Vanigard_Man - Slashdot User

Submission + - Snakes On A Plane - It's worth a try.

Submitted by Yoooder on Thursday May 24, 2007 @12:40PM

Yoooder writes: CNN Reports: CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Customs officers at Cairo's airport have detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said. The officers were stunned when a passenger, identified as Yahia Rahim Tulba, told them his carryon bag contained live snakes after he was asked to open it. Tulba opened his bag to show the snakes to the police and asked the officers, who held a safe distance, not to come close. Among the various snakes, hidden in small cloth sacks, were two poisonous cobras, authorities said... Full Story

Submission + - Jack Thompson threatens Bill Gates and MS

Submitted by

smitty_srs

on Wednesday May 23, 2007 @11:36AM

smitty_srs writes: "Looks like old Jackie hasn't learned his lesson yet. Now he's threatening Bill Gates over Halo 3. [gamealmimghty.com]
From the letter: 'Here's the deal, Mr. Gates: Either Microsoft undertakes dramatic, real steps, through its marketing, wholesale, and retail operations to assure that Halo 3 is not sold, via the Internet and in stores, directly to anyone under 17, or I shall proceed to make sure that Microsoft is held to that standard by appropriate legal means. I have done that before successfully as to Best Buy, and I shall do so again as to Microsoft and all retailers of Halo 3.'
So, the question is: Why go after Microsoft and not retailers as he's done 'successfully' before?"

Submission + - Ubuntu founder says Microsoft is our pal

Submitted by

Golygydd Max

on Wednesday May 23, 2007 @11:27AM

Golygydd Max writes: "Who says that Microsoft and open source developers are enemies? It's not Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. He says that Microsoft is not the patent threat Linux and open source developers should be worried about, and that the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years."

Submission + - Cheap Solar Power

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml "Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity"

IT Departments Fear Growing Expertise of Users 499

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:42PM from the illusion-of-control dept.

flatfilsoc recommends a long article in CIO magazine on users who know too much and the IT leaders who fear them. Dubbing the universe of consumer technology the "shadow IT department," the article highlights the extent to which the boundary between users' workplace and home have broken down. It notes the increasing clash — familiar to anyone who works in a company with an IT department — between users' home-grown productivity boosters and IT's mandate to protect corporate data. The inherent tendency of the IT department to want to crack down and control technology that it doesn't supply should be resisted at all costs, according to CIO. The article outlines strategies for co-existence. It just might persuade some desperate CIO somewhere not to embark on a career-limiting path of decreeing against gmail and IM.

Submission + - More Privacy Tech - digital credentials & ecas

Submitted by John Q Random on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:41PM

John Q Random writes: From the cypherpunks-write-code / privacy-through-advanced-crypto department, Stefan Brands company credentica.com announced their U-Prove library and SDK implementing ID tokens (also known as digital credentials or private credentials).

(Private Credentials are a cool PKI replacement and anonymous ecash tech that allows you to prove certified attributes like age, credit rating, group membership, etc without revealing who you are; to allow you to have a digital life without the digital dossier effect inherent in central databases like google's).

Following that Adam Back announced — credlib, an open source implementation of Brands credentials (and the older more basic Chaum certificates).

Relates to recent news from IBM's Zurich labs on their identity-mixer project (reported on slashdot here) that is based on the less efficient Jan Camenisch and Anna Lysyanskaya credentials.

Submission + - Now track in-depth feed usage with RapidFeeds

Submitted by

Akram Quraishi

on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:18PM

Akram Quraishi writes: "RapidFeeds.com is a free online service that provides RSS feed creation & management solutions to publishers and webmasters. It also provides feed distribution and re-syndication services for free. This Advanced Feed Statistics update brings in-depth feed distribution & performance tracking for RSS feeds. Using this new feature publishers can track feeds for valuable distribution information."

Submission + - Surgical success linked to skill at video games

Submitted by mjh on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:16PM

mjh writes: According to The Guardian, "A study has found a direct link between skill at video gaming and skill at keyhole, or laparoscopic, surgery. Young surgeons who spent at least three hours a week playing video games in the past made 37% fewer errors, were 27% faster, and scored 42% better overall than surgeons who had never played a video game at all." The sample size they quote seems rather small, but it suggests that Steven Johnson might be right.

Submission + - IE7 No longer a critical update?

Submitted by Gene K on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @04:12PM

Gene K writes: While running a handful of newly-installed machines by Windows Update today, I noticed that the Internet Explorer 7 'critical update' is no longer listed. Is this simply an oversight or has Microsoft finally buckled in the face of incompatibility?

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