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Communications

Submission + - Apple Imposes New Limits on IPhone Sales (myway.com)

Submitted by solitas
solitas writes: SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Apple Inc. (AAPL) no longer accepts cash for iPhone purchases and now limits sales of the cell phone to two per person in a move to stop people from reselling them.

The new policy started Thursday, said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. Before then, there was no cash restriction and the purchase limit was five per person.

"We're requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers."

I can see a purchase limit, but whatever happened to "this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Sam Adams vs Sam Adams 2

Submitted by
peacefinder
peacefinder writes: "Sam Adams recently announced he's running for Mayor of Portland, Oregon. A few of his fans registered a couple of websites on his behalf. The brewer of Samuel Adams beer noticed these new domains, and sent the registrants a Cease-and-Desist Letter claiming trademark infringement. Local bloggers are calling for a boycott of the beer, while another claims that — if there exists real confusion — Boston Brewing may be violating Oregon election law by continuing to sell its beer here. Can the Portland Beer Party be far behind?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Mom blasts Ballmer over kid's crappy Vista OS (computerworld.com) 6

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "While on stage at a Gartner's ITxpo conference today, Ballmer got an ear-full from the mother of a 13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer she decided only two days later to switch back to XP because Vista was so difficult. Ballmer defended Vista saying: "Your daughter saw a lot of value"; to which the mother replied: "She's 13." Ballmer said that Vista is bigger than XP, and "for some people that's an issue, and it's not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1. But machines are constantly getting bigger, and [it's] probably important to remember that as well." Says the mother: "Good, I'll let you come in and install it for me.""
The Internet

Journal Journal: Mouseovers - as bad as popups? 8

Journal by fyngyrz

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by words and phrases in web articles that pop up boxes because my mouse pointer happened to cross them, temporarily hiding the content I was reading in the first place? I didn't click on anything, and consequently, I don't want a context change. I find these annoying to the point of noting what the site is and not going back. Anyone else feel the same? Anyone have a defense of the practice?

Communications

Submission + - Verizon Rejects Text Messages From Abortion Rights

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "Saying it had the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon's mobile network available for a text-message program ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/business/27cnd-verizon.html?hp ). The other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code. In turning down the program, Verizon, one of the nation's two largest wireless carriers, told Naral that it "does not accept issue-oriented (abortion, war, etc.) programs — only basic, general politician-related campaigns (Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, etc.).""
Spam

Submission + - Hitting back at spammers with BSD and spamd (hungryhacker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This article shows how you can use spamd available with OpenBSD and in the Free/NetBSD ports to waste a spammers processor cycles, backup his mail queue and waste his bandwidth. All on a personal machine not running a public mail server. This would include all BSD users who don't run a a public MTA. First log you will enjoy looking at! http://www.hungryhacker.com/articles/misc/spamd
The Courts

Submission + - eBay Seller Files Federal Lawsuit Against Autodesk (aecnews.com)

Submitted by
New10k
New10k writes: "Tim Vernor is an eBay seller (happyhourcollectables) with over 10,000 positive reviews. He specializes in comic books but sells most everything. He got thrown off eBay after Autodesk filed complaints against him for reselling Autodesk software. He has responded by filing a federal lawsuit alleging fraudulent use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He has already passed the federal court's "is this guy a wacko?" test and the suit is official — Autodesk has 30 days to respond. Details at AECnews (http://aecnews.com/news/2007/09/10/2377.aspx)."
Editorial

Submission + - When Was The Exact Day Slashdot Jumped The Shark? (oreillynet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: by Noah Gift in Opinion from O'Reilly OnLamp Blog: "I remember in the early 2000's, Slashdot was THE geek website, but something has changed and it appears they have lost the magic. ...I find their stories trite, boring and dare I say, irrelevant to IT? What is your best bet to the cause of their demise?
Movies

Submission + - Paramount picks HD DVD over Blu-ray

Submitted by
WebHostingGuy
WebHostingGuy writes: "From the article reported by MSNBC: Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. will offer next-generation DVDs in the HD DVD format and drop support for Blu-ray. "Part of our vision is to aggressively extend our movies beyond the theater and deliver the quality and features that appeal to our audience," said Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. "I believe HD DVD is not only the affordable high-quality choice for consumers, but also the smart choice for Paramount.""
Media

