BHS_Turf - Slashdot User

Submission + - Apple: the best and worst

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:54AM

An anonymous reader writes: silicon.com is running a two-part column on the 10 best and 10 worst things about Cupertino — and it would seem Steve Jobs' latest magic trick is the ability to create products that are simultaneously Mitchell and Webb... Take the iPod — it's apparently blessed with "usability and simplicity". Yet has also "long been dogged by accusations of dodgy battery life, defective mechanics, easily scratched or cracked screens and a general lack of longevity"... Or the iPhone — a flagrant example of 'style over substance', says writer Seb Janacek, before really sticking the boot in: "A clutch of mobile devices have been offering the same services for the last year or so at a fraction of the price. And it doesn't arrive for another six months or so. And when it does there will be just one operator to choose from. The latest example of Steve Jobs snake oil?"... But wait! "The gloriously sexy iPhone was worth the wait"... gushes the same author... "Apple spent two and a half years developing a device that makes the usual phone functions, MP3 playing and internet browsing work as a whole"... Confused? It seems Steve Jobs is not the only one guilty of a 'reality distortion field'...

Submission + - Puretracks music store drops DRM

Submitted by

khendron

on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:51AM

khendron writes: "The Canadian online music store Puretracks (a store I have generally avoided because of their Microsoft specific solutions) has announced that it will immediately start selling part of its catalog as DRM-free mp3 files. The site's unprotected catalog, which includes artists such as The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, will initially feature only 50,000 of its 1.3 million tracks, but will grow weekly.

More also from the Globe and Mail. If this endeavour is successful, maybe we will see the larger music labels jumping on board."

Submission + - AT&T's Fiber "Cuts" Off Central Illino

Submitted by mozzwald on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:51AM

mozzwald writes: Virtually all phone services (cellular and land-line) were disrupted Tuesday in Central Illinois because of a cut fiber line near Joliet Illinois. "Officials also said a separate piece of equipment that serves as backup near Decatur also went down, causing disruption to 309, 815, and 217 area codes." This caused major problems for businesses that use credit and debit card machines. It even caused sporadic problems with 911 services.

Colossal Squid Landed Intact In Antarctica 85

Posted by kdawson on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:40AM from the bigger-than-giant dept.

zakkie writes "New Zealand fisherman have caught a massive 450-kg colossal squid in Antarctic waters. This is by far the biggest yet found, measuring over 10 meters in length and weighing 450 kg. It has been taken back to New Zealand for study." The NZ government's announcement page features a downloadable backgrounder on the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) and a 1.1-MB popup portrait of the animal in the fishing boat's hold.

Submission + - Email Security (gmail, yahoo etc...)

Submitted by utefan001 on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:31AM

utefan001 writes: Many of us have email accounts that contain some level of sensitive data. A simple security measure that gmail could provide (but doesn't) is a log file of the date and time of the previous successful logins. Why doesn't any of the big online email providers have something like this? Some type of two-factor login would be good, but RSA type solutions still can fail using man in the middle attacks.
http://scmagazine.com/us/news/article/629853/messa gelabs-phishing-emails-outnumber-virus-trojan-emai l-attacks

Submission + - Shock therpay used to cure internet addiction

Submitted by andy1307 on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:31AM

andy1307 writes: According to this article in the Washington Post, Chinese teenagers deemed addicted to the internet are being treated in military run installation. Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks. The state run media blames internet addiction for for a murder over virtual property earned in an online game, for a string of suicides and for the failure of youths in their studies. Located on an army training base, the Internet-addiction clinic is distinct from the other buildings on campus because of the metal grates and padlocks on every door and the bars on every window.From the article "On the first level are 10 locked treatment rooms geared toward treating teen patients suffering from disturbed sleep, lack of motivation, aggression, depression and other problems. Unlike the rest of the building, which is painted in blues and grays and kept cold to keep the teens alert, these rooms are sunny and warm."

Submission + - NY Times Trashes Open Source

Submitted by on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:26AM

An anonymous reader writes: From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/business/smallbu siness/20hack.html?pagewanted=2&ref=smallbusiness
In a NY Times article about small businesses and network security : "Many use open-source software, which is free on the Internet...Some of that software, because it is written by relatively unskilled programmers, has a poor security record." It goes on to discuss the 'threat' of PHP and Ajax.

