quick search on Netcraft.com reveals that a number of sites owned by Microsoft are apparently relying on Linux. FolderShare.com, which is a Windows Live service is running on Linux with PHP for Apache. The filesharing/backup site was acquired by Microsoft a few years ago and on up until now, Microsoft has seen fit to leave it running on Linux. It's also interesting to see that quite a few of Microsoft's most popular sites are still running Windows 2000 on IIS 5.0 (who wanted businesses to upgrade?) and most of Microsoft's sites are using the F5 Big IP load balancer which recently switched over to Linux from BSD. You gotta love Microsoft for their patriotism to Windows :)

Cisco to Kill Linksys Brand Name 262

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday July 26, 2007 @10:02PM from the alas-we-hardly-knew-ye dept.

Mav sent in this article that opens, "In a roundtable with the European press, John Chambers confirmed the "end of life" of the Linksys name, being replaced by the new and redesigned Cisco branding." He explains, "It will all come over time into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that."

Journal Journal: Review of "Practical Rails Social Networking Sites"

Journal by beachdog on Thursday July 26, 2007 @03:11AM

Mini review: Practical Rails Social Networking Sites by Alan Bradburne, published by Apress, Berkeley, California 2007. US $44.99

Reviewed by Lee McK

Practical Rails Social Networking Sites has a cover subtitle "Learn how to implement a modern social networking web site using Rails, from design to deployment."

Submission + - Bush Orders No Cruel Treatment of Terror Suspects (foxnews.com)

Submitted by ArcherB on Friday July 20, 2007 @06:12PM

ArcherB writes: President Bush signed an executive order Friday prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Read the whole executive order HERE.

Submission + - Burning questions of service-oriented architecture (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

jbrodkin

on Friday July 20, 2007 @11:14AM

jbrodkin writes: "IT shops around the world are using SOA to fundamentally change how they deliver services. Six burning questions are answered in this article, including what are SOA's dark sides?; will data security be comprised?; what about network performance and management?; is anyone saving money with SOA?; and when is Microsoft planning to get a clue?"

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