Comment Dogs in the manger (Score 1) 353
These are the same guys who arrogantly rejected digital cellphones for a long time because it would interfere with their market share grasp of analog cellphones.
Comment Drugs'll get ya thru times of no $ (Score 1) 873
Better than $ will get ya thru times of no drugs.
Comment Busiest day of the year for Mom (Score 2, Informative) 586
There's the grocery shopping, baking pies, thawing out the turkey, reaching your arm inside its cavities to pull out the neck bone and giblets, boiling up the cranberry sauce, making the stuffing, peeling all the potatoes to cook and mash, trying to figure out how to make gravy from the drippings, carving the damn turkey after it's roasted, not to mention hauling out all the wedding china and "good" wineglasses (which can't go in the dishwasher of course), ironing that mile-long tablecloth, poihsing the silver, dirtying up every pot and pan in the house. Not to mention relatives who come and stay for the entire weekend and have to be fed and entertained. Whew! I'm glad to have my family gather together, but I give thanks when it's all over!
Facebook Scrabble Rip-off Capitalizes on Mattel's Lethargy 216
mlimber writes "The Facebook app Scrabulous was written by two Scrabble-loving brothers in India, has over 700,000 users, brings in about $25,000 per month in advertising revenue, and is in flagrant violation of copyright law. The corporate owners of Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel, have threatened legal action against the creators and have made deals with Electronic Arts and RealNetworks to release official online versions of the game. But according to an NYTimes article, 'Scrabulous has already brought Scrabble a newfound virtual popularity that none of the game companies could have anticipated,' and according to one consultant to the entertainment industry, 'If you're Hasbro or Mattel, it isn't in your interest to shut this down.' Hasbro's partner RealNetworks is 'working closely' with the piratical brothers, but Mattel says that 'settling with the [brothers] would set a bad precedent' for other board games going online."
'Death Star' Aimed at Earth 400
An anonymous reader writes "A spectacular, rotating binary star system is a ticking time bomb, ready to throw out a searing beam of high-energy gamma rays that could lead to a major extinction event — and Earth may be right in the line of fire. Australian science magazine Cosmos Magazine reports: 'Though the risk may be remote, there is evidence that gamma ray bursts have swept over the planet at various points in Earth's history with a devastating effect on life. A 2005 study showed that a gamma-ray burst originating within 6,500 light years of Earth could be enough to strip away the ozone layer and cause a mass extinction. Researchers led by Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, U.S., suggest that such an event may have been responsible for a mass extinction 443 million years ago, in the late Ordovician period, which wiped out 60 per cent of life and cooled the planet.'"
PHP Optimized for Windows Server 2008 182
Stony Stevenson writes "It used to be that popular PHP applications would run more poorly on Windows Server than on a Linux or Unix servers, for which PHP had been optimized. Specialist in the PHP language Zend Technologies now says that's no longer the case. The Zend Core commercially supported form of PHP has been certified by Microsoft as ready to run 'with performance and stability' on Windows Server 2008, said Andi Gutmans, co-founder and CTO of Zend. Previously, PHP 'didn't run as well as it should on Windows,' said Gutmans, despite the fact that 75% to 80% of PHP users were developing on Windows workstations."
Comment News coverage (Score 5, Insightful) 187
Did anyone see the Associated Press coverage? link.
"An effort at damage control has snowballed into a public relations disaster for a Swiss bank seeking to crack down on a renegade Web site for posting classified information about some of its wealthy clients."
Apparently, company information is "classified information", and WikiLeaks is a "renegade" website. I guess it is compared to the Associated Press. Here's a high school example of propaganda. Perhaps it was written by a high school student.
"An effort at damage control has snowballed into a public relations disaster for a Swiss bank seeking to crack down on a renegade Web site for posting classified information about some of its wealthy clients."
Apparently, company information is "classified information", and WikiLeaks is a "renegade" website. I guess it is compared to the Associated Press. Here's a high school example of propaganda. Perhaps it was written by a high school student.
Tor Used To Collect Embassy Email Passwords 99
Several readers wrote in to inform us that Swedish security researcher Dan Egerstad has revealed how he collected 100 passwords from embassies and governments worldwide, without hacking into anything: he sniffed Tor exit routers. Both Ars and heise have writeups on Egerstad's blog post, but neither adds much to the original. It's not news that unencrypted traffic exits the Tor network unencrypted, but Egerstad correctly perceived, and called attention to, the lack of appreciation for this fact in organizations worldwide.
Submission + - New Top500 List released at ISC '07
Guybrush_T writes: The new Top500 list has just been released at ISC'07 in Dresden.
The top 10 is heavily dominated by IBM and BlueGene systems, with only Cray holding rank 2 and 3, Dell holding rank 8 and SGI holding rank 10.
The first non-US system is the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, ranked 9. Japan is loosing ground, with their first system ranked 14.
The full list is also available.
The top 10 is heavily dominated by IBM and BlueGene systems, with only Cray holding rank 2 and 3, Dell holding rank 8 and SGI holding rank 10.
The first non-US system is the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, ranked 9. Japan is loosing ground, with their first system ranked 14.
The full list is also available.
When Does Technolust Become An Addiction? 281
An anonymous reader writes "According to a CNet article, an incredible one in three people aged 16 to 24 in the UK would not give up their mobile phone for a million pounds. 'The phone-centric survey, called Mobile Life, was carried out across the UK and questioned 1,256 people aged 16 to 64 on a variety of topics ... So young people really like having a mobile phone and we all love buying gadgets. But before you dismiss this research as stating the bleeding obvious, think about this -- if someone had told you even ten years ago that people would be taking out second mortgages to buy flat screen TVs, would you have believed it?' Is this just the result of deliberately skewed marketing dressed up as research, or is this another indication of western culture's obsession with communication and technology? How much is too much tech?"
Canadian DMCA Coming This Spring 153
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government is reportedly ready to introduce copyright reform legislation this spring, provided that no election is called. The new bill would move Canada far closer to the U.S. on copyright, with DMCA-style anti-circumvention legislation that prohibits circumvention of DRM systems and bans software and mod chips that can be used to circumvent such systems."
MS Requiring More Expensive Vista if Running Mac 545
ktwdallas writes "Mathew Ingram from Canada's Globe and Mail writes that Microsoft will require at least the $299 Business version of Vista or higher if installing on a Mac with virtualization. Running the cheaper Basic or Premium versions would be a violation of their user agreement. According to the article, Microsoft's reasoning is 'because of security issues with virtualization technology'. Sounds suspiciously like a 'Mac penalty' cost that Microsoft is trying to justify."
Submission + - Inside ReactOS
Andareed writes: "Alex Ionescu, a lead developer of ReactOS (an open-source, source and binary compatible clone of Windows NT) recently gave a talk on the internals of ReactOS. In this talk, Ionescu also discusses how ReactOS is nearing complete kernel compatibility with Windows Server 2003. Interestingly, Ionescu hints that there are no plans for ReactOS once the kernel has been completed."
Submission + - 1989 Bill Gates Talk on Microsoft
alumctdalek writes: "I found an interesting talk by Bill Gates from 1989 (available in FLAC, MP3, WAV, and OGG). Gates talks about how he first started Microsoft and his day as a developer. He goes on to discuss what his vision for the future of Microsoft is. The most interesting thing he talks about is how he thought that in 1981 640k should have been ok for 10 years, when in fact it was only ok for about 6 years. Perhaps this is where this infamous quote by Bill Gates came from: "640K ought to be enough for anybody.""
Vista Worse For User Efficiency Than XP 546
erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."