Submission + - Cheap Solar Power

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml "Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity"

IT Departments Fear Growing Expertise of Users 499

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:42PM from the illusion-of-control dept.

flatfilsoc recommends a long article in CIO magazine on users who know too much and the IT leaders who fear them. Dubbing the universe of consumer technology the "shadow IT department," the article highlights the extent to which the boundary between users' workplace and home have broken down. It notes the increasing clash — familiar to anyone who works in a company with an IT department — between users' home-grown productivity boosters and IT's mandate to protect corporate data. The inherent tendency of the IT department to want to crack down and control technology that it doesn't supply should be resisted at all costs, according to CIO. The article outlines strategies for co-existence. It just might persuade some desperate CIO somewhere not to embark on a career-limiting path of decreeing against gmail and IM.

Submission + - S. Africa to ISO: A Plague o' Both Your Standards

Submitted by

Andy Updegrove

on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @11:13AM

Andy Updegrove writes: "Usually, representatives of national bodies don't have to worry too much a bout being molested by multinationals pushing their favorite standards. But when the economic stakes are high enough, standards committee members can start to feel like citizens of Iowa during a presidential year — as suggested by Microsoft's recent accusation that IBM has been lobbying against OOXML. How bad can it get? Apparently pretty bad, according to the South African Bureau of Standards (SASB), which has apparently had enough of ODF and OOXML. The following is an excerpt of from a complaint the SASB recently sent to JTC 1, which has placed it on the agenda for discussion at a March 1 meeting:...It is our opinion that the submission of such "standards" directly to JTC 1 via the PAS route, where the standard has not been discussed within the relevant SC, was never the intention of the PAS System.The fact that some consortium has published a document that they refer to as a standard does not automatically imply that it has any sort of widespread industry acceptance.The fact that the publisher might claim international usage or acceptance is not longer a valid reason in these days of large multinationals, and the SABS has previously been approached by local branches of multinationals to vote in support of such PAS submissions, even if we have no local industry involvement or membership in the appropriate JTC 1 SC."

Journal Journal: Wired 1.6: Where Are They Now?

Journal by 8tim8 on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @11:11AM

I was rooting around in my storage closet a few days ago when I came across a pile of old Wired magazines. Talk about a trip through time--they're all from the early nineties, the first few years of Wired, and they combine a cute-but-ironic enthusiasm for new tech interlaced with full-page ads for long-dead software products and companies (anyone remember Kai's Powertools?).
In the interest of historical research I thought it would be fun to go through an

Submission + - Longhorn server is virtually ready

Submitted by Rob on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @11:09AM

Rob writes: The next release of Microsoft's server operating system depends on the company deciding its virtualization capabilities are ready to go, according to the company's UK server director. In April 2005, Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, announced that the company would introduce a virtualization hypervisor in the next version of Windows Server, which is codenamed Longhorn. The hypervisor technology will be embedded within Windows and enable it to take direct advantage of processor-level virtualization technologies to improve the performance and efficiency of running virtual machines. The approach being taken by Microsoft is similar to that taken by its open source rival and partner XenSource Inc in that it creates virtual environments at the operating system layer rather than the hardware virtualization model taken by incumbent VMware Inc, a division of EMC Corp.

Submission + - Wikipedia founder Q & A

Submitted by

MattSparkes

on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @11:06AM

MattSparkes writes: "Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, answered readers questions in this New Scientist interview.

Q: 'Wikipedia is such a huge source of information and many articles are open to vandalism and abuse, therefore they can display people's racial or cultural beliefs. Is it hard to keep this offensive material under control?'

A: 'No, it is pretty easy.'"

Submission + - Spam-bot intrusion caught! Now what?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19, 2007 @07:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: I've recently detected and halted an intrusion on my home computer, taken some actions to prevent further intrusions, and located the software that was running a bot agent. Cursory examination showed that the bot software is intended for acting as an agent for spamming. Configuration files distinctly point at the user/host/domain of several bot-herders — damning evidence. To whom should I disclose this information for appropriate investigation, follow up, and countermeasures? Nothing would please me more than to see this botnet to be caught and dissassembled, I'm sure much of the internet-using community would support this. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Submission + - Discipline in Open Source Projects

Submitted by on Monday February 19, 2007 @07:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: I've recently been elected (with another project member) to lead an open source project that we helped start several years ago. One of our goals as project leads is to implement some way to discipline project members who are disruptive to the project. In the past, the project has been slowed by flames, trolls, and even filibustering. Everyone says they want to work together, but some refuse to accept majority opinion. This passive-agressiveness, coupled with growing despair on the part of other members, would have caused the project to dissolve if a vote had not taken place to elect new leadership (which the project has been lacking for some time).

As co-leads we want the project to continue and grow, and we welcome all opinions, but how can disruptive members be told "enough is enough"? We've read Ubuntu's Code of Conduct, but how can it or something similar be enforced?

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