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The Internet

Submission + - Is the end (of the Net) nigh?

Submitted by Grey Eminence
Grey Eminence writes: http://p2pnet.net/story/11287 Is the end (of the Net) nigh? New online TV services such as Joost, from Kazaa billionaires Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, and YouTube, now owned by Google, could crash or seriously impair it, say reports from this month's the Cable Europe Congress in Amsterdam.
Hardware

Dell Laptop Burns House Down 405

Posted by kdawson from the dude dept.
Nuclear Elephant writes "The Consumerist is running a story about a house burned down by a Dell laptop. 'My 130-year-old former farm house was engulfed in flames, with thick dark smoke pouring out of the windows and roof... Hours later, after investigation the fire marshal investigator took me aside asked me if I had a laptop computer. Yes — I told him I had a Dell Inspiron 1200.' It was determined that the laptop, battery, or cord malfunctioned after its owner left for work, leaving the fire to spread through the entire house. All attempts to contact Dell have failed. 'I have tried to call Dell to at least notify them of my problems, but each time I have called I get transferred into an endless loop of "Joe" or "Alan" all speaking a delectable version of English I presume emanates from Bangalore. I have been outright hung up on each time I get someone who speaks a reasonable version of English, or sounds like they might be in charge of something. Promises of call backs have gone, of course, unreturned.'"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Hippo Eats Dwarf

Submitted by
Craig Maloney
Craig Maloney writes: "It's no surprise to most people on Slashdot that the Internet is chock-full of misinformation, half-truths, and self-perpetuating myths. I'm sure you have received an e-mail from someone about some strange photo, story, or plea with the claim "this is true!". Invariably, though, these mails turn out to be unworthy of the pixels they're displayed upon, with leaps of logic or some other rudimentary clue which could have easily been researched on Snopes or Wikipedia. Unfortunately, a quick scroll through the list of the previous recipients of these mails tell the tale of long lists of people who are ready to perpetuate the myths they've been sold as fact. It seems the Internet has become a fertile ground, much like television and other media, for hoaxes to flourish unchallenged. Hippo Eats Dwarf is a great tune-up for your inner B.S. detector, and a hilarious look between the blatantly ridiculous, and the surprisingly true.

Hippo Eats Dwarf bills itself as "A Field Guide to Hoaxes and other B.S.". Indeed, it reads like a tour guide through some of the more bizarre corners of Each section contains various "Reality Rules", where the author informs the reader of various immutable truths, such as "No one in Hollywood has their original body parts", and "There's nothing like the promise of future wealth to separate a person from his sanity". Also included are definitions of terms you might not have heard of before, like "Dead Cat Bounce", and "VCNC" (Vast Cable News Conspiracy). Each of these "Reality Rules" are interspersed between the various stories, and add to the already humorous content of the book.

Most of the book, however, is a museum of the various curiosities that have spread through the Internet. Hippo Eats Dwarf consists of 14 chapters covering birth, death and practically everything in between. The chapters are Birth, Bodies, Romance, Food, Photography, The World Wide Web, E-mail, eBay, Technology, The News, Entertainment, Advertising, Business, Politics, War, and Death. Each chapter contains lots of these strange stories, anecdotes, and occasional pictures of the subject matter. The book is well paced, and very entertaining. Much of the material may be familiar to you, but I'll bet that unless you've actively sought out the bizarre and weird, there's at least something in this book you haven't heard of before. Lest I give you the impression that this book only covers Internet oddities, there's also ample coverage of other hoaxes that almost made the news, such as the faked JFK / Marilyn Monroe love letters (which ABC paid handsomely to obtain, only to realize that the typewriter which typed them hadn't been manufactured. Plus, the letters had Zip Codes, which weren't used until after JFK's death). Among the technology bits are some hoaxes (the Rand computer photo), some legitimate products (the DVD rewinder), and some products we'd like to see someday (iLoo, anyone?).

Hippo Eats Dwarf is a very easy-reading book. The topics are the right fodder for anyone mildly curious about the realms of the strange and fictitious. I found myself just turning the pages looking for the next ridiculous story. The stories are engaging, and the author gives each the right mix of reporting and commentary. I'd highly recommend giving this book to the next person who forwards you a 15 page chain letter (don't break the chain!), or the office co-worker who photocopies a photograph of a 100lb cat to post into the break-room. Hippo Eats Dwarf may not stop them from propagating this stuff, but at least you'll be secure in the knowledge that you tried."
Portables

