defile - Slashdot User

Maker of Anti-Clinton Video Outed, Loses Job 401

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 22, 2007 @12:40PM from the on-his-own-time dept.

Raul654 writes "Philip de Vellis, the author of the anti-Hilary Clinton viral video was outed yesterday on the Huffington Post. The company he worked for, Blue State Digital — a Democratic Internet strategy company that does work for Barack Obama — has now fired him as a result. Said Vellis: 'I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process.'"

ISPs Fight To Keep Broadband Gaps Secret 170

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 22, 2007 @12:06PM from the where-their-bread-is-buttered dept.

Aaron writes "Broadband Reports notes how Maryland was working on a law that would force ISPs to show exactly where they offer service and at what speed. The goal was to help map coverage gaps, since FCC broadband data is worthless for this purpose. Cable and phone company lobbyists have scuttled the plan, convincing state leaders the plan would bring 'competitive harm,' 'stifle innovation,' and even close local coffee shops. Of course the real reason is they don't want the public to know what criteria they use to determine the financial viability of your neighborhood — as they cherry-pick only the most lucrative areas for next-generation services. The Center for Public Integrity is trying to obtain the unreleased raw FCC penetration data, but these companies are also fighting this tooth and nail."

Submission + - Space X Falcon 1 launch failure speculation

Submitted by jafac on Thursday March 22, 2007 @11:59AM

jafac writes: As discussed in this SpaceDaily article, the video footage from the launch, earlier this week (available at www.spacex.com), of the Falcon 1 vehicle, seems to show a problem with the stage separation. I noticed this when I watched the video last night — it appears that the top of the first stage bumps the engine nozzle.

The upper stage guidance does a good job of setting the craft straight after this bump, but some odd things happen after that, including some kind of ring flying off the engine, and a wobble that gets progressively worse until the vehicle goes completely out of control. I've been fascinated by the availability of these kinds of videos more and more; but this is the first one I've seen that documents a failed launch — (Elon Musk's denials notwithstanding), and because of that, it's probably the coolest video I've seen all year.

Submission + - Why Windows Vista isn't ready for geeks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22, 2007 @11:57AM

An anonymous reader writes: The boys over at Short-Media have a pretty convincing write up about Vista. They are advocating that all geeks stay away from the new MS operating system. "Games wouldn't run, applications wouldn't install, and a slew of Vista options could not be disabled even if it would've helped the PC's performance or my sanity; it all just went to hell." They also try to cut out some of the Vista's bloat by going over all the services and disabling the ones that are unnecessary. They were able to get their system from 42 Processes, 607MB paged and 532MB of RAM used to a lowly 29 processes, 368MB paged and 400MB memory usage; an accomplishment any true geek would recognize.

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