grudgelord - Slashdot User

Submission + - A Freakonomic analysis of identity theft

Submitted by mlimber on Monday March 12, 2007 @11:40AM

mlimber writes: In a recent article, the Freakonomics guys analyze who pays for identity theft: 'So if the banks, the consumer and the police aren't sufficiently incentivized to stop identity theft, who is? ... The merchant.... "If you're a merchant," Peisner says, "you have all the liability."'

Submission + - HD-DVD and Blu-Ray keys continue falling

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:18AM

An anonymous reader writes: arnezami at Doom9 has released a program that appears to reveal most of the keys needed to decrypt both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Along with other users determined to safely backup and fairly use the high-definition content they purchase, arnezami and friends have greatly advanced the work begun by muslix64 only three months ago.

Submission + - NZ objects to Microsoft Open XML standard

Submitted by kumachan on Sunday March 11, 2007 @04:16PM

kumachan writes: According to a Standards New Zealand spokesperson, the objection is that "the ISO [The International Organisation for Standardisation] has already developed a standard for XML open format [that is, Open Document] and the committee does not believe that there is a need for another standard, and that Microsoft's [standard] is in conflict with the existing one." http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/82AF97DEB BAFD057CC2572990006C14C

No Passport For Britons Refusing Mass Surveillance 790

Posted by kdawson on Saturday March 10, 2007 @05:43PM from the and-you-thought-Sweden-was-bad dept.

UpnAtom writes "People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed, and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to — will be denied passports from March 26th. The Blair government has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons. Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe — more so even than Sweden. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British government to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."

Submission + - Canadian Music Industry Says Its Never Sued Anyone

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10, 2007 @05:39PM

An anonymous reader writes: Lies from the recording industry probably doesn't count as news, but this whopper from the Canadian Recording Industry Association is striking for how deluded the industry has become. More than two years after it filed suit against 29 alleged file sharers, CRIA President Graham Henderson told an industry conference that "we've never sued anyone."

Can Outing an Anonymous Blogger be Justified? 197

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday March 10, 2007 @11:57AM from the scruples-be-damned dept.

netbuzz writes "Absolutely, depending on the circumstances, yet a Florida newspaper's attempt to unmask 'a political group hiding behind the name of a fictitious person' has sparked outrage in some circles. Part of the reason for that outrage is that the paper posted to its Web site a surveillance video of the blogger visiting its advertising department, a tactic the editor says he now regrets. What's really at issue here is the right to publish anonymously vs. the right to remain anonymous. The former exists, the latter does not."

Submission + - Private database of student info open to Google

Submitted by deeceent on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @12:07PM

deeceent writes: A community college student who was Googling himself last month found some disconcerting information when he typed his name into the popular Internet search engine: a database file from his college popped up that included his name, birth date and Social Security number. The file also contained data on about 2,000 other students.

"We didn't think the information was open to Google," said Susie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Los Rios schools. "It was a shock to learn they were able to do it."

Submission + - RIAA going after Internet Radio

Submitted by scopius on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:26AM

scopius writes: As reported this morning in The Wall Street Journal, the RIAA is now pushing Congress to hike royalty rates for Internet Radio. Tim Westergreen, co-founder of Pandora.com, claims that this action will shut down Pandora, along with many other internet radio stations. The rates set by the board are .08 cents per song per listener, and this rate is in addition to royalties already paid to the songwriters of the works. Up until this point, these stations had been paying a flat fee, but these new rates will be much larger than revenues for most stations. One interesting point is that normal radio doesn't have to pay anything like this rate, they only pay the songwriters royalties, according to the article.

Submission + - What's it like for a developer to go into sales?

Submitted by on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:58AM

An anonymous reader writes: I've worked for a single, very large technology company since graduating from college in '89. My degree is in Computer Science, and I wrote everything from embedded machine code for big iron to applications with Smalltalk. I'm still in development, but since'99 my programming tasks have been replaced by project management, some customer-facing work (technical-ish presentations, demonstrations, training, etc), helping our marketing people position my team's work, and other things that programmers generally don't like to do.

