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UK Games Retailers Threaten Boycott of Steam Games 443

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-we-like-it-our-way-better dept.
RogueyWon writes "Games industry trade site MCV is reporting that two major UK video games retailers are threatening to ban Steam-enabled PC games from their stores. The as-yet-unnamed retailers are apparently concerned that by selling Steam games, they are pointing their customers towards a competitor and will by trying to bring pressure upon publishers to strip Steam functionality from their games. This could prove an interesting test of where the real power lies at the retail end of PC gaming."

Comment I damaged my graphics processor in 4 hours (Score 1) 715

by ExpressTrain (#33573660) Attached to: The Last Component To Fail In My Computer Was The...
I got a new laptop assigned at work. On day one, I closed the lid (as I do every evening to put it into "hibernate" mode), slipped it into my bag and headed home for the day. Four hours later I pulled it out of bag to do some work at home and noticed that it was extremely hot. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I opened the lid and realized what I had done. But the only damage I noticed was some flickering pixels. Bottom line, only had the laptop in my possession about 4 hours before it was damaged. Fortunately my IT guy was very understanding.
IT

The 100 Degree Data Center 472

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-take-off-all-your-clothes dept.
miller60 writes "Are you ready for the 100-degree data center? Rackable Systems has introduced a new enclosure that it says can run high-density racks safely in environments as hot as 104 degrees (40 degrees C), offering customers the option of saving energy in their data center. Most data centers operate in a range between 68 and 74 degrees. Raising the thermostat can lower the power bill, allowing data centers to use less power for cooling. But higher temperatures can be less forgiving in the event of a cooling failure, and not likely to be welcomed by employees working in the data center."
Security

Submission + - Phishing for bank info without any pesky malware! (darkreading.com)

Submitted by
Emb3rz
Emb3rz writes: "DarkReading.com brings us news of a new approach to phishing that targets online banking sites. Here's the novel part of it: it doesn't involve any of the typical attack vectors we all know and love. Instead, it uses JavaScript from a remote page to detect if you have a banking site open, and prompts you for info via popup if you do. Read on for full details. http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212900161"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - My friend was tricked into buying OpenOffice

Submitted by
mldkfa
mldkfa writes: "Recently I told a friend about OpenOffice and how it was a great alternative to the big name pay office suites. She went home and searched on Google for it and thought she found the website, filled typical registration information, and downloaded OpenOffice.org 3.0. The next time she opened her e-mail she found a request for 98 for her 1 year subscription to OpenOffice.org 3.0 from the company that she downloaded it from. Apparently the EULA stated this cost and here in Germany she is required to pay up. So I thought I would ask Slashdot, should she pay? On the OpenOffice.org German website there is a warning of these schemes being legal. Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else? It has really made me think about recommending it to any more friends."
Censorship

Submission + - Wiretapping Program Legal

Submitted by
BuhDuh
BuhDuh writes: "The New York Time is carrying a story concerning that well known bastion of legal authority the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance" court, which has ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program was perfectly legal.

A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.

Given that the largely derided administration of the last 8 years is expiring, should we be surprised? Should we even care?"

Comment Re:Get out now (Score 1) 1055

by ExpressTrain (#26442913) Attached to: How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out?
I think that it would cost more in terms of accounting to deal with the complexity of carrying over 4 hours from the first week to the second week than they would gain in some nefarious extra labor benefit. However, I worked a 9/80 schedule for years, and LOVED it. However, it was successful largely because my manager was great about respecting the Friday off. Also, I didn't deal with customers outside of the company.
IBM

Submission + - IBM have a M$ Free Future with Ubuntu Thinclients. (eweek.com)

Submitted by freenix
freenix writes: IBM is rolling out it's planned, "Microsoft free" thinclient desktop solution.

IBM joined forces with Virtual Bridges and Canonical Dec. 4 to offer a virtual desktop package comprises three software components that sit on one corporate server. The bundle, billed as "Microsoft free," is then provisioned to hundreds or even thousands of desktops.

Everyone and their dog is reporting this. IBM is basically dancing on Vista's grave by promissing cheaper and more flexible solutions. Existing hardware can be used, Windows is virtualized to run legacy apps but the real works is concentrated for greater reliability and easier upkeep. People at the Wall Street Journal concentrate on costs and claim savings of $500 to $800 per desktop per year. Eweek has lots of technical details. Others seem to follow these leads.

It looks like IBM is ready to capitalize on it's GNU/Linux work in a big way.
Security

Researcher Publishes Industrial Complex Hack 190

Posted by samzenpus from the who-runs-the-power-plant dept.
snydeq writes "Security researcher Kevin Finisterre has published code that could be used to take control of computers used to manage industrial machinery, potentially giving hackers a back door into utility companies, water plants, and even oil and gas refineries. The code exploits a flaw in supervisory control and data acquisition software from Citect. The vendor has released a patch and risk arises only for systems connected directly to the Internet without firewall protection. Finisterre, however, sees the issue as indicative of a 'culture clash' between IT and process control engineers, who are reluctant to bring computers off-line for patching due to the potential havoc wreaked by downtime. 'A lot of the people who run these systems feel that they're not bound by the same rules as traditional IT,' Finisterre said. 'Their industry is not very familiar with hacking and hackers in general.'"
Programming

In IE8 and Chrome, Processes Are the New Threads 397

Posted by kdawson from the keeping-intel's-margins-healthy dept.
SenFo writes "To many of the people who downloaded Google Chrome last week, it was a surprise to observe that each opened tab runs in a separate process rather than a separate thread. Scott Hanselman, Lead Program Manager at Microsoft, discusses some of the benefits of running in separate processes as opposed to separate threads. A quote: 'Ah! But they're slow! They're slow to start up, and they are slow to communicate between, right? Well, kind of, not really anymore.'"
Google

Automated News Crawling Evaporates $1.14B 546

Posted by kdawson from the who-shall-watch-the-watchers dept.
cmd writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Google News crawled an obscure reprint of an article from 2002 when United Airlines was on the brink of bankruptcy. United Airlines has since recovered but due to a missing dateline, Google News ran the story as today's news. The story was then picked up by other news aggregators and eventually headlined as a news flash on Bloomberg. This triggered automated trading programs to dump UAL, cratering the stock from $12 to $3 and evaporating 1.14 billion dollars (nearly United's total market cap today) in shareholder wealth. The stock recovered within the day to $10 and is now trading at $9.62, a market cap of $300M less than before Google ran the story." The article makes clear that Google's news bot only noticed the old story because it has been voted up in