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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft pays companies to use LiveSearch

Submitted by
tsa
tsa writes: "On John Battelle's Searchblog there is a piece about how Microsoft pays companies to not only have them use MS's Live Search engine, but also get information about the amount of users and PC's in the company. Companies get paid a fee per PC. The height of the fee depends on the usage of the MS LiveSearch engine. The use of IE7 is mandatory for this, because MS wants the companies to use a plugin for this browser to be able to keep track of the user's searching habits. If you ask me, this is bribery."
Linux Business

Journal Journal: Off-the-shelf dual-boot linux PCs 1

Journal by ironfrost
I was surprised today to see an advert from Founder, one of China's major computer manufacturers. It caught my eye because it was promoting the company's new line of dual-boot Windows+Linux desktop machines. Although selling computers with Linux preinstalled isn't particularly strange here, this is an encouraging sign because it shows that the reasons for offering Linux aren't just to save money any more - previous Linux offerings in China seem to have a
Quickies

Submission + - High School Student Builds Fusion Reactor

Submitted by
deblau
deblau writes: "In 2006 Thiago Olson joined the extremely sparse ranks of amateurs worldwide who have achieved nuclear fusion with a home apparatus. In other words, he built the business end of a hydrogen bomb in his basement. A bright plasma "star in a jar" demonstrated his success. "The temperature of the plasma is around 200 million degrees," Olson says modestly, "several times hotter than the core of the sun.""
Data Storage

Journal Journal: Life of CDs for archiving data

Journal by Jeff1946
One of the science fair entries I judged today was on the use of CDs to archive data and the expected lifetime. The students did accelerated lifetime testing at 80C to determine the failure rate of the cyanine dye on which is written the data. They didn't have enough time at 80C to detect any failures. Of more interest to me and /. folks is conversations they had with people at NIST and the Library of Congress. The students learned that CDs lifetimes have greatly improved d
Spam

Submission + - Can spam be reduced by checking domain maturity?

Submitted by gmHumfrey
gmHumfrey writes: It seems to me that most of the URLs in spam email contain domains that were registered in less than 90 days. If the whois databases could be snapshotted, and released as a bulk download + incremental updates for anti-spam software, then a lot of spam (including the picture-spam that is becoming more frequent,where they still try to provide something for you to click on) could be eliminated before reaching the person's inbox. Not a solution, but it would help significantly reduce the amount of spam that is able to be sent. There would be workaround's for this eventually, such as using a redirector url which the antispam engine would have to fetch the url to see where it actually resolves to. What does the slashdot community think about this?
United States

Submission + - The C flag flies again...

Submitted by elsrik
elsrik writes: CommodoreGaming has emerged with a line of PCs geared for gaming performance. "Driven by a team of gaming veterans and enthusiasts across a broad range of disciplines Commodore Gaming is a passionate provider of products and services for the mobile, PC and Video game market. Having acquired the Commodore brand in late 2005 as part of a joint venture with Commodore International Corporation, Commodore Gaming aims to re-establish the brand as a leader in its industry." as seen at http://commodoregaming.com/
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - First Pictures and Specs of Commodore's New PCs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following last week's announcement of the return of Commodore with a new line of gaming PCs comes the first specs and images of the new systems. The models, from entry-level to high-end, are the Commodore Cg, Cgs, Cgx, and Cxx. The initial hardware specifications for the 'extreme level' Cxx are as follows: Intel CoreT2 Extreme quad-core processor, an Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard, two 150 GB 10,000 RPM SATA drives in RAID 0, with a spare 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA drive, 4GB (2 x 2048) Corsair Dominator memory at 1066 MHz, two nVidia 8800 GTX videocards, a Creatve Labs X-Fi, and Windows Vista Ultimate installed. Hell, it might even run Crysis.
Science

New State of Matter Boosts Quantum Computation 41

Posted by kdawson from the string-net-liquid dept.
Matthew Sparkes writes "In theory, quantum computers can be superior to classical computers for some kinds of problems; in practice their building blocks, qubits, are extremely fragile. Even a slight knock can destroy information. A radical solution to this problem was proposed in the 80's — instead of storing qubits in properties of particles, such as an electron's spin, it was suggested that qubits could be encoded into properties shared by the whole material, and so would be harder to disrupt. Unfortunately, no material with the needed properties existed. Scientists now think they have made a material in the lab, thought to be an example of a new state of matter, that might do the trick. It's an ultra-purified form of a mineral, herbertsmithite, first discovered in Chile in 1972. Its electrons are arranged in a triangular lattice. Researchers say it could become the silicon of the quantum computing era."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PAL PS3 backwards compatibility update

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Following statements by Sony about reduced backwards compatibility in the PAL version of the PS3, The Inquirer reports that Cynamite in Germany got their hands on an European PS3 model and tested its backwards compatibility with 12 of the most famous PS2 games. The results were that only one of those games worked properly, Eragon. Those tests were done with a PS3 containing version 1.5 of the PS3's firmware. Other sites are reporting that on launch day, Firmware version 1.6 will be released, which will allow about 1200 PS2 games to be played, accounting for about 50% of all PS2 games launched in Europe. This means that people who want to play older games will most likely have to update their Firmware right after buying their PS3. Sony will only release the definitive list of backwards compatible games on launch day, 23rd of March.
Censorship

