prostoalex - Slashdot User

Submission + - eCoupled to demo wireless power at CES

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Wednesday December 27, 2006 @11:50PM

prostoalex writes: "A Michigan-based startup eCoupled is announcing that its wireless power technology will be available at CES next year: "eCoupled technology leverages inductive coupling, which works by transferring energy from one device to another through a shared magnetic field. The technology stems from the foundational work of renowned scientists Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla." The company already accumulated a portfolio of 7 patents, according to the official site. No word on whether this can be combined with pond scum."

Submission + - Top Q&A sites reviewed

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Wednesday December 27, 2006 @05:15PM

prostoalex writes: "MIT Technology Review runs a real-world test of top question and answer sites — AnswerBag, Amazon Askville, MSN Live Q&A, Wondir, Yahoo! Answers and Yedda. The sites are rated on the features and originality as well as availability of answers to the journalist's three questions: "First, I searched each site's archive for existing answers to the question "Is there any truth to the five-second rule?" (I meant the rule about not eating food after it's been on the floor for more than five seconds, not the basketball rule about holding.) Second, I posted the same two original questions at each site: "Why did the Mormons settle in Utah?" and "What is the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich?" The first question called for factual, historical answers, while the second simply invited people to share their favorite sandwich-making methods and recipes." The results might be surprising to some readers. While it's generally believed that small startups are better at building efficient solutions, the leaders of the MIT Technology Review are all sites built by Internet giants — Yahoo! Answers, MSN Live Q&A and Amazon Askville all ranked above the competing sites."

Submission + - Siemens reaches 107 Gbps data transfer record

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Wednesday December 20, 2006 @03:02PM

prostoalex writes: "Reuters is reporting on Siemens engineers reaching 107 Gbps data transmission record over a fiberoptic cable, and expects the technology to be on the market within a few years: "The test, 2.5 times faster than a previous maximum transmission performance per channel, was done in cooperation with Germany's Micram Microelectronic, the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications and Eindhoven Technical University of the Netherlands.""

Submission + - Sony, BMG offer refund for infected CDs

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @05:09PM

prostoalex writes: "If you're a proud owner of 'Never Gone' by The Backstreet Boys, 'On Ne Change Pas' by Celine Dion, or a few dozen other CDs infected by MediaMax or XCP rootkits, SonyBMGCDTechSettlement.com is now allowing the consumers to file a refund claim. The deadline is December 31st of this year. Sony and BMG will also pay California and Texas a $750,000 fine."

Submission + - Small businesses worried about MS anti-phishing

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @04:55PM

prostoalex writes: "Ever get that warm feeling of safety, when the anti-phishing toolbar on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 turns green, telling you it's safe to shop on a given site? Well, you probably don't, but millions of Internet users who are running IE7, probably pay attention to anti-phishing warnings. Wall Street Journal is reporting on Microsoft making it tough for a small business to assure it's treated properly by the anti-phishing algorithm: "That's because sole proprietorships, general partnerships and individuals won't be eligible for the new, stricter security certificates that Microsoft requires to display the color. There are about 20.6 million sole proprietorships and general partnerships in the U.S., according to 2003 and 2004 tax data from the Internal Revenue Service, though it isn't clear how many are engaged in e-commerce.""

Submission + - PostgreSQL vs. MySQL comparison

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday December 18, 2006 @04:23AM

prostoalex writes: "Ever find yourself wondering which open source database is the best tool for the job? Well, wonder no more, and let your tax dollars do the work in the form of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory publishing this unbiased review of MySQL vs. PostreSQL. After reading it, however, it seems that MySQL ranks the same or better on most of the accounts."

Submission + - Google patents the design of search results pages

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @09:42PM

prostoalex writes: "ZDNet is reporting on USPTO issuing a patent to Google, Inc. for "ornamental design for a graphical user interface". This is not, as ZDNet points out, a software patent, which is usually issued as utility patent, but a design patent, which governs the look and feel of the product and prevents others from directly copying it."

Submission + - Best places to work in IT

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @02:53PM

prostoalex writes: "ComputerWorld's annual survey of best IT employers ranks Quicken Loans, University of Miami, The Capital Group Companies, American Fidelity Assurance and Grant Thornton as the best places to get paychecks from if you're an IT worker. What's the criteria? From the introduction: "In January 2006, contacts at the nominated companies received a 100-question survey asking about their organizations' average salary and bonus increases, the percentage of IT employees receiving promotions, IT staff turnover rates, training and development opportunities, and the percentage of women and minorities in IT staff and management positions. In addition, information was collected on how the organizations reward outstanding performance, how their retention programs are structured and what benefits they offer, ranging from elder and child care to flextime and tuition reimbursement for college and technology certification courses.""

