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The Internet

Submission + - Poll: Most Americans Filing Taxes Online

IdidITAgain writes: The frantic ritual of racing to the post office to get tax returns postmarked just in time to satisfy the Internal Revenue Service is giving way to the online age most people file their tax returns electronically now because it's convenient, despite lingering concerns about the security of their most sensitive financial information, according to a new AP-AOL Money & Finance poll.

Feed Geek Squad technician arrested for invading customer's shower (engadget.com)

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Sure, it's easy (and sadistically enjoyable) to bust on Best Buy, especially when it considers frugal shoppers "devils" and shoos away loyal customers holding down the fort for a PS3, but the latest knock against the retailer will be even tougher to shake. While it's no surprise that BB cashiers aren't the easiest to deal with when bringing back demolished goods, a pair of sisters also realized major holes in the company's personality screening process over at Geek Squad. Reportedly, a hired technician actually set up a cameraphone to record one of the siblings whilst she was taking a shower, but obviously wasn't sly enough to hide the "blinking red record light" from view. Subsequently, the violated duo supposedly ganked the internal flash card, made haste for a Verizon store to confirm the contents, and of course, phoned up the boys in blue to come take care of business. Needless to say, the shady criminal is now facing "two counts of invasion of privacy and one count of child molestation," but apparently it's still not a crime to charge clueless customers outrageous rates to tackle the simplest of tasks. Sheesh, where's the justice?

[Via Digg]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!


Power

Harnessing High Altitude Wind Power 132

jakosc writes "The Economist has an interesting article about increasing the efficiency of wind-powered generators by turning them into flying wind farms. These tethered generators would harness high speed jet stream winds above 15,000 ft and in theory could give outputs of 40MW per generator (PDF). The developer's website has more details of some of the safety, technological, and economic issues."
Microsoft

Submission + - Working Around Vista Apps Incompatibilities

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft says there are over 1,000 applications you can run on Windows Vista with few, if any, issues. However, given that there are tens of thousands of Windows apps, incompatibility remains a huge problem. Add to that the fact that x64 Vista versions don't support legacy 16-bit code, and that the Windows Resource Protection in Vista breaks some apps, and you've got a big issue. In How To Manage Windows Vista Application Compatibility, Nelson Ruest lists a host of nifty workarounds. He discusses Vista's compatibility mode, its Program Compatibility Assistant wizard, and a little know form of file and registry virtualization that's built into the OS, among others. What problems have you encountered with incompatible apps, and are any issues you've encountered deal-breakers which could further roil the already muddied adoption picture for Vista?
Puzzle Games (Games)

Submission + - Former chess champion Kasparov arrested at rally

vertinox writes: From the BBC: 'Police have arrested Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov at a banned anti-Kremlin rally in Moscow. He was detained during a huge security operation to prevent protesters from gathering at Pushkin Square. Police deny reports he has now been freed. The former chess champion leads the United Civil Front group, part of the opposition coalition Other Russia.'

BBC has also run a profile on Mr Kasparov's political aspirations.

For those who may not remember Garry Kasparov was the 1984 World Chess Champion and also played Deep Blue in 1997 and lost.
Java

Submission + - Apache Sends Open Letter To Sun

IIO writes: "The Java portion of the blogosphere was abuzz in the last several days over an open letter that Geir Magnusson Jr. of Apache Software Foundation sent to Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems. At issue is the "field of use" restriction in the licensing terms of Sun's Java Compatibility Kit that Sun offers to Apache, which Apache deems "totally unacceptable." Sun's response is here. A unbiassed analysis of the dispute can be found here."
Microsoft

Microsoft Pressures Testers After Software Leak 263

narramissic writes "ITworld reports that Microsoft is 'taking tough measures to find out who leaked a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Windows Home Server to The Hotfix.net blog.' The software preview was posted on the site by a user named 'Richard' soon after it was released to a small group of testers. In an e-mail to MVPs whose names contain 'Richard,' Kevin Beares, the Windows Home Server community lead at Microsoft, wrote: 'For right now, you have no access to the beta until I can find the Richard who posted the WHS (Windows Home Server) CTP on this site.... I will work with the Connect Admin team to determine which one of you is the real culprit of this leak.'"
Google

Submission + - Create XML with Google Web Toolkit

IdaAshley writes: Most of Ajax applications use XML to transfer information to and from the server, so your application must be able to parse and create XML data. This tutorial shows you how to manipulate and create XML using the Google Web Toolkit. This toolkit enables you to use Java syntax to create the JavaScript necessary for Ajax user interfaces.
Censorship

Submission + - SQL-Ledger Relicensed, Community Gagged

Ashley Gittins writes: "Users of the popular accounting package SQL-Ledger are being kept in the dark about a recent license change. Two weeks ago a new version of the software was released but along with it came the silent change of license from GPLv2 to the "SQL-Ledger Open Source License" — presumably in an effort to prevent future forks like LedgerSMB. As it turns out, the author is making deliberate attempts to prevent the community from finding out about the license change. All posts to the SQL-Ledger mailing lists asking about the license change are being censored and direct questions to the author are going unanswered. This behaviour is not a first for this particular project, and is part of the reason for the original LedgerSMB fork. So, does a project maintainer have an ethical obligation to notify his or her community of a license change? What about a legal obligation?"
Windows

Jumping to Conclusions on BIOS, Phoenix, and Windows 107

tomlasusa writes "In a post on LinuxQuestions.org, user 'chessonly' cites a 2003 article from Networkcomputing.com by writer Steven J. Schuchart as evidence of that Phoenix Technologies has made its BIOS more Windows-friendly — thereby locking out users from using other OSs. In a rebuttal posted at nwc.com, Schuchart says that this is just not true."
The Internet

15-Year-Old Scams YouTube 106

SurturZ writes "A fifteen year old from Perth, Australia, posed as an employee of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, demanding that YouTube remove hundreds of video clips of 'The Chasers War on Everything.' The amusing part is that The Chaser is a comedy company well known to perpetrate exactly this sort of prank."
Displays

Finding a Display You Can Read in the Sun? 63

max3000 asks: "I'm currently building an embedded device that will be used outdoors, and the technology is pretty much nailed down at this point, except the display. Quite honestly, I'm confused and lost in all the display technologies out there: LCD (TFT, passive/active, and so forth), ChLCD, OLED, FED, AMLCD, EL, electrophoretic, ePaper like eInk, and more (some of which may overlap). Can you help a confused, fellow reader? What I need is (apparently) fairly complicated: an outdoor, sunlight-readable (at-a-glance readable, not squint-your-eyes readable), VGA/SVGA display. The display should have a 4-6 inch diagonal, capable of displaying at least 16 color grayscale, and it should be based on a technology with a roadmap to color in 2-3 years time. If not driveable directly from a PC, the display should come with a development kit that is." What small displays are out there that can meet these specifications?
The Almighty Buck

IRS To Go After eBay Sellers 310

prostoalex writes "Fed up with numerous violations of tax law by individuals and businesses selling goods on eBay, Amazon Marketplace, uBid.com, etc., IRS is pushing Congress to make online marketplaces responsible for reporting the sales information to the tax man, in order to prevent under-reporting of the income. eBay's 'own statistics suggest that there are 1.3 million people around the world who make their primary or secondary source of income through eBay, with just over 700,000 in the United States', News.com says." How long before the same fate befalls the folks who make a living working the Massively Multiplayer secondary markets?

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