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Comment: re:Remember when people ran their own mail server? (Score 2) 383

by dexomn (#40504879) Attached to: Gmail Takes Largest Webmail Service Crown

It was 2001. I was working for an isp in the midwest, in the noc. Start seeing '/var/spool/mail ballooning out of control, filling up the f@#$ partition' errors coming from a mail server in Idaho. Login to machine to investigate, see that approximately 40 users of a common domain (hosted domain for email) had forwarded a 9MB .avi not only to everyone that shared their domain, but several other local users who also began spamming people with this thing. It was that damned video of the guy fishing for salmon that gets in a fistfight with a bear.

Intel

Intel To Launch TV Service With Facial Recognition By End of the Year 175

Posted by timothy
from the nielsen-with-a-ray-gun dept.
MojoKid writes "Despite television being a rather tough nut to crack, Intel is apparently hoping that its upcoming set-top box and subscription service will be its golden ticket to delivering more Intel processors to the living room. The service would be a sort of specialized virtual cable subscription that would combine a bundle of channels with on demand content. So what's Intel's killer feature that distinguishes it from the vast and powerful competition? Granular ratings that result in targeted ads. Intel is promising technology in a set-top box that can distinguish who is watching, potentially allowing Intel to target advertising. The technology could potentially identify if the viewer is an adult or a child, male or female, and so on, through interactive features and face recognition technology."

Comment: Re:Not making money = wasting money (Score 1) 141

by dexomn (#39990399) Attached to: 'Goofing Off' To Get Ahead?

I do a lot of dinking off at work, mostly coding utilities we can use in-house. The boss department merely nods and congratulates on these things because of the man-hours I save by investing the companies time I save for taking a 30 minute task an trimming it down to 3 minutes. I do not get paid extra for this, but the time it saves allows us to to do our jobs in less time. I would encourage folks in the SMB market to let the smart guys (that have been there a while) take a few hours to automate some things that will save people time. If a long drawn out procedure can be automated and require less attention it is going to profit the company.

Microsoft

Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic 601

Posted by timothy
from the momma-said-knock-you-out dept.
TheGift73 writes "The Russian based 'Pirate Pay' startup is promising the entertainment industry a pirate-free future. With help from Microsoft, the developers have built a system that claims to track and shut down the distribution of copyrighted works on BitTorrent. Their first project, carried out in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures, successfully stopped tens of thousands of downloads. Hollywood, software giants and the major music labels see BitTorrent as one of the largest threats to their business. Billions in revenue are lost each year, they claim. But not for long if the Russian based startup 'Pirate Pay' has its way. The company has developed a technology which allows them to attack existing BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible for people to share files."
Education

Universities Hold Transcripts Hostage Over Loans 541

Posted by Soulskill
from the might-execute-a-few-to-show-they're-serious dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Dave Lindorff writes in the LA Times that growing numbers of students are discovering their old school is actively blocking them from getting a job or going on to a higher degree by refusing to issue an official transcript. The schools won't send the transcripts to potential employers or graduate admissions office if students are in default on student loans, or in many cases, even if they just fall one or two months behind. It's no accident that they're doing this. It turns out the federal government 'encourages' them to use this draconian tactic, saying that the policy 'has resulted in numerous loan repayments.' It is a strange position for colleges to take, writes Lindorff, since the schools themselves are not owed any money — student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government, and in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are not on the hook in any way. They are simply acting as collection agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection. 'It's worse than indentured servitude,' says NYU Professor Andrew Ross, who helped organize the Occupy Student Debt movement last fall. 'With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.'"

Comment: If it looks like a duck (Score 2) 545

by dexomn (#38745384) Attached to: Will Secure Boot Cripple Linux Compatibility?

It's interesting that Microsoft has long been strong-arming hardware vendors into REQUIRING that they sell their machines with an OS(oh, any OS is fine *wink* *wink*). Now apparently they want to make sure you can't take Windows off of the device. This isn't so different from encrypted bootloaders on android devices.

Now that these mobile devices have advanced to being full blown computers in every sense of the word, they are still not referred to as such. They are not even referred to and single-purpose/special-purpose computers. They are referred to as consumer electronic devices or mobile phones. People are used to consumer electronics and mobile phones being proprietary devices, this is normal and accepted. There is still the pervasive idea that with desktop computer or a notebook computer that the machine is the PROPERTY of the OWNER of the machine. "This is my machine and you can't tell me what I can or can't put on it."

They idea of buying a laptop computer that you cannot, WILL NOT, run anything but the operating system shipped with it is just weird. If people aren't thinking of the device as a computer, but merely a telephone or a gadget, this idea doesn't seem weird at all.

Java

Oracle and the Java Ecosystem 157

Posted by samzenpus
from the a-different-approach dept.
First time accepted submitter twofishy writes "After an undeniably rocky start, which saw high profile resignations from the JCP, including Doug Lea (who remains active in the OpenJDK), and the Apache Software Foundation, Oracle is making significant efforts to re-engage with the wider Java ecosystem, a theme which it talked up at the most recent JavaOne conference. The company is working hard to engage with the Java User Group leaders and Java Champions, membership of the OpenJDK project is growing, and the company is making efforts to reform the Java Community Process to improve transparency. The firm has also published a clear, well-defined Java roadmap toward Java 8 and Java 9."

Science may someday discover what faith has always known.

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