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Comment Re:Not surprising... (Score 1) 195

by Firehawke (#26190669) Attached to: Abit To Close Its Doors Forever On Dec. 31, 2008

Exact opposite here. I've had no less than EIGHT of one Gigabyte board model die across four people-- we'd all bought the boards at the same time, online purchase from different places. I wouldn't touch a Gigabyte board if you PAID me to use one now.

  MSI, on the other hand, was always rock solid. It took UPS literally shredding the case, board, and components to take that machine down. I've had four MSI boards, and none failed under normal operating circumstances. UPS destroyed the one, the others were just outgrown.

Comment Re:So... (Score 1) 143

by Firehawke (#25263005) Attached to: Amazon Kindle 2 Leaked, Sony Reader To Get Touch Screen

Admittedly, it's homebrew and requires a modified firmware, but that hasn't been a real problem in roughly two years. The custom firmware guys are on the ball, and have CFW up to date with the official firmware within a very short time.

Bookr also supports cutting CPU speed down to minimum, which prolongs the battery life quite a bit compared to the bloated HTML renderer on the PSP.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Attacks IBM Over ODF

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has severely criticised IBM, saying Big Blue is pushing the OpenDocument Format standard to the detriment of Microsoft's Open XML standard. Darren Strange, senior product manager for Microsoft Office 2007, said: "The difference in view is that [IBM] are espousing 'one standard fits all', which is hard for us. IBM seems keen for ODF to be the only standard for everyone. The issue is about choice — there's room in the world for more than one open standard. And it's all XML — technically speaking, we speak the same language."
Software

Submission + - MS removes features from MS Virtualization Tools

Submitted by
untouchableForce
untouchableForce writes: "Microsoft has dropped three features of it's virtualization tools that are to ship with the next version of Windows Server. The three features that have been dropped are:
  • Live Migration
  • Hardware Hot Swap Compatibility
  • Ability to use more than 16-CPU Cores
The cutting of these features comes after the beta release of this product was delayed last month but claimed to still be on schedule. One has to wonder if they are still on schedule if they are cutting features. Considering the massive delay's suffered by windows vista, and it's slow adoption rate among corporation could this be an opportunity for alternative OSes to pick up additional market share?"
Media

Submission + - Lawsuit Invokes DMCA to Force DRM Adoption

Submitted by TechnicolourSquirrel
TechnicolourSquirrel writes: Forbes.com informs us that Media Rights Technologies is suing Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real Networks for not using its DRM technology and therefore 'failing to include measures to control access to copyrighted material,' alleging that their refusal to use MRT's X1 Recording Control technology constitutes a 'circumvention' of a copyright protection system, which is of course illegal under the Digital Millenium Copryight Act. I would say more, but without controlling access to this paragraph with MRT's products, I fear I have already risked too much...

Feed Google sets legal attack dogs on Dutch cyberquatter (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
He's off the Russia

Google UK says it will sue a Dutch cyberquatter who has used the name Google cunningly in several domains, including Googledatingsite.nl, Googleonlineshop.com, Googlecommunity.nl and Googlestore.nl. Marcel van der Werf ran these sites from the UK.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - La Fonera - A Good Thing?

Submitted by
Zatoichi007
Zatoichi007 writes: "OK..so I was surprised to find out that I was one of the 10,000(?) people who got the free La Fonera router when it showed up on my door step today. I got it up and running in 10 minutes. It works great, provides the public unencrypted La Fonera network AND a private WPA secured network for me and the family to use. I am 99.9% sure that I am the only person within a mile of my suburban home to have one. My question is: Is this a great thing for me? Should I FreeCycle the old (3+ years)Network Everywhere B-only router that has served me well? Or will La Fonera die and take my wireless with them?"
X

Submission + - Council of the EU says: We cannot support Linux

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Council of the EU has a streaming service to watch the meetings. But the streaming service can be only be used by Mac or MS Windows user. This is because they use wmv for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this:



"The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux"

