nadamsieee - Slashdot User

Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On 269

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @03:31PM from the doing-it-right dept.

An anonymous reader sends along a posting from the Grooveking blog on a group of Stanford students who got together to help promote Firefox and ended up releasing a long overdue eBay Toolbar for Firefox before Mozilla and eBay could release their jointly developed extension in Europe. Mozilla's COO said the preemptive release of the eBay Toolbar had ruffled some feathers among European eBay execs. "Besides basic search features, it removes external ads on the site and allows users to see thumbnail pictures on ALL search items, even those sellers didn't pay for. An eBay toolbar has been long overdue... eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees. But eBay users get a really good deal."

Submission + - OIN Comments On Microsoft Article In Fortune

Submitted by nadamsieee on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @01:22PM

nadamsieee writes: Jerry Rosenthal, chief executive officer of Open Invention Network, issued the following statement today: "A recent article in Fortune Magazine raises — or more precisely, re-raises — tired, old allegations about the Linux operating system for the sole purpose of perpetuating unwarranted fear, uncertainty and doubt among current and potential Linux users and distributors... We stand ready to leverage our IP portfolio to maintain the open patent environment OIN has helped create." Groklaw, as always, provides perspective.

Submission + - Vista interface "a step back" says analyst

Submitted by thephydes on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:42PM

thephydes writes: Vista's user interface is a step backwards compared to Windows XP, an analyst has suggested. http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?news id=8120 An interesting read. I'll let you make your own judgement.

Submission + - New Fair Use Bill introduced today to change DMCA

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: WashingtonPost.com notes that Reps Boucher(D-Va) and Dolittle(R-Calif) today introduced the FAIR USE Act that updates the DMCA to "make it easier for digital media consumers to use the content they buy." Boucher's statement on the bill says "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use..." Backing the bill is the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, the American Library Association and others.

Submission + - Trolltech Qtopia Greenphone and SDK Review

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Greenphone comes at a time when there are countless mobile Linux platforms, but not many of them are open for easy development. This little device aims to fill a niche for a community-oriented mobile development platform. How does it perform? Linuxlookup.com reviews the Trolltech Qtopia Greenphone and SDK.

Submission + - MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

Submitted by

nadamsieee

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:32PM

nadamsieee writes: "Eliot Van Buskirk has an interesting piece over at Wired about the fall-out from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win.""

Vista Worse For User Efficiency Than XP 546

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:27PM from the two-steps-back dept.

erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."

Submission + - BlackHat RFID hack demo pulled after legal threats

Submitted by

InfoWorldMike

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:23PM

InfoWorldMike writes: "Update to New Controversy over Black Hat Presentation: A planned demo on RFID security by a security researcher has been pulled from this week's Black Hat Federal security conference after security card maker HID claimed the talk violated the company's patent rights and threatened to take legal action against Chris Paget, the researcher, and IOActive, Paget's employer, if the talk went forward, InfoWorld reports. The company decided to cancel the talk after all-night negotiations with HID collapsed, said Josh Pennell, CEO of IOActive. In response, Black Hat organizers were forced to tear materials out of printed show proceedings and will instead present a discussion by a representative of the ACLU on the criticality of RFID security, said Jeff Moss, founder and director of Black Hat."

Submission + - Data-based Study Ranks Top Online Colleges

Submitted by

ftblguy

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @02:23PM

ftblguy writes: "Online higher education is growing, but a lack of transparency is preventing it from reaching its full potential. So OEDb (The Online Education Database) recently published a study that ranks what they believe to be the top 21 accredited online degree-granting colleges in the United States. "For each college, we gathered data for eight different metrics — acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, peer Web citations, retention rate, scholarly citations, student-faculty ratio, and years accredited.""

Submission + - DST, the new Y2K for Consultants

Submitted by

fatalwall

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @01:58PM

fatalwall writes: "I work at a consultant firm that is has been looking at the Daylight Savings Time change of three weeks earlier and what updates are needed for various software. We have discovered that there is an update for Windows, Exchange, Outlook, blackberry ect. Grandly Microsoft has not provided updates through Microsoft updates for all of these. We have found various tools online that will help however we have some clients that use outlook with PST's which requires every user to run an update. The only thing I can find our people complaining they cant find a solution. How is everyone else dealing with this problem? What have you found for solutions?"

Submission + - Gore accused of energy hypocrisy

Submitted by ems2004 on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @01:53PM

ems2004 writes: Former US Vice-President Al Gore has been accused of hypocrisy for apparently guzzling energy while he lectures the world on climate change. A Tennessee-based free market think-tank said Mr Gore's home used more than 20 times the national average of gas and electricity.

EU Wants German Telekom Fiber Open to All 100

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @01:44PM from the don't-bogart-the-photons dept.

High Fibre writes "The European Commission has informed Germany that a new law protecting Deutsche Telekom's fiber optic network is illegal. Deutsche Telekom is in the process of rolling out a new fiber network that will serve the 50 largest German cities by the end of 2007 and convinced the German parliament to pass a law that would keep the competition from being able to lease its lines. The EC says that's a no-go: 'The EC believes that the German law would make it more difficult for competitors to enter the German market. More importantly, it runs contrary to an EC-endorsed recommendation that Deutsche Telekom be forced to open up its network — including the new fiber deployment — to competitors.'"

Submission + - How to Keep America Competitive

Submitted by pkbarbiedoll on Monday February 26, 2007 @10:35AM

pkbarbiedoll writes: In a Washington Times column from this weekend, Bill Gates writes,

This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees. The United States provides 65,000 temporary H-1B visas each year to make up this shortfall — not nearly enough to fill open technical positions. Permanent residency regulations compound this problem. Temporary employees wait five years or longer for a green card. During that time they can't change jobs, which limits their opportunities to contribute to their employer's success and overall economic growth.

Interesting read, but this argument is not new and is based on a distortion of truth. If US companies simply offered fair pay, good benefits, and a general sense of job security to US citizens there would be no reason to insource labor from other countries. Mr. Gates implies that US workers are not willing to work IT anymore. He fails to mention why. Most college students do not wish to throw away 4 years of their lives (and thousands of dollars) on a career in an industry rife with outsourcing. Mr. Gates acknowledges that most US companies are not interested in offering competitive wages, so the only solution in his eyes is to import coders willing to work for a lot less (or, outsource). This has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with creating downward pressure on IT costs.

Submission + - Youtube Claims DMCA Covers Public Events

Submitted by

simon

on Monday February 26, 2007 @01:12AM

simon writes: "Does the DMCA prevent you from recording public events? Apparently so, as one West Australian Citizen Journalist find out last week when YouTube removed his public recordings of the Red Bull Air Race at the request of IMG Media. From the article:

...it raises a much larger issue with respect to copyright. Are IMG Media, the people that organize the Red Bull Air Race, suggesting that they own the copyright to all free public displays of the Red Bull Air Race? What type of precedent would that set?

"

Slashdot Top Deals