Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

eBay's Ill-Timed Lifetime Achievement Webby 316

Posted by kdawson from the do-as-I-say dept.
theodp writes "eBay CEO Meg Whitman will accept a special Webby Lifetime Achievement Award next month on behalf of the eBay Community, which has 'permanently changed the way people connect, discover and interact with each other.' Perhaps by then, people will have forgotten how eBay enabled buyer 'Blazers5505' to hook up with sellers like 'oneclickshooting' just weeks before the worst mass shooting in modern US history, prompting eBay to issue a gun-parts-don't-kill-students-guns-and-ammo-do statement that showed little evidence of its celebrated commitment to social consciousness. CEO Whitman, who received $11.1M last year for her leadership efforts, has kept a low profile since tooting eBay's trust-and-safety horn for Wall Street analysts two days after the Va. Tech rampage."
Windows

Only 244 Genuine Windows Vista's Sold in China 457

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-good-odds dept.
morpheus83 writes "Whilst Microsoft was bragging about the sales number of their latest OS Windows Vista, few would actually know that they have only managed to sell 244 copies in the whole of China in the first 2 weeks. You heard that right, and that's the number quoted from the headquarters of the Windows Vista chief (90% national volume) distributor in Beijing."
The Courts

Submission + - 1st-degree felony, 5th-grade defendant

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "Philadelpha Daily Times has an article about a fifth grade student being charged with 1st-degree burglary charge. From the article: "Joseph Ramos is learning how tough on crime Bucks County can be. Last Labor Day weekend, he and a buddy entered a neighborhood friend's unlocked townhouse when no one was there. Trading cards, a video game, a game controller, and $340 in cash were reported missing by the homeowner."

The homeowner just happened to be a high-ranking prosecutor in the Bucks County District Attorney's Office. Filing felony charges against a 10-year-old with no prior legal run-ins, is rare — and rarer still in a matter more typically settled among neighbors. Age isn't the only thorny issue in the prosecution of Joe Ramos. Despite the conflict of interest presented by Gambardella's position, the Bucks District Attorney's Office reviewed the charges and approved a warrant for Joe's arrest in October, juvenile court records show. It took three more months before Gibbons, citing that conflict, asked the state Attorney General's Office to assign an independent prosecutor."
Intel

Submission + - Intel usage of public benchmarking data misleading

Submitted by Hans Pechestoni
Hans Pechestoni writes: In a comparative benchmark presentation given to the press and analyst, Intel instead of comparing their latest greatest chips to AMD's latest greatest chips (as Intel should be doing to legimately convince Wall St., the press, and customers of leadership and/or breakaway performance), more than half of the data points that show Intel leading or breaking away show it doing so against older AMD chips (in some cases, single-core chips or chips from an older generation of Opterons) and in some cases, with retired benchmarks (retired in Feb 2007) for which newer versions have been developed (released in August 2006) to better measure the performance of today's systems (particularly of the sort that contain Intel's latest greatest technology). Specifically, the charts compare Intel to AMD using benchmarks from SPEC.org's six year-old CPU2000 suite.
Security

Submission + - People Don't Know Which Network They're On

Submitted by
Elliot
Elliot writes: "You don't really know which wireless network you're connected to. "About 14.3 million American households use wireless Internet," and millions of their laptops are configured to automatically connect to common open networks. Attackers can easily set up a wireless hotspot named "Linksys", "D-Link", or "NETGEAR", and unsuspecting laptop users will connect to it. At that point, the hacker could access the laptop's network shares, or act as a "man in the middle" and log their website usage activity. Even more sinister is when the attacker names the network something official, such as "USC Wireless", "Marriott Wireless", or "LAX Wireless", and then redirects the visitor to an official-looking page asking for their log-in and password. Lawmakers are aware of the problem: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the Wi-Fi User Protection Bill on Sept. 30. Elliot Lee discusses the problem, and suggests that using a reliable VPN is the only way to get a secure connection away from home."
Science

67-Kilowatt Laser Unveiled 395

Posted by kdawson from the very-big-sharks dept.
s31523 writes "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has announced they have working in the lab a Solid State Heat Capacity Laser that averages 67 kW. It is being developed for the military. The chief scientist Dr. Yamamoto is quoted: 'I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67 kW of average output power.' Although many lasers have peaked at higher capacities, getting the average sustained power to remain high is the tricky part. The article says that hitting the 100-kW level, at which point it would become interesting as a battlefield weapon, could be less than a year away."
HP

