BkBen7 - Slashdot User

Microsoft pays searchers to use Live.com-> 0

Submitted by spotplace on Tuesday November 13 2007, @10:47AM

spotplace writes "Microsoft is being severely trounced by Google in the search market so it was expected that the Redmond company would do something exciting and innovative to pick up the interest of us, poor searchers, and put some heat over Google's dominance. But did Microsoft radically change their algorithm and quality of their search index? No. Microsoft lacks so much confident on the quality of their search engine, that they just started paying searchers to use Live.com."
Link to Original Source

Adult MySpace User Drives Teen To Suicide-> 0

Submitted by on Tuesday November 13 2007, @10:29AM

An anonymous reader writes "A young girl from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, met who she thought was a sympathetic boy on MySpace. However, things turned ugly when her "boyfriend" suddenly turned on her, spreading nasty rumors and eventually telling her, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you," and driving the girl to suicide. However, her parents were later shocked to discover that he boy had never existed — he was the online persona of a neighbor and family friend, who was using the fake MySpace profile to see what people were saying about her daughter. The daughter was a former friend of the suicide victim."
Link to Original Source

Firefox Memory Hogging Is Due to Fragmentation-> 0

Submitted by A beautiful mind on Tuesday November 13 2007, @10:19AM

A beautiful mind writes "It has been long claimed by users that Firefox leaks memory, and on the other hand the developers claimed the number of leaks are minimal. It turns out both groups were right. Stuart Parmenter, one of the authors of the RAMBack extension started investigating and found out that the issue is memory fragmentation. He discovered that while loading about:blank uses 12,589,696 bytes of memory in the test he performed (image), after exercising Firefox with different websites and then clearing the caches with the help of the RAMBack extension the picture is wholly different: "Our heap is now 29,999,872 bytes! 16,118,072 of that is used (up 4,634,208 bytes from before... which caches am I forgetting to clear?). The rest, a whopping 13,881,800 bytes, is in free blocks!""
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:We already have cellphone use on aeroplanes (Score 1) 249

by BkBen7 on Friday October 19 2007, @01:41AM (#21037191) Attached to: Cellphone Use On Planes Coming Soon?

Or maybe the government was lying to you when they told you about those calls?...........nah!!!

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Announced 463

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday August 16 2007, @09:42PM
from the roll-for-initiative dept.

bigstrat2003 writes "For the past day, Wizards of the Coast has had a countdown to "4dventure" on their web site. The countdown ran out at 6:30 eastern time today (and the web site promptly crashed), but stories are already appearing on the rest of the web. Wizards also has had their 4th edition forums up for a couple of days."

Google's $10 local search play 0

Submitted by thefickler on Monday August 13 2007, @04:22PM

thefickler writes "The ever enterprising Google has come come up with a novel way of boosting the information it has about local businesses. As part of the Business Referral Representative program, Google is offering individuals up to $10 to visit local businesses and tell them about Google Maps and Google AdWords, collect information (such as hours of operation and types of payment accepted), and take digital photos of the business."

Man surgically alters thumbs to better use iPhone 0

Submitted by taliesinangelus on Monday August 13 2007, @03:29PM

taliesinangelus writes "This 'faux article' can be found here on the North Denver News site: http://northdenvernews.com/content/view/922/2/ The editor's note is very revealing: http://northdenvernews.com/content/view/925/2/ The CBN (Christian Broadcast Network) and certain blogs picked this up as a real news story and ran it along with commentary."

Deceased Malayan hit with $218 trillion cell bill-> 0

Submitted by Suraci on Monday August 13 2007, @02:00PM

Suraci writes "Published Sunday 12th August 2007 03:56 GMT

What otherworldly ectoplasms lurk in the oblivion of such an unholy place as accounts receivable?

A Malaysian man who paid off a $23 wireless bill and disconnected his late father's cell phone back in January has been stiffed for subsequent charges on the closed account, MSNBC has reported. Telekom Malaysia sent Yahaya Wahab a bill for 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit, or about $218 trillion, for charges to the account, along with a demand from the company's debt collection agency that he settle the alleged debt within 10 days, or get a lawyer.

Bring it on, bean counters. Funereal topcoats, ghostly visages and all.

"If the company wants to seek legal action as mentioned in the letter, I'm ready to face it," Yahaya claimed. "In fact, I can't wait to face it."

No one apparently at Telekom Malaysia is quite sure whether the bill was a mistake, or, cryptically, if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after his death. This correspondent not long ago got his sh*t pushed in by Verizon for $117 in roaming charges during a week-long conference in Montreal, but even at Verizon's ultimate 'screw you' rate of $4.99 per roaming minute, yours truly would have to clock 43.7 trillion pure, hardcore roaming minutes to ring up $218 trillion in charges, or roughly 727 billion Verizon-hours of internet surfing and chit-chat. The $218 trillion total is roughly 17 times the GDP of the United States.

Yahaya, from northern Kedah state, said he nearly fainted when he saw the new bill, and here at El Reg we're curious what supernatural force allowed the grim reapers inhabiting the nether regions of collections and legal to avoid a similar state of semi-conscious disbelief.

The recent discovery of previously unknown life forms in the hinterlands of deepest Africa lends hope that science may yet elucidate the inscrutable nature of the number-crunchers. Of course, Montreal is not exactly on the banks of the river Styx, but if a math-challenged gringo can extrapolate from that mobile billing clusterf*ck, the bean counters at Telekom Malaysia surely can do better."
Link to Original Source

Jackon may be involved with Hobbit after all 0

Submitted by Conspiracy_Of_Doves on Monday August 13 2007, @01:57PM

Conspiracy_Of_Doves writes "Sci-Fi Wire is reporting that New Line co-chairman Robert Shaye is attempting to patch up his argument with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and wants Jackson to be "creatively involved in some way in The Hobbit."

Slashdot previously reported that Jackson would most likely not be directing the movie version of The Hobbit"

World of Warcraft Hits 9 Million Users-> 0

Submitted by

Wowzer

on Tuesday July 24 2007, @02:22PM

Wowzer writes "Blizzard today announced that their MMORPG World of Warcraft is now played by more than 9 million gamers around the world. From the article: "That's half a million more than the number of monthly players WoW had back in March five months ago. — It's interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA's World Factbook says that out of 236 listed countries it would be the 90th most populated country on Earth above Haiti, but behind Sweden." Also revealed this week was that DC Comics are creating World of Warcraft Comic Books based on the MMORPG, with the first issue appearing on November 14th. The ongoing monthly series will be written by industry veteran Walter Simonson (Thor, Orion) and feature art by Ludo Lullabi and inker Sandra Hope."
Link to Original Source