Dark Kenshin - Slashdot User

Submission + - Yahoo! India steals content from blogs

Submitted by on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo! India, an Indian subsidiary of Yahoo! Corporation launched a new Malayalam (Indian Language) Portal recently. While browsing through the contents, couple of Malayalam bloggers were shocked to find their published content (blogs that were registered under Creative Common Licensing rights) were smoothly lifted and placed on Yahoo! India's portal. Obviously, the bloggers were never contacted before this violation. A Malayalam recipe blog by blogger 'Surgayathri' had to suffer the major violation even though her blog is registered under Creative Common License. Read more here: http://copyrightviolations.blogspot.com/

Submission + - Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) 5x coverage

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: This past weekend saw the fifth annual Southern California Linux Expo in Los Angeles. Press coverage was a little better this year than in previous years: LXer has day 1 and day 2 individual coverage; The Jem Report has a writeup on the women in open source mini-conference and a summary of the whole weekend; the Haiku guys wrote a brief commentary on their experiences at SCALE 5x, as did event speakers Celeste Lyn Paul and Dru Lavigne.

California Balks At Internet Sales Tax 268

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:06PM from the what's-$2B-among-friends dept.

bob_calder writes "California has walked away from $2 billion a year in revenue by declining to get on board with a group working to standardize tax rates so a national tax on Internet sales could eventually be implemented by Congress. Supporters of the tax think they still have a chance in New York, Texas, and Florida. At the moment the largest states pursuing the Streamlined Sales Tax Initiative are New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. California didn't want to give up its autonomy in setting taxes to a coalition of smaller states."

Submission + - Groupthink in Digg: A Suggested Solution

Submitted by

Bob Caswell

on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:01PM

Bob Caswell writes: "Think digg doesn't have a severe case of groupthink? And article on the subject, was 'groupthinked' (i.e. buried) off the home page within four minutes of having enough diggs to make it there. Bottom line: diggers don't like articles on digg and groupthink, even if offering a solution to the problem... http://www.computers.net/2007/02/groupthink_in_d.h tml"

Why Online Multiplayer Isn't That Important 134

Posted by Zonk on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:53PM from the one-opinion dept.

cyrus_zuo writes "GameTunnel has published an article on why they believe online multiplayer is over-rated. Specifically, author Russell Carrol feels that multi-player is only at its best when you have an emotional connection to the people you're playing against. In his words: 'Multiplayer gaming is awesome, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that online multiplayer modes are all that great. Unless I'm playing in the same room as the person I'm playing against, I lose the emotional and physical connection that makes multiplayer games fun. .. It's like going to a party where you drink and dance by yourself in your living room, and connect to everyone else through headsets, video cameras and HD TVs. No matter how you look at it, the end result is a lame party.'"

Submission + - Study finds P2P has no effect on legal music sales

Submitted by

MBrichacek

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:52PM

MBrichacek writes: "A new study in the has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe. The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves."

Submission + - No more Gmail for you ! ;) -gmail harmless exploit

Submitted by

Mike

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:43PM

Mike writes: "Are you logged in to your beloved gmail ? If no, login now and open http://www.nogmailtoday.com/
Something funny will happen, don't be afraid — it's harmless ;)
If you liked it, put "No Gmail button" on your site and send this link to all your friends!"

Submission + - VeriSign implants 222 people with RFID chips

Submitted by

cnet-declan

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:40PM

cnet-declan writes: "Anyone remember VeriChip, a company that came up with the idea of implanting chips in humans for tracking them? They've been behind ideas like RFID tagging immigrant and guest workers at the border, and they've persuaded a former Bush Health Secretary to get himself chipped. In this CNET News.com article, we offer an update on how successful the idea has been. It turns out that, according to IPO documents, 222 people have been implanted, with sales revenue of $100,000."

Submission + - ATi Unveils the R600

Submitted by

MBrichacek

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:29PM

MBrichacek writes: "VR-Zone has learned about some new details on 80nm R600 today and there will be 2 SKUs at launch; XTX and XT. There will be 2 versions of R600XTX; one is for OEM/SI and the other for retail. Both feature 1GB DDR4 memories on board but the OEM version is 12.4" long to be exact and the retail is 9.5" long. This picture shows a 12.4" OEM version. The power consumption of the card is huge at 270W for 12" version and 240W for 9.5" version. As for R600XT, it will have 512MB of GDDR3 memories onboard, 9.5" long and consumes 240W of power. Lastly, there is a cheaper R600XL SKU to be launched at a later date. Good luck fitting this thing into your case!"

Submission + - Canada Claims Quantum Leap

Submitted by

egyptiankarim

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:16PM

egyptiankarim writes: "From the article:
...it's been a holy grail in the arcane world of supercomputers — and a Canadian firm claims it will be unveiling one on Tuesday.

D-Wave Systems, Inc. is making some big claims about having developed a quantum computer. Though, I don't know how willing I am to believe the announcements seeing as how even the researcher from MIT they cite seems skeptical."

Submission + - SAP skills shortage driving up salaries

Submitted by

bednarz

on Monday February 12, 2007 @07:10PM

bednarz writes: "A shortage of skilled SAP workers is making it difficult for IT departments to fill open jobs and caused the average salary for certain high-level SAP professionals to rise 15.6% in the past year. Consulting firm Foote Partners says the average base salary for directors of SAP program management rose from $115,468 to $133,500 in the calendar year that just ended. This increase dwarfs the typical increases in IT salaries of 3% to 5% a year. Network World has the story: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/021207-sap-w orkers.html"

Submission + - Bee Farmers Buzzing About Misfortunes

Submitted by

Da3vid

on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:52PM

Da3vid writes: "Bees have been mysteriously disappearing. Beekeepers in 22 states report losses of up to 80 percent. Speculation is that mites or poor nectar has caused their demise, but scientists haven't reached any conclusions. One farmer estimates that he will lose $350,000 based only on his current losses. In only a matter of days, entire hives have been lost. Is this a problem we have already seen the effects of, or is it just developing?"

Submission + - Building a silicon brain

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:31PM

prostoalex writes: "MIT Technology Review reports on Stanford scientists replicating the processes inside the human brain with silicon: "Kwabena Boahen, a neuroengineer at Stanford University, is planning the most ambitious neuromorphic project to date: creating a silicon model of the cortex. The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons. Groups of neurons can be set to have different electrical properties, mimicking different types of cells in the cortex. Engineers can also program specific connections between the cells to model the architecture in different parts of the cortex.""

Submission + - Julie Amero wrongly convicted? The spyware defense

Submitted by Anonymous Howard on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:28PM

Anonymous Howard writes: Substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for exposing kids to porn using a classroom computer, but the facts strongly suggest that she was wrongfully convicted. Many issues remain, from the need for an independent computer forensics investigation and the presence of spyware and adware on the Windows 98 machine, to bad or incomplete legal work on both sides of this criminal case. It appears that spyware caused Julie Amero's conviction. She will be sentenced on March 2, 2007. This is a new development from the previously story on Slashdot.

Submission + - GPL version of kqemu

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:20PM

An anonymous reader writes: I just noticed that kqemu has finally been released with a GPL license. This grants qemu full virtualization, even without a *really* new computer.

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