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Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Did iPhone crash AT&T EDGE Network?

Submitted by
pdclarry
pdclarry writes: "Numerous reports on the Apple iPhone forum point to a failure of AT&T's (formerly Cingular's) EDGE network for several hours today (July 2). The reports are all anecdotal and are scattered, with several iPhone owners claiming to have spoken to tech support personnel who confirmed the outages. Originally it was reported to be a West Coast problem, but reports have also appeared from other parts of the country. There have been no official statements as yet from Apple or AT&T. Other sites have picked up on the rumors, but no official word as yet.

Of course, this problem (if real) could be coincidence, but coupled with other stories today that over twice as many iPhones were sold over the weekend as industry analysts expected point to all of those iPhone surfers."
Announcements

Submission + - Jim Butterfield, 1936 - 2007 1

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "While nearly everyone was going crazy over the iPhone, the computing community lost a luminary on Friday. Jim Butterfield, an early columnist and author for hobbyist computing in the 1970's and 80's, passed away peacefully in his sleep at 1:30 AM on 29 June. He was 71. Jim had been battling cancer since at least December of last year, when he announced he was beginning chemotherapy. Jim was a frequent contributor to periodicals such as The Transactor, COMPUTE!, and TPUG; and was the author of several books on introductory programming. Jim's clear and incisive writing helped introduce a generation of newcomers to the joys and wonders of computers and computer programming. No small fraction of today's engineers owe their livlihoods to Jim's writing and enthusiasm, this chronicler included. He will be missed."
Privacy

Submission + - Employee vs. Employer rights.

Submitted by MustHaveMetal
MustHaveMetal writes: Can an employer legally restrict their managers from associating with lower level employees outside of work (away from the workplace, outside of business hours, and that sort of thing)?
Businesses

Submission + - Dealing with recruiters and other opportunities?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm currently in an unstable situation. My job could disappear within the next 15 days or so due to downsizing. So I started looking for a new job. I got more than I asked for and the market seems to be really good at the moment. I'm currently working with one recruiting firm even though I think recruiters can be jackals sometimes. One of the opportunities I interviewed with from the recruiter looks like they're going to bite. I also have another opportunity that also could come through as well but it's one that I found and it could possibly be better. However I won't find out for another two weeks about that opportunity. The recruiter is insisting that I drop all other opportunities if the company he's representing wants to hire me. I for one would like to keep it to see what kind of deal I would get. If I accept the job from the recruiter, give my two week notification and within that two week period I'm given a better offer from the other job that I found. Will I be forced to keep the recruiters job? When do recruiters get paid their fee? Will I be liable in any legal way for the recruiter losing his payday? How do you deal with recruiters who insist that you drop all other opportunities? How would you deal with a situation where you were offered a better deal for a job that wasn't from the recruiter?
The Internet

Submission + - Are web-developer certifications worth it?

Submitted by
riyley
riyley writes: "I'm a fairly advanced web developer with some hard experience in HTML, CSS, Javascript, Coldfusion and PHP. Now the HR at my company wants me to prove it in a way they understand, certificate. My boss has asked me to select some solid certifications and i've come up with three providers: W3Schools, BrainBench and ExpertRating.

I would like to know if these companies hold any more weight than the frame around the cert, or if it's a waste of my departments money and time? Is there another company I should look at? I'd prefer that in 3-5 years when i'm ready to move on to another job, that these would still be worth padding my resume with. Is that a pipedream?"
Television

Submission + - The New Age of Portable Video?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the past, I didn't see the point of ripping a DVD because they were already pretty compact. But that's changing now that I've got several pocket-sized things for displaying video. Even my DVD player from Philips plays Divx and MPEG4s. This mainstream NY Times article (reg. required) notes that there are more and more reasons for legitimate movie owners to move their copy like keeping "sticky little fingers off DVDs". Many want to download videos from YouTube, reformat them, and take them along in their video iPod. Will the proliferation of options and needs going to put more pressure on studios to let users move their copies from machine to machine? Will the gadget manufacturers take the lead?
Spam

Submission + - Stock E-mail Spam Evolve: New Style PDFs. (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "The stock spam e-mail recently evolved again with a new style portable document format (PDFs). First, spammers used just plain text, next they used static image files. Next, they used random image files, all to avoid filtering. Due to people starting to use FuzzyOcr, stock spammers moved into PDFs. These PDFs contained plain text, which again using the right tools can be filtered. This morning, the "next generation" appeared: PDF's with random images embedded in the PDFs. You can see brief information and screen shots in this blog about this. Seen in a Broadband/DSL Reports security forum thread/discussion"
Software

Submission + - Simulation of 9/11 attacks back building failure. (smh.com.au)

Submitted by
BlacKSacrificE
BlacKSacrificE writes: "Sydney Morning Herald reports lads at the Purdue University have created a computer simulation of the aircraft hitting that shows what caused the towers to collapse allegedly. While they are yet to address most of the conspiracy theories claims around the event regarding melting temperatures of steel, pools of thermite-like molten material pouring out of the buildings, and reports of midgets in clown uniforms with explosive squibs, it apparently backs the idea that all the central support beams were taken out, causing the collapse. A video of the simulation is not available online as far as i can find, but I would love to see it nonetheless."
Power

Submission + - Install Solar Panels, get foreclosed (myfoxdfw.com)

Submitted by
gambit3
gambit3 writes: "According to the Dallas Fox affiliate, the exclusive Valley Ranch subdivision outside of Dallas is threatening to foreclose on a homeowner. His crime? Installing solar panels. They claim it is an eyesore, even though the panels can be seen only from the lawn of one neighbor, and he has no problems with the panels."
Software

Submission + - A New Browser War, Without the War?

Submitted by DECS
DECS writes: RDM chronicles the arrival of the web browser from the Origins of the Web with NCSA's Mosaic to the Web Browser Wars of Netscape Internet Explorer and a recent Web Browser Renaissance: Firefox and Safari. Can browsers exist without proprietary warfare? And does Apple have more in mind than just putting its browser on Windows? Cuckoo for Cocoa: Is Safari on Windows the next iTunes?
Microsoft

Submission + - Netflix Watch Now Without Vista or XP SP2

Submitted by superanonman
superanonman writes: Conspiracy alert? The Netflix website states that the Watch Now feature "requires" IE 7, Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, and Windows Media Player 10 or 11. However, a simple registry edit enables Watch Now on Windows 2003 Server and Windows 2000 with IE 6 and WMP 9. Just change the User Agent string for IE to match that of IE 7 under XP SP2 and everything works like a charm.

Now that we've established that no technical reason exists for these obviously false "minimum requirements," why is Netflix blocking IE6/WMP9/<SP2 users? With Netflix's founder on Microsoft's board, this is the stuff lawsuits are made of.
Programming

Submission + - Practical ways to improve bad progammers 2

Submitted by walt101
walt101 writes: There is plenty of material around stating how to spot bad programmers — the question I've got is how to improve them. Some companies (such as mine) have a culture of personal development; in other words, it's impossible to just sack someone unless you've proven they can't do their job after training. What are the practical techniques to instill a deep-routed approach to structured programming, defensiveness, etc, to a colleague who's happy to cobble together brittle, monolithic code?

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