SCO Chair's Anti-Porn Act Advances In Utah 421

Posted by kdawson from the set-the-evil-bit dept.
iptables -A FORWARD writes "Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah reportedly plans to sign a resolution urging Congress to enact the Internet Community Ports Act. The ICPA proposes that online content be divided by port, rather like TVs have channels with adult and family content, so that certain internet ports will be 'clean' — so-called Community Ports — and others will be 'dirty.' Thus, they hope to remove objectionable content from port 80 and require that it be moved elsewhere (port 666 was already taken by Doom, sorry), so that people could more easily block objectionable content, or have their ISPs do the blocking for them. This concept is being pushed by the CP80 group, which is chaired by Ralph Yarro, who also chairs the SCO Group. That probably explains why they didn't choose to adopt RFC 3514, instead."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Kwort 2.2 released

Submitted by
JulioCP
JulioCP writes: "This announcement came to me: "I'm proud to announce that Kwort 2.2 final version has been released after a very long time (more than a year). The system is very stable and very usable. The core system is based on Slackware and provides a rock solid system, and it's also a great place to start making a full featured and usable desktop environment using Xfce. Kpkg is now the official package manager, providing an easy way to remove and install local and mirrored packages. It allows the user to keep their system up to date with the new "upgrade" functionality. So now, Slackware's package tools were removed except of makepkg that's included in kpkg. My favorite highlights in this version: * Kpkg: A simple way to remove, retrieve packages and upgrade the system. * Kwort Network Manager: A simple network manager that works as a console standalone network configurator and as Xfce plugin. * A customized Xfce 4.4.0: Desktop, which continues from Kwort 1.5 and 2.0, with more applications, a new file manager and a new archiver beside other things. * Kernel 2.6.19 with new udev: this upgrade allow me to remove discovery, so the system is quite faster at boot time. * New logo: This new logo is very nice. ;) As in older versions, users know that I like to say the bad things as the good ones, so now the things that I look forward to improving: * A way to do things hal does but without it, as hal is very buggy and unstable (and of course, an integration with the rest of the desktop). * Stable gaim: Gaim 2.0.0 included in Kwort is beta6, which is very stable, but not stable as I would like it to be. * Newer amule: This 2.1.3 version doesn't include UPnP. People who I would like to thank: Andreas Schipplock for making and maintaining the new site, mirroring the iso and for testing; Julio Cesar Pugpinos for doing such a great testing; Stijn Seger for testing the new kernel at last moment, Fabricio Caizza for the new logo. As usual, I would to thank all the mirror providers: Ricardo Brisighelli for the mirror in the UNR, Alberto Ferrer for the mirror in emanon-linux. I would like to thank Patrick Volkerding for Slackware Linux. I hope I didn't forget anyone. As usual, if you need support, feel like talking about Kwort (or anything else), or you just want to meet the people who is behind Kwort, you can join IRC: irc.oftc.net/Kwort. More info in: www.kwort.org""
Announcements

Submission + - Is there a fourth state of matter?

Submitted by
Matthew Sparkes
Matthew Sparkes writes: "In theory, quantum computers are superior to classical computers, in practice they are extremely fragile. Even a slight knock can destroy information. A radical solution to this problem was proposed in the 80's — instead of storing qubits in properties of particles, such as an electron's spin, they suggested that qubits could be encoded into properties shared by the whole material, and so would be harder to disrupt. Unfortunately, the material needed simply didn't exist. Scientists now think that a material, thought to be an example of a new fourth state of matter, could provide the answer."
The Media

Assignment Zero Tests Pro-Am Journalism 52

Posted by kdawson from the should-you-choose-to-accept-it dept.
Jay Rosen writes "Assignment Zero is a pro-am, open-platform reporting project. The investigation: crowd sourcing and peer production are a social trend growing well beyond tech. Why is this happening? Partners: NewAssignment.Net and Wired.com, with Newsvine. From the Wired essay: 'We're trying to figure something out here. Can large groups of widely scattered people, working together voluntarily on the net, report on something happening in their world right now, and by dividing the work wisely tell the story more completely, while hitting high standards in truth, accuracy and free expression?' Wired.com: 'We want out readers and our sources to be one and the same. We think it will make for better journalism.'"
United States

Submission + - DC Residents Get Credit Freezes (Finally)

Submitted by
Jeremy
Jeremy writes: "The Washington Post reports that DC residents will soon be able to get Credit Freeze protection (starting July 1st, 2007). They don't go into much detail other than to say that there's a $10 fee per Credit Reporting Company (so effectively $30). If you're not familiar with why this is such a big deal, see my article here. But the short version is that credit freeze laws are part of the 2 step plan for crippling the identity theft problem that I submitted to the FTC's Identity Theft Task Force's open request for ideas to help stop identity theft. If every state had a good credit freeze law and we prevent congress from enacting a weaker federal law, identity thefts will start to dry up fast."
GUI

Submission + - Beryl 0.2.0 Released

Submitted by
stormeru
stormeru writes: ""With this release, Beryl has taken a giant step apart from Compiz. While some things are similar, which is inevitable in a fork, many things are not." says the Beryl Blog.
What do Slashdotters think about the utility of a 3D GUI besides 'it looks pretty'?"

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