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Comment Re:No need (Score 1) 393

by fishdan (#25660805) Attached to: Bill Joy For New National CTO Post?
I hear you brother in small government, but to have someone with that much common sense and technology experience in cabinet meetings makes every decision that much better. I guarantee you there are plenty of areas of government that can be optimized with better tech. I go to 10 meetings a week (because my life sucks) where I don't think I need to be there, but I end up making suggestions about ways to use technology that make this project or that project MUCH better. Bill Joy will do the same. He won't make technology decisions, he'll be advising others how they can use technology they may not be aware of.
Programming

Submission + - Can Palm Regain Its Developer Edge? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Palm CEO Ed Colligan recently trumped up the upcoming Palm OS, Nova, as a next-generation, Web-based marvel, but the real reason Nova will likely be irrelevant before it hits the ground is that Palm has "lost focus on one of the most important contributors to its early success: the independent developer community," Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes. Colligan and company have offered little insight into its Linux-based Nova. Not a peep from the Palm developer forum, either. "Meanwhile, Apple and Google are basing their systems around existing, well-understood technologies, including WebKit and the new SquirrelFish JavaScript engine. A common Web platform that spans the desktop and handheld devices is beginning to emerge — where is Palm?""
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - EA says no Madden 09 on PC (fishdan.com)

Submitted by
fishdan
fishdan writes: "Wired is reporting that EA will not release Madden '09 to PC. EA has an exclusive license with the NFL to be the sole producer of video games through 2009. Although there are other "football" games out there such as Midway's Blitz: The League, Madden is still VERY popular. As a current online PC player, at any give time there are 60 people online looking to play PC games, and at peak times well over 300.

You have to wonder what the NFL thinks about this. Will they open up bidding in 2010? And what about the gamers? What is the real future of games on the PC? Is this going to motivate anyone to buy a console? Or will MSFT start selling a XBox360 emulator, and make this all moot."
Security

AT&T Invents Surveillance Programming Language 119

Posted by Zonk from the code-breathing-on-the-other-end-of-your-phone dept.
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has long been associated with advances in the programming arts as well as communications. They've recently brought those disciplines together to create a powerful datamining language called Hancock. Hancock is a C variant developed to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes. 'The manual for the language includes a Hello World variant that shows you how to write a program that will parse logs of IP addresses and record them into permanent hashes. The program for parsing millions of records as they flow into permanent data farms sounds oddly close to the data mining the NSA performed after 9/11 to find targets for its warrantless spying on American citizens calls and emails."
Businesses

Submission + - I am the bad boss!! what now?!?

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: I'm an IT manager since almost 2 years now and out of no-where (maybe arrogance), I decided to do a 360 feedback (using one of those websites). Employees were able to answer anonymously and, now I'm sure, didn't hold on anything on their mind. Turned out I'm not very good; pretty much very bad. As suggested, I'm one of those managers who got promoted due to "technical prowess" in my previous position. And in all honesty, although I like the job (well, before I did...), I didn't sign up for this (people who hates you and goes bad mouthing about you — not that they're not right, just that I don't want to be known like that). What should I do now? You guys saw anyone in that same position (maybe you?) and actually turned it over and became a good boss?
Spam

Submission + - How do you handle Spambot Attacks?

Submitted by
Amazing Quantum Man
Amazing Quantum Man writes: "I'm a member of a site devoted to nitpicking tv shows and movies (Site link not posted as it is currently under spambot attack, and doesn't need a slashdotting to go along with it). It has always had an open posting policy — no registration required, you ould use any name you wanted, etc...

This policy (instituted way back in 1998) led to some quite fun, freewheeling threads on various boards.

Recently, we have come under spambot attack, with spambots posting links to gambling and porn sites on every single discussion board on the site. The admins have been trying to block IPs, but it's useless against a botnet.

As a defense, it looks like the site is going to require registration, and disable anonymous posting. Many regulars, while they understand the need, are concerned that the freewheeling character of the site will be lost.

Let me continue by saying that I'm not a site admin, merely a member there. Also, if it helps, the site in question is running Discus.

Has anyone here been in a similar situation? How did you handle it? What did it do to the "culture" of your site?"
Businesses

Submission + - Chris Anderson Interview

Submitted by
endychavez
endychavez writes: "This interview with Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail, applies the economic transformation described in the book's title to a wide swath of industries, far beyond books and CDs. Everything from beer to automobiles are covered in this piece.

From Chris Anderson: "When Anheuser Busch created a division called Long Tail Libations to do microbrews, I realized that people were finding resonance in very traditional industries I had not anticipated. I've spoken to companies involved in heavy machinery, shoes, coffee, agricultural goods, consumer packaged goods. The long-tail concept makes perfect sense to them, so I've been on a serious learning curve about subjects like agricultural machinery, just so I can map the phenomenon to their businesses.""

Domain Resale Market Is Phisher Heaven 120

Posted by CmdrTaco from the big-shock-here dept.
Krishna Dagli writes "Finish security firm F-Secure has discovered that alongside the sale of such innocuous domains as filmlist.com comes the resale of domains that obviously belong to banks or other financial institutions. Sedo.com, for example, is reselling domains like chasebank-online.com, citi-bank.com and bankofameriuca.com. 'Why would anybody want to buy these domains unless they are the bank themselves — or a phishing scammer?,' F-Secure asks."
Businesses

Submission + - Handango reams a small developer - take 2

Submitted by
Stugots
Stugots writes: "/. had the chance to lead on this story, but you muffed it. Maybe now you'll post something about it?

Because it's now being carried on The Register. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/31/handango_k icks_omnisoft/.

Handango has ruthlessly (literally) terminated an independent vendor's account with them, and reneged on a marketing award. No reason given, except for some fatuous "we have private information we cannot divulge" reasons that sound a lot like George W. Bush is running Handango."

Bot Nets Behind Recent Spam Surge 389

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-hates-it-so-much dept.
gsslay writes "Everyone must have noticed a surge in spam recently, particularly for stock pump 'n' dump scams. The Register reports that anti-spam companies have seen a 30% increase in the last two months and, more worryingly, more of this spam is getting through to mailboxes due to the spammers' change in tactics. Rather than use unsecured mail relays spammers are using bot nets, making spam harder to identify and eliminate. Bounced spam is also on the up, and some experts reckon it's past time to start worrying. "
Games

Submission + - HP Gears Up for Gaming

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "HP has acquired VoodooPC, a high-end gaming PC provider who's former co-owner will now be the chief technologist of HP's newly formed gaming PC division. Back in May, we saw Dell acquire Alienware, are gaming machines important options to consumers or is it just plain profitable? Who will we see enter the gaming market next? Apple?"

OpenBSD 4.0 Released 201

Posted by kdawson from the humppa-negala dept.
Undeadly Halloween writes, "On October 18th, OpenBSD celebrated its 11th birthday and ten years of punctual biannual releases. Now it's time for OpenBSD 4.0, which includes tons of new drivers for wireless, network, and storage chips. Consider helping the project by buying the new goodies (CD set, t-shirt, poster, Audio CD). And discover what's new and what battles developers must face daily to support new hardware in the traditional interview featuring nearly 20 developers."

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