Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft

Submission + - Why has Microsoft avoided liability lawsuits?

Submitted by ultimai
ultimai writes: While doing research to start my own computer consultancy business, I ran into errors & omissions liability insurance and how it was a big must for anyone doing any sort of consultancy work. But it also made me ask why Microsoft (or a lot of other software companies) have avoided error liability lawsuits from bugs causing millions in damage? From their reputation as a maker of faulty software, the laws of different jurisdictions, the shaky legal status of EULAs and other such things, hasn't there been ANY high profile lawsuits? Does a few magical sections in their EULA shield them from this type of legal threat? Or do they do something like auto manufacturers with their secret warranty programs?

Making Time With the Watchmakers 257

Posted by Zonk from the temple-fugate-would-be-proud dept.
PreacherTom writes "In the age of watches that have more computational power than Apollo 11's computer, one would think that the watchmaker has gone the way of the cobbler, the blacksmith and the Dodo. Quite the contrary. With the rise in interest for mechanical watches (especially luxury models), Rolex has sponsored a new school to train horologists in the arcane art. From the article: 'We were facing a situation today where we needed to foster a new generation of watchmakers,' says Charles Berthiaume, the senior vice-president for technical operations at Rolex and the Technicum's president 'Thirty to 40 years ago, there was a watchmaker at every jewelry store. That's not the case today,' he notes. Included are some remarkable examples of their training, dedication, and intricate patience as they take technology in an entirely different direction."
Handhelds

Submission + - Official Jeb Bush Portrait Includes BlackBerry

Submitted by
Armadni General
Armadni General writes: "The official portrait of Florida Governor Jeb Bush was unveiled yesterday and includes, among other elements, a BlackBerry handset.

From the article:

"The BlackBerry made it into the portrait because Bush was said to have been the first "E-governor," receiving tens of thousands of e-mails and responding to many of them. The governor told friends he thinks his administration has helped change the relationship between government and people, and Floridians are generally more hopeful and optimistic.""
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Best of Casual Gameplay nominations are up!

Submitted by
Jay Bibby
Jay Bibby writes: "The good folks at Jayisgames.com, who have been reviewing casual Web games longer than any other site, have just posted their picks for the Best of 2006. Add your voice by selecting one nomination from each of 15 different categories. Results will be posted on January 1st.

http://jayisgames.com/bestof/2006/best_of_casual_g ameplay.php

Zonk — Please post something about us, you never have before. This is our third annual Best of feature. We have earned the respect of the international development community as well as others within the games industry who appreciate what we do. We only link to authorized versions of games from the original creators, and are very conscientious about the quality of the games we choose to review. Our community is substantial, as we reach nearly a million unique IPs each month.

Thank you kindly for your consideration."
Privacy

Submission + - Computer seized for evidence

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I used to work at an electronics recycling warehouse somewhere in the United States. My responsibility was initially to evaluate everything that came in on a pallet or in a gaylord box and take all of the "goodies" upstairs for testing and resale. This eventually expanded to include maintaining and installing the company servers, but in any case, I must have wiped hundreds of terabytes of 10/20/40GB HDDs while I was there.

Anyway, towards the end of my employment, I happened upon a few pallets of old computers from various departments of XYZ County. Items of note included a pair of Gateway servers (the first I'd ever seen in person, I almost didn't believe Gateway made them!) from the ABC wastewater treatment plant and a black ATX full tower case with no sides and evidence tape all over it. I pulled it upstairs because it had some very very nice components in it, top of the line in late 2002 (a typical computer to get on a pallet is a beige box from 1996, PC or Mac). Supplied with monitor, mouse, keyboard, and power, it booted into Windows 2000, automatically logged in, and in general seemed to be in very good working order. I used Google to search the rather unique surname that was markered on the 'seized as evidence' label and found some correlations with business documents on the PC itself. The contents of the computer were the usual mix of pornography, cracked video games, and IT deployment and migration plans that you'd expect from a feisty little dotcom specialising in media streaming technologies. I had initially assumed that the computer was seized as evidence of naughtiness by the company itself, but it turned out after contacting the original owner of the PC that it was evidence in a case against his father and they promised him that they'd return the PC eventually. Well as it turned out, there was no evidence on the computer's hard drive anyways, as his father had never used it, and they never returned the guy his PC and dumped it at our recycling plant, consigning his hardware and data to the trash heap. I did not think that was a very good ending to the situation, so I bought the drive from my company and mailed it to the original owner (I believe his dad was convicted of whatever and went to jail).

What is ethical in this situation? Obviously I violated the expectation of XYZ County that my company would wipe all of the data, but was it really theirs? Aren't they supposed to return evidence that wasn't even used, and obtained from people who weren't even defendants? I understand the owner was insistent for quite a while that his system be returned and promises were made but nothing came of it. I also feel bad about having snooped on the guy's computer, but he was quite understanding and pretty relieved in the e-mails I received from him."
AMD/OSTG

Journal Journal: Shuttle launches XPC 1337 Series SXDi

Journal by OSTG Marketing
Forget selling your first born for a PlayStation 3, and get in line for the SDXi gaming rig from Shuttle's XPC 1337 range. You'll get a double performance boost from the two ATI Radeon X1950 XTX video cards that are running in AMD's ATI CrossFire technology, and will have the fastest machine on the block.
AMD/OSTG

Journal Journal: AMD opens next-gen chip tech think-tank

Journal by OSTG Marketing
Software giant AMD has opened a next-gen chip tech think-tank in Redmond, Washington. The Advanced Architecture and Technology Lab (AATL)'s mission is to determine which technologies will drive AMD's products "beyond the five-year time horizon", part of the company's plan to build it's operation into one to match arch-rival Intel's. "The AATL will be run by AMD's chief architectural officer, Rich Witek, who's
Sony

Submission + - PS3 hits one million units shipped worldwide

Submitted by
Wowzer
Wowzer writes: "Sony's latest PlayStation 3 shipment numbers show Japan has received 390,000 PS3 units. The Americas have received 620,000 PS3 units. Which would put PS3 at 1.01 million units worldwide. From the article: "However, these are shipped numbers, which the latest Media Create sales numbers from Japan confirm. Last week in Japan, 70,942 PS3's were sold, bringing the total in customers' hands there to 308,949 units. Compared to 390,000 units shipped now, that's a difference of 81,051, which probably sold out this week." U.S. retailers reported in November that Madden NFL 07 and Resistance: Fall of Man were the best-selling titles."
Networking

Submission + - Network outage

Submitted by
sheddd
sheddd writes: "I haven't been able to get into Ebay (and a few other sites) for 3 days or so; I started digging today and tried from Freeshell (Washington) Gulftel (Alabama), Cox, and Network Tools.

All the sites fail at the same router; I'm suprised this isn't in the news yet.

trscape-8.border3.acs.pnap.net [216.52.194.70] reports: Destination net unreachable."
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - ZSNES 1.50 released

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "After two years, the popular open source emulator ZSNES has finally been updated to 1.50. There are tons of fixes and new features including emulation of Top Gear 3000, updated movie support, and removal of old hacks. A full list of changes can be found here."

Slashdot Top Deals

The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.

Close