snuffin writes to tell us the Washington Post is reporting that Microsoft announced stepped up anti-piracy measures being implemented in their latest operating system, Vista. From the article: "If a legitimate copy is not bought within 30 days, the system will curtail functionality much further by restricting users to just the Web browser for an hour at a time, said Thomas Lindeman, Microsoft senior product manager." Ars Technica also has coverage available on this new development.

Trent Lucier writes "Why Software Sucks professes to be a book for computer users, not programmers. Author David Platt wants to be the informant, pulling back the curtain on software development so mere mortals can get a glimpse inside the sausage factory. Platt flaunts his geek cred, all the while implying that he's not one of those geeks. But ultimately, trite observations and a condescending tone left me wishing that the book would end long before it did." Read the rest of Trent's review.

Joystiq is reporting on a new outfit claiming they'll powerlevel your gamerscore for cash. For $300, they say, they'll raise your Xbox Live gamerscore by 3000 points. Ozymandias, a member of the 360 Launch Team, has commentary on the situation. From his post: "The thing that struck me as most interesting about this is that Achievements (and the Gamerscore associated with them) have become a currency... one just as valuable as virtual currency in MMOs, and one some people might be willing to pay real dollars for. I certainly don't condone it, but it does support my belief that competitors will need to have their own Achievements/Gamerscore system in the future as it's definitely a tipping aspect for some folks. (For the record, I now believe the rumor of PS3 'Entitlements' to be false; however, I fully expect a similar solution within the next year or so once the online service has launched.)"

jefu writes "According to the New York Times, the US Department of Homeland Security is funding AI tools to monitor the foreign press in order to detect threats to the United States. While the article says there are restrictions on doing this kind of monitoring within the US, there are no restrictions on media outside the US. (No hint is given as to how this would apply to syndicated articles written in the US and published abroad.) This is as yet experimental."

narramissic writes "Hitachi Maxell Ltd. has developed an optical disc that is less than 1/10 of a millimeter thick. Working prototypes on display at this week's Ceatec Japan 2006 exhibition are based on DVD technology and are capable of holding 4.7 GB each. Making discs so thin doesn't come without its problems, however. To make the discs rigid enough for the laser to remain in focus on the disc's surface, the company has fitted inside each drive a 0.6 millimeter-thick piece of glass through which there are holes. Air is drawn through the holes when the disc spins causing the flexible disc to be drawn against the rigid piece of glass to make it flat."

In todays Opposable Thumbs column at Ars Technica, Ben Kuchera wonders out loud on the importance Microsoft is placing on Gears of War . Despite assurances that 360 games will look better, it's still a toss-up over whether Microsoft or Sony will emerge as the graphical powerhouse of the seventh generation. With ad copy flying fast and only a few weeks until the game's launch, this is Microsoft's last chance to persuade any on-the-fence PS3 fans. From the article: "The question is: does Sony need to beat it? It's not important right now--Sony is delivering what amounts to a paper launch this year; a few people will get systems but the vast majority will be waiting until supplies get a little heavier. It is clear that Sony is going to have to show those early adopters something strong and at least as good as Gears of War in terms of graphics: even thought it's a second generation game against first generation titles, the $200 price difference means people want to see better than 360 quality, and unless we get it now there will be some grumbly early adopters."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is reporting the release of "Google Gadgets", 1,220 dynamic applications for use on your web pages, without needing to connect to Google. 'Google Gadgets range from a miniature look-up for Google Maps or Google Calendar to independent applications ranging from financial information to sports to communication tools and jokes, horoscopes or geometric puzzle game Tetris.'"

Over at Wired, Randall Sullivan writes about the spectacular breakup of Gizmondo. The discussion of the short-lived portable console's reign begins, of course, with the well-known car accident: a perfect metaphor for an imploding company. The article goes on to discuss the sordid past of Bo Stefan Eriksson, and how his role with Gizmondo never stopped his collusion with some of society's more sordid elements. From the article: "It wasn't long before Eriksson imported his wingmen from the Uppsala Mafia. Johan Enander, who had served more than two years for crimes including grand theft and extortion, handled security for Gizmondo functions. Peter Uf, who had spent more than five years in prison for fraud, was named a Gizmondo director. The company opened a glass-fronted corporate headquarters next to Farnborough Airport, and expensive Ferraris and McLarens dotted the parking lot. To add to the glitter, in 2004 Gizmondo purchased a 75 percent interest in a London modeling agency called Isis, ensuring that there would be plenty of beautiful young women at its parties and events."

