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Submission + - Dreamhost triple charges some by accident (dreamhoststatus.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As a user being hosted on Dreamhost, I've loved the insane amount of bandwidth, space, and all. This morning, however, I found my bank account charged for nearly 400 dollars and an email thanking me for renewing. The rub is I was automatically charged twice for an account that's not even due yet. Some folks are getting charged as much as $9000 (the highest I found so far.) Dreamhost's response?

Scripts are still running to correct the original problem. Last night, this guy ran a standard billing cycle to clean up stragglers from 2007.
And the part I love:

Also, you needn't contact us or your credit card company/bank about this.. we're fixing it right as you read this (and maybe already have for your account)! The best move for you is to just sit back and pretend you never got those weird billing email(s) talking about owing lots of money!
The height of professionalism, I'm sure. They've had their bout of hosting screwups, but this billing screwup takes the cake. Will they be around much longer?
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Worst Example of False Tech Advertising?

Submitted by
Invisible Pink Unicorn
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "In several of the NCAA football bowls that aired this postseason, the DLP technology developed by Texas Instruments was advertised in a particularly misleading way — by plastering a bunch of "DLP" logos on a generic camera, they implied that this camera somehow utilized the DLP technology that's used in televisions and projectors. Several blogs complaining about the over-advertising of the "DLP Cam" mistakenly believed it was some sort of new technology. We also recently saw James Randi offer $1M to anyone who can prove that a pair of $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables do anything out of the ordinary. What other particularly egregious examples of false advertising in technology have other readers encountered?"
Security

Submission + - Canadian Passport Data Breach Due To Bad Coding

Submitted by
circletimessquare
circletimessquare writes: "Hot on the heels of the large government data breach in the UK comes news of a serious security hole in the Canadian passport application process. Jamie Laning, a Canadian IT worker, discovered that just by tweaking a single character in the query string of the URL of his Passport application session, he was able to bring up other people's applications. He was able to view personal information such as social insurance numbers, driver's licence numbers, a federal ID card number and even a firearms licence number. Mr. Laning informed Passport Canada, who now says the error is already fixed. According to the article, Canadian law does not require organizations to disclose when they've suffered security breaches. Ouch."
The Internet

Submission + - 47-year-old Internet stalker causes suicide 1

Submitted by
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast writes: "Perhaps others had heard about this story, but I hadn't noticed it until it hit The Times today. A 47-year-old woman — pretending to be a teenage boy — played with the emotions of a neighboring teenage girl, eventually causing her to commit suicide. Her penalty? Nothing. I admit to being of two minds on this one: should someone be culpable for, by way of the written word, causing mental anguish leading to someone's death? The Free Speech part of me says no; the humane part of me says yes."
Microsoft

Submission + - Sysinternal Tools going Bye Bye...? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently I have tried to download the source codes for some Sysinternal tools, namely pskill.exe, to incorporate it into my program to help kill a spawned process when it is not behaving properly. Since Microsoft have purchased sysinternal.com, us administrators have have become worried that these cool tools, that are necessary for our day to day needs, might vanish into thin air. The Source codes have disappeared from the website during migration, and now all their download links no longer works. Is this the end of Sysinternal tools?
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Twentieth Century Fox Confirm 'X-Files 2'

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After years of speculation, the Studio officially announced that production of the long-awaited X-Files sequel will commence December 10th, with a release date set for July 25, 2008. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are signed to reprise their roles as Mulder and Scully. The story is to be a standalone rather than a continuation of the long-running Mytharc of Alien conspiracies. [URL:http://www.variety.com/VR1117975124.html]
Businesses

Confessions of a Gamestop Manager 184

Posted by Zonk from the shame-of-it-all dept.
The site Consumerist has up a lengthy post from a former Gamestop manager, listing some of the sins, boons, pitfalls and promises perpetrated while he was on the job. Includes a discussion of the 'gutted' display game, pre-orders, the 'discount' card, trades, and lots of 'pro-tips' on how to get the most out of your Gamestopping experience. "19) Don't be afraid to sell things on your own! The going resell rates for any current games or accessories online is usually close to what we resell for. If its a much newer title and you don't mind listing and shipping it, you could make a small handful more selling it online yourself. Ebay and Amazon.com are obvious choices, but you may find other outlets that work for you."
Software

Submission + - Linux Kernel Developers Sabotage Reiser4 (150m.com)

Submitted by
Teran McKinney
Teran McKinney writes: "Hans Reiser's trial is coming up, so this really makes things really interesting. This article covers some Linux kernel developers "sabotaging" and breaking Namesys's Reiser4 code. This article shows two examples of where it strongly appears that the Reiser4 code was modified to introduce problems. A good explanation is definately needed for this."
The Internet

Submission + - Navisite Fumbles Migration of 200,000 web sites (ipdemocracy.com)

Submitted by
tclark
tclark writes: "Managed hosting provider Navisite went forward with a badly planned attempt to migrate thousands of customers from the recently purchased Alabanza NOC in Virginia to its facility in Andover MA. After numerous problems and missed deadlines, customer websites are still down with little information coming from Navisite. Many current customers are considering ditching the troubled service provider."
Networking

Submission + - Private/Reserved Addresses being assigned on net!