Submission + - Samsug announces look-alike iphone killer

Submitted by goombah99
goombah99 writes: Samsung unveiled a prototype of their touchscreen phone. It's look, single button front, full-face touchscreen are the essentially identical to the iphone. The screen resolution is sufficiently worse that video viewing will be less of a pleasure, it's thicker, and it lacks Wi-Fi. But it has a slide-out full thumb-board, a 5 mega pixel camera, supports 3G (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access). Web connectivity however lacks the elegant full screen approach with a gestural interface of the iphone. Price, battery life and availability are not known. Read Here and here for first impressions. My impression is that hardware wise it's at the same level as the iphone so, as always, it's the apple polish of the interface that will be the deciding factor. Simultaneously, Microsoft revealed a workmanlike update of it's mobile version.
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Ex-Box: The Death of Microsoft's Xbox

Submitted by
Tyler Treat
Tyler Treat writes: "I think it's safe to say that the Xbox has officially passed away (it's no longer being manufactured). It had a decent run, and gave Sony's PlayStation 2 a run for its money. However, instead of letting it fade away into the grave of lost consoles, let's look back at the good times. (Full Story | Digg)"
Patents

MS Seeks Patent For Repossessing School Computers 299

Posted by kdawson from the what-were-they-thinking dept.
theodp writes "Microsoft has applied for a patent for 'securely providing advertising subsidized computer usage.' The application describes how face-recognition webcams and CAPTCHAs can be used in schools to ensure that computer users are paying attention to ads, and the recourse of 'disabling or even repossessing the computer' if they are not."
Censorship

Two Ways Not To Handle Free Speech 686

Posted by kdawson from the hang-up-or-takedown dept.
Two stories in the news offer contrasting approaches by Web companies to questions of free speech. First YouTube: reader skraps notes that the Google property has recently banned the popular atheist commentator Nick Gisburne. Gisburne had been posting videos with logical arguments against Christian beliefs; but when he turned his attention to Islam (mirror of Gisburne's video by another user), YouTube pulled the plug, saying: 'After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down.' Amazon.com provides a second example of how to react to questions of free speech. Reader theodp sends along a story in TheStreet.com about how Amazon hung up on customers wanting to comment on its continuing practice of selling animal-fighting magazines. The article notes that issues of free speech are rarely cut-and-dried, and that Amazon is doing itself no favors by going up against the Humane Society.
Update: 02/11 04:25 GMT by KD : updated Nick Gisburne link to new account.
Mandriva

Submission + - Is Mandriva Near Financial Demise?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Distrowatch editorial poses the question, "Is Mandriva near financial demise?" From the editorial: "However, due to extraordinary items, the net loss for the 4th quarter 2006 at Mandriva has more than doubled from 400 thousand to 840 thousand, and the full year net result has gone from essentially break-even to a 2.84 million loss." It is fairly clear that Mandriva is in trouble. Can they manage to save themselves again from the financial hemorrhaging?
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - New eBay scam, without violating ebay policy

Submitted by
Bert64
Bert64 writes: "It seems that eBay allows you to say one thing about the location of an item in the auction description, but then if the item turns out to be defective to supply a completely different address, in another country, where the item can be returned at buyer's expense. No mention of this was in the original auction listing, in the hope of fooling those who would normally not buy from a foreign seller. Details on http://www.ev4.org/ of how i was stung by this, and how it can so easily be abused by anyone to profit by ripping off unsuspecting buyers while ebay sits back and does nothing about it. So anyone can ship defective items, and then make the returns process expensive enough that people won't bother."
Programming

An Overview of Parallelism 197

Posted by kdawson from the cores-galore dept.
Mortimer.CA writes with a recently released report from Berkeley entitled "The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View from Berkeley: "Generally they conclude that the 'evolutionary approach to parallel hardware and software may work from 2- or 8-processor systems, but is likely to face diminishing returns as 16 and 32 processor systems are realized, just as returns fell with greater instruction-level parallelism.' This assumes things stay 'evolutionary' and that programming stays more or less how it has done in previous years (though languages like Erlang can probably help to change this)." Read on for Mortimer.CA's summary from the paper of some "conventional wisdoms" and their replacements.
Mozilla

Submission + - flaw in way firefox updates extensions

Submitted by
Rishabh Singla
Rishabh Singla writes: "mozilla firefox has a flaw in the way it tries to update extensions when there is no active internet connection. instead of simply telling the user that there is no internet connection available, firefox throws up an incorrect error message as well as removes all the available updates from the list. this could be irksome and maybe harmful to some.
check out the details here
http://rishabhsingla.blogspot.com/2007/02/mozilla- firefoxs-way-of-updating.html"
Enlightenment

Submission + - Have You Heard The Good News

Submitted by
fishdan
fishdan writes: "This Sunday, many Christians of varying denominations will be doing something that will surprise many /. readers. They will hold special services celebrating Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Their purpose? Refuting creationism, which claims the biblical account of creation is literally true, and which is increasingly being promoted under the guise of "intelligent design".

"For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science," says Michael Zimmerman, founder of Evolution Sunday and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis. In the Clergy Letters, Zimmerman goes on to state: "Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts."

I'm not Christian, but I think I might attend one of the services (listed on the first link) near my house to show my support for rational religion."

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