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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Our ATM is broken, so you go to jail? (myway.com)

Submitted by Actually, I do RTFA
Actually, I do RTFA writes: A short while ago, slashdot featured an article about possible criminal prosecution for people who took advantage of faulty slot machine software. At the time, many people drew an analogy to an ATM that dispensed too much money. Well, apparently, that too may result in criminal charges. Interestingly, although they suspect that someone may have tampered with the ATM, they are considering charging anyone who withdrew money from the ATM.

This also provides an interesting rejoinder to 'if they can build a secure ATM, why cannot Diebold build a secure electronic voting machine.'
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Man burns opponent's house for calling him "ne (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "The Globe and Mail is reporting on a feud between two members of a picture-sharing site that motivated one of the opponents to drive down to Texas from Virginia, meanwhile taking photos of his trip and sharing them on aforementioned picture-sharing site, to burn the victim's house down: "Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a "Revenge of the Nerds" sign. Tavares obtained Anderson's real name and hometown from Anderson's Web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House. Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator at the AEGIS Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va., and started driving. Investigators say he told them he planned to point a shotgun at Anderson and shoot his computer.""
Software

Submission + - Lawyers shafted by windows on NY bar examination

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over 5000 aspiring lawyers who took the New York bar examination on laptops using windows, word and a software from a company called SecureExam ended up with lost essays and computer problems. The New York Board of Bar Examiners released a statement and the company responsible released a second statement. Possibilities at this point might entail a software company being held liable for licensed software under a EULA for the first time. Bar examinations in Georgia reportedly had problems as well. It seems the software created a single file with all the answers and either discarded the file rather than upload it or mixed parts of the essays together.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Running Mac OS X Apps on Linux 497

Journal by Anthony Baby

I have the urge to commit my 24" Core 2 Duo iMac to a single Linux operating system; thus giving up the goodness of my beloved Mac OS X. I am not a stranger to Linux, but I am a stranger to the concept of running Mac apps on Linux. On my PowerPC, I can use SheepShaver to run Classic apps. The Mac-on-Linux project can run OS X apps, but it requires a PowerPC, not x86.
Software

Submission + - First iPhone 3rd Party GUI App Compiles

Submitted by CmputrAce
CmputrAce writes: Well, it's here now. The #iphone-dev team has compiled the first third-party application for the iPhone. Of course, it is the standard "Hello, world." application, but it's native to the iPhone and uses the iPhone's GUI. This opens up the iPhone for development by anyone who can forge through the process of cracking the iPhone, installing the iPhone "Toolchain", writing an application, compiling, translating, and finally installing the application to the iPhone. With the pace of development at present, expect to see commercial "jailbreak" (mod-enabling) applications soon as well. You can already get high-quality applications (Mac) to theme the iPhone and add your own ring tones (Win) for the phone.
Patents

Submission + - O'Reilly's $1,000,000 Trademark Problem

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Tim O'Reilly repeatedly bashed the blogosphere last summer over the Web 2.0 trademark debacle. It was "shocking how much ignorance was on display — of the facts of the case, of trademark law, of the existence of trademarks," wrote Tim. Harsh words, especially since court records show that O'Reilly Media was also accused of trademark ignorance at the time, finding itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit after publishing a book entitled The Art of Project Management, a previously trademarked term, giving rise to a $1,000,000 legal claim that seems like it could have been avoided with a little of the fact checking espoused by 'I-do-believe-in-trademark' Tim. But all's well that ends well. Unlike Tom Raftery, O'Reilly was able to call on a New York Super Lawyer for help, and the lawsuit was quietly dismissed earlier this year, allowing the title of Scott Berkun's tome to remain unchanged, with no one the wiser. Tim would later issue his Blogger's Code of Conduct, which called for enforcing civility on trademark infringers."
Education

Submission + - Would you buy an OLPC, if you had to paid extra...

Submitted by VoxVeritas
VoxVeritas writes: How much would you pay for an OLPC laptop, if the extra money you paid would buy one for a worthy child? It seems to me that it would be a good way to get more machines into the hands of kids that need them by charging enough to sell them to geeks like us, so that for each OLPC sold would buy a machine for a child that needs one. Plus, imagine all the free software development that the program would get. The BBC has a pretty good article about the OLPC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6679431.stm _ How much would you pay $200, $250, $300 or $333(if it came with a Mr. Wizard Laptop bag)?
Editorial

Submission + - What's next after Social Networks? (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Howard
Anonymous Howard writes: Have you thought about what will come after social networking becomes old news? Digital Trends' Patricia has, and she thinks its a mashup of entertainment/media and social networking. It's a great article, concise article on how current companies seem to be focusing too much on Facebooks of the 'net instead of focusing on what's to come.
Privacy

Submission + - MPAA: Plagarism good, Piracy bad? 1

Submitted by BillGatesLoveChild
BillGatesLoveChild writes: The MPAA is fast to complain about their Intellectual Property being violated, but have no qualms about violating the Intellectual Property of others. The SMH reports another case of a Hollywood Studio plagarizing a film as their own. Adam Sandler's I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) is a tale of two firemen who pretend to be gay to get domestic partner benefits. Curiously Paul Hogan's Strange Bedfellows (2004) made three years earlier, is also a tale of two firemen who pretend to be gay to get domestic partner benefits. Universal Studios issued a statement claiming "the similarities are purely coincidental". The producers of "Strange Bedfellows" are amused but not convinced.

This isn't the first time, with similar accusations being made against Spielberg's Julie Newmar (1995) vs Priscilla (1994) and Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America" which the courts found was stolen from writer Art Buchwald. Add to that "Hollywood Accounting" fleecing artists (The Forest Gump movie didn't pay the author a cent in royalties), the Record Industry doing the same and the MPAA itself caught yet unrepentant for pirating movies. Before The Senate rushes off to do their bidding, shouldn't the MPAA and RIAA be ordered to clean up their own houses?
Books

Submission + - Harry Potter and a Goblin's Take on Copyright (scienceaddiction.com)

Submitted by
DevanJedi
DevanJedi writes: "Here's a passage from page 517 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : (Ron's brother Bill is warning Harry against trusting a goblin Griphook.) "You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs. [...] They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. [...] They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft." These goblins sound like our friendly neighborhood MPAA/RIAA lawyers!"
Announcements

Submission + - Pope: Creation vs. evolution clash an 'absurdity' (msn.com)

Submitted by
RobertinXinyang
RobertinXinyang writes: "The Pope has spoken out on both the issue of creation v. evolution and on the issue of the environment. Of course, many slashdot readers are such bigots that thtt will have to watch that their jerking knees do not hit their, foaming with ignorant hate, mouths when the pope is even mentioned; however, the facts are that a lot of people do listed to him. If the number of people who listen to him were taken as a sole concern, his comments are relevant.
"Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an "absurdity," saying that evolution can coexist with faith... This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such... Benedict also said the human race must listen to "the voice of the Earth" or risk destroying its very existence... We all see that today man can destroy the foundation of his existence, his Earth... We cannot simply do what we want with this Earth of ours, with what has been entrusted to us," said the pope."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - How to test wifi?

Submitted by grilled-cheese
grilled-cheese writes: I'm working for a growing university's IT department and we are growing more and more concerned with our wireless network. While we have managed to feel pretty good about our security solution, we don't have a good method for planning, analyzing, and troubleshooting our existing infrastructure as it grows. How would you go about troubleshooting your wifi problems, or surveying the current setup? Is there a published standard for wifi coverage or utilization? What would be some important factors in your wifi planning such as Signal-Noise-Ratio and Multipath?
Intel

Submission + - VIA to compete with AMD and Intel @ 1333Mhz bus (techreport.com)

Submitted by
athloi
athloi writes: "According to a report by DigiTimes, VIA plans to introduce a brand new processor architecture in the first quarter of 2008. The architecture will materialize in a processor core code-named Isaiah, which will feature 64-bit support, 65nm process technology, 1MB of L2 cache, a 1333MHz bus, as well as virtualization and ECC memory support. http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12933"
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla and Thunderbird to Split Up? (mozillazine.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Mitchell Baker's latest blog entry is an Email Call to Action discussing the future of Thunderbird and its role in Mozilla. Because of Mozilla's extreme focus on Firefox and the web, they feel Thunderbird isn't getting the attention it deserves, and thus that they "should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird." Three options are briefly explored: a Thunderbird foundation, a new Thunderbird subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation, and releasing Thunderbird as a community project like SeaMonkey. They're hoping to start a public discussion on Thunderbird's future, and are seeking additional ideas for how to handle this.
Yahoo!

Submission + - Yahoo building open source Map/Reduce and GFS (yahoo.net)

Submitted by
owenomalley
owenomalley writes: "Yahoo is developing Hadoop, which is an open source implementation of key pieces of Google's infrastructure (namely, Map/Reduce and GFS). Hadoop's framework allows you to write applications that reliably process very large datasets (100's of terabytes) efficiently on large (1000+) clusters of computers. Without a framework like Hadoop, writing applications on large clusters requires a lot of duplicated effort as each application deals with distribution, reliability, and reporting. Hadoop handles those parts for you and just requires you to write your application logic.

Hadoop is managed under Apache."

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