An online petition has been set created to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its serve in a way that its platform independent.
Announcements

Submission + - Saddam hanged at dawn

Submitted by
thecybernator
thecybernator writes: "BAGHDAD, Dec 30 (Reuters) — Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity at dawn on Saturday, a dramatic, violent end for a leader who ruled Iraq by fear for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S. invasion four years ago. "It was very quick. He died right away," one of the official Iraqi witnesses told Reuters, saying the ousted president's face was uncovered, he appeared calm and said a brief prayer as Iraqi guards walked him to the gallows and put the noose round him. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30803181 .htm"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Man Uses Wings and Engines to Fly Like a Bird

Submitted by
Adam9
Adam9 writes: "Yves Rossy has built a contraption allowing him to fly through the air [Coral Cache] similar to a bird. From the article: 'Back in 2003 Rossy, now a commercial airliner captain, began his Flying Man project, when he strapped a pair of stubby wings to his back and leapt out of a plane, swooping eight miles in freefall for the loss of just 1000ft in altitude. Strapping on the contraption, which is made of various metals, fibreglass, Kevlar and carbon fibre, Rossy climbs into the small aircraft which is to launch him into his flight. At an altitude of some 7750ft, he leaps out, just like a skydiver. But unlike a skydiver, he does not plummet to the Alps below. There is just enough lift generated by the 10ft aerofoil strapped to his back to negate the effects of gravity. At first, after the wings are unfolded electrically, he becomes a glider then, when the four kerosene-powered engines are turned on, he becomes a jetplane.'"
Announcements

Submission + - Fedora Legacy shutting down

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Jesse Keating and David Eisenstein of the Legacy Team sent out a notice to the fedora-legacy-announce mailing list stating that Fedora Legacy is shutting down.

"In case any of you are not aware, the Fedora Legacy project is in the process of shutting down.

The current model for supporting maintenance distributions is being re-examined. In the meantime, we are unable to extend support to older Fedora Core releases as we had planned. As of now, Fedora Core 4 and earlier distributions are no longer being maintained.

Discussions last night on the #Fedora-Legacy channel have brought to light the fact that certain Fedora Legacy properties (servers) may be going away soon, such as the repository at http://download.fedoralegacy.org/ and the build server. Legacy folks need to let us know what they want to be done with the content in the repository mirrors. If you don't speak up, we may find ourselves in a place where 'yum update' commands will fail in the near future for the Red Hat and Fedora Core releases that Legacy has supported in the past.

If there are any issues you need to discuss regarding these events, you are welcome to discuss them on our IRC channel (channel #Fedora-Legacy on the freenode IRC network http://freenode.net/), or on the Fedora Legacy discussion list: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-leg acy-list

Sincerely,
  Jesse Keating
          and
  David Eisenstein
"
Software

Keeping Passwords Embedded In Code Secure? 130

Posted by Cliff from the execute-only dept.
JPyObjC Dude asks: "When designing any system that requires automated privileged access to databases or services, developers often rely on hard coding (embedding) passwords within the source code. This is obviously a bad practice as the password is then made available to anybody who has access to the source code (eg. software source control). Putting the passwords in configuration files is another practice, but it is still quite insecure as cracking hashed passwords from a text file is a trivial exercise. What do you do to manage your application passwords so that your system can run completely automated and yet make it difficult for hackers to get their hands on this precious information?"
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - IRS eyeing your hard-earned virtual gold

Submitted by nox
nox writes: The Weekly Standard has an article on the IRS looking to tax goods in MMOs. From the article: Miller's committee began examining virtual gaming economies last October and is expected to issue a report early in 2007. And while Miller said that the committee wouldn't "[seek] to impose a new tax on virtual economies," he said that the report would clarify "what is a taxable event in a virtual world." "Congressional and IRS interest in this issue," he explained, "is simply a matter of time." So gamers take note. The day may be approaching when, after killing an orc and slaying a dragon, you will get your 1,000 gold pieces — and a 1099 form. Read the article at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/013/115eckhl.asp

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