Submitted by
Liastnir
Liastnir writes: "Someone is actually using 10.*.*.* network addresses on the internet. Using a computer directly connected to the internet, try running tracert on 10.21.8.43 and you will reach a host. Several other addresses in that area are also being assigned. I have to emphasize (because I've made the mistake on our campus network) to be off a LAN when you try it."
Windows

Submission + - Dell pulls support for x64 Vista? (neowin.net) 5

Submitted by
leighklotz
leighklotz writes: "This message is getting forwarded about with some concern by those who have to validate software on multiple platforms...it looks like Windows is beginning to see the fragmentation that Linux is so often accused of.

A user named "Morpheus Phreak" wrote on neowin:

I do a fresh install of Windows Vista Ultimate x64 Edition. The install finishes and my system reboots with in-box drivers for almost all of my hardware. The first thing I do is go to the Dell Support site and download drivers, or do I? It seems that Dell has decided to stop supporting all 64-bit editions of Windows, thus nothing to download.

I make a post on their forums asking if anyone knows if it's temporary and I receive this response from a Dell employee:

"It cost us in time and money to validate drivers. We built PCs with specific operating systems in mind. That is all we will support."


I mention to the Dell employee that he must be mistaken as that would violate their Vista Logo contract with Microsoft. At this point the Dell employee replied tersely with the following:

"Be assured, our legal team is on top of this decision."


At this point I'm stumped and a bit angry. After all the OEM Logo requirements state, "OEMs using x64 implementations must have signed drivers available to end users if shipping a 32-bit version of Windows Vista on the system."

By removing their x64 driver support they have now violated their contract with Microsoft. Any x64-based systems they sell now with the logo are illegal. One can only help but wonder, why would Dell put themselves in this position?

I'll kindly step down from my Soapbox now, but I ask one question to all of you.

Where do we go from here?
"
Enlightenment

Submission + - New Giant Dinosaur Species Found (interactivegenius.com)

Submitted by
ivorobey
ivorobey writes: "On Monday, scientists from Argentina and Brazil uncovered the skeleton of a new dinosaur species. The discovery was made in Argentina of a 105 foot dinosaur skeleton, making this one of the larges dinosaurs ever to be found."
Education

Submission + - Books that substitute for CS degree? 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Are there any good books out there that would be good at concisely covering the key and most important areas of a CS education for those programmers who never obtained a CS degree? I am a self-taught programmer and computer hobbyist with a degree in physics, and I would like to find a book(s) that would give me a better understanding of what I am missing by not having obtained a CS degree. I realize this may involve some differing opinion on what the most important parts were, and I would be interested in hearing everyone's take on this as well. It would also be interesting to hear from an employer perspective about what sets a fresh CS grad with no experience apart from those with a non-CS degree but with some IT experience.
Space

Submission + - Would a bridge help the space elevator?

Submitted by
FredK
FredK writes: "Start with with well crafted parts for a bridge in circular equatorial earth orbit, say 250-300 miles up. Dangle conductive cables to generate power beamed to earth causing the parts to slow and fit together in a gigantic arch. When the arch has slowed to geosynchronous speed attach cables at various places to anchor it to the earth. Before this rockets on the bridge may be necessary to keep it properly aligned. If compressive force would be too large perhaps this could be combined with the suspension bridge idea by attaching parts of the bridge to large bodies slightly outside their natural geosynchronous orbits. Such bodies would need to drift out from near the location of the bridge as the bridge is slowed. Such a bridge would be "mostly impractical" to build, but is it "totally impractical"?"
Privacy

Submission + - School taking action against Network freedom 1

Submitted by
Tristan Stillwell
Tristan Stillwell writes: "I am a teenage high school student in the municipality of Bunn, North Carolina.
Today I found out I was suspended from school for ten days for possessing programs that were "capable of doing damage to the private school network". The programs were Firefox Portable and VNC viewer, and BlueJ Java Development Environment. I, an 18 year old high school student, was informed through my aunt, who was called about this disciplinary problem ( Isn't this private information?). I have no chance to appeal this suspension and are being forcefully and permanently removed from my Java(c) Computer Science and US government and Politics courses which I was taking through the state. I will most likely receive grades of ZERO (0) for both classes, thus destroying any chance I ever have of getting into a decent college. I am initially receiving a 10 day suspension, and then possibly a longer suspension pending investigation. Note- the school has found nothing I might have done to potentially cause damage to the network, I was suspended for having the programs- nothing else. I plan to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation for help with this clearly unfair oppression. The only (thought) crime I have committed is one arousing suspicion, not arriving from action. I will provide further information after I officially receive the suspension."

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