Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Media

Submission + - Demonoid - Down For Good?

Submitted by
NewbieV
NewbieV writes: "This is what the front page of Demonoid looks like this morning:

The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

We have brought online a forum in order to help the community stay together. This forum is not file sharing related in any way, it's just a mean to help the community stay together — please read the forum rules before posting. You can use your Demonoid account info to log in.
A history of the site is available in its Wikipedia entry."
Google

Submission + - Google adwords bait and switch?!

Submitted by
Missionary Man
Missionary Man writes: ""Greetings from Google,
Congratulations on your continuing success with Google AdSense.
To thank you for your custom and help you to maximise the earning potential of your site, we invite you to try advertising with Google AdWords with a £30 free voucher."

Hmmm. Sounds great, doesn't it? This is a snippit of a wonderful email I received a while back. Last week I thought I'd try it out — after all, what did I have to lose? Just to re-assure me that all was above-board, the email concluded:

"Your campaign can be set up in as little as 15 minutes. There's no additional spend commitment, so this offer is risk free. Start advertising today!"

Well, what was I waiting for? I wandered over to the adwords site (adwords.google.co.uk), created my account and jumped through the hoops (including providing funding information!). I created my advert, entered my promotional code — no additional spend commitment, remember — and got ready to experience the might of Google advertising on my teeny weeny website (url not provided! This is not guerrilla marketing!).

Hmmm, there's a problem, says Google:

"Your AdWords prepaid funds have been exhausted. We have stopped running your ads until you transfer additional funds into your AdWords account."

That's funny, they didn't even start running them! My account shows a balance of £25 (believe it or not, they charge a £5 "administration fee" to set up the account! I don't remember paying anything for adsense ...) but the adverts are on hold.

I email Google to highlight a technical problem with their adwords site. After all, they gave me a £30 promotional voucher to sample their advertising for free, remember?

"There's no additional spend commitment, so this offer is risk free!"

Not according to the reply I received:

" ...the sign up coupon that you have received will be applied towards your advertising charges after you have paid your account activation fee ... I understand that the coupon that you have received does not specify that it is valid only for advertising charged. We are aware of this and have taken steps to correct it. We apologise for any confusion."

So — the bottom line:
  • Send out voucher offering free adwords advertising
  • Use comprehensive sign-up procedure to gain billing information
  • Take customer through the entire process, with just a slight hiccup at the end
  • Ask for payment before adverts can be run
  • PROFIT!
Before you ask, the answer is "no". I didn't pay, and am currently not an active adwords customer. I wrote back and told them that the whole thing sucked, it was classic "bait and switch" and that I'd be unleashing the awsome power of Slashdot on their dubious practices. Now watch them beg forgiveness ... or maybe not!"
Social Networks

Submission + - Facebook: Worse than useless for unions (ericlee.info)

Submitted by
Eric Lee
Eric Lee writes: "The editor of LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement and author of The Labour Movement and the Internet: The New Internationalism, challenges the growing use of Facebook by unions and other campaigning organizations. Using the examples of PointCast, ICQ and MySpace, and little-known examples of censorship by Facebook and other social networks, he urges social change activists to use do-it-yourself tools to conduct online campaigns rather than to become over-reliant on Facebook."
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Apple answers Back to My Mac security concerns (christopherprice.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As you may have heard, there are many concerns about Screen Sharing and Back to My Mac. Apple has addressed them today, and here's the link both explains the situation, and what you can do.
Education

Submission + - Virtual IT admin could be very real job (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "VMware and Cisco are increasingly pitching the idea of virtualizing the entire data center, which would enable the dynamic management of servers, storage and network devices through a single "fabric." That virtualization platform may spawn a new IT position for a person who would supervise the management of the virtual layer of the data center. The discussion gained momentum when Cisco and VMware announced an integration initiative between Cisco's VFrame Data Center and VMware Infrastructure 3, which is an appliance upgrade that fits into the Cisco's Data Center 3.0 vision. The combination would automate IT orchestration in the areas of server, network and storage provisioning for shops invested in Cisco hardware."
Google

Submission + - List of Websites with Google Pagerank 10 (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
technojuice
technojuice writes: "Ever wondered what kind of website would have a utopian 10/10 Google Pagerank ? I guess there are only 3 people (Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and God) who know how the hell the trademarked Pagerank is calculated. After the recent shakeup which saw Statcounter dropping to PR 9 here are PR 10 ! No Domain Backlinks 1 adobe.com 116,000 2 google.com 3,090,000 3 real.com 428,000 4 w3c.org 122,000 5 whitehouse.gov 60,200 6 energy.gov 423,000 7 macromedia.com 116,000 8 mit.edu 415,000 9 nasa.gov 233,000 10 nsf.gov 43,000 http://technojuice.blogspot.com/2007/11/website-google-pagerank-10-list.html"
Security

Submission + - Dislike a Relative? Turn Them in as a Terrorist! 9

Submitted by Stanislav_J
Stanislav_J writes: A Swedish man who had less than fond feelings for his daughter's hubby, took advantage of the son-in-law's trip to America by reporting him to the FBI as a terrorist. The e-mail, which the father-in-law admits to sending, earned him a libel charge after his poor son-in-law was arrested on his arrival in Florida, handcuffed, interrogated, and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being released.

