bigplrbear writes "I found an interesting article revealing the many places that Microsoft products reside, and what they're used for, ranging from elevators to ticket scanners." From the article: "Thanks to VMWare Windows is spreading throughout the datacenter. And, of course, there is only one operating system to use if you are dependent on Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. While I have joined the chorus of security folks who rail against the Microsoft Monoculture I still cannot believe some of the uses for Windows. Some of them are just downright silly, some you may claim are criminally negligent." Note: I'm making no claim of criminal negligence!

MSTCrow5429 writes "In the latest of a long train of scandals to hit Wikipedia, the Sydney Morning Herald reports on an accusation that founder and Wikia President Jimmy Wales traded a multi-thousand dollar donation for an article re-write. Jeff Merkey, formerly of Novell, claims that Wales approached him in 2006 and said that for a fee, Wales would personally see to it that the article on Merkey, which had cast him in a negative light, would be re-written in Merkey's favor. Merkey claims that after he donated $5,000, Wales followed through on this quid pro quo. The Wikipedia edit history does indicate that Wales wiped out the article on Merkey, and then personally re-wrote it. The SMH reports that Wales has called the allegation 'nonsense.'" Merkey filed a harassment lawsuit in 2005 against a number of people and organizations, including Slashdot. Slashdot was removed from the suit on 2005-07-20.

Update: 03/12 00:39 GMT by KD : Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh provided this official statement: "Current allegations relating to Jimmy Wales soliciting donations for the Wikimedia Foundation in order to protect or edit Wikipedia articles are completely false. The Wikimedia Foundation has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to a Wikipedia article — nor has Jimmy Wales. This is a practice the Wikimedia Foundation would never condone."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Microsoft is now saying that Vista SP1 disables some 3rd party applications. The KB article on SP1 incompatibility states: 'For reliability reasons, Microsoft blocks these programs from starting after you install Windows Vista SP1.' It does link to several vendor support pages with updates or workarounds. Unfortunately, at least one of the suggestions consists of merely disabling part of the program, which could leave you with half an anti-virus solution."

meteorit found a story about rumors of an Alienware phone based on Google's Android phone OS. As Dell has a history of bombing with handhelds, it would be interesting to try the Alienware brand instead. And I'm not exactly sure where they get off claiming that their drawings are the first pictures of the thing. Cheesy renderings designed explicitly for your website are not quite pictures of a product... they are artists impressions.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton adds his experience to the litany of woes with Microsoft Vista. Unlike most commentators who have a beef with the operating system, Bennett does a bit of surveying to bolster his points. Read his account by clicking on the magic link.

BlueshiftVFX writes to let us know that the writers' strike may be over. CNBC and other media are quoting former Disney CEO Michael Eisner: "It's over. They made the deal, they shook hands on the deal. It's going on Saturday to the writers in general... A deal has been made, and they'll be back to work very soon."

jerel brings us a story about a prototype authentication system which approaches security from an atypical angle. It focuses on hiding identity challenges from attackers in addition to the responses. The system, Undercover [PDF], "uses a combination of visual and tactile signals in the authentication process." "The system displays a set of images to the user and asks if any belongs to the image portfolio that the user had previously selected. At the same time, the trackball sends the user a signal that maps each button on the case to a certain answer. The user's hand must cover the trackball for it to operate, so a sneaky observer wouldn't be able to see his or her selections, or answers. So a would-be attacker can't 'see' the tactile challenge presented by the trackball and therefore doesn't get the user's authentication data, even though he or she could see the image challenge on the display."

Komi writes "Has anyone tackled the Traveling Salesman Problem with Google Maps or any other online mapping tool? I've searched, but can't find anything. To me this seems like such an obviously cool function. I'm not up to date on algorithms, so perhaps this isn't really tractable for large values of n. But for small numbers (maybe up to 5), this could at least be brute-forced. I would love to use this when I have errands to run, and I want an overall optimal route. So if this hasn't been done, someone please do it!"

alphadogg-nw writes "Tired of being wrong too often, a Network World pundit applies 20-20 hindsight to this list of prognostications for 1998, which if he's right will turn out to be quite a year. Among the forecasts: The U.S. Department of Justice will go medieval on Microsoft, Compaq will buy what's left of DEC, AOL likewise Netscape, Apple will introduce something said to look like an Easter egg ... and then there's the deafening buzz about this new search engine called Google."

h4rm0ny writes "After previously limiting their iPlayer to only the Windows platform (as we discussed earlier here and here), the BBC's content is now available to UK-based users of Linux and Mac OS X. From their site: 'From today we are pleased to announce that streaming is now available on BBC iPlayer. This means that Windows, Mac and Linux users can stream programs on iPlayer as long as their computer has the latest version of Flash. Another change is that you do not have to register or sign in any more to download programs ...' It seems that the BBC have listened to people who petitioned them for broader support and an open format. Well, Flash isn't exactly open, but its a lot more ubiquitous than Windows Media and Real Player formats."

Another year, another horrifying SpikeTV Video Game Awards show done and over with. BioShock grabbed the 'Game of the Year' nod, but both the title and designer Ken Levine were denied their moment in the sun. When the winner was announced some folks from Gamecock rushed the stage and basically said 'it sucks'. They're now apologizing: "Gamecock co-founder Mike Wilson apologized for the disruption on behalf of his team. 'I'd personally like to sincerely apologize to the BioShock team and Ken Levine in particular for GameCock infringing on their spotlight at this weekend's VGA Awards show ... The award acceptance they interrupted was the LAST one we would've wanted to interrupt , ('most addictive game fueled by mountain dew' would have been a wonderful choice) as we have the utmost respect and love for Bioshock.'"

Over the weekend we posted a story about a new copyright bill that creates a new govt. agency in charge of copyright enforcement. Kevin Way writes "In particular, the bill grants this new agency the right to seize any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime and auction it off. You would not need to be found guilty at trial to face this penalty. You may want to read a justification of it, and criticism presented by Declan McCullagh and Public Knowledge." Lots of good followup there on a really crazy development.

VincenzoRomano writes "It's official! KDE 4.0 will be released on January 11th of next year. The release itself doesn't sound very firm, as 'the developers are confident to be able to release a more polished and better working KDE' and not the long awaited prime-time release. At the very first Alpha release on march 11th, the release date had been forecasted to October 2007, and then shifted to the end of the year with the second Beta. Despite this, the promises for the fourth version are quite interesting and maybe deserve a 'stay tuned'."

Ebon Praetor writes "The BBC reports that Blizzard and Activision have announced an $18.8bn merger. Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick, will become the head of the joint company, while Vivendi, Blizzard's current parent company, will become the largest single investor in the new group. Even with the size of the merger, the combined company will still be smaller than the industry giant EA. 'As part of the merger plan, Blizzard will invest $2bn in the new company, while Activision is putting up $1bn. The merged business will be called Activision Blizzard ... Vivendi will be the biggest shareholder in the group.'"

pwizard2 writes "Gamepolitics reports that controversial Miami attorney Jack Thompson faces the start of an ethics trial this morning, a process which could ultimately see him disbarred. The review board has set aside the entire week to hear details on the case. 'Over the weekend, Thompson turned to the Florida Supreme Court in an apparent effort to block this morning's trial from moving forward. In one court filing Thompson asserted that he was willing to accept a 90-day suspension of his license to practice law. The embattled attorney claimed that such an offer had been on the table, but that the Florida Bar was now seeking his permanent disbarment.'"