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Seventh Harry Potter Book Named 449

Posted by CowboyNeal from the and-the-last dept.
Croakyvoice writes "JK Rowling has today given fans of the Harry Potter books the name of Book 7 of the very popular series via a Christmas present on her site, to get to the name you need to follow a complicated procedure but thankfully the name of the book has been revealed as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
Movies

Submission + - New Transformers Trailer Shows Battles, Prime

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Transformers Movie is now only 7 months away. A couple of months back we saw an underwhelming teaser showing the Beagle 2 'rover' discovering robots on Mars. A new trailer has been posted on the official website [flash] showing battle scenes, transformations and a fleeting glimpse of what appears to be Optimus Prime. Autobots, roll out!

Non-Geeky Gifts for Tech Geeks 142

Posted by Zonk from the when-you-absolutely-have-to-serve-hockey-puck-smoothie dept.
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad.com has just put out another holiday gift guide. They've gathered together, along with the usual video cards and whatnot, several non-techie toys with a techie slant. With the exception of an mp3 and a digital camera, everything else they recommend is stuff I haven't seen on any list before. They have things ranging from $10 to $7500. My favorite has to be the Blendtec blender. 2 horsepower motor. Turns hockey pucks into mulch."
Math

Submission + - Science's Breakthrough of the Year

Submitted by
johkir
johkir writes: "Last year, evolution was the breakthrough of the year; We found it full of new developments in understanding how new species originate. But we did get a complaint or two that perhaps we were just paying extra attention to the lively political/religious debate that was taking place over the issue, particularly in the United States. Perish the thought! Our readers can relax this year: Religion and politics are off the table, and n-dimensional geometry is on instead. This year's Breakthrough salutes the work of a lone, publicity-shy Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman, who was at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences until 2005. The work is very technical but has received unusual public attention because Perelman appears to have proven the Poincaré Conjecture, a problem in topology whose solution will earn a $1 million prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute. That's only if Perelman survives what's left of a 2-year gauntlet of critical attack required by the Clay rules, but most mathematicians think he will. There is also a page of runner-ups. Many of which have been covered here on Slashdot."

Spam Volume Jumps 35% In November 371

Posted by CowboyNeal from the crazy-email-subject-lines dept.
gregleimbeck writes "Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters. 'There's been a huge increase in spam volume,' says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, 'from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28.'"
The Internet

A Brief History of 'sex.com' 78

Posted by Zonk from the truth-is-always-stranger-than-fiction dept.
linuxwrangler writes "Violet Blue's current 'Open Source Sex' column in SFGate covers the amusingly sordid history of sex.com. More graft and corruption than hanky-panky, the article details some of the exploits surrounding the much-desired URL, including an attempted assassination, drug smuggling, money laundering, and a bid to buy out Ceasar's Palace. From the article: 'It's estimated that Cohen made over $100 million off the URL in the years he had it, even making a 1999 bid to buy Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and was only forced to give it back to Kremen when a San Jose court awarded the URL (and $65 million in damages) to Kremen in 2001. It had been a five-year struggle for Kremen, both in battling his speed addiction and in trying to raise funds for his own litigation. Even though his dot-com boom resume boasted typical startup-style impressive credentials, Kremen was only able to afford the court bills when bitter Sex.com porn industry rivals helped fund the case.'
The Courts

RIAA Drops Suit Against Santangelo 190

Posted by Zonk from the christmas-presents dept.
VE3OGG writes "The RIAA, in an expected motion, has recently dismissed the case against Patti Santangelo, one of the most famous targets of the RIAA lawsuits. The mother of five was described by the judge presiding as an 'internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo.' While this is good news, the RIAA is still pursuing its case against two of Mrs. Santangelo's children. To make matters worse, the RIAA has also dismissed the case 'without prejudice', meaning that they could, in theory, take action against her again later on. The RIAA alleges that Santangelo's children downloaded and subsequently distributed more than 1,000 songs. The damages they seek are presently unknown"
Internet Explorer