Submission + - How Craigslist is keeping up Internet ideals

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @02:11AM

prostoalex writes: "CBS MarketWatch discusses whether Craig Newmark and CraigsList.org are missing out by not "monetizing" their traffic or selling out to large corporations: "Their noble stance gives entrepreneurs from San Francisco a great name. Despite the many unfortunate examples of greed, Internet entrepreneurs aren't all about getting rich quick and cashing out. At an entrepreneur's roots is a vision to provide a service that helps alleviate a pain point. The money thing always muddied the waters down the road. The attitude at Craigslist is a nice reminder of how entrepreneurs' ideals can still remain intact, no matter how odd they may seem in a world that worships money." CraigsList is currently #7 e-commerce site on the Internet with 13 mln unique visitors monthly, and only charges for real estate listings by professional brokers. No word on whether that income is enough to pay 24 salaries and data center fees for hosting a major Internet site."

Submission + - Microsoft publishes free XBox development tools

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday December 11, 2006 @05:39PM

prostoalex writes: "Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tool for developing C# games that run on both Windows and XBox. They're also selling XNA Creators Club subscriptions, which, similar to MSDN subscriptions, offer access to sample code and additional documentation. Also, Microsoft is explicitly aiming towards uniting the Windows and XBox development platforms: "You will have to compile the game once for each platform. In this release simply create a separate project for each platform and then compile them both. Our goal is to allow as much code as possible to be shared between those two projects, allowing you to use the same source files in both projects, but platform-specific code will need to be conditionally-compiled.""

Submission + - New developments at Microsoft Research

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Sunday December 10, 2006 @09:44PM

prostoalex writes: "Information Week magazine runs a brief report from Microsoft Research, showcasing some of the new technologies the company's research division is working on. Among them — a rootkit that eliminates other rootkits, a firewall that blocks the traffic exploiting published vulnerabilities, a system for catching lost e-mail, a honeypot targeted at discovering zero-day exploits as well as some anti-phishing applications."

Submission + - Will blogs and wiki rebuilt the US intelligence?

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday December 04, 2006 @01:40PM

prostoalex writes: "Any James Bond fan would be eager to tell you how the technology used by the intelligence community far supercedes anything available to mere mortals. However, as The New York Times Magazine discovers, the three-letter agencies asre consistently relying on twentieth-century technologies, where the information is not shared between agencies, making it extremely difficult to connect the dots, such as CIA reports, NSA findings and local police reports. The result? Impossibility to predict the September 11th attacks, even though anybody with access to all the pieces of information could probably alert the higher-ups. A small group of enthusiasts in CIA, FBI and Department of Defense are promoting the use of intelligence blogs and wikis for sharing information among the agencies."

Submission + - Bjarne Stroustrup on C++ and why software sucks

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday November 28, 2006 @03:35PM

prostoalex writes: "MIT Technology Review interviews Bjarne Stroustrup on C++ and why modern software is so bad. Some memorable quotes on why software is bad: "People reward developers who deliver software that is cheap, buggy, and first. That's because people want fancy new gadgets now." On problems developers might have with C++: "Often, when people have trouble with C++, the real problem is that they don't have appropriate libraries — or that they can't find the libraries that are available." On some developers frequently complaining about C++: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses.""

Submission + - Message boards not liable for libelous content

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday November 21, 2006 @02:40PM

prostoalex writes: "USA Today is reporting on California court ruling that a Web site cannot be held liable for libelous or inflammatory content posted on the public message boards. The core of the case, according to the paper is this: two doctors, which "operated websites devoted to exposing health frauds", were accused of stalking a Canadian producer in an e-mail message by Tim Bolen. Then Ilena Rosenthal, "a woman's health advocate who runs various message boards and promotes alternative medicine", republished Tim Bolen's message, which resulted in a lawsuit from two doctors being directed at Ms. Rosenthal's alternative medicine message boards, not Tim Bolen, the original author of the letter with stalking accusations."

Submission + - Yahoo!'s VP calls for layoffs, priorities change

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Saturday November 18, 2006 @03:22PM

prostoalex writes: "Yahoo!'s Senior VP Brad Garlinghouse sent out a company-wide memo calling for layoffs of 15-20% of Yahoo! staff and reversal of priorities to concentrate on major issues facing the company. MarketWatch quotes Garlinghouse: "I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.""

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