342171
submission
El Lobo writes:
IT SEEMS LIKE JUST A YEAR AGO THAT WE WERE CELEBRATING THE MUCH-MALIGNED 'CAPS-LOCK' KEY. NOW, JUST 365 DAYS AND ONE KEYBOARD LATER, IT'S ONCE AGAIN INTERNATIONAL CAPS-LOCK DAY.
253581
submission
El Lobo writes:
It seems that it's not only Apple, Dell and Sony who are having a though time with their batteries. Nokia is now replacing more than 46 million batteries that are experiencing overheating. This advisory applies only to the batteries manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006.
193673
submission
El Lobo writes:
A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.
"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project.
190647
submission
El Lobo writes:
Gates, who dropped out of Harvard and co-founded Microsoft Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) to become the world's richest person, stopped off at his former stomping grounds to collect an honorary law degree.
I've been waiting for more than 30 years to say this: Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree," Gates, 51, told the crowd, which included his father, also named Bill.
Jobs and Gates share the spotlight
"I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume," said Gates in a reference to his plan to shift full time into philanthropy.
179295
submission
El Lobo writes:
If you think back a few years to IIS 5.0, the future for Microsoft's web server looked rather bleak. With IIS 6.0, Microsoft made "locked down" mode settings the default at installation, which helped minimize security problems, and helped IIS 6.0 recapture a major part of trust that IIS 5.0 lost. No major security disasters have been reported since the release of IIS 6.0. Now, Microsoft is looking to consolidate IIS 7.0's position as a secure and robust web server.
A recent market survey indicated that Microsoft's IIS has a 31.13 percent market share, which places it in second position behind the open source Apache Web Server. Another survey by Port80 Software that takes Fortune 1000 companies into consideration reports that IIS has overtaken Apache among Fortune 1000 sites.
167137
submission
El Lobo writes:
CBC news is reporting that Lenovo has agreed to buy up to $1.3 billion US in software from Microsoft Corp. to preinstall Windows and other software suites on its computers.The Lenovo-Microsoft deal, the largest single agreement announced Wednesday, is similar to a $1.2-billion deal signed between the two companies last year.
163023
submission
El Lobo writes:
Computer Sweden (Swedish only) is reporting that The Pirate Bay has been hacked. Millions of identities and passwords have been stolen. "Arga unga hackare" (Angry Young Hackers) is the organization responsible for the incident.
153727
submission
El Lobo writes:
The Mono open-source project will create a Linux version of Silverlight by the end of year, said Miguel de Icaza, a Novell vice president and head of Mono. Asked about plans for Linux, Microsoft executives have been non-committal, saying that it will depend on demand. But de Icaza, who is attending Mix, was able to commit without hesitating.
148159
submission
El Lobo writes:
Since many years ago the Delphi community has been using a great set of components to add unicode support to the Delphi VCL. The TNT components have been used in a lot of important projects (from the top of my head, Skype, Cobian Backup and others). Many open sources projects and derivated components were based on the Tnt components since their original license was very permissive (BSD like). Now the components have been adquired by TNS Software and they are charging 30 euros for them. That's fine and dandy, but the original author and the new owners are trying to revoke the original license and are disallowing people to freely distributing the old libraries. Of course the existing Open Source projects will kind of die if this happens.
So the question of the day between Delphi users is: Does the copyright owner have the right to change the license? OTOH, making arbitrary changes like this, could potentially destroy whole projects that were based on this set of components. Where is the limit here, legally and morally, for an author to change or revoke a license?
147459
submission
El Lobo writes:
Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $14.40 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2007, a 32% increase over the same period of the prior year. This revenue drove record profits with operating income of $6.59 billion and net income of $4.93 billion. This quarter marked the consumer launches of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
Maybe Vista is only selling slow on planet Slashdot?
97746
submission
El Lobo writes:
A Vanity Fair writer named Nick Tosches starts an epic quest to find the origin of the Windows wallpaper "Autumn". Eventually, after many days of hard work, he finds out the name of the photographer and the original location of the photo.
83970
submission
El Lobo writes:
Raymond Chen, a known Microsoft developer is once again discussing the Samba issues with Vista in his blog. From the article:
A significant number of network attached storage devices were found that did not implement "fast mode" queries correctly. Some of them were Samba-based whose vendors did not have an upgrade available that fixed the bug. But many of them used custom implementations of CIFS; consequently, any Samba-specific solutions would not have helped those devices. those buggy non-Samba implementations mishandled fast mode queries in different ways. For example, one of them I was asked to look at didn't return any error codes at all. It just returned garbage data.
Given this new information, the solution that was settled on was simply to stop using "fast mode" queries for anything other than local devices. The most popular file system drivers for local devices (NTFS, FAT, CDFS, UDF) are all under Microsoft's control and they have already been tested with fast mode queries.
Such is the sad but all-too-true cost of interoperability and compatibility.
Of course many people claim that the Open Source model is only positive in any way, but many ignore just the huge disadvantage of having just millions of untested and uncompatible versions in such a chaotic way.
80556
submission
El Lobo writes:
Computersweden features an interview with the maker of the Trojan that was used to hack into one of the major swedish banks. Using a pseudonym, the reporter claimed to be interested in buying his own Trojan, tailored for attacking an internet bank. From the interview:
"Some versions of the Haxdoor Trojan can hide themselves in the operating system with rootkit functionality. That means they're invisible to most virus protection applications. "Corpse" confirms that the version he is hawking works like this...The banks try to cover up 99 percent of all attacks, because they do not want to scare their customers. :)
-Quite impressive. Is that the version that I could get for 3,000 dollars?
-Yes, but "It's like roulette," he says in broken English: "Some accounts have a million dollars, some have one dollar. You never know who gets infected."
73722
submission
El Lobo writes:
Apple's legal team has not only written "cease and desist" letters to the web sites disseminating the iPhone skins, but also to at least one blogger, Paul O'Brien, of MoDaco, as reported by tech.blorge.com
From the letter send by Apple to MoDaco:
"It has come to our attention that you have posted a screenshot of Apple's new iPhone...the icons and screenshot displayed on your website are copyrighted by Apple, and copyright law explicitly prohibits unauthorized display and distribution of copyrighted works...Apple therefore demands that you remove this screenshot from your website"
This is not the first time that Apple has used such heavy handed tactics. In 2004 Apple sued three bloggers who had, Apple claims, revealed trade secrets.
73138
submission
El Lobo writes:
Savvy coders have developed iPhone "skins" that work with most smartphones based on the Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems. The issue has angered Apple to such an extent that it has sent its lawyers after a number of those involved — both directly and indirectly.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/mobiles — handhelds/appl e-crunches-websites-over-iphone-skins/2007/01/15/1 168709656280.html
Not surprising considering Apple's history. Remember when Apple lawyers asked for the removal of "anything that even remotely looks like Aqua" for skins and themes for WindowBlinds, IconPackager and DesktopX?