Clipboard Data Theft Now Optional With IE7 162

Posted by Zonk from the options-are-good dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's been known for a long time that Internet Explorer will happily allow any Web site to steal data that users have recently cut-and-pasted or copied into the Windows 'clipboard' data storage area. Well, now it looks like Microsoft has finally decided that this 'feature' was probably ill-advised, according to The Washington Post's Security Fix blog. IE7 throws up a warning asking whether users really want to let a site filch their clipboard data (Firefox, Opera and most other non-IE browsers forbid this behavior by default)."
Software

Submission + - Vista Tweaking Utilities Combine

Submitted by Andy Keritsinovitch
Andy Keritsinovitch writes: Popular Vista tweaking utilties, EasyBCD and TweakVI, have integrated with one-another. NeoSmart Technologies and Totalidea Software today announced a partnership that will lead to the complete integration of both their Vista management software. EasyBCD is a tool used to manage the Vista bootloader and set up dual boots with other operating systems; TweakVI is a powerful registry-hacks tool that automates many registry changes. Both EasyBCD and TweakVI are freeware utilities, though there is a paid "ultimate" version of TweakVI available to subscribers.
Graphics

Submission + - Linux gets GeForce 8800 drivers before Vista does

Submitted by etsolow
etsolow writes: In a surprising move, NVIDIA has released Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD drivers ( http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp ) for its flagship GeForce 8800 series of graphics cards before releasing so much as a beta driver for Windows Vista. Despite the "ready for Vista today" and "Essential Vista", plastered all over its website and product boxes, NVIDIA has staunchly refused to release anything to Vista users, saying only that drivers will be available for Vista's retail launch in late January via this little blurb on their Vista-ready page ( http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_gpu.ht ml ): "** GeForce 8800 requires updated drivers for Vista, which will be available to download when Vista is available at retail in late January." Unfortunately, a two-line disclaimer was not enough to calm Vista users who had purchased the card under false pretenses during the previous month. See the angry discussion as moderators try to maintain control in NVIDIA's user forums here: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23399

Robots Could Some Day Demand Legal Rights 473

Posted by Zonk from the good-news-everyone dept.
Karrde712 writes "According to a study by the British government, as reported by the BBC, robots may some day improve to a level of intelligence where they might be able to demand rights, even 'robo-healthcare'." From the article: "The research was commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Centre. The 246 summary papers, called the Sigma and Delta scans, were complied by futures researchers, Outsights-Ipsos Mori partnership and the US-based Institute for the Future (IFTF) ... The paper which addresses Robo-rights, titled Utopian dream or rise of the machines? examines the developments in artificial intelligence and how this may impact on law and politics." I'd better get started on my RoboAmerican studies degree.
Software

Submission + - $10,000 donation to a free NVIDIA driver?

Submitted by blueser
blueser writes: David Nielsen committed to donate at least $10.00 to the Nouveau driver project if 1,000 other people do so. These guys intend to reverse engineer NVIDIA Linux driver to produce a 100% open source alternative with 3D acceleration. From their page you can see there's still a lot of ground to cover: "Currently, nothing works. If you're not a developer, you're not interested in this at all." Could this work? Would this free driver be able to keep up with newest NVIDIA hardware as it comes out? This is not an unreasonable scenario as some might think: NVIDIA dropped their own nForce network driver in favor of the open source, reverse-engineered 'forcedeth' driver.
Microsoft

MS Fights Gmail With 2-GB Exchange Mailboxes 353

Posted by kdawson from the supersize-it dept.
prawnonthebarbie writes "Microsoft is battling the trend for frazzled office workers to give up on Outlook and auto-forward all their mail to Gmail: the company is promising 2-GB mailboxes in Exchange 2007 rather than the piffling 50-MB mailboxes most workplaces have now. Speaking at the launch of Vista, Office, and Exchange in Singapore, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Martha DeAmicis said Microsoft had built clustered replication into Exchange so corporate IT admins wouldn't be worrying about backing up big mailboxes to tape. However, its killer feature appears to be its plans to make those gigs of email available on Joe Officeworker's mobile phone."

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