Submission + - Dan Rather uncovers flaws in touchscreen voting

Submitted by goombah99
goombah99 writes: Dan Rather Reports has posted a lengthy YouTube teaser of their upcoming touchscreen voting expose (to air tuesday at 8 or 11pm ET) This is sort of a "60-minutes" style investigation of touchscreen voting. It's apparently not a rehash either. Rather turns up some new evidence such as tracking down the dilapidated plant where the ES&S ivotronic touchscreens were assembled. There they were having a 30 to 40% rejection rate on the screen themselves. Apparently the issue here was a rush to market to meet the election schedule. They needed lots of machines, fast. So plant workers say the rejects got shipped too. The "rush to market" aspect demonstrates an often overlooked strength of the use of open source software with commodity hardware and a multiple vendor business model like open voting consortium. This should be much less subject to single source point failures and has a built-in adversarial oversight nature that might lend some quality control. I just hope their conclusion is not "we need perfect machines and perfectly trained operators" and instead is we need a different approach that is transparent, robust and self correcting in the face of errors.
Security

Submission + - VMWare Escape Publicized at SANSfire 2007 (foolmoon.net)

Submitted by
FoolMoon
FoolMoon writes: "Anyone in the know on VMware security knows that Ed Skoudis, Tom Liston and "crew" from Intelguardians (and some close researchers) have been researching VMware escapes for the last couple years for an US government customer. At SANSfire 2006, they presented some of this research to include how malware might detect the fact it was running under virtualization and hinted that there were possible exploits. Tonight at SANSfire 2007 some of these were revealed and the world saw the first public display of this capability. My blog represents my takeaway from this presentation given. As the presentation is not expected to be made publicly available, my notes may be of interest to anyone not in attendance. Any errors and misstatements in this are my own. — Monty McDougal For the complete blog entry visit http://www.foolmoon.net/cgi-bin/blog/index.cgi?mod e=viewone&blog=1185593255"
Software

Submission + - Gentoo crisis continues on the -dev mailing list

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Following on from a previous Slashdot comment, Gentoo's main developer list seems to have exploded again.

In a scene that is all too often seen at Gentoo nowadays, an initial subject of whether to continue to allow user's contributions on a developer list blew up five days later with developers saying that they didn't care about the community or users, a developer leaving and users "finding it commonplace" in the Gentoo communication channels.

Is this another nail in the coffin leading to a fork or is Gentoo just losing excess baggage?"
Books

Submission + - Unusual security for Harry Potter 7 (thinkabdul.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This article highlights some of the most unusual and unheard of security measures that are being taken to ensure that the secret about the death of two main characters in the story are not revealed till the launch of the book on 21st of July. They include interesting items from various sources such as:

-only Rowling and 20 others — illustrators, editors and continuity experts — know the book's ending

-some employees had to work in near darkness to prevent them from reading the books

-The delivery trucks are fitted with satellite tracking systems GPS) costing up to £1,000 each

-written consent from Rowling's literary agent to read aloud from the book. Quizzes, riddles and crosswords are strictly banned.

http://thinkabdul.com/2007/07/16/highlight-unusual -unprecedented-security-measures-taken-to-protect- jk-rowlings-harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-s ecrets/
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - How Apple Can Win The PC Battle (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by
ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Despite dropping the word computer from its name, Apple still desperately wants to win the PC market. And recent statistics show they are making progress. Just a year ago Apple's share was close to 2%. Now Apple's Desktops have crossed 10% and the MacBooks now closing on 15% of the laptop market. This puts MacBooks in 4th place behind HP, Toshiba and Gateway. The figures are likely to increase in the 3rd quarter, which is traditionally strong for Apple, because of the back-to-school sales.

Despite the fact that Macs are on the rise and iPods rule already, one can't help but wonder: why are people still using PCs if Macs are so great? One reason is of course cost — Apple computers are usually more expensive than PCs. But another reason is Inertia. When it comes to switch, the cost is not just measured in dollars — it is measured in time and brain power. In addition to cost and learning barriers, there are big corporate barriers as well."

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