eldavojohn wonders: "In the October IEEE Spectrum magazine, I read an article on backyard windmills and their growing feasibility. With the lowest model's price tag, it's about $9,000 and lasts for around 100,000 kilowatt-hours (20 year life), which results in 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, the article mentions that if the market takes off, that price will drop. However, I was wondering what price range the windmills would have to fall to (or the energy rates have to rise to) before I could consider this? Well, the price of the windmills in the article are out of my price range right now. I don't imagine many Americans have $8k-$11k laying around and the current month's rates for energy in my neighborhood are 2.2 cents/kWh for the first 800 kWh and 1.2 cents/kWh after. I was wondering what are your thoughts on being an early adopter of wind energy? Do you think that if enough people bought these windmills, the price per kWh could compete with the local power grid's? Will it ever?"

Richard Gorman, of Bay Partners, is a venture capitalist. Part of his job is to seek out and finance open source companies. He's not easy to snow technically; he has a Master's degree in Computer Science from MIT. And he's not easy to snow financially, either; he also has a Master's in Management. This is a golden opporttunity for all you budding entrepreneurs out there to find out exactly what a tech-hip, management-hip venture capitalist looks for in an open source-based startup. (As always, Slashdot interview rules apply.)

BlueCup writes "The X Prize Foundation, sponsor of a widely noted 2004 award for developing a reusable rocket suitable for private space travel, says it is now teaming with a wealthy Canadian geologist to offer $10 million to any team that can completely decode the genes of 100 people in 10 days. And that's not all. As an encore, the winning team will be paid $1 million more to decode another 100 people's genes, including a bevy of wealthy donors and celebrities. Already accepted for future decoding: Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul G. Allen and former junk-bond king Michael Milken."

eldavojohn writes "Gamespot has an article describing PS3s operating erratically at conference demonstrations.' In its defense, Sony said the PS3 failures were caused by unusually high temperatures created by having many of the next-gen consoles operating in close proximity to each other. 'It's not a problem with the PlayStation 3 unit itself,' Sony spokeswoman Nanako Kato told the AP. 'For a normal player at home, there shouldn't be any problem.' As a result, Sony's stock slid 2.75%. I guess they should have thought first before releasing five times the number of kiosks as they did with the PS2 — they're causing each other to overheat. There goes my PS3 beowulf cluster idea!" Update: 10/04 20:40 GMT by Z : anti-human 1 wrote in to mention a GamesIndustry.biz article, with a flat denial of overheating issues from Sony. "As could be seen on the TGS floor by the tens of thousands of media and public attendees, both the hardware and software worked flawlessly."

An anonymous reader writes ""Asus has shown off a prototype of the first dual-screen laptop, the W5Fe. These laptops, bearing the Intel codename 'Newport' have a standard screen on the inside plus a smaller, additional colour display on the outside of the lid. The second display is capable of showing video, flight departure information, movie show times, alerts, games, movies, images and MP3s, all while the laptop is switched off. According to CNET, the battery requirement for such a screen is minimal — with standard laptop batteries providing hundreds of hours of use."

An anonymous reader writes "All e-mail going back and forth from Sourceforge and Gmail is being bounced. This leaves many Open Source projects with helpless mailing lists. Fortunately, Sourceforge blames Google and Google is blaming SourceForge for this. The Sourceforge support site is clogged with support requests for a resolution to this problem. Google's response to this bouncing has been automated e-mails saying it is probably at the other end of mail delivery. This is something that the community needs to know about since it has been going on for a week already with no end in sight." Worth noting that Sourceforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG. Update 20:07 GMT by SM: According to SourceForge support staff this issue is now resolved. Apparently a few days ago the sender-verify to gmail started resulting in 450 errors. Google has since either corrected this issue or whitelisted SourceForge and several tests of the system have resulted in correct delivery.

Joe writes "Yorkfield Extreme Edition based on the 45nm Penry core architecture will meet heads-on with AMD Altair based on the 65nm K8L core in Q3 2007 as reported by VR-Zone. Due to its advanced 45nm process technology, Yorkfield XE is able to pack a total of 12MB L2 cache (2 x 6MB L2) and still achieving a much smaller die size and higher clock speed of 3.43-3.73Ghz. Yorkfield will feature Penryn New Instructions (PNI) or more officially known as SSE4 with 50 more new instructions. Yorkfield XE will pair up nicely with the Bearlake-X chipset supporting DDR3 1333, PCI Express 2.0 and ICH9x coming in the Q3 '07 timeframe as well."