Slashdot

Ian Lamont writes "Palm's fourth quarter results came out a few days ago, and they were not pretty: Palm reported losses of 40 cents per share, for a quarterly loss of $43.4 million. It's the fourth straight quarter of losses, and it's clear that the company is not faring well in the rapidly evolving smartphone market. The Treo line is lagging after seven years, and while the Centro has done well, it's not well enough to compete with the likes of the iPhone 3G and RIM's surging BlackBerry line. New competition is on the horizon, with developers and manufacturers working on the Google Android platform and the recent news that Symbian is being open-sourced. What happened to Palm? What can the company do to effectively compete in the mobile market, and turn its fortunes around?"

As for the service pack not crashing routers, they actually do have the ability. So no MS bashing for me, just truth. Microsoft just has a bad run with service packs for XP, huh? SP3 has also been the culprit for a lot of machines just up and crashing. At both of our shops, we've gotten scads of machines, all with the same issues, all caused by an SP3 update. It's insane. First ME, then XP SP2, then Vista, now SP3. Microsoft really wants to be the evil empire, don't they?

Quote from their website:

"After detail analysis, we found that Windows XP SP3 sent out the DHCP packet with the Option 43 data (include Microsoft's 'Vendor Specific Information'), but Windows XP SP2 sent out the DHCP packet without the Option 43 data. However, the Option 43 data is not compatible with Billion's original definition, so it will cause this problem. The affected firmware versions of BiPAC 5200 series are 2.9.8.x and 2.11.0.x~2.11.33.x. There is no impact to BiPAC 5200 series if the firmware is 2.10.x.x. Please check Appendix A for checking your current firmware version."

http://au.billion.com/downloads/Notice-Billion-5200-series-via-Windows-SP3.pdf

The irony level in this situation is simply astounding. Secondary attack can cause execution of said downloaded binaries? What about all that malicious content that Internet Exploiter happily executes for the user with nary a warning or confirmation?

jfischet writes "Back in 2005 a Slashdot user asked this question and the responses were helpful — but I'd like to ask again to see what has changed in three years. I'd like to know what this community thinks is the best choice of smartphone for remotely administering Linux/UNIX boxes via SSH."

Whats the difference between religions and cults? As far as I can tell they really are the same thing.

Wow. One website has a green background, and another has a blue background. The one with the green background has 12x as many posts as the other one. Coincidence? I think not.

Are you seriously stating that you're considering a 190mhz machine, with 64MB of RAM, with a 640x480 8-bit display, as a web browser? Do you use the same web I do? Even applying CSS rules would crush that machine.

emj writes to tell us project jDome has started actively soliciting consumer feedback and, of course, donations. They are currently promising to deliver their "180 degree FOV monitor" this year for a pricepoint of around $200. The videos and talk have been circulating for the last couple of weeks or so, but they have added a video of the supposed tech in action. Buyer beware, but I would love to see a couple of reviewers get ahold of this and let us know what the story is.

jamax writes "Russia plans to build an orbital plant for the production of spacecraft (link to sketchy Google translation of the Russian original) that are too big to build planetside, or are just too bulky to fire into orbit once built. Presumably these are the ships we would fly to the Moon and Mars. Plans seem to be rather sparse at the moment, with the tentative construction date set for 2020, after the ISS is scheduled for decommissioning."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft researchers are working out the perfect strategies for worms to spread through networks. Their goal is to distribute software patches and other friendly information via virus, reducing load on servers. This raises the prospect of worm races — deploying a whitehat worm to spread a fix faster than a new attacking worm can reach vulnerable machines."

The C|Net Crave blog has up an article exploring the history of console gaming, and wonders aloud about the pecking order of the various systems. "Gaming is so subjective that there is no single "greatest" system ever. It might sound like a cop-out, but it really depends on what standards you're using and what generation you grew up in. I loved the SNES, and would personally call it the greatest system of all time. However, the NES and PlayStation could both easily be called the best, based on the standards they set and the advances they presented to gaming." The Guardian follows up this piece, noting that the article's rose-colored recollections of the SNES days may not be entirely accurate. Subjective or not, it's a good question: which consoles have a valid place in history and which ones should be forgotten?

The NPD group, owners of the not-quite-as-popular-as-they-had-hoped HD-DVD format, attempted to battle back against the tide of "naysayers" who claim that the format war is over and have declared Blu-Ray Disc the winner. "While select articles have implied that HD-DVD as a format is doomed and the sky is falling for the format's supporters, the NPD Group this afternoon reinforced that sales results from a single week do not necessarily indicate a trend, and that the week in question had several intriguing variables that have gone unreported."

The Consumerist is reporting that a Best Buy customer recently purchased a hard drive only to discover that the box contained six ceramic bathroom tiles instead of the Western Digital drive he had expected. The rub of it is Best Buy is refusing to grant a refund or exchange for the non-existent drive. "The employee and assistant manager were more than willing to help, saying that it happens. So they set up the return and I repurchased the drive and while I was checking the contents to ensure it was a hard drive this time, the store manager came up, took the box from me and said to take it up with the manufacturer. Now to my surprise, I argued with the guy saying that they have already accepted the return and I have now purchased the new one. He said I was shit out of luck. I followed up with the manufacturer today and they said they would get the complaint to the Best Buy Purchasing department. Best Buy corporate said that they stand by their manager's decision."