Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Linux Company sale. Suits $44m cash, workers $0 (perens.com)

Submitted by michaelcole
michaelcole writes: "Ex employees of Monta Vista, the embedded Linux company, are telling me that they are being paid $0 for the sale of their company to Cavium Networks while USD$44 Million goes to the holders of three series of preferred stock. CEO Jim Ready and another executive are taking parachute payments and either retention or severance payments to the tune of 1 to 2 Million a piece in addition to anything they make from holdings in the preferred rounds.

I wasn't aware that Monta Vista went bankrupt, and a merger or purchase of a company isn't a liquidation, so I'm not at all clear how they can pay only the preferred stockholders. The employees need a good securities attorney." — Bruce Peren's blog

What's it all mean?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft admits Plurk code was stolen (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Microsoft's Juku service in China did indeed steal code from Plurk, a popular Twitter rival in Asia, Redmond has admitted. Plurk alleged this week that about 80 percent of Juku's code base was stolen from Plurk. Shortly after the accusations appeared on Plurk's blog, Microsoft suspended the Juku service and said it was investigating the matter."
Space

Submission + - SPAM: Dying star mimics our Sun’s death

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: In about 5 billion years, our Sun could have a nasty death. Scientists with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics this week released dramatic new pictures of a star, much like the Sun, about 550 light-years from Earth called Chi Cygni that is dying. According to the researchers, has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swallow every planet out to Mars in our solar system. The star has started to pulse dramatically beating like a giant heart, they stated.
[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Server Beach quickly rewrites SLA after outage (serverbeach.com)

Submitted by javajedi
javajedi writes: After experiencing a significant network outage last week, due to a botched DNS upgrade, Server Beach decided to cut their losses by quickly and quietly rewriting their network SLA to claim they were only responsible for a 5% refund every HOUR of down-time, instead of the previous 5% for every half-hour of down-time. They sent no notification of this change to their customers. You can find their previous SLA in Google's cache

Submission + - Is AT&T's Network Fail an Enterprise Disaster? 1

Submitted by Curt Franklin
Curt Franklin writes: It's no secret that businesses depend on the cellular data networks for critical applications. Last week's AT&T failure in San Francisco has raised the question of application ruggedness when it comes to mobile networks. Is there a good way (aside from avoiding AT&T — which might not solve the problem, anyway) to make sure your application can keep going? I give a couple of my ideas at http://www.itworld.com/mobile-amp-wireless/89303/cellular-network-outage-raises-carrier-questions but I'd love to know the options I haven't considered. What is there for a rational organization to do?

Submission + - Black Holes No More? (newscientist.com)

Submitted by kendbluze
kendbluze writes: 'Three cosmic enigmas, one audacious answer' — An intriguing look at an alternative physics model of black holes from NewScientist...

Submission + - Freenode under DDoS attack (freenode.net)

Submitted by Craig Maloney
Craig Maloney writes: According to freenode's announcement, "We are currently experiencing heavy DDoS against several locations at which we've got servers hosted. The attack is ongoing and cause a lot of disruption, both to users of the network and unfortunately to projects/companies/individuals whos infrastructure is hosted at the same locations as us. Our sponsors and our sponsors' upstreams are working hard to try curb the attacks as best they can".

Comment Drupal (Score 4, Informative) 364

by michaelcole (#29290615) Attached to: Game Over For Sony and Open Source?
This headline is dramatic and uninformed. Linux isn't the only open source project out there.

Sony has made huge contributions to the Drupal CMS (Website Content Management System).

They have hired a full-time programmer who is 100% dedicated to open source (CCK/Views modules).
They have sponsored major improvements to Drupal - http://drupal.org/node/383954

Ease up on the rhetoric, before you sour other open-source projects.

Maybe you want to couple your perceived right to hack the PS3 with open source? That's dangerous. Make an open-sourced PS3 and no problem. Mike
Google

Submission + - Google Voice invites going out! (google.com)

Submitted by
michaelcole
michaelcole writes: "Soon I'll have my google os, with my google browser, that checks my google email, and while listening to my google voicemail, from my google phone number, on my google phone.

Sounds Google-tastic!

(P.S. I'm totally jazzed about this, thanks Google team)

(P.P.S. To all my creditors who call me non-stop, prepare to meet the bit bucket)

Invite Email

You've been invited to Google Voice

You are invited to open a free Google Voice account. To accept this invitation and create your account, visit https://www.google.com/voice/inv/blahblahblah

If you haven't already heard about it, Google Voice is a service that makes using your current phones much better!

Here's what it offers:

        * A personal phone number that rings all of your existing phones when people call
        * All of your voicemail in one inbox with unlimited online storage and free voicemail transcripts sent to your phone and email
        * Low-priced international calling to over 200 countries and free SMS
        * Other powerful features like the first phone spam filter to protect you from unwanted callers, the ability to ListenInTM on your voicemail messages while they are being left, conference calling and more

To learn more about Google Voice before registering, visit: http://www.google.com/voice/about

Please note that Google Voice is only available for sign up in the US.

We hope you enjoy Google Voice,

The Google Voice Team"

Comment Blame it on the rain! Conversion tools suck. (Score 2, Interesting) 394

I just migrated from Gmail to Google Apps, and it sucked. There are no decent migration tools out there. You think that Google could migrate between it's own two platforms. I couldn't move my email rules (filters) automatically and have about 80. Anyways, Outlook-Exchange-Sharepoint is just a better product. I use Google cause it's free. Deal with it. Mike

Comment Copyright or not, that's freakin wire fraud! (Score 1) 339

by michaelcole (#28516223) Attached to: Of Catty Rants and Copyrights

If the story is true, the principle committed wire fraud when they misrepresented themselves as the student to the newspaper. That's a felony. Like jail-time style!

There may be civil damages that can be attributed to that fraud, but I aint no lawyer.

Yes, the rant was publicly available on the myspace page, but it wasn't presented in the context of a "letter to the editor". The principle :

  • 1) fraudulently represented themselves as the author
  • 2) through that fraud, changed the context of the writing from "web page" to "letter to the editor"
  • 3) this change of context had repercussions that damaged the student and their family.

Had the principle contacted the newspaper as the principle and asked that the students letter be publishes, what would the newspaper have done?

------ If it's a "legal code", how come it doesn't compile?

Comment Volunteering! (Score 1) 1354

by michaelcole (#28417229) Attached to: Where Does a Geek Find a Social Life?
Volunteering: Interesting people who have their lives together enough to help other people. It's worth meeting people whose view of the world expands beyond their personal envelope. You'll meet lots of interesting interested people. And they will be *very* excited to have your help. You'll have alot to bring to the table if you want to be techy. If you don't want to be techy, consider not mentioning it. Set clear boundaries and be honest about what you have time for. To me, way more interesting than getting drunk with people in a bar. Although, we do that too :-)
Security

Submission + - Obama Helicopter Security Breached by File Sharing 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "A company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Barack Obama's helicopter. "We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president's helicopter," says Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, a security company that specializes in peer-to-peer technology. Tiversa was able to track the files, discovered at an IP address in Tehran, Iran, back to its original source. "What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One," says Boback adding that someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, not realizing the potential problems. "I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went." Iran is not the only country that appears to be accessing this type of information through file-sharing programs. "We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence.""

Slashdot Top Deals

2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League

Close