RedOregon writes "One of the world's most notorious spammers has settled lawsuits with the state [of Texas] and Microsoft Corp. that cost him at least $1 million, took away most of his assets and forced him to stop sending the e-mails."

MetaNick writes "It seems with every worldwide sporting event, e.g., Olympics, World Cup, we hear warnings of a "meltdown" as more and more broadband users attempt to stream video of the event to their browsers. And such predictions have just begun for the World Cup just getting underway: World Cup streaming to cause network meltdown, World Cup by broadband endangers networks. Has this ever really happened? Will it happen with this the World Cup just getting underway? I tend to doubt it. I looked for articles discussing how predictions of meltdowns did NOT come to pass, but I couldn't find any."

Tom wonders: "I am working in a medium-sized software development company. The functional analysts use Microsoft Word to document the specifications, and Sharepoint to publish the documents. However we'd like to improve our process to have better revision control and traceability. We have looked at alternatives like using Wikis, or static HTML documents with CVS. The functional analysts want ease of use, while we developers would like to see high-quality end products, revision control (i.e. tagging & branching of the document base), and traceability features. What tools and document formats do you use and would recommend?"

Nethemas the Great writes "The Universal Software Radio Peripheral or USRP created by Matt Ettus and Eric Blossom gives a new perspective on the radio spectrum, as in just about all of it from DC to 2.9Ghz. With the right software and daughterboards, their USRPs can capture FM, read GPS, decode HDTV, transmit over emergency bands, track peoples movement via their mobile phones, and much, much more. With prices starting at just $550 this new toy is accessible by most anyone."

Ravi writes "There is commercial grade software like VMware (which does full virtualization) as opposed to open source approaches like Xen which do partial virtualization. But besides these two, there is a very interesting piece of software called User Mode Linux (UML), which can be used to create virtual Linux machines within a Linux computer. Unique to UML is that support for it has been incorporated into the mainstream Linux kernel tree and it is now a fully supported part of the official Linux kernel. On this note, UML gains a lot of significance. UML has been created and maintained by Jeff Dike, who is known throughout the Linux technical community. And when someone who has created a popular software decides to author a book on the subject, then that book is sure to hold a lot of promise. So when I came across the book titled User Mode Linux, authored by Dike under Bruce Perens' Open Source Series, I just couldn't resist getting my hands on it." Read on for the rest of Ravi's review.

alex writes "A Russian rocket will launch a 1/3 scale model of of the Bigelow inflatable space station a week from Friday, according to The Space Fellowship. This prototype will carry a thousand personal objects donated by Bigelow Aerospace employees. If all goes well, another prototype should go up by September, and non-Bigelow-employee enthusiasts might be able to contribute their own garbage--err, personal items--to the project. (Via Futurismic)"

toughguy asks: "I'm the principal in a software startup that develops web apps for a relatively small market. We typically run our software for our customers in hosted environment (kinda like SalesForce.com). We've got some large potential customers who are more sophisticated and would run our application in-house. They'd also like to be able to do more customization using their internal development staff. This customization would require us to give them our source code. This, frankly, gives me the willies. The source code for our application represents millions of dollars of invested time and energy. At this point, we're not interested in open-sourcing the whole thing. I'm interested in knowing how other people have handled similar situations. What protections did you have in place? A good lawyer is a must. A good contract with the customer that makes it clear what they can and can't do with the code. How have you handled similar situations?"

G Roper writes "Studies show that most spreadsheets have critical errors in one percent of their cells, well beyond a permissible level. Here are some news stories about spreadsheet errors. Spreadsheets won't protect a firm from liability when they are audited and spreadsheet errors found: spreadsheets are not secure, provide no audit trail and won't pass HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley auditing. How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"

An anonymous reader writes "This is a pretty good insight into some of the dangers of social networking and website customisation -- marketing and loss of privacy. When marketeers know who your friends are and what you are all into, it makes their advertising a lot more effective. From the article: "Why are the companies worth so much money? Why is MySpace worth over half a billion dollars without a proper revenue model? Why is Digg allegedly pitched at over $20m (at the last count) without any idea of where money is going to be pulled from? The answer is - data. Information. Marketing. Every detail about you and me. That is where the money is."

truthsearch writes "The UK's National Union of Journalists is calling for a boycott of Yahoo! because of its 'unethical behaviour' in China. Yahoo! has given details of at least three people to Chinese authorities who were subsequently imprisoned. 'The NUJ regards Yahoo!'s actions as a completely unacceptable endorsement of the Chinese authorities. As a result, the NUJ will be cancelling all Yahoo!-operated services and advising all members to boycott Yahoo! until the company changes its irresponsible and unethical policy.' Yahoo! sent a response to The Register."

mikemuch writes "While you're waiting for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, you may want to check out ExtremeTech's roundup of dual-layer DVD burners. Starting at about $43US, some of them are quite powerful, come with nice bundled software, and are pretty good deals, to boot."

An anonymous reader writes "Carrier Grade Linux, once the domain of big-bucks Bells and commercial software vendors, just became more attainable for universities, companies running high-availability web services, and average Linux hackers interested in learning what goes into the world's most reliable, maintainable, and available systems. The Debian project, backed by HP, has launched the Debian-Carrier Grade Linux subproject, and registered Debian-CGL with version 2.02 of the CGL spec. LinuxDevices has created a simplified version of the registration form that lets you see which Debian packages to apt-get, and which packages you'll have to download and compile out side of Debian, in order to get your own Carrier Grade Linux setup."

Half-Life 2 was worth the wait. Great story, beautiful graphics, and inventive gameplay made the game a worthy successor to Valve's 1998 classic. Last week gamers were finally allowed access to the next part of the story. Half-Life 2: Episode One is a fast-paced and entirely worthwhile continuation of Gordon Freeman's tale. It also raises some really good questions about the very idea of charging for small chunks of content. Read on for my review of this $20 experience, and a few comments on the episodic content debate.

dr_fatty writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that analyst Peter Misek, who predicted a partnership between Research in Motion and IBM, is now predicting a partnership between Apple and Rim. The predicted result? The AppleBerry. 'Such a deal would have huge merit because each company lacks what the other provides. RIM wants a firm foothold in the consumer market and Apple doesn't have a presence in the booming wireless data sector, he said.'"

GamePolitics reports that M-rated games have been taken as evidence a case involving the death of a 55-year old man in Louisiana. The connection? Jack Thompson says: "Nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you're a hitman or a videogamer." GP goes on to point out the lunacy of this claim. From the site: "Funny, that. A quick Google search on 'shot in the face' turns up 921,000 entries."