AusG4 - Slashdot User

The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time 623

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @01:51PM from the let-them-down-easy dept.

Technologizer writes "They add insult to injury — and computing wouldn't be the same without 'em. So I rounded up a baker's dozen of the most important error messages in computing history — from Does Not Compute to Abort, Retry, Fail to the Sad Mac to the big kahuna of them all — the mighty Blue Screen of Death. And just in case my judgment is off, I include a poll to let the rest of the world vote for the greatest error message of all." I can't believe that "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" didn't make the list.

The 5 Most Laughable Terms of Service On the Net 399

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @05:47PM from the until-you-cry dept.

nicholas.m.carlson writes "According to these five terms of service and EULA, Google owns any content you create using its Chrome browser and can filter your Gmail messages if it likes. Facebook says it can sell its users' uploaded images as stock photography. YouTube can keep footage of your kids forever, even after you've deleted it from the site. And AOL can ban you for using vulgar language on AIM. Funny, right? That's why Valleywag calls them 'The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net.'" Reader dlaudel writes, regarding the previously-mentioned Google EULA for Chrome, "According to Ars Technica, Google's EULA for Chrome was just copy-and-pasted from its EULA for other services, a practice that is apparently common at Google."

Linux Authentication Against Active Directory 90

Posted by kdawson on Friday August 08, 2008 @12:55PM from the likewise-i'm-sure dept.

Bandman writes "For a while now I've been looking for something to integrate my Linux/Mac corporate environment with Windows Active Directory. I was hoping for centralized authentication at best. As I found out, Likewise Software has produced two products, the free Likewise Open and the commercial Likewise Enterprise. Both of them provide much more than just a centralized repository for accounts. I wrote a review of Likewise Open, but I don't have enough experience with Active Directory to really do justice to Likewise Enterprise. If you've been trying to integrate the Linux and Windows worlds, this could be the easiest way to do it."

Free SMS On IPhone 3G Via AOL IM Client 267

Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 13, 2008 @02:27PM from the dodging-the-gouge dept.

Glenn Fleishman writes "Jeff Carlson has discovered that you can bypass the 20 cent per message or $5 to $20 per month fees for SMS (text messaging) with the iPhone 3G and AT&T by using AOL's downloadable instant message client for iPhone 2.0, which is free. Just like the full-blown AOL IM system, you can add buddies that are the phone numbers of cell phones you want to send SMS to, and you establish a two-way conduit. The recipient still pays for SMS (if they have a fee) on their end, but if it's another iPhone user, you could coordinate with them via SMS to use instant messaging instead."

Changes In Store For PHP V6 368

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, 2008 @05:47PM from the ready-or-not dept.

An anonymous reader sends in an IBM DeveloperWorks article detailing the changes coming in PHP V6 — from namespaces, to Web 2.0 built-ins, to a few features that are being removed.

Do the Blind Deserve More Effort on the Web? 663

Posted by Zonk on Thursday April 17, 2008 @03:47PM from the some-effort-would-be-a-good-start dept.

dratcw writes "An article was posted this week to ComputerWorld, detailing the frustrations faced by blind people struggling to use the Web. The piece shows how little progress has been made and the inadequacy of solutions such as Microsoft's Narrator screen reader. While the article generated many positive comments, one reader said the disabled should 'get a grip' and maintained they 'have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used.' Should Web sites and software makers do more, or does the reality of today's economics dictate that the blind/disabled will continue to struggle and learn to live with it?"

Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files 626

Posted by Zonk on Thursday April 17, 2008 @09:19AM from the kind-of-strains-the-mind-to-think-about-huh dept.

mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."

Family Guy Spins off Cleveland 250

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 29, 2008 @07:06PM from the whens-it-gonna-be-my-turn dept.

E Online is reporting that a new spinoff is currently in the works to feature Cleveland, the soft-spoken neighbor in popular animated sitcom Family Guy. "Not much is known about Cleveland other than the fact it will revolve around the Brown clan. It's unclear whether the series will remain set in the town of Quahog or whether Cleveland, along with his wife and son, will continue to appear on Family Guy, though as both series are animated, the double-billing won't so much be a logistical problem as a creative decision."

Microsoft Should Acquire SAP, Not Yahoo 188

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 24, 2008 @10:11PM from the few-billion-more dept.

