invisik - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft Loses $142M Patent appeal

Submitted by

darkonc

on Monday November 26, 2007 @06:08PM

darkonc writes: "Groklaw points to an article about Microsoft losing their appeal on a $142M patent award. Ironically, Microsoft was found guilty of infringing a patent on piracy prevention.
Also of interest is that, at about 3% of their last quarterly profit, this award may not reportable to the SEC as 'a significant event'."

Submission + - Find Out What Car Anyone Owns With Progressive.com

Submitted by I Ride A Segway on Friday August 17, 2007 @07:18AM

I Ride A Segway writes: Thanks to Progressive.com, all you need is a name and an address, and you can find out what car(s) that person owns. Sounds amusing at first, until you realize that what amounts to convenience for Progressive's potential customers could also be considered a rather big privacy concern for others. Innocently looking up your friends and neighbors and that guy you hated in High School is one thing; Using it to stalk politicians, celebrities, and other people in the public eye is quite another. Either for criminal intent or just plain embarassment, information as simple as that (public record not withstanding) can be easilly misused....Incidentally, Al Gore apparently still drives a hybrid. :)

Submission + - Shannahoff v. Belkin Corporation = REFUND$!

Submitted by areguly on Sunday April 29, 2007 @10:15PM

areguly writes: As posted on Belkin's website: "If you purchased a Belkin wireless product, you could get a full refund or 50% promotional discount from a class action settlement." . I just received this by e-mail from them, and it looks like I am getting a refund! If you got a wireless router or AP, your chances are you a elegible too! See the fine print and submit your refund.

Submission + - Slashdot blocked at Admirals Club

Submitted by on Thursday April 26, 2007 @03:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: Much to my surprise, I discovered that slashdot.org is blocked at the public Internet terminals in the American Airlines' Admirals Club, at least the one at Terminal D in DFW. The most shocking part was the "reason" displayed by the filtering software: "Hate/Violence". Should I also mention that another "competing" site was not blocked at all?...

Submission + - Indian Autorickshaw Challenge - Mumbai Express

Submitted by

Marika

on Thursday April 26, 2007 @01:54PM

Marika writes: "Indian Autorickshaw Challenge- Mumbai Express Rally Preparations for the very first Indian Autorickshaw Challenge- Mumbai Express Rally have gotten fully underway this week, as the organisation ready themselves for the August 5th 2007 start. The administration certainly has their work cut out for them, as this the most wild, unpredictable, and unique road race ever organised. The entrants to this amateur adventure will all be enjoying the crazy Indian night life and pushing their endurance to the limit by day as they cover 1921 km along India's western and central regions, all in local Tuk-Tuks. The Tuk Tuk -A.K.A the Autorickshaw — is India's three wheeled work horse and general purpose runabout, which hundreds of brave entrants shall be piling into, making their own, and then pushing to the limits and beyond. The job of the organisers over the next few months before the starting flag drops in Chennai is not just finalised logistics, but also to ensure that the Adopt A Village program — the real heart of the event — is all ready to go. The unique Adopt A village scheme will see each member team being assigned a specific village along the road route, where they will stop off to deliver supplies and badly needed aid. This aid will particularly be used to further the education of the village's children, and each donation will have huge positive effects for generations to come in these depressed areas. At the moment the organisers are still looking for a few final all-important sponsors to ensure that the rally can have the best possible impact on these impoverished rural areas. With the highly visible international profile of the already infamous Autorickshaw Classic Rally, the prospects look good for both the organisers and potential sponsors. _________________________ Mutalieva Marika Manager-Client Relations Indian Autorickshaw Challenge marika@indianarc.com http://www.indianarc.com/"

Submission + - Unsolicited telemarketing calls from abroad

Submitted by

Chet

on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @04:31PM

Chet writes: "Today, for the umpeenth time, I received at my home phone an unsolicited telemarketing call. This time, it was from Dish Network. They were selling me their satellite TV, I presume. The guy calling had an Indian accent (I'm of Indian origin, and I can tell), identified himself as working for Dish Network, in Seattle, WA, and refused to connect me with his supervisor. Of course, calling Dish Network's customer service did not yield me a phone number for either their corporate switchboard, or their legal department. Heck, I couldn't get to a supervisor there, either. I'm on the Federal Do-Not-Call list. And yet, I get lots of these calls, on behalf of lots of US-based companies, and always with details similar to above. I'm sure I'm not alone, and I wonder whether these companies are breaking the law, or have merely found a loophole. Certainly, it's awful behaviour. Anybody else out there experiencing this? Anybody know what to -do- about it?"

