Wanker - Slashdot User

SPAM: Telemarketers forced to surrender $5M in profits 0

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday May 01 2008, @11:22AM

coondoggie writes "Canadian telemarketers who fraudulently pitched Visa and MasterCard credit cards have been ordered to pay back the nearly $5 million they garnered via the scheme. The Federal Trade Commission brought the charges and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said under the terms of the final order and judgment, the defendants — collectively known as Pacific Liberty — are barred from violating the FTC Act and the Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). They are liable as well for approximately five million dollars, the total net sales they made through the cross-border scheme. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Teacher's porn conviction sparks tech debate

Submitted by

Steve Davis

on Tuesday February 13 2007, @08:01PM

Steve Davis writes "Substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison after being convicted of exposing seventh-grade students to pornographic images on their classroom computer in Norwich, Conn. She claims spyware and adware caused pornographic popup ads to show up on their own, which her students saw."

World of Warcraft Expansion Bypasses Retail Stores

Submitted by Wanker on Friday February 02 2007, @11:05AM

Wanker writes "In a move that has been frequently requested by customers but often denied, Blizzard has decided to risk alienating their retail channels and offer a recent expansion for download:

https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/bc-splash.htm

In the past for online role-playing games such as Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark age of Camelot, and others the publishers have decided not to make expansions available, citing concerns that their retail partners would be unhappy about the potential lost revenue. Is Warcraft simply so big they can ignore these concerns? Have the fears of the retailers been largely unfounded? Does this bode well for easily available future upgrades?"

Orange, Smelly Snow Falling in Siberia

Submitted by

Khakionion

on Friday February 02 2007, @10:29AM

Khakionion writes "According to the BBC, Russia's flying in scientists to determine why western Siberia has been getting smelly, orange snow. From the article: "Chemical tests were under way to determine the cause...residents have been advised not to use the snow for household tasks or let animals graze on it.""

Help with Linux Backup and Archive Solutions

Submitted by

earlshaw03

on Friday February 02 2007, @10:27AM

earlshaw03 writes "I work for a small independent phone company and have a few questions regarding one of our Linux boxes that is our customer email server. We are running Debian and are having some issues backing up every users email. We had about 90GB worth of mail on the server, so we deceided to implement a new policy that all email that was not popped would be deleted after 90 days. We scoured sourceforge, freshmeat, and google to find a good archiving program that would allow us to accomplish this. The only one we could find was archivemail, which worked somewhat well, but we keep getting an error that stops the program about half way through, on the same user. It also stalls on other users as well. We have managed to work around these accounts and get the size down to 55GB worth of email. We are currently using Vembu Technologies StoreGrid product to backup this server. The backup usually took anywhere from 3-4 days for a full backup. So finally I am asking the Slashdot Community what do you use to Backup and archive/delete mail?"

Can I be sued for quitting?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2007, @08:23PM

An anonymous reader writes "I work at a large hosting company in Texas and recently decided to go work for a smaller competitor. I had a great relationship with my employer and wanted to leave on good terms. I felt the new company had just gotten too large and I didn't like working there anymore, I gave them two weeks notice in writing. They were really upset when I insisted on leaving and one week into my last two weeks the V.P. of Sales told me the company was suing me for leaving and suing my new employer for hiring me. They then escorted me out of the building. I was shocked. Should I hire an attorney? Has anybody ever heard of this happening? Do they have any legal basis for suing me? I never signed any non-compete or employment agreement."

Microsoft Applies to Patent BlueJ

Submitted by Vultan on Saturday January 27 2007, @09:51AM

Vultan writes "Slashdot readers may be familiar with BlueJ, a popular free (as in beer) IDE used for teaching Java. One of BlueJ's key strengths is its object bench (see screen shot), which lets students interact with objects in a point-and-click manner. Microsoft has stolen this same idea, without attribution or citation, for inclusion in Visual Studio 2005. Screen shots of the new Visual Studio functionality show it to be nearly identical to that of BlueJ (compare with screen shots in pages 11 and 12 of this BlueJ tutorial. This is unethical on its own, but the matter is considerably worse: Microsoft has applied to patent this "object test bench" functionality. If this patent succeeds and Microsoft chooses to enforce it, BlueJ could be shut down. Of course, BlueJ counts as prior art, but the BlueJ project is a small academic operation and may not have the resources to challenge.

I've used BlueJ myself in educating students, and it is a wonderful tool. The team building it has spent many years working really hard on it. What can be done?"

Google admits China censorship damaging.

Submitted by

pilsner.urquell

on Saturday January 27 2007, @09:25AM

pilsner.urquell writes "Google founders admitted that allowing China to censor its search engine did harm to the company.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative."

Google launched in China in 2005."

Intel, IBM make independent silicon breakthrough

Submitted by on Saturday January 27 2007, @09:13AM

An anonymous reader writes "IBM, Intel independently announced they have made a breakthough in transistor design which allows futher shrinkage of silicon technologies. Intel said the 65nm process can be now reduced to 45nm, later this year. IBM made a same announcement, and its parnters including AMD may enjoy this new technology as well. This is considered the biggest breakthrough in transistor technology since the 60's, and one must wonder: how come two different companies announce the same thing on the same Friday??"

Web Honeynet Project IDs Attackers 70

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 27 2007, @04:33AM
from the they-can-see-youuuu dept.

narramissic writes "The Web Honeynet Project, an independent group of Honeynet researchers from Securiteam and the ITOSF, is putting a new twist on Web application honeynets by naming not only the attack details, but the IP addresses and other tracking information about the attackers as well. As security consultant Brent Huston notes, 'This approach is not unheard of, as lists of known high-volume attackers have been circulating through the Net for several years, but this is the first time someone has applied the honeynet concept to making attacker IP data publicly known.'"