Reservoir Hill writes "Randall Stross has an insightful article in the NY Times that says that if Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should pursue not Yahoo but SAP, another major player in business software, thus merging Microsoft's strength with that of another. This is more likely to produce a happy outcome than yoking two ailing businesses, Yahoo's and Microsoft's own online offerings, and hoping for a miracle. Stross points to Oracle as a company whose acquisition strategy has picked up key products and customers while avoiding venturing too far from its core business, or overpaying. Stross recommends that Microsoft acquire SAP and leave it alone as an autonomous division — which would avoid a culture-clash integration fiasco. Besides, large enterprise customers are arguably the best customers a software company can have. A few dozen well-paying Fortune 500 customers may actually be more valuable than tens of millions of Web e-mail 'customers' who pay nothing for the service and whose attention is not highly valued by online advertisers."

Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database 684

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 19, 2008 @03:48PM from the finger-on-the-scale dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Church of Scientology can delete auctions from eBay with no supervision under the VeRO program, and has used this to delete all resale of the e-meters Scientologists use. This is to stop members from buying used units from ex-members instead of buying from the official (and very expensive) source. Given Scientology's record of fraud and abuse, should eBay give them this level of trust? Will this set a precedent for other companies that want to stop the aftermarket resale of their products?"

Where Are Tomorrow's Embedded Developers? 245

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @05:31PM from the not-like-embedded-reporters dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a similar vein to the previous discussion about the New York professors taking Java to task for damaging Computer Science education, Mike Anderson of the PTR group wonders why it's so hard to find good embedded developers these days. 'As for today's CS programs, it seems that long gone are the computer architecture classes, writing code in assembly language (or even C at this point) and engineering software economics. In fact, a large number of CS majors apparently believe that everything can be implemented in a virtual machine and that both memory and [CPU] cycles are infinite.'"

Web Browsers Under Siege From Organized Crime 168

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @02:23PM from the x-force-2007-sounds-like-an-awesome-movie dept.

An anonymous reader writes "IBM has released the findings of the 2007 X-Force Security report, a group cataloging online-based threat since 1997. Their newest information details a disturbing rise in the sophistication of attacks by online criminals. According to IBM, hackers are now stealing the identities and controlling the computers of consumers at 'a rate never before seen on the Internet'. 'The study finds that a complex and sophisticated criminal economy has developed to capitalize on Web vulnerabilities. Underground brokers are delivering tools to aid in obfuscation, or camouflaging attacks on browsers, so cybercriminals can avoid detection by security software. In 2006, only a small percentage of attackers employed camouflaging techniques, but this number soared to 80 percent during the first half of 2007.'"

Submission + - Driver issues plague HTC handhelds (htcclassaction.org)

Submitted by on Tuesday January 15, 2008 @11:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: The latest and greatest HTC SmartPhones and PocketPC's, including the TyTN II, are plagued with driver issues, namely missing or grossly underperforming video, touchscreen and camera drivers. After months of complaining to HTC and them hardly even acknowledging the issue, there is now even talk of a possible lawsuit to get HTC to fix the problems.

Affected devices include the "PDA of the year" HTC TyTN II (Kaiser, AT&T Tilt, T-Mobile MDA Vario III, Vodafone v1615), the "iPhone killers" HTC Touch / Touch Dual / Touch Cruise, the HTC Titan (Sprint Mogul, Verizon XV6800) and several other less known devices.

Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back 751

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 13, 2008 @02:23AM from the what-goes-around-comes-ariynd dept.

theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."

iPhone Forcing Open Wireless Networks? 291

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 10, 2008 @08:14AM from the open-up dept.

fermion writes "Wired asserts that the iPhone blew up the wireless industry. This article argues that because Apple demanded the opportunity to control their own phone, and ATT née Cingular agreed, other companies are opening up the networks, and Google now has the opportunity to make Android a reality. There are other tidbits. Allegedly Verizon turned Jobs down without even listening to his pitch, a decision they may well regret now that they are hemorrhaging customers. Also, that Motorola and the networks were responsible for the fiasco dubbed the ROKR, something which I believe given how damaged the American version of the RAZR was compared to international version. It also estimates that the iPhone cost upward of $150 million to design, and earns Apple about $200 profit per phone."

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