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Submission + - Is Samsung putting keyloggers on their laptops? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two brand new Samsung laptops both have a keylogger installed. After calling Samsung tech support, they supposedly admitted to it. After the amount of press the Sony BMG problem got, I'm surprised this isn't a big uproar.

Part one: http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2011/032811sec2.html
Part two: http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2011/040411sec1.html
Privacy

Submission + - Google Faces Privacy Audits For Next 20 Years

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Google has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Buzz, a social blogging service that the company introduced through Gmail last year that will require that Google have regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. Buzz drew heavy criticism at launch in February 2010 for a glaring privacy flaw. When users turned it on, it suggested people to follow based on their Gmail contacts list and their most frequent email partners. "Although Google led Gmail users to believe that they could choose whether or not they wanted to join the network, the options for declining or leaving the social network were ineffective," says the FTC. Along with the 20 year oversight, the settlement also says that Google is barred from misrepresenting privacy or confidentiality of the user information it collects, Google must obtain user consent before sharing their information with third parties if it changes its privacy policy, and Google must establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program."
Robotics

Submission + - U.S. To Send Radiation-Hardened Robots To Japan (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "The United States is sending specialized robots to Japan to help officials there get control of the Fukushima nuclear power plants damaged in this month's devastating earthquake and tsunami. Dr. Peter Lyons, an acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy with the DoE, said the robots, which could be sent into areas that would be dangerous for humans to enter because of high radiation levels, could begin to give officials readings on the environment inside the nuclear power plants. Lyons told the U.S. Senate on Tuesday: 'We are moving expeditiously to ship not only the robots but also operators who perhaps will be used to train Japanese operators. We don't know yet how close the operators will need to be to the site." Asked about getting information about the state of the damaged reactors, Lyons said the robots could provide some information. 'Certainly not all we need, but some,' he said."

Submission + - Generic PCs for corporate use 1

Submitted by porkThreeWays
porkThreeWays writes: I work for a government agency supporting about 1000 PCs. The economy has hit us just like everyone else and we are looking at ways to save money. We currently buy Dell computers and even with our government discounts end up spending about $1,000 for a pretty mediocre computer. I had the idea of building our own PCs for considerably less. We'd spec out a standard configuration that we'd use for 18 months. CPU speeds and RAM sizes may change during that time, but socket types, memory standards, hard drive interfaces standards, etc, etc would be required to stay the same. We have Dell warrantys right now, but I could see just keeping spare parts on the shelf and building that into the cost of the PC. We'd also be able to transfer Windows licenses because the Dell installs are non-transferable. However, I couldn't find anyone on the large scale doing this. Is anyone on Slashdot using PCs they built themselves on the large scale?
User Journal

Journal Journal: Back!

Journal by SJS

A new machine is a good time to re-evaluate how one's been doing things.

Such as logging _in_ to Slashdot.

Let's see how the new interface holds up.

Submission + - Ant Tribes, Chinese struggle to find jobs. (yahoo.com)

Submitted by HockeyPuck
HockeyPuck writes: Liu Jun sleeps in a room so small (180sq ft), he shares a bed with two other men. It's all the scrawny computer engineering graduate can afford in Tangjialing, China (a city on the edge of Beijing). It's so expensive that the average white-collar professional can't afford to buy a home. "Unlike slums in South America or Southeast Asia, these villages are populated with educated young people as opposed to laborers or street peddlers," says Lian Si, who teaches at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Liu is one of millions of engineers struggling to find a job to pay the bills in which there are more graduates than jobs. These are the ant tribes."

Submission + - Dell shafts SSD early adopters

Submitted by
cl_everett
cl_everett writes: "Dell has shipped tons and tons of laptops with solid state disk drives, but without ATA TRIM enabled. ATA TRIM support allows the drive to consolidate free blocks, and keeps the performance high. SSDs without ATA TRIM support eventually begin to slow down to a crawl and begin stuttering as they fragment. You would think that Dell would be happy to make a firmware upgrade for these laptops available for download, but for now the only way to get your firmware upgraded is to call in to Delhi support and tell them you had an extended period of slowdowns followed by a BSOD:

STOP: 0x000000ED (0X82F937C8, 0XC0000006, 0X00000000,0X00000000)

and then tell them that the pre-boot diagnotic utility tells you :

Hard Drive — DST Short Test
Error code 2000-0142
Msg : Unit 1 : Drive Self Test failed. Status byte = 79.

Then you have to pray that they send you a new drive with up to date firmware.

Dell's attitude on this has been reprehensible; We know that Samsung has released upgraded firmware for the drives in question, months ago. But we can't use that firmware, it apears to brick SSDs with Dell branded firmware, so we have a problem only Dell can solve.

To top it all off, we see Dell's contempt for us as consumers: Halfway down http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/254961-32-warning-careful-ordering-dell-machines-ssds we have prize quote: ... as long as your computer is starting, there is no problem for us. You know your computer is slow only because of your computer knowledge, if we give it to somebody else, they won't notice, so there is no problem ...

At this point, I see the only alternative as naming and shaming. Please help."

Comment Re:Earth to David! (Score -1) 383

by ters a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!* (#28891787) Attached to: David Pogue Wants to Take Back the Beep
Well i got a boost mobile phone with walkie talkie and unlimited everything for 50 a month i hook it to my lappy and get dial up quality internet with it where ever i have service i use goggle maps read /. etc. it drops calls like hell but old vm phone i went threw like 20 - 80 dollars a month now i don't have to be a how are you and what do you want type phone guy

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