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The Internet

Submission + - Second Life Ends First Land Program

Submitted by
RancidPickle
RancidPickle writes: "Second Life, the virtual word created and run by Linden Labs, announced they were no longer issuing First Land to premium members.

Effective immediately, the supply of cheap First Land parcels by Linden Lab will cease. Premium accounts will still be able to own up to 512m of land as part of their Premium membership package as they do now, the only change is that we will not be supplying the discounted parcels as we have done in the past. The website and knowledgebase will be amended to reflect this change shortly.


As a premium SL user who spent hours looking for First Land, this does not bode well for me or the users who will be left out in the cold — literally."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - iPods making their way into cockpits

Submitted by
Agentscott00
Agentscott00 writes: "Apple's iPod has found its way into the cockpit and is about to become a flight data recorder (FDR), more commonly known as "black box." Flight reports that light aircraft maker LoPresti Speed Merchants is adding the ability to use an iPod as a flight data recorder to its Fury piston aircraft. The airplane will include an iPod dock connector, and will be able to send data to the iPod for storage. Although it's not clear yet exactly what data will be recorded, typically that includes system monitoring information and data for post-flight analysis."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Encourages Use of Vista Cracks

Submitted by Vulva R. Thompson, P
Vulva R. Thompson, P writes: Yeah, yeah, another Vista story. But this one has a twist. After reinstalling Vista Home, the user wasn't able to activate with the key he purchased so he called the activation line: "The Customer Service Manager told me that I could either borrow an XP Home disk from a friend (isn't that software piracy ??) or look online for one of the many Vista Activation cracks to bypass Vista Activation completely...Well, I followed his instructions." Full story here: http://www.overclockers.com/articles1416/
The Internet

Ten Predictions for XML in 2007 71

Posted by CowboyNeal from the crystal-balls dept.
An anonymous reader writes "2007 is shaping up to be the most exciting year since the community drove off the XML highway into the Web services swamp half a decade ago. XQuery, Atom, Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), XProc, and GRRDL are all promising new power. Some slightly older technologies like XForms and XSLT are having new life breathed into them. 2007 will be a very good year to work with XML."
Media

Submission + - Meet theTynonym

Submitted by
mahangu
mahangu writes: "As an armchair linguist, I recently stumbled upon the T9onym or Tynonym. A new morphological process that has come about as a result of people using the T9 predictive text method for sms messages, the tynonym appears to be in use, at least in the UK. Although there appears to have been a Wikipedia entry on T9onyms at some point, for some reason, it no longer exists. What about you, have you heard people say book for cool, in everyday speech? Will the tynonym become a significant part of conversational speak in the years to come, or will it be just another passing fad?"
The Internet

Submission + - Disabled People Online - A New Portal

Submitted by
Kineticartist
Kineticartist writes: "You go around the web you search, you surf, You have lovely portal sites, like yahoo, google, msn and slash dot and others but as a disabled person who spends most of his time online Jay Cohen is a guy who has a dream... Create a portal for the disabled community. http://www.disabledonline.com/ is just such a place. You can find links to websites that cater to the disabled person and their family and friends. A place where disabled individuals can get together in a forum and share experiences and chat online in a safe environment. A one stop shopping site where you can go through extensive products and services (over 60,000 at the time of this writing) that are targeted towards disabled users looking for anything from wheelchairs and assistive/adaptive devices to gourmet chocolates. Disabled ONLINE is just such a place.

Jay, who has muscular dystrophy (which he doesn't let slow him down) spent the last 3 years making this dream a realization with little to no money to spend on site development. Jay took on the task himself and put together a fairly comprehensive site and understand this Jay is unable to use a keyboard but rather uses voice recognition software and a trackball mouse to get anything done on the computer . But it still lacked a professional 508 Accessible framework. Then comes Geek On Wheels who believed in Jay and his dream and garnered a deal with him to build a site that would use the latest in php and opensource e-commerce systems along with a forum, chat and a classifieds ad system so Disabled Online users can post their items for sale and sell them without ever giving a nod to ebay...

So whether you are looking for baseball or football or hockey jerseys, or gourmet chocolates to send your lady friend(s) or need information on arts and entertainment for the disabled to government websites and disabled accessible websites to get information on laws and statues regarding disabled users and their rights. or whether you yourself are disabled or not or friends or family of a disabled person or persons or just want to chat or get an account on his forum, making Disabled Online a favorite in your browsers is well worth it.

Don't believe me? then check it for yourselves!!!"
The Internet

Submission + - Police use Myspace in murder investigation

Submitted by therufus
therufus writes: NineMSN Australia is reporting that police are using Myspace pages to track down the killer of murder victim Carly Ryan

"Police believe the web of message boards stemming from Carly's own Myspace profile could be crucial to finding out how the 15-year-old died."
The Courts

Submission + - Louisiana city wins 2nd municipal fiber case

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The (Lafayette, La.) Daily Advertiser reports that the Louisiana Supreme Court today unanimously ruled in favor of Lafayette Utilities System in its fiber to the home legal battle. The city passed a referendum in July 2005 62%-38% to approve bond sales to fund its city-operated utility service's plan to lay fiber-to-the-home throughout the city (population about 112,000). Cox and BellSouth previously delayed it with a suit that failed; this decision is against a resident sued about the use of bond to fund the endeavor. According to LUS, "bonds could be issued in 2-3 months.. Eighteen months after the bonds are issued, some LUS customers could be using fiber." LUS already has paid $3.5 million in legal fees to get to this point.
Announcements

Submission + - Superconducting heat spreader to obsolete CPU fans

Submitted by vinsci
vinsci writes: R&D company Novel Concepts, Inc. has announced its new IsoSkin heat spreader material that dissipates heat 20 times more effectively than copper, according to the company. The thin (down to 500 microns) IsoSkin spreaders could eventually be used to replace the outer "skin" of portable electronics, thereby eliminating the need for heat sinks and fans that cool notebooks and PCs, ExtremeTech reports.
Education

Submission + - A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia

Submitted by
odyaws
odyaws writes: "The New York Times has an article about the history department at Middlebury College banning Wikipedia citations as a research source, which came after a professor noticed half a dozen students making the same factual error on an exam. I'm as big a fan of Wikipedia as anyone, but as an academic I find the notion of citing it absurd. Does anyone think Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) suitable for anything but casual information gathering or as a place to find links to source material?"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Extremism is mainstream on the internets. 1

Journal by yoder

The web is a great place for free political speech. It is also a beautiful informational tool. But if you are looking for total anonymity, the internet is not great. It does, however, give people the feeling of total anonymity and that is the perfect environment to see people as unfettered, morally unrestrained, emotionally spastic versions of their public face.

Slashdot Top Deals

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

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