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The Almighty Buck

GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers 222

Posted by timothy from the strong-accusations-so-consider-the-source dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A GoDaddy Vice President has been caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. The employee Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal? Said a representative for a competitor, 'Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.' This comes hot on the heels of news that despite earlier promises to ICANN to end their 60-Day ban on transfers, GoDaddy quietly circumvented it by forcing customers to agree to the ban anyway. ICANN doesn't appear to be investigating or asking follow-up questions about this. What can be done to force ICANN to police the registrars for which it is responsible?"
Businesses

Submission + - An Ebay Sale is a Sale

Submitted by syousef
syousef writes: An Ebay Sale is a Sale says an Australian New South Wales State Judge in a case where a man tried to reneg on the Ebay sale of a 1946 World War II Wirraway aircraft. The seller tried to reneg because he'd received an offer $100,000 greater than the Ebay sale price elsewhere. The buyer who had bid the reserve price of $150,000 at the last minute took him to court. "It follows that, in my view, a binding contract was formed between the plaintiff and the defendent and that it should be specifically enforced," Justice Rein said in his decision. All dollar figures are in AUD.
Slashdot.org

Submission + - A paper analyzing Slashdot's users and comments (www.itu.dk)

Submitted by
pumba_lt
pumba_lt writes: "This study has implemented a HTTP/HTML-based Slashdot comment crawler that automatically downloads the articles, parses the comments, and stores them. A dataset consisting of 10 articles and almost 4000 comments was collected using it.
After that, Slashdot was analyzed as a social network using PageRank and HITS algorithms as metrics and the most authoritative and trustworthy users were discovered."
Portables

Submission + - The $200 Laptop - Asus - eee PC (gadgettastic.com)

Submitted by
fatgadget
fatgadget writes: "Asus has announced the eee PC. 'eee' stands for 'Easy to learn, work, play'; 'Excellent internet experience' and 'Excellent mobile computing experience'. It is reported to have a battery life of 3 hours, and the base model will go one sale for about $200 (about £100) with the top model costing $500 (about £250), if the prices are right, this will be serious competition, for UMPC's and Palm's new Foleo. The eee features a 7 display and weighs just 0.8kg, with an Intel Mobile CPU, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Intel UMA graphics, and up to a 16GB Flash drive. It also features a webcam and intergrated speakers. For that price, its a bargain. http://www.gadgettastic.com/"
Television

Submission + - Fanfic Writers Say No Way

Submitted by
bill jackson
bill jackson writes: "Multichannel News Magazine's very best blogger — Mary McNamara — says that a couple of former Yahoo execs are trying to create the next MySpace by aggregating fanfiction on a website called FanLib. But the fanfic writers recognized that exploitation was written all over the idea and they've refused to participate. Very interesting, well researched article written by McNamara. She even calls into question the FanLib patent application. http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330/post/1 30010013.html"
Enlightenment

Submission + - /. member tries to appear human

Submitted by
gwjenkins
gwjenkins writes: "My partner just left for a whole week, taking my darling less then 1 yr daughter. In typical /. fashion I'm spending the next 6 nights surfing the net, drinking, eating frozen meals and watching Miyazaki anime dvds! Oh friends, help me. When they return I know they'll expect some sort of emotional thing. Surely you're been through this? What can I do?"
Power

Journal Journal: Freetricity? Small-scale wind & solar generator 1

Journal by zmef420

OK, so a while back now I was working on a business plan and stumbled across the website of a startup company offering a very intriguing product, a small wind and solar generator system. The product is about the size of a digital satellite dish and the basic unit is claimed to produce 300 watts and includes a 700 watt inverter. Being the impulse buyer that I am, I quickly purchased some of these units but sadly they still haven't arrived. I'm starting to worry that I've been duped. My questio
Wii

Submission + - Features the Wii Opera Browser is Screaming for

Submitted by
frenchy64
frenchy64 writes: "With the next release of the Wii Opera Browser just around the corner, there is just so much potential to fulfil it's overwhelming. Okay, we know it needs Tabs, updated Flash and all that jazz, but what else could be included? The Wii Gamers have an editorial suggesting features such as DS Connectivity for an easy wireless Keyboard, Wiimote Gestures, and Browse-While-Playing capabilities (to name a few)!"
Slashback

Submission + - 1000 to 10000 e-books with help from /.

