Avrice - Slashdot User

Passenger Avoids Delay By Fixing Plane Himself 178

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 06, 2009 @01:11PM from the flying-the-diy-skies dept.

It would be a shame if an engineer on a recent Thomas Cook Airlines flight doesn't get a complimentary first class upgrade every time he flies. The engineer was on flight TCX9641 when it was announced that the trip would be delayed eight hours, while a mechanic was flown in to fix a problem. Luckily for the other passengers, the engineer happened to work for Thomsonfly Airlines, which has a reciprocal maintenance agreement with Thomas Cook. After about 35 minutes the man fixed the problem and the flight was on its way. A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said, "When they announced there was a technical problem he came forward and said who he was. We checked his licence and verified he was who he said he was, and he was able to fix the problem to avoid the delay. We are very grateful that he was on the flight that day."

Submission + - ATI committed to fixing its problems with OSS

Submitted by

Sits

on Thursday May 10, 2007 @03:02AM

Sits writes: "While talking about the Red Hat summit Chris Blizzard mentions how an ATI marketing spokesman was on stage. The spokesman said ATI knows it has a problem with open source and is committed to fixing it. Does this mean ATI will finally resolve alleged agpgart misappropriation, fast track the release of open source 2D drivers on its latest cards while releasing specifications for its mid-range cards or is ATI only concerned with fixes to its binary driver to maintain feature parity with competitors?"

Submission + - SecondLife Crackdown: Accusations of Child Porn

Submitted by sboutwell on Thursday May 10, 2007 @02:30AM

sboutwell writes: From Secondlife's BLOG http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/09/accusations- regarding-child-pornography-in-second-life/#more-9 52

Recent crack downs and required IDENTITY information updates are coming because of Recent accusations of KIDDIE PORN and Child Adult Sexual Play in Second Life.

From their Blog: On Thursday May 3, we were contacted by German television network, ARD, which had captured images of two avatars, one that resembled an adult male and another that resembled a child, engaged in depicted sexual conduct. Our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman. Both were immediately banned from Second Life.

More details on all of this as well as Secondlife's official response can be found on their BLOG.

Submission + - Thurn & Taxis Post Roads Map in Germany 1786

Submitted by

Jack Polo

on Friday May 04, 2007 @04:50AM

Jack Polo writes: "The Torre e Tasso family, from Val Sassina, owned several courier services in Lombardy from about 1290. From 1490 on, Francesco de Tassis, called Franz von Taxis, was granted the right to carry government and private mail throughout the Empire and in Spain. Thus, the Thurn & Taxis family operated for 350 years, postal services in the major part of western Europe, from Spain to Hungary. This map, by Homann's Heirs, presents the 1786 Thurn & Taxis post-roads in the German Empire and in the neighbouring countries. Be aware that some roads, especially in the ecclesiastical principalities are missing.
Johann Baptist Homann (1664 — 1724) was imperial geographer from 1715 in Nurnberg and his work was continued by his son Christoph under the name Hommänischen Erben.
http://www.euratlas.net/cartogra/deutschland_1786/ index.html"

Submission + - Internet Voting Coming To Alabama's Troops

Submitted by

InternetVoting

on Friday May 04, 2007 @04:42AM

InternetVoting writes: "Alabama's Governor has proposed a plan allowing Alabama's deployed troops to cast ballots over the Internet. The planned has garnered support from both Republicans and Democrats, including the Secretary of State who said "This is a wonderful opportunity for Alabama to lead the nation in support of the rights of our service men and women around the world." From the article: "General Mark Bowen of the Alabama National Guard said deployed units are assigned voting officers charged with helping troops vote, but the process often takes too long and some ballots are not received in time. 'Electronic voting is the way to go,' Bowen said.""

Submission + - Part 3 of Douglas Adams Interview

Submitted by Lake Titicaca on Friday May 04, 2007 @02:26AM

Lake Titicaca writes: http://darkermatter.com/issue3/douglas_adams.php

Part 3 of the exclusive 1979 interview with Douglas Adams is now available at Darker Matter.

The Unauthorized State-Owned Chinese Disneyland 746

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday May 04, 2007 @12:36AM from the just-like-the-real-thing dept.

rmnoon writes "Apparently Japanese TV and bloggers have just discovered Disney's theme park in China, where young children can be part of the Magic Kingdom and interact with their favorite characters (like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Seven Dwarfs). The park's slogan is 'Because Disneyland is Too Far,' and there's even an Epcot-like dome. The only problem? Disney didn't build it, and they didn't authorize it. What's more? It's state-owned!"

Submission + - Look Ma, No Shortage of U.S. Engineers!

Submitted by

theodp

on Thursday April 05, 2007 @01:41AM

theodp writes: "Debunking claims to the contrary, a new study from Duke University asserts that it is cost savings, and not the education of Indian and Chinese workers, or a shortage of American engineers that has caused offshore outsourcing."