It's a brief article, but dovetails nicely with the recent Slashdot story about "The War on the Unexpected." That article touched on many examples of well-meaning, but misguided and paranoid citizens reporting innocent activities to the authorities. In the current climate, the potential also exists for maliciously false and far from well-meaning reports made to the Feds about people one simply doesn't care for, or those made merely as a sick prank.

While the man admitted to sending the e-mail to the FBI, he claims he thought no harm would come from it because "he did not think the US authorities would be stupid enough to believe him." To quote the great philosopher Bugs Bunny, 'Nyahh....he don't know us very well, do he?'
Security

Submission + - MSFT and NSA have backdoored your phone ... (securiteam.com)

Submitted by isbeen
isbeen writes: According to a recent post on Bugtraq, researchers have posted information regarding an agreement between the NSA and MSFT which provides backdoors to microsoft products, including phones running the windows mobile platform, where they can apparently tap and monitor phones.

From the original post:

"According to the post National Security Agency has access both stand-alone systems and networks running Microsoft products.

The post states the following: "This includes wireless wiretapping of "smart phones" running Microsoft Mobile. Microsoft remote administrative privileges allow "backdooring" into Microsoft operating systems via IP/TCP ports 1024 through 1030.

According to the Cryptome's source this is typically triggered when devices visit Microsoft Update servers.

Cryptome.org: http://cryptome.org/nsa-ip-update11.htm

SecuriTeam Blogs: http://blogs.securiteam.com/?p=1028
Google

Free IMAP On Gmail 440

Posted by kdawson from the bout-time dept.
A number of readers are writing in to tell us that Google is rolling out IMAP support for Gmail accounts. Several people say that some of their gmail accounts offer the IMAP option (in Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP) and others do not.
Programming

Submission + - iPhone/iPod Touch jailbreak exploit code released (toc2rta.com)

Submitted by
NixLuver
NixLuver writes: "Niacin released the source code for his now-famous iPhone/iPod tiff exploit that allows us to use the iPhone and the iPod Touch as the full-blown unix computing platform they want to be — five months before Apple is willing to (maybe) do the same thing. For a look inside the coding style and vision of the guys (Niacin and dre) that made it all possible, check out this post ."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - CNN Slams Apple For Trialware

Submitted by
gbulmash
gbulmash writes: "When you think of computers that have been overloaded with unwanted trialware and demo programs to try to improve the manufacturer's margins, who do you think of? CNN apparently thinks of Apple. In a video story on how to avoid excessive amounts of trialware on your new PC, they displayed 25 seconds (from 2:07 to 2:32) of footage of an Apple store while their expert described how stores will charge you up to $130 to remove trialware and optimize the machine you just bought. Is this fair, or does CNN owe Apple an apology?"
Software

Submission + - Successful Department Documentation - Whats worked

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Those of us working in IT Departments face the age old issue of documentation. Managers love it, but everyone has a different idea on what documentation should look like. I'm interested to know what works for people. Do you have use wikis or does indexed standalone docs work for you. What software are you using to manage your docs, do you have a standard index and document struture. All up, what's been successful for you. If there's any info that might help me no reinvent the wheel, I'd be grateful to know.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Why You Feel Like Less of a Man Once You Marry

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Just in case you haven't picked up this month's Current Anthropology, it's official — getting married saps your testosterone. After measuring testosterone in 205 Ariaal men in Kenya, researchers found that those with one wife had lower levels of the hormone than unmarried men, and men with more than one wife had the lowest levels of all. 'Testosterone levels are lower among married men probably because they are investing less in mating effort,' said Peter Gray of the UNLV. Ball Finder, anyone?"
Music

Submission + - Slashdot Reverses Facts about Radiohead 1

Submitted by Apro+im
Apro+im writes: The popular news aggregation website, Slashdot today reported that the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows was pirated more than it was procured via legitimate means, setting off a flurry of speculation on their online discussion board as to the implications of this "fact". Strangely overlooked in much of the discussion, however, was the fact that the article they linked contained the exact opposite information, stating:

"The file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day — adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads. That's less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com"
Questions about what this implies about Slashdot's editorial practices and readership remain unanswered.
OS X

Submission + - Why Users Ditch OS X for Windows (osweekly.com) 7

Submitted by
coward
coward writes: "OSWeekly.com says users ditch OS X for Windows. Why? It's too pricey, the article claims. "If one more person points me to a Mini and tells me this is going to replace a 2.00GHz PC with standalone video and a SATA drive, I'm going to scream. Despite Apple providing a superior OS for the casual consumer, it remains a price issue for most people. You take any unsuspecting cash conscious family and if you actually tell me that they are going to be willing to drop $1,099 versus $499 on a notebook for their child, you had better present one serious sales pitch. Even considering the long-term value, malware-free environment, those parents would be presenting their soon to be college aged kid, the fact is they are not informed enough to understand that the $499 notebook is an utter junk, thanks to poor hardware quality."

Slashdot Top Deals

You see but you do not observe. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"

Close