Submission + - Vonage allowed to sign new customers

Submitted by

terrymr

on Friday April 06, 2007 @07:30PM

terrymr writes: "The Court of Appeals for the federal circuit has stayed the injunction against vonage pending their appeal."

Submission + - SCO is a penny stock

Submitted by Subm on Friday March 16, 2007 @08:53PM

Subm writes: SCO closed below $1.00 every day this week for the first time, accompanied by news about their case that can't be helping them out.

The stock has been stable for some time, and they can always reverse split to remain listed. Nonetheless, you have to wonder, is it time to start shorting?

Journal Journal: Top 50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming

Journal by mauriziop on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @10:40AM

Global warming is a dramatically urgent and serious problem. We don't need to wait for governments to solve this problem: each one of us can bring an important help adopting a more responsible lifestyle: starting from little, everyday things. It's the only reasonable way to save our planet, before it is too late.

Submission + - CompUSA Closing More Than 50 Percent of Stores

Submitted by

Zurbrick

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @10:07AM

Zurbrick writes: "CompUSA, the computer and gadget retailer owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, said on Tuesday it would close more than half of its U.S. retail locations over the next two to three months to focus on top performing locations.

CompUSA said in a statement it would close 126 of its stores and would receive a $440 million cash capital infusion, but it was not specific as to the source of the cash. The company also said it would cut costs and restructure.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2099068 ,00.asp"

Submission + - Ars.Technica Examines BitTorrent Video Store

Submitted by Rocketship Underpant on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:51AM

Rocketship Underpant writes: Ars Technica has given the new DRM-based BitTorrent video store a test drive. For those who may not know, the BitTorrent name is following in the footsteps of Napster, using its name to pursue non-free media distribution. But while Napster had nothing in common with its filesharing precursor, BitTorrent does use the bit-torrent protocol for distributing videos.

So does the new BitTorrent store work? "Store" may be an exaggeration; while it was (mostly) capable of taking the reviewer's money, none of the first few videos that were downloaded would play. Unsurprisingly, DRM is the source of the problem. Windows Media Player experienced numerous problems trying to read and authenticate the videos, even though it is the only supported player. In the reviewer's opinion, the service of the BitTorrent store is unacceptable. What's more, even files that work are rendered practically useless by the restrictive BitTorrent DRM, as the video cannot be burned to DVD or played on other devices.

Submission + - Stable Open Source NTFS After 12 Years of Work

Submitted by

irgu

on Monday February 26, 2007 @10:53AM

irgu writes: "Open source NTFS development started in 1995 by Martin von Loewis under Linux, which was taken over by Anton Altaparmakov in 2000. Two years ago Apple hired Altaparmakov to work on Mac OS X and made a deal with the team to relicense the code and return the new one, soonest in the spring of 2008. But the team also continued the work and Szabolcs Szakacsits announced the read/write NTFS-3G driver for beta testing last year. Only half year passed and NTFS-3G reached the stable status and has been already ported to FreeBSD, Mac OS X, BeOS, Haiku, 64-bit and big-endian architectures, and new CPU's!"

Submission + - USA

Submitted by

reviews site

on Monday February 19, 2007 @02:13PM

reviews site writes: "What are the real implications to huge debt beyond leaving it a younger generation of tax payers? Reason I ask is that I argued with a staunch Republican after the presidential election, and he asked me "what do you care about the national debt?", guess he was referring to my age (60 +). And being Mongo (not well informed), I did not have a good answer for him."

Submission + - Couple who catch cop speeding could face charges.

Submitted by

a_nonamiss

on Monday February 19, 2007 @02:10PM

a_nonamiss writes: "A Georgia couple, apparently tired of people speeding past their house, installed a camera and radar gun on their property. After it was installed, they caught a police office going 17MPH over the posted limit. They brought this to the attention of the local police department, and are now being forced to appear in front of a judge to answer to charges of stalking.

from the article:

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.
I have the utmost respect for most law enforcement. They have a difficult, dangerous and mostly thankless job to do, but shouldn't they be held accountable for casually breaking the very same laws they are supposed to be enforcing? Additionally, shouldn't we, as citizens, have the right to be able to bring this to someone's attention without having to face laughably bogus charges for our efforts?"

Submission + - Firefox 3 to support offline apps

Submitted by thinkingpen on Monday February 19, 2007 @11:41AM

thinkingpen writes: Read/Write web is carrying an interesting story about Firefox 3. From the article — "An interesting tidbit came out of the recent Foo Camp New Zealand (which unfortunately I wasn't able to attend). Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla, who is based in NZ but drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox, spoke about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This is significant because you'll be able to use your web apps — like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc — in the browser even when offline. I deliberately mentioned all Google web apps there, because of course this plays right into Google's hands." Now thats web 3.0 ?

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