Submission + - Microsoft: Google 'cavalier' on copyright
w1z4rd writes: "The Guardian reports, "Microsoft will today launch a blistering attack on Google, accusing the Silicon Valley giant of a "cavalier" attitude to copyright."
"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs," says Microsoft Lawyer Tom Rubin"
"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs," says Microsoft Lawyer Tom Rubin"
Submission + - France Bans Filming of Violence By Non-Journalists
BostonBTS writes: "According to this Macworld Story, the French Constitutional Council has made it illegal to film (or distribute video of) violence unless you are a professional journalist. The law was approved exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday. From the article:
"The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said [Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi]. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.
Submission + - Factory soot leads to increased pacific storms.
Cryolithic writes: From the Vancouver Sun
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html ?id=e28e0f63-8add-4f03-aa2e-f64a8499bad5&k=5988
Soot from the factories of Asia is changing weather across the Pacific Ocean and causing storms like the December howler that clobbered Vancouver's Stanley Park, a new study says.
"The intensified Pacific storm track is climatically significant," and is the first time climate scientists have been able to measure the effect of "aerosols" — minute airborne particles — on climate, the team writes.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.htm
Soot from the factories of Asia is changing weather across the Pacific Ocean and causing storms like the December howler that clobbered Vancouver's Stanley Park, a new study says.
"The intensified Pacific storm track is climatically significant," and is the first time climate scientists have been able to measure the effect of "aerosols" — minute airborne particles — on climate, the team writes.
Submission + - Best Buy redefines "best"
Uknowwhoibe writes: "http://www.kantor.com/2007/03/03/best-buy-creates- scam-site-to-trick-customers/
So Best Buy was apparently caught red-handed screwing over its customers.
George Gombossy of the Hartford Courant gets the major-league kudos for exposing this. (And Gnomic gets a hat tip from me for pointing it out!)
See, Best Buy had a secret intranet it used to trick customers. Note that the word is intranet — that is, an internal Web site.
According to Gombossy, if a customer went to a sales person and commented that he thought such-and-such an item was cheaper online, the sales guy would pull up a Web site that looked like the real Best Buy Web site, but was in fact an internal site where the prices were higher. ...even when one informs a salesperson of the Internet price, customers have been shown the intranet site, which looks identical to the Internet site, but does not always show the lowest price.
Thus the sales guy could say something like, "Actually, sir, it's more expensive on the Web." You had to be the kind of person who would either A) print out the Web page and bring it in to the store, or B) check the price online when you got home.
Based on what his office has learned, [Connecticut State Attorney General Richard] Blumenthal said, it appears the consumer has the burden of informing Best Buy sales people of the cheaper price listed on its Internet site, which he said "is troubling."
Further, Best Buy had denied that such a site existed.
What I want to know is, has Best Buy also created spoofs of its competitors' sites? That way, a sales guy could say, "Let's see what Circuit City has it for" and pull up a higher — but fake — price.
That would make the customer think Best Buy had better prices, and the store could avoid matching a competitor's price.
Hmm."
Submission + - Optimum Hardware for Visual Studio Development?
blaster151 writes: "What would your "dream development machine" look like and how would you configure it for performance?
My team is working on a large software system on the Visual Studio 2005 platform (over a thousand source files). We have fairly fast machines, but they often take 15-20 seconds to do a complete rebuild and since this happens rather often I can't help but wonder how to eke out better performance. Our developers typically have VS2005 and database client tools concurrently, but we don't usually run local databases on our machines so that's less of a consideration.
I'm in a position to do some hardware recommendations and I want to understand how to prioritize the following factors:
So, to restate the question, what would your "dream development machine" look like and how would you configure it?"
My team is working on a large software system on the Visual Studio 2005 platform (over a thousand source files). We have fairly fast machines, but they often take 15-20 seconds to do a complete rebuild and since this happens rather often I can't help but wonder how to eke out better performance. Our developers typically have VS2005 and database client tools concurrently, but we don't usually run local databases on our machines so that's less of a consideration.
I'm in a position to do some hardware recommendations and I want to understand how to prioritize the following factors:
- Processor (How much does a coding/build environment like VS2005 benefit from having a Core Duo processor as opposed to a traditional, higher-end CPU?)
- RAM (Obviously, more is good; we currently have a minimum of 1.5GB per developer)
- Disk (Is SCSI worth the price difference?)
- Laptop (Any drawbacks or considerations if we go the mobile route?)
So, to restate the question, what would your "dream development machine" look like and how would you configure it?"
Submission + - Stopping WGA Installation sends data to Microsoft
rev writes: "The new WGA Notification installation that can be installed using Windows Update sends data to Microsoft if the user decides to cancel the installation. A cookie is set that could be used to identify the host and information such as version of Windows and WGA as well as language of the operating system are transmitted. Part of the data is encrypted. (read more)"
Submission + - Windows 2.0 era talk by Bill Gates with 640k
An anonymous reader writes: Back in 1989, Bill Gates came to talk to the students
of the University of Waterloo on the early days of Microsoft, and the future
of computing. It's an interesting blast to the past, as he touches on topics
such as the VGA graphics, OS/2 and software piracy, as well as the now
infamous 640K of memory. Lost for nearly two decades, the tape of the talk
recently surfaced and is now available in a number of audio formats from the
University of Waterloo Computer Science Club.
Journal Journal: [fun] Rubik's Cube 2
Feed China Nixes More Web Cafes (wired.com)
Submission + - F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line
Anonymous Coward writes: "Lockheed's F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighter in the world with its stealth capabilities, advanced radar, state of the art weapons systems and ultra-efficient turbofans.
But while the simulated war games were a somewhat easy feat for the Raptor, something more mundane was able to cripple six aircraft on a 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled by the International Date Line (IDL).
When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to "reboot" the systems to no avail.
http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets +Zapped+by+International+Date+Line/article6225.htm "
But while the simulated war games were a somewhat easy feat for the Raptor, something more mundane was able to cripple six aircraft on a 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled by the International Date Line (IDL).
When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to "reboot" the systems to no avail.
http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Get
Feed Marines' New Ride, Made in Israel (wired.com)
Feed Where's My Personalized Medicine? (wired.com)
Submission + - Broadcasters will be fined $12.5 million in payola
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/us/article/0,2 845,MCA_25346_5397222,00.html
WASHINGTON — Radio listeners sick of hearing the same tunes again and again may soon encounter surprising new voices, thanks to a $12.5 million settlement pending against major broadcasters accused of taking record companies' bribes.
Submission + - Wikipedia Admins Censor Criticism
Wikingo writes: "Wikipedia has been accused before of censoring articles that some of its admins are biased against, or that are critical of the censorship practice itself. A couple of recent incidents have only strengthened this impression. Is the select group of Wikipedia admins slowly shifting towards the Chinese Great Firewall model, where a lot of information is allowed to pass through, but nothing that doesnt toe the offical party line on certain controversial topics or is critical towards its censorship practices?"
