conq writes "BusinessWeek.com has an article looking at the possible consequences if anti-gambling legislation is passed. From the article: 'Just how much of a setback is the proposed legislation for the $12 billion industry? While online gambling companies generate half their sales from U.S. gamblers, the industry is operated almost completely by companies beyond the reach of U.S. regulators. [...] It's a lot of smoke and mirrors and misstatements.'"

IZ Reloaded writes "Space Shuttle Discovery has a problem with the pipeline for an auxiliary power unit that controls the shuttle's hydraulic steering and braking maneuvers. CNN reports that the pipleline is leaking 'fuel' at about six drops per hour." From the article: "The leak is more likely nitrogen, but there is no way of knowing that, so NASA is treating the problem as if the leak were fuel ... If it is fuel, the current rate is still 100,000 times slower than what would cause a fire ... Just in case, NASA will turn on the power unit with the leak early Sunday as part of its normal testing and then see if the leak rate changes. If it does, NASA may burn off the hydrazine and shut down the power unit before the shuttle returns to Earth to eliminate any fire hazard.'"

theodp writes "Amazon.com and CBS have partnered to offer a la carte news clips on custom-made DVDs. Pay $24.95 and you'll get 10 clips or 90 minutes, whichever comes first. Not too surprisingly, CBS News seems to have the best coverage on the new service."

Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Shooting the moon,' the San Diego Union-Tribune describes how and why physicists from UCSD are using lasers to send light pulses in direction of an array of reflectors installed on our moon in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. One of the goals of these experiments is to check the validity of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Another one is to measure the distance between the Earth and moon with a precision of one millimeter by catching photons after their round trip to the moon. But it is amazing to realize how difficult it is to capture photons after such a trip. I also have up a summary, which contains additional details and pictures, if you just want to learn how difficult it is to capture photons back from the moon."

rfreedman asks: "Most of the buzz on the web about software development tools, languages, and practices seems to concentrate on getting software developed as quickly as possible. Take, for example, the current huge hype about Ruby on Rails, and how it allows the creation of a CRUD web-database application x-times more quickly than every other environment. It seems to me that this concentration on initial construction of software ignores the issue of total cost of ownership. Most people who develop software also have to maintain it, and have to support changes to it over long periods of time. As has been discussed many times over the years, maintenance is the most expensive part of the software development life-cycle. I think that the software development community would be better served by discussions of how to build more robust, flexible, and maintainable software (thereby driving down TCO), than by the endless discussions that we currently see about how to build it quickly. What do you think?"

feminazi writes "Business knowledge and domain specific skills are becoming more important to IT workers, according to Computerworld's special report on IT careers in 2010. The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may not have deep-seated technical skills at all. Traci A. Logan, vice president of information technology and vice provost for academic affairs at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. says, 'That [business skill set] is going to be more important than the straight technical skills they know, because you're going to see a closer marriage between the business and IT.'"

WinBreak asks: "Well, I guess I'd be an 'IT Administrator' - but I work for a public library. The job consists of baby sitting 20-odd computers. The problem is, as a public library, we don't have much bandwidth - a simple 768K DSL line shared among everyone. It's good enough, for our normal traffic, and when people want to come in and do research (as long as there aren't too many kids on YouTube!). The problem comes when we need to do reformats and installs on machines. Most of our CD's for these machines are XP with Service Pack 1 - though we have a couple with Service Pack 2. For the SP1 CD's, we immediately deploy the SP2 Redistributable. But that still leaves OVER 100MB worth of downloads from Windows Update to go get. Our budget isn't great in the IT department, so spending money is not a great option - but I could sling together a grant proposal if need be. So how do others manage deploying a new install of Windows? Are we really expected to still download 100+MB per reinstall? Is Service Pack 3 on the horizon?"

An anonymous reader wonders: "gradschoolstory.com has an entry on the Top 10 Reasons to go to Graduate School in the Modern World. Why did Slashdot readers go to graduate school and what did they get out of it?"

An anonymous reader writes "Dell has gone to the Consumer Product Safety Commission looking for help determining the cause of death for its exploding laptop. Dell has been blaming the lithium ion battery; the commission seems to have had a few problems with those batteries in the past."

conJunk writes "Security Focus has an article about HD Moore's Exploit-Every-Day-in-July endeavor raising the hackles of both browser vendors and criminals. He started the project because he felt that vendors were not taking his analysis seriously enough, but he appears to be the only one enjoying it. 'Black Hats' are having their exploits exposed, and Microsoft (who bears responsibility for the majority of the browser holes) can't keep up with the pace he's setting." From the article: "The software giant indirectly criticized the release of vulnerabilities in a statement to SecurityFocus, underscoring the importance of getting customers updated before they are exposed to threats from malicious attackers. 'Microsoft continues to encourage responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities,' the software giant said in a statement sent to SecurityFocus. 'We believe the commonly accepted practice of reporting vulnerabilities directly to a vendor serves everyone's best interests.'"

Game Girl Advance brings up the subject of emotion in games, again, by going to the dark places. Jane talks about movies that are just plain uncomfortable to watch (shades of Donnie Darko), and wonders why when games will have the same effect. From the article: "Yet you could argue that Manhunt used a cheap trick - it set up the situation in order to exploit it for someone's idea of 'fun.' You could say that the developers did not mean to convey any message beyond entertainment. City of God was entertaining, in the broadest sense of the word, but it was also a portrait of hopelessness and a cycle that trapped its inhabitants; it was also in some ways a social history of gang violence in the slums from the seventies to the eighties. Manhunt does not have enough external references to be about anything other than what it is."

conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on the recent woes of Apple and Dell. One possible reason according to the article: 'imminent price wars'." From the article: "'There's a softness in the market that's building,' says Richard Shim, a senior research analyst at IDC. In the past two weeks, IDC cut its 2006 forecast for U.S. PC growth to 5.7%, from 6.8%. 'In '04 and '05 there was tremendous growth. In a market that's as mature as this industry is, there's no way you can maintain those levels.'"

Chris Reimer writes "The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that McAfee fixed a serious design flaw months ago in their enterprise product without notifying businesses and U.S. government agencies until today." From the article: "McAfee said its own engineers first discovered the flaw, which lets attackers seize control of computers to steal sensitive data, delete files or implant malicious programs. McAfee produced a software update in February but described it only as offering new feature enhancements. Many corporations and government agencies are reluctant to update software unless necessary because of fears that doing so might introduce new problems."

Joystiq had the chance to exchange a few words with Sony's Phil Harrison at the UK Develop Conference. They asked him some hard questions about the crazy comments that have been coming out of the company since E3. From the article: "There's always going to be a risk when you are market leader for ten years that we start to lose perspective; and we have to make sure that we don't lose perspective. But I don't think we're arrogant, I think we have to recognize that we're in a highly competitive industry and that anything that we say will be eternally editorialized by professionals and consumers alike. So we're always in the spotlight." After the tape was off he snarked that he hadn't been asked very nice questions. Poor guy, having to answer questions that aren't 'How awesome is the PS3 going to be?'

alveraan writes "According to a the BBC, 'the UK recording industry is urging the foreign secretary to raise the issue of Russian bargain music download website allofmp3.com at the G8 summit'. British Phonographic Industry (BPI) chairman Peter Jamieson wants Margaret Beckett to 'urge the Russian government to take action against the operators of the site by insisting that it is removed from the internet'. Allofmp3 has insisted in the past that it is operating in compliance with Russian copyright laws."