Submission + - Ó âàñ &#23

Submitted by
Ìàê&amp
Ìàê&amp writes: "Òîëüêî ëó÷øèå ñöåíàðèè ïðàçäíèêîâ, òîñòû, ïîçäðàâëåíèÿ è ñìñ îòîáðàííûå ëè÷íî àâòîðîì Ó âàñ ïðàçäíèê? Âàì ñäà! http://www.tostik.ru/ Ëó÷øèå òîñòû è ñöåíàðèè. http://www.tostik.ru/ Ëó÷øèå ñöåíàðèè è ïîçäðàâëåíèÿ Òîëüêî ó íàñ — ñöåíàðèè ñâàäåá! http://www.tostik.ru/ Ó âàñ ñâàäüáà? Çàõîäèòå ê íàì! Íóæåí ñöåíàðèé — ó íàñ îí åñòü! http://www.tostik.ru/ Ëó÷øèå òîñòû è ñöåíàðèè. Íóæåí ñöåíàðèé — ó íàñ îí åñòü! http://www.tostik.ru/ Ëó÷øèå ïîçäðàâëåíèÿ è ñöåíàðèè. Êîëëåêöèÿ òîñòîâ ïîçäðàâëåíèé è http://www.tostik.ru/ ñöåíàðèåâ íà âñå ñëó÷àè æèçíè. Âñå äëÿ ïðàçäíèêà: ëó÷øèå òîñòû ïîçäðàâëåíèÿ è ñöåíàðèè http://www.tostik.ru/ "
Graphics

Submission + - Consumers pledge to support open graphics drivers

Submitted by
the Hewster
the Hewster writes: "A pledge has been setup at pledgebank.com to let the Free Software and Open Source community show that they are ready to vote with their wallet and support graphics cards manufacturers with open graphics drivers.
To add incentive to either nVidia or ATI to open up their drivers, the pledge is to support the first of the two to open their drivers over the next 5 years. Disclaimer: I am the author of the pledge."
Patents

MS vs AT&T Case Stirs Software Patent Debate 218

Posted by samzenpus from the can-you-or-can't-you dept.
Stormwave0 writes "A Microsoft appeal against a decision for AT&T and their speech recognition patent has reached the Supreme Court. AT&T has argued that they did not license software using the patent for sales overseas. Microsoft, in the original case, argued "that it wasn't really liable for infringing on AT&T's licensing rights because it only supplied the golden disk to the replicator one time, and that disk did not really contain software in a usable form anyway." With that argument rejected, the case has moved in an unexpected direction. The court is now debating whether or not software is actually patentable."
Announcements

Submission + - 67 Kilowatt Laser Unveiled

Submitted by
s31523
s31523 writes: "We all remember the scene from the movie Real Genius where the nerdy guys get a laser to fire which burns a hole through everything for miles. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has announced they have a Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) that averages 67kW working in their lab. Developed for the military, Dr. Yamamoto claims this to be a record and is quoted as saying, "I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67kW of average output power". The potential uses for this bad boy go well beyond turning a professor's house into Jiffy Pop. Here is what a 40w laser can do, now imagine 67000 watts. Although many lasers have peaked at higher capacities, getting the average sustained power to remain high seems to be the tricky part."
The Courts

Groklaw No Front for IBM 206

Posted by CowboyNeal from the killing-the-messenger dept.
A Groklaw Reader writes "After all the wild speculation SCO put forth about Pamela Jones, her alleged subpoena by SCO, and her recent vacation due to illness, we now have Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols writing to say 'Yes, there is a PJ.' In his own words, he says, 'Let me address this directly. Yes, Pamela Jones is a real person. I've met her several times [...] I consider her a friend. She is not a front for anyone.' Hopefully, this statement will be enough to put those SCO-induced conspiracy theories to rest."
Microsoft

Microsoft Slugs Mac Users With Vista Tax 661

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mac users wanting to run Vista on their Macintosh, alongside Mac OS X programs, will have to buy an expensive version of Vista if they want to legally install it on their systems. The end-user license agreement for the cheaper versions of Vista (Home Basic and Home Premium) explicitly forbids the use of those versions on virtual machines (i.e., Macs pretending to be PCs)." Update: 02/08 17:50 GMT by KD : A number of readers have pointed out that the Vista EULA does not forbid installing it via Apple's Bootcamp; that is, the "tax" only applies to running Vista under virtualization.
Intel by OSTG

Vendor Intel readies x86 system-on-a-chip as XScale successor 11

Submitted by OSTG Marketing Dept.
Intel's plans to develop an x86-based system-on-a-chip line are beginning to emerge as potential customers are being briefed. Codenamed 'Tolapai', the part is based on the 32-bit Pentium M processing core. "Add to that 256KB of L2 cache, an DDR 2 SDRAM controller - 400-800MHz memory supported - and an integrated South Bridge component that provides PCI Express connectivity, USB, SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, a cellular l
Intel by OSTG

Vendor WIN announces dual Intel Xeon processors control board 2

Submitted by OSTG Marketing Dept.
WIN Enterprises has a new network control board, the MB-09015 , with dual Intel Xeon processors and ten GbE LAN Ports. "The Dual-socketed MB-09015 suits enterprise network security, anti-spam, antivirus, load balancing, firewall, and UTM applications. Along with Intel E7520 chipset that supports 800 MHz FSB and EM64T, board features 10 GbE LAN Ports with optional bypass Ethernet module. It supports up to 16 GB DDR2 system m

Slashdot Top Deals

Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...

Close