Submitted by seeit
seeit writes: On November 8, 2002 slashdot mentioned Distributed Proofreaders. A few months later, DP completed its 1000th e-book.

Today, with the help of many volunteers who work on books and software, DP completed its 10,000th title.

Distributed Proofreaders, a wholly volunteer organization, was established for the purpose of producing quality transcriptions of machine-readable texts from public domain sources. Once a unique title has been completed the result is made freely available in widely used text and graphic formats via the Internet. The complete library of "DP texts" accessible from file servers throughout the world under the governance of Project Gutenberg, the founding ancestor of online archives.

True to its international nature, Distributed Proofreaders, while respecting U.S. copyright laws, does not limit itself to preserving solely English language content. Nearly 15% of completed titles, to date, represent over 20 languages beyond English. A look to DPs 10,000th title set reveals the diversity of world cultural content in the public domain. Among this commemorative collection are a French translation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice; the chronicle of Portuguese explorer Serpa Pinto's African expeditions; a pair of illustrated children stories from Germany; the first part of 'Species Plantarum', a 17th century Latin botanical reference work and a translation of a 17th century Guatemalan Maya manuscript.

The fifteen titles released today are not a cheer towards the past accomplishments of Distributed Proofreaders, nor are they pat on the back for deeds fulfilled on this day. What these titles so clearly represent, of their own merits, is the future and what awaits within the world's public domain yet to be rescued from obscurity and re-presented to an audience hungry to rediscover the cultural treasures of previous ages.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Avelia Pet Adventures wecomes over 1,000 players

Submitted by
Techbear
Techbear writes: "Austin, TX — Aggressive Game Designs is happy to announce that over 1,000 unique accounts have been created in it's brand new pet-raising MMOG. Avelia Pet Adventures is a free and unique massively-multiplayer adventure for the PC. Avelia Pet Adventures lets you design, breed, and raise your own pets. You can trade your pet designs, play mini-games with your pets, and collect magic potions. The official website is http://www.aggressivegames.com/avelia.htm Avelia Pet Adventures has a full-featured editor which you can use to design any pet you can imagine. The editor is intuitive, yet powerful, and most of all fun to use. You can choose heads, eyes, wings, and more, from a palette of hundreds of unique parts. Once you design your pet's shape, you can create a new version of that pet at home on your personalized farm. Once you have a new pet, you can take it out into the world, a side-scrolling common area. There you'll see other players and their pets. You can talk, wander around, and play mini-games throughout the world. Mini-games are simple, varied, and challenging, and you can win money and special magic potions. Back home on the farm, use the magic potions you've collected to create new pets, with special colors, patterns, and stats. "I've been working on pet games for many years," said the game's creator. "And I've always recognized that bringing multi-player communities and pet raising together would result in an explosion of creativity and fun. So finally, I embarked on this very special project." Avelia Pet Adventures includes a robust economy that supports the artist. When you've created your pet design, you can make it publically available for a small amount of game money. Then, other players who like your design can create their pets from your design, adding their own colors and patterns, and upping the stats, using their collected flowers. When they pay for your design, you get some of that game money! Good artists can make a fortune in game money. Avelia Pet Adventures will soon feature micro-payments, so users can pay for an extended list of special potions and pet parts."
Input Devices

Submission + - Do-It-Yourself Steampunk Keyboard

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Who said there's no use for your old IBM "M Series" keyboards anymore? This

creative fellow shows us step by step how to convert the keyboards of yesteryear into keyboards of an even further distant, fictional time. H. G. Wells would be proud.

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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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