I find that I enjoy the broad, technical perspective that comes from working in the field, and I'm thinking about moving out of development and into technical sales. Moreover, I've interviewed several techies in my company who are now in sales and all tell them they love it. Several have reported that a techie can make more money in sales. But I have several reservations: I am an introvert and a full day of face-time can really sap my energy, many sales people I've worked with are "sharks" (which I simply cannot be), and I don't like the idea of putting part of my salary at-risk.

Are you a former developer who went into sales? If so, what were your experiences like from a professional and personal perspective? What advise would you give to a developer considering a new career in sales?

Submission + - Paul Allen Flips!

Submitted by

WED Fan

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:58AM

WED Fan writes: "Paul Allen has a new hardware venture, smaller than a laptop, larger than a blackberry. According to the Seattle P-I, the vision is to replace the laptop for most everyday use, such as office applications, email, and web surfing.

"Really, FlipStart gives you everything that your laptop does," said Robin Budd, senior director with FlipStart Labs, a Seattle-based subsidiary of Allen's Vulcan Inc. "We're not promoting the idea that you would do CAD design on it, but for Office applications and most of what people do with their laptops, it's great."

But at a $2000 price tag, this could be a little bit out of the range of many users. The product will launch on the FlipStart in the not to distant future."

AMD Claims Intel Inadvertently Destroyed Evidence in Antitrust Case 90

Posted by Hemos on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:56AM from the ah-the-smell-of-open-court-in-the-morning dept.

Marcus Yam writes "In an unpublished statement to the U.S. District Court of Delaware, AMD alleges Intel allowed the destruction of evidence in pending antitrust litigation. According to the opening letter of the AMD statement, 'Through what appears to be a combination of gross communication failures, an ill-conceived plan of document retention and lackluster oversight by outside counsel, Intel has apparently allowed evidence to be destroyed.'"

Submission + - What gamer-stereotype do you want to be?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:54AM

An anonymous reader writes: GamersWithJobs suggest that gamers aren't being given enough attention or being marketed to as aggresively as we should be, and that we should be asking for game companies to put is in smaller and smaller boxes:

As gamers — all of us under the big tent — we should embrace this. We should demand it. The continued atomization of our subculture is a sign that we have arrived, and that more of us arrive every day onto an Ellis Island of geekdom.
The writer's solution is for gamers to somehow self-identify, so that we can be more accurately targeted by game companies. So, what kind of gamer are you?

Submission + - Vista upgrades still causing pain

Submitted by

s31523

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:35AM

s31523 writes: "Vista has been out for some time now, and it has many people asking "Should I upgrade?" BBC business editor Tim Weber details his experience as the "Vista Trap". The consensus seems to be, as the article says, "Wait for half a year until the driver issues are settled and then buy a new PC". I find it somewhat ironic that the numerous issues that people have with Vista, driver problems, software compatibility, lack of support, etc. are all akin to the problems people mention when getting a Linux Distro working right."

Submission + - Chinese Astronaut Could Be On The Moon In 15 Years

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:28AM

An anonymous reader writes: Xinhua and Reuters are reporting that China will have the technical capability to put astronauts on the moon within 15 years. According to Huang Chunping, chief launch vehicle designer, a Chinese lunar landing will be achievable in that time frame if funding is available and preliminary projects go well. Huang says that China's current generation of Long March rockets are 'slightly' better than Europe's Ariane rockets, but trail the United States and Russia. China achieved its first human space flight in 2003. The United States had its first human space flight in 1961, and put the first astronauts on the moon about 8 years later, in 1969. The US is planning to return to the moon by 2020, 13 years from now.

Red Hat Readies RHEL 5 for March 14 Launch 129

Posted by Hemos on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:20AM from the coming-out dept.

Rob writes "The wait is almost over. It may have taken two weeks longer than Red Hat would have liked, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the updated version of the company's commercial Linux platform, will be launched along with a bevy of new products and services on March 14. The delivery of RHEL 5, the fourth major commercial server release for Red Hat, will better position its Linux against Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as well as Windows, Unix, and proprietary platforms. RHEL 5 has been cooking for more than two years and includes changes to the Linux kernel. In addition to the support for the Xen hypervisor, RHEL 5 also has an integrated version of Red Hat Cluster Suite, the company's high availability clustering software, as well as support for iSCSI disk arrays, InfiniBand with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), and the SystemTap kernel probing tool."

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