EU Rejects Microsoft Royalty Proposal 274

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday April 05, 2007 @01:36AM from the no-money-for-you dept.

pallmall1 writes "According to MSNBC, The Financial Times has reported that the EU is going to drastically reduce or even eliminate Microsoft's proposed royalties on interoperability information required to be released by the EU's antitrust ruling issued three years ago. According to a confidential EU document, "Microsoft will be forced to hand over to rivals what the group claims is sensitive and valuable technical information about its Windows operating system for next to no compensation...". Even Neil Barrett, the expert picked by both Microsoft and the EU to oversee Microsoft's compliance with the 2004 ruling, says a zero percent royalty would be 'better.'"

Feed Verizon Wireless Slowly, Quietly, Backing Away From Misleading Claims Of Unlimit (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Thursday April 05, 2007 @01:33AM

For years, Verizon Wireless has been pushing its EVDO wireless internet service as "unlimited" -- but then cutting off users if they passed some unknown, unstated "cap." When pushed on this, a Verizon Wireless rep actually said "It's unlimited amounts of data for certain types of data." And... if you happened to go over a certain amount of total data, then they insisted you absolutely must have been using it for "other" types of data -- even if they had no actual proof. For a while it was thought that the cap was 10gigs, but later it was revealed that it was merely 5gigs of data per month -- which these days, really isn't all that much for some people. We've always wondered why no one ever hit Verizon Wireless with a false advertising suit over the claim of "unlimited," but it never happened. However, it appears that Verizon Wireless has been slowly backing away from the unlimited claim, and is now putting the 5gig limit into the terms of service. They still do use "Unlimited" in their press releases, but seem to be backing away from it in their ads. There's nothing wrong with limiting the total bandwidth that can be used, so as long as the company was clear about it. It's unclear why it took years for Verizon Wireless to decide that actually being (somewhat) honest about what it was selling was a good idea.

Submission + - google wants you to swim across the atlantic

Submitted by

Robert

on Thursday April 05, 2007 @01:15AM

Robert writes: "Check out step 40 on these Google directions. Apparently they want you to swim across the Atlantic ocean when giving directions between continents. "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 5,572 km" http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=madrid ,+spain&daddr=new+york,+new+york&sll=-71.074056,-8 4.375&sspn=173.090734,360&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=4&ll=42 .488302,-38.408203&spn=48.515198,71.015625&om=1"

Submission + - Seagate's Full Disk Encryption (FDE) hard drive

Submitted by

Doctor High

on Thursday April 05, 2007 @12:20AM

Doctor High writes: "Josh Kuo's article Seagate's Full Disk Encryption (FDE) hard drive talks about the pros and cons of using the new Momentus FDE notebook drives from Seagate. They feature hardware encryption of the entire drive, so it is an excellent security mechanism to prevent data loss in the event that the laptop itself is stolen. However, what about the inevitable lost passwords?"

Submission + - New solar cells that don't need direct sunlight

Submitted by ultracool on Thursday April 05, 2007 @12:16AM

ultracool writes: New solar cells developed by researchers at the Nanomaterials Research Centre at Massey University in New Zealand don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power. Researchers at the centre have developed the dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis.

Feed Kodak's cheap inkjet claims all talk? (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @08:52PM

Filed under: Peripherals

We were pretty stoked to hear Kodak was planning on running full tilt at the current status quo of "loss leader" printer tactics, that has unwitting consumers picking up inkjet printers for a dime, and spending a fortune on printing supplies. Unfortunately, it looks like Kodak hasn't come upon any magical printing techniques to pull this off yet, since its new printers didn't do so good up against the likes of Epson, HP and Canon. Kodak is marketing its printers as capable of producing 10 cent prints, which would indeed be a great deal. Tests show that an $18 pack of paper and ink results in about 165 borderless prints, about 11.5 cents per print. Unfortunately, the prints were basically "draft" quality, maybe fine for certain budget-minded consumers, but hardly comparable to "lab quality" photos. To boost the quality you'll need pricier Kodak paper, which ends up at about 35 cents per print, and renders the whole exercise pointless. The testers recommend the $150 Epson Stylus Photo RX580, for super good prints and great speed. Might want to leave that $200 Kodak EasyShare 5300 on the shelf for the time being.

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Submission + - Circuit City and the American Dream job

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29, 2007 @09:35AM

An anonymous reader writes: Circuit City said yesterday that it had fired 3,400 of its highest-paid sales staff and will replace them with lower-paid workers, however the fired workers have a chance to apply for lower-paying positions after a 10-week delay, said the 655-store electronics chain based in Richmond, Va. Circuit City spokesman Jim Babb said: "This is no reflection on job performance,". "We deeply regret the negative impact. Retail is extremely competitive, and if we're going to thrive and operate a successful company for our shoppers, employees and shareholders, we just have to control costs." So work hard, become the best in your field and get fired so they can offer you a new job 10 weeks later at a lower salary. That seems to fit the American Dream?????

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