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Submission + - Best Buy

Submitted by
MJay
MJay writes: "On April 13, 2003 I ordered a plasma TV with a four year extended warranty from the Best Buy Store in North Olmsted, Ohio. I was on a six month travel order with the Department of Defense. I was assured that it would not be a problem when I received the unit as I was planning a renovation when I returned home to San Diego, CA. The clerk told me the dates did not matter. The TV was delivered September 13, 2003 and the Best Buy installers attached it to my wall hiding all the wires on Sept 17. The TV operated fine until Sept 4, 2007, suddenly the TV went out. Although I thought I still had a few more days left on the warranty, Best Buy informed me that the warranty had started 5 months before I received it. Best Buy prorated the extended warranty refunding me $41.62, which I did not cash. I found out from Samsung that the TV was manufactured in Korea 17 days after Best Buy said the warranty started. Samsung also showed that their 24 month warranty started from the date I received it, Sept 13, 2003 and that was also the date of purchase. I went to small claims court November 1, 2007. The judge ruled in my favor. The judge ruled that I am entitled to costs of Best Buy repair service visit of $100 and have the TV fixed or replaced. I am now waiting for the court papers. I can only imagine what Best Buy will do next. I would be happy to help in any way I can for others. There were a number of things they told me that were not true. There are too many to make it boring, but in one instance I have a witness, my brother a licensed plumber. During my renovation in 2003 their installer told me that I needed to replace my copper plumbing with plastic. I immediately called my brother who then spoke with their installer. It was decided that it was unnecessary. Their installer wanted to steal my copper. I find I cannot believe anything Best Buy tells me. I wish to help others in anyway I can because I feel Best Buy misrepresented the facts but got caught on a technicality. I was lucky but they said they can fix the TV four times before replacing it. I do not trust them and expect there will be more problems when I should be getting an apology."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Cruising in our cities

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "If you drive a car in many European cities, I bet you're not always happy to see the traffic lights stopping you. And you're not alone: environmentalists agree with you — but for other reasons. As traffic flows account for about one-third of global energy consumption, better control systems for traffic lights could reduce harmful CO2 emissions. Now, German researchers have developed a self-organized control system for traffic lights that could improve vehicular traffic flow by up to 95 percent. They even patented their combination of two strategies leading to this better control system for traffic lights. But read more for additional details and figures showing intersection-free designs of urban road networks which could eliminate the need for traffic lights — at least in new cities."
Networking

Submission + - Networking's 50 greatest arguments (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rundown and writeups of 50 debates from the obvious like Windows vs. Mac to the old like Token-Ring vs. Ethernet to the in-between, like routing vs. switching and Cisco vs. everyone else.

Windows Vista SP1 Hands-On Details 409

Posted by Zonk from the preview-of-the-preview dept.
babyshiori writes "Users of Microsoft Windows Vista can rejoice in the fact that Microsoft just released a preview of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate! The build is the lead-up to the actual service pack, which will be made available to even more testers at a later date. 'In our early tests with the beta, we saw some small improvements in boot time on an HP Compaq 8710p Core 2 Duo notebook. Before SP1, the laptop took 1 minute, 51 seconds to boot. After the update, that figure dropped by almost 20 seconds. Microsoft is also touting improvements in "the speed of copying and extracting files," so we tested a few of those scenarios. We noted a slight increase in the time required to copy 562 JPEG images totaling 1.9GB from an SD Card to the hard drive of the aforementioned HP Compaq notebook.'"
Handhelds

Submission + - Best PDA for painless use with Linux?

Submitted by mistakenanonymity
mistakenanonymity writes: I am a lawyer (though I am not your lawyer) and am starting my own practice with rather limited capital. I have run various flavors of Ubuntu at home for a couple of years as my primary OS. I am currently running 7.10, Gutsy, 64 bit, as a dual-boot with Vista (only because that's what my laptop came with). I was running Thunderbird as my email client, but I need calendaring to manage my own practice. I have tried Sunbird and Lightning, but have not found them stable enough for my needs, so I switched to Evolution since it seems well-integrated and (I think) will sync better with a potential PDA. Which brings me to my question(s): What cheap PDA would work best to reliably sync with my Evolution calendar, address book, and email? I'm pretty sure something running a variety of the PalmOS along with gnome-pilot should work, but will it work well?
KDE

Submission + - KDE's Oxygen Wallpaper contest winners announced (ruphy.org)

Submitted by
Franz Keferboeck
Franz Keferboeck writes: "KDE's Oxygen team finally published the outcome of the August-announced wallpaper contest on Riccardo Iaconelli's blog. The decision defines what a brand new vanilla KDE desktop's face will look like to thousands of users (Although the actual default image, which will be one of the 15 winner submissions, is not yet announced yet)."
User Journal

Journal SPAM: NOLA council wins white majority - First in 20 years 3

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Now, will come the "redistricting" of newest, American "Vanilla City".

Analysts had said the race could set a baseline for the changing political landscape in a post-Hurricane Katrina city in which the gap between white and black voters is narrowing.

Blacks remain the majority but are now about 58 percent of the population, down from 67 percent before Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.
The Military

Journal SPAM: 120 US war veteran suicides a week 2

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

THE US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS. At least 6256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 - an average of 17 a day - the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.
Sci-Fi

Star Trek Home Theater 123

Posted by CmdrTaco from the money-to-burn dept.
Critical Facilities writes "Someone thought it would be a good idea to model their home theater after the Enterprise NCC-1701D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The result is super geeky, but actually rather cool. Named the best theme theater installation at CEDIA 2007, this Palm Beach County, FL home features motion-activated air-lock doors with series sound effects, and a "Red Alert" button on the Crestron TPMC-10 controller to turn all of the LEDs bright red and flashing."
Microsoft

Submission + - Visual Studio 2008 Is Imminent (eweek.com)

Submitted by
eweekhickins
eweekhickins writes: "Always cagey, often late, Microsoft seems to be keeping its promise to deliver Visual Studio 2008 by the end of November. It may even be made available via download as of Monday November 19. Fantastic for a company as powerful as Microsoft to make a deadline it set for itself a whole entire month ago. Now we'd like to know why the code names are so much cooler than the go-to-market names they inevitably adopt."
Music

Submission + - Universal Offers Classical, Jazz Catalog DRM-Free (gramophone.co.uk) 3

Submitted by Mode_Locrian
Mode_Locrian writes: Gramophone Magazine reports that Universal Classics and Jazz will be making its entire catalogue available for sale in DRM-free form. While Universal stresses that this will be a trial run, it certainly looks like a step in the right direction. Now, if only they'd offer downloads in formats other than mp3...
Anime

Submission + - Comcast targets unlicensed anime torrents (animesuki.com) 3

Submitted by
SailorSpork
SailorSpork writes: "According to the linked thread on the forums of AnimeSuki, a popular anime bittorent index site, Comcast has begun sending DCMA letters to customers downloading unlicensed (meaning that no english language company has the rights to) fan-subtitled anime shows via bittorrent. The letters are claiming that the copyright holder or an authorized agent are making the infringement claims, though usually these requests are also sent to the site itself rather that individual downloaders.

My question is have they really been in contact with Japanese anime companies, or is this another scare tactic by Comcast to try and reduce the bandwidth use of their heavier customers now that their previous tactics have come under legal fire?"
Graphics

Submission + - Photoshop for Politicians (kashmirnewz.com)

Submitted by
Jon Golden
Jon Golden writes: "Source: Kashmir Newz Written by Haroon Mirani Desperate to boost the image of the Chief Minister of Indian administered Kashmir, Ghulam Nabi Azad, the region's Department of Information has turned to graphic software to project a mass support for him. The daily press releases and pictures sent by the Information department off late include doctored photographs showing mammoth crowds at the chief minister's rallies. A keen look at the photographs, however, betrays the computer skills of the department. See larger versions of the retouched images http://www.kashmirnewz.com/n000246pic1.html"

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