Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft

Submission + - MS exec: Pirating software? Choose Microsoft

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: ArsTechnica is running a story regarding Microsoft's view that should software piracy occur, Microsoft's desire is that the pirated software be theirs, to potentially, in the future, convert users from the "dark side" into legit users who obtain licenses...

"At the Morgan Stanley Technology conference last week in San Francisco, Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes commented on the benefits of software counterfeiting. 'If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else,' he said. 'We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software.'"

Obviously Microsoft prefers the market to use their software even if it's pirated rather than the alternative to occur: the use of free software which threatens their dominance in the software market.

COWS Ajax - Ajax Evolved 142

Posted by kdawson from the cows-2.0 dept.
nuttzy writes, "COWS Ajax takes over where Ajax leaves off. The web has gone through a great period of experimentation and there is now a dizzying array of frameworks, add-ons, howtos, and books. The common drawback these Ajax aids all fail to overcome is that, even with aids, apps take a long time to create and debug. Many times someone has already created a great tool and you'd really just rather use theirs instead of reinventing it (especially if it's a Google, Yahoo, or other trusted player). Wouldn't it be great to drop in a single line of code to gain a huge amount of functionality that frees you for something else? You can't do that with Ajax, but you can with COWS (Changeable Origin Web Services) Ajax. Now highly interactive third party services like SpellingCow are possible."

Subliminal Spam Using an Animated GIF 216

Posted by kdawson from the you-are-getting-sleeeeepy dept.
JohnGrahamCumming writes "Everyone's noticed the recent flood of image spam (including the SpamAssassin developers who are working on an OCR-extension to beat it), but take a look at this spam containing a subliminal message flashed every 17 seconds to try to entice you to buy the stock being pumped. Does this work? Warning: link shows the actual spam; don't blame me if you lose money on this stock!"

Interview With Linux Flash Player's Lead Engineer 222

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the because-everyone-loves-flash dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "Ryan Stewart of ZDNet has an interview with Mike Melanson, the lead engineer behind Adobe's upcoming Flash Player 9 for Linux. It covers what the plans are for the player, what kinds of things won't be in the Linux player that are in the other players, and ways to give Adobe input on the Linux player."

The Simpson's Movie Confirmed 334

Posted by Zonk from the not-a-joke dept.
bagsc writes "BBC News reports Twentieth Centruy Fox confirms The Simpsons are going to the movies! Should hit theatres in 2007." From the article: "A 25-second trailer for the film has been shown to US audiences at screenings of Ice Age: The Meltdown, promising to introduce 'the greatest hero in American history'. It then cut to Homer Simpson, wearing only his underwear, who admitted: 'I forgot what I was supposed to say.'"

Neutrino Mass Confirmed 318

Posted by Zonk from the they-do-exist dept.
biohack writes "BBC News reports that results from the MINOS experiment have confirmed that neutrinos have mass. To look for neutrino oscillations, scientists created muon neutrinos in a particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). After passing through a particle detector at Fermilab, a high intensity beam of neutrinos travelled to another particle detector 724km (450 miles) away in a disused mine in Soudan, US. The set up established that fewer particles were being detected at the Soudan site than had been sent from Fermilab, which confirmed that some neutrinos changed their flavor on the way - an effect called neutrino flavor oscillation, which requires them to have mass. 'To put it simply, if they are heavy, it means that there is a lot more mass in the Universe than we thought there was,' said Professor Jenny Thomas from University College London."

Wikipedia Covers April Fool's Hoaxes 129

Posted by Zonk from the check-out-what-you-missed dept.
vladd_rom writes "Wikipedia maintains an up to date list with April Fools hoaxes from this year. The list already includes hundreds of entries. Among the most popular, one could find Google Romance, a new Google.com project, Google Browser, as well as Yahoo!'s desire to buy all Web 2.0 companies on the web. However, it seems that this year hoaxes will be more interconnected: the wiki page already includes some websites that announced that they have been bought by Yahoo!, and linked to Yahoo!'s blog post from their pages."

OMG BARBIE LINUX LOL!!1!!!! 124

Posted by Zonk from the comes-with-ponyos dept.
tini1212 writes "LIKE OMG!! Have you guyz seen Barbie Linux!!??!?!?!? It's like totally cool! It's open source too!!! We can spend long nights patching the kernel, and look at pictures of that total hottie, Linus Torvalds!" From the site: "Making a bid for a piece of the emerging desktop Linux market, Mattel, Inc. announced the immediate availability of downloadable beta ISOs for BarbieOS 0.99, and said it hoped the final 1.0 retail version would be on store shelves in time for Christmas. The new OS was created by Mattel to power the upcoming revision of its popular B-Book line of laptops for girls between the ages of four and eleven. The original B-Book laptop, which ran a modified version of PalmOS, was a huge hit with consumers last holiday season, so much so that many stores had trouble keeping them in stock."

How Hot Would a Light Saber Really Be? 410

Posted by Cliff from the whizzz-vroom dept.
Datagod asks: "Has anyone ever calculated the temperature you would need to be able to slice through steel like it was thin air? How hot would a light saber really need to be? Also, I am assuming that at least some of the metal would be vaporized and the expanding gas would fling bits of molten metal at the saber wielder. Wouldn't your average Jedi be horribly scarred from all this."

Slashdot Top Deals

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

Close