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Submission + - Dell, Raymond Unveil 'One Smartwatch Per Child'; Icahn Erupts

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As Dell's (DELL:NASDAQ GS) board reviews three competing proposals for taking the company private, including a $24.4 billion deal led by founder and CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners, the company has announced it is entering the suddenly crowded smartwatch sweepstakes along with Apple, Google, and Samsung. The twist is that Dell's product will target the low end of the market — the extreme low end, in the words of CEO Dell, because 'that's where most of the world's customers are'. Dell's smartwatch, projected to cost just 19.99 USD ($319.99 before Dell's mail-in rebate) will allow children in developing countries to communicate via voice and text, collaborate on school activities, and perform native-to-English voice and text translations with the help of Dell's new ARM supercomputer. Dell says premium models will also perform translations in the reverse direction, i.e. English-to-native. Open Source advocate Eric S. Raymond, who joined Dell for the conference call, stated 'this is the beginning of what I call the Bazaar Wrist model of the mobile Internet. It'll be a battle of ideas against what I call the Office Tower Wrist model that Apple and Google will be selling.' Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who recently launched a rival bid for Dell, labeled the product an 'a pig in the poke' as well as a 'distraction and extreme waste of shareholder value', adding that his $7.44 Wal-Mart watch 'works just great for me and probably anyone else'.

Submission + - Radio Shack TRS-80 vs. Commodore 64: Battle of the Titans (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "The one and only Jeff Cogswell is back with a new article comparing the two biggest competitors in the home-computing business: the Commodore 64 and the Radio Shack TRS-80. What does he have to say about these absolutely cutting-edge machines? The TRS-80 simply can't stand up to the awe-inspiring Commodore 64, which features the latest processor from MOS Technology, the 6510. Best of all, the C-64s graphics processor can display up to 16 colors simultaneously, and it can create a full screen made up of 320 x 200 "dots." But the TRS-80 has some good points, as well, including a whopping 512 K of memory (not that you'll ever use that much, anyway). As Cogswell writes: "Let’s cover these two bad boys and provide a totally unbiased review unencumbered by any alleged kickbacks (including a brand new daisy wheel printer and a case of Schiltz Beer) from Commodore, the maker of the awesome machine known as the Commodore 64.""
Security

Submission + - ISIS Lab Fixes Computer Security! (poly.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NYU-Poly's ISIS lab has teamed up with tech giants to once and for all solve the problem of computer security. Expect more news to follow!
Government

Submission + - Defcad.org seized, shut down (defcad.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Defcad has been shut down. The Defcad/Defensedistributed crowd has been indicted on multiple counts which can be viewed at defcad.org.
Unix

Submission + - Quick, somebody tell SCO! More patent trolling on UNIX (theregister.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
donak
donak writes: "It seems SCO has competition : A company registered in minor league tax haven the Cook Islands, but with a subsidiary in Delaware, lawyers in the patent-troll heaven of East Texas and an office in Sydney, Australia, has asserted intellectual property rights over all versions of Unix and “Unix-like derivatives” and plans to seek royalties from every company that has ever used the operating system.
Quoting the "anonymous spokesperson" : “It's clear that some far-sighted Unix pioneer created this daemon even though it has only become useful in the last few years,” he said, “That the insight is significant is obvious from the fact the code has been copied not only throughout Unix but into the Windows code stream via NT, and Apple's world via BSD. It appears to us that NSFW is also present throughout the code base of every significant Linux distribution,” he added."

Submission + - Indies Grab the Controls at Game Developers Conference (nytimes.com)

Submitted by RougeFemme
RougeFemme writes: Indies beat out mainstream studios for most of the Game Developers Choice Awards. "FTL: Faster Than Light", an independent game financed by a Kickstarter campaign, won the award for Best Debut. Because of the growing success of the indies, Eric Zimmerman, game designer and instructor at the NYU Game Center, is cancelling the Game Design Challenge that he's held at the conference for the last 10 years. “The idea of doing strange, bizarre, experimental games is no longer strange, bizarre or experimental.”
Science

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Explaining to my girlfriend that humans didn't ride dinosaurs (dinosaurc14ages.com) 4

Submitted by
p00kiethebear
p00kiethebear writes: "Dear Slashdot. Remember when you learned that Santa Clause wasn't real? I have a wonderful and beautiful girlfriend. She treats me so right in every way. We've been together for almost a year now and everything seemed to be going perfectly until this morning. Over breakfast we were discussing dinosaurs and she told me a story about how her grandfather, fifty years ago, dated footprints of a dinosaurs and a man that were right next to each other to be within the same epoch of history. I laughed when she said this and then realized that she wasn't joking. She seriously believes this. She believes dinosaurs and humans walked at the same time together. Her grandfather told her this when she was little so regular logic and wiki isn't going to be able to contest her childhood dreams that she has been raised to believe. The odd thing is that she's not religious, it's just what her archeologist grandfather taught her. More important than just backing up evidence to the contrary, how do I explain this to her without crushing her childhood dreams? Is it even worth discussing it further with her? Have you ever had a loved one or family member that believed something that made you uncomfortable?"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - 10 geeky and foolish ways to celebrate April Fools' Day (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: April Fools' Day has become increasingly geeky, since the Web, cameras and other high-tech tools make it so much easier to prank people, and with the nonstop leadership of companies like Google. http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow/93495/googles-famous-follies-10-favorite-april-fools-gags-and-easter-eggs.html Here's a roundup of ways to make the most of your April 1.
Open Source

Submission + - Open Sauce Foundation; Freedom From The Condiments of Intellectual Tyranny (sharpenedsticks.com)

Submitted by
TekTek
TekTek writes: "In response to the growing proliferation of the use of “secret sauce” as a vehicle for entrepreneurs’, venture capitalists’, and investment bankers’ thinly veiled proprietary machinations, a global consortium of premium condiment manufacturers has launched the Open Sauce Foundation (OSF). Founding members include McIlhenny Company (producer of Tabasco brand pepper sauce), Huy Fong Foods (producer of “Rooster Brand” Sriracha sauce), and Kikkoman (producer of Kikkoman brand Soy Sauce). The new foundation’s stated aim is not only to uphold the virtues of buying worthy sauce manufacturers’ products, but to demonstrate to the tech, financial, and media communities that “Open” companies, and condiments, can, and do, assume leadership roles in their respective markets."
Novell

NetWare 3.12 Server Taken Down After 16 Years of Continuous Duty 187

Posted by samzenpus from the served-us-well dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica's Peter Bright reports on a Netware 3.12 server that has been decommissioned after over 16 years of continuous operation. The plug was pulled when noise from the server's hard drives become intolerable. From the article: 'It's September 23, 1996. It's a Monday. The Macarena is pumping out of the office radio, mid-way through its 14 week run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, doing little to improve the usual Monday gloom...Sixteen and a half years later, INTEL's hard disks—a pair of full height 5.25 inch 800 MB Quantum SCSI devices—are making some disconcerting noises from their bearings, and you're tired of the complaints. It's time to turn off the old warhorse.'"

Comment In traffic, a VW will get me someplace (Score 4, Insightful) 749

by wiredog (#43248313) Attached to: Can You Really Hear the Difference Between Lossless, Lossy Audio?

as fast as a Ferrari.

Since I do most of my listening in a car, and am almost 48, I can't hear the difference between an mp3 and a vinyl album, or a cd, most of the time. Well, except for the lack of skipping. Ever try to listen to an LP in a moving car? But I digress. Sure, people who are younger and $pend lot$ of dollar$ on the Finest Audiophile equipment areound can tell. Me in my Chevy? Not so much.

Submission + - Storm brewing over Weather Channel's bid for ".weather" TLD (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by wiredog
wiredog writes: From the Capital Weather Gang blog comes the story of the various people and organizations objecting to the Weather Channel's attempt to grab ".weather" for themselves.

I don't know why they would try, since they don't actually do weather forecasting anymore. Just one reality show after another.

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