the_illuminatus - Slashdot User

Journal Journal: Insult Islam (and the President), Go to Jail

Journal by turgid on Friday February 23, 2007 @06:05PM

Once again, human stupidity determines that this all-powerful, all-wise, all-seeing "god" thing isn't capable of fighting its own battles, and in Egypt, a blogger is sent down for 4 years for insulting it.

Amnesty has the story too.

For Unlucky 360 Owner Seventh Time's the Charm 153

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:56PM from the give-him-some-bennies dept.

Microsoft has maintained that the problems occasionally reported by Xbox 360 owners are not very prevalent; just a small percentage of 360s are faulty, they say. That may be so, but for one unlucky console owner it's taken seven faulty consoles for him to get customer service satisfaction. The Mercury News discusses the tale of Rob Cassingham, a self professed 'Xbox fanboy'. He and his wife Mindy run a gaming center, and were responsible (via direct purchases and through word of mouth) for more than a dozen 360 purchases. For his business, he had six machines ... and every one of them failed. Even one of the replacements for the original unit failed, and for every replacement he's had to wait two weeks to get a new system. As he puts it, "Why spend money for rims on a car that spends 90 percent of its time in the shop?" After the Merc's Dean Takahashi referred his case to Peter Moore, he finally received a new machine as a replacement for his most recent faulty model. Cassingham is still deciding whether to keep it or not.

Submission + - US Historical Tornado Database and Map

Submitted by

Anonymous

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:47PM

Anonymous writes: "Weather geeks rejoice! Programmers keep finding novel ways to use the wealth of information available on the Internet. In this case, the Tornado History Project has combined historical tornado data freely available from the National Weather Service and combined it with Google Maps. The result is a free, searchable database of every official tornado in the United States from 1950-2005. Search results can be output and sorted in text form (results include date, states and counties affected, fujita rating, injuries, fatalities, width, path length and much more) or overlaid on a Google map. Additionally, users may leave comments (personal memories, etc) about any tornado in the database. Users may even share their own photos or videos of any tornado. The site's creator, Josh Lietz, plans to keep it up and running in perpetuity as a kind of virtual museum. He also plans to add to the database as each new year of tornado statistics becomes available."

Submission + - ESA Uses U.S. Law To Target Mod Chips in Canada

Submitted by

CanuckGamer

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:39PM

CanuckGamer writes: "Michael Geist is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association is targeting mod chips in Canada by claiming that U.S. copyright law applies north of the border. An ESA lawyer has tried to import the U.S. Grokster case into Canada, which Geist argues should be subject to a claim of copyright misuse and reveals the ESA's double talk on mod chips and copyright reform."

Submission + - Fedora delays next release, chooses new theme

Submitted by

lisah

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:29PM

lisah writes: "The release of Fedora 7 (F7), originally scheduled for April 26 has been pushed back to the end of May to allow the development team more time to create a build system to manage the new merge of Fedora Core and Fedora Extras. The team still plans to take a 'highly polished' live CD based on Test 4 of F7 to this year's Red Hat Summit, however, where attendees will get a chance to see the artwork that has been selected for the release's new design theme."

Submission + - Does the internet need a major capacity upgrade?

Submitted by wiggles on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:27PM

wiggles writes: According to the Chicago Tribune, the recent surge of video sites such as youtube and Google video are pushing the limits of the internet's bandwidth, or soon will be. Pieter Poll, chief technology officer at Qwest Communications, says that traffic volumes are growing faster than computing power, meaning that engineers can no longer count on newer, faster computers to keep ahead of their capacity demands. Further, a recent report from Deloitte Consulting raised the possibility that 2007 would see Internet demand exceed capacity. Admittedly, this seems sensationalistic, but are we headed for a massive slowdown of the whole internet?

Submission + - Creating a Web service app object using WebSphere

Submitted by

BlueVoodoo

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:27PM

BlueVoodoo writes: "Extend your WebSphere Portal Personalization capabilities to make data from external sources available to your portal using Personalization Rules. In this part, work through a scenario that uses a Web service to obtain data values for an application object. Also, listen to this Lotus Component Designer webcast that tells you how to build Eclipse applications that run in IBM WebSphere Portals."

Submission + - Composers Scene Thrives in Atlanta

Submitted by on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: Technology rules at Georgia Tech, where Jason Freeman's "Graph Theory" — a "wiki" piece of music, where Web users help shape the composition — has been widely discussed on blogs and performed live in several cities. Gil Weinberg's "Jam'aa" is written for Tech's robot drummer Haile. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/images/news_articles/2007 /accessatlanta_weinberg_022307.pdf

Submission + - FutureLink founders attack Microsoft over cover up

Submitted by thefickler on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:19PM

thefickler writes: The founders of a failed ISP, FutureLink Online, have issued a statement attacking Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft is trying to hide a multi-million dollar law suit that they have launched against it.

"This is more than a modern-day David vs. Goliath. It's a story of how corporate cannibal Microsoft stole the American Dream from us and then dragged us through 10 years of litigation," said Futurelink cofounder Farina.

Bookmark NASA has plan for unstable astronauts (yahoo.com)

by Radon360 on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:17PM

Submission + - How to Compensate for Poor Telecommuting Policy

Submitted by

fistfullast33l

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:13PM

fistfullast33l writes: "Unable to dial into work from home? Don't know enough people to organize a carpool with? No problem! A man on Long Island was ticketed for driving in the HOV lane with a CPR dummy in his front seat wearing black hair, a mustache, and a jacket. According to the article, "The driver of the vehicle said that he was just trying to get to work and he had been doing this since October. Tietjen also had a baseball cap and sunglasses that he sometimes put on the mannequin." Unfortunately they didn't mention if the dummy was wearing any pants..."

Submission + - Duct Tape to control Mad Astronaut?

Submitted by netwolf on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:13PM

netwolf writes: The plan to tranquilize a mad astronaut is outlined in this CNN article: " NASA's plan for unstable astronauts: Duct tape, tranquilizers" http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/23/astronaut .plan.ap/index.html. Interesting part: "A gun would be out of the question... NASA has determined that there is no need for weapons at the space station" What happens when aliens attack?

Feed MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:12PM

A jury's $1.52 billion judgment against Microsoft hangs a sudden, unexpected cloud over MP3. This could be the opening open-source advocates have been waiting for. By Eliot Van Buskirk and Evan Hansen.

Feed Lawmaker Probes TSA Website Gaffe (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:12PM

A service intended to help innocent travelers get off the No Fly List instead sent their personal information unencrypted to a Virginia company. Following a Wired News report, a congressman asks the TSA to explain itself. By Ryan Singel.

Submission + - Use Linux, Lose an Election

Submitted by

johnlittledotorg

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:02PM

johnlittledotorg writes: "Rob Enderle has written a piece on Cuba's increasing adoption of Linux that represents an astounding achievement in the art of sowing FUD:

If I'm running against an incumbent (who probably has no clue about software at all) and I know some organization under them deployed Linux and that it is being positioned as anti-U.S., might I not use that in the election? "Ladies and gentlemen I promise that under my administration we will not implement products like Linux that put the nation at risk, which contribute critical technology to the terrorists, and embolden our enemies."
What next Rob? A bounty on Osama bin Linus? Please tell us how to we can stamp out this threat to our nation. Oh, all we have to do is install Windows Vista? Sweeeeet."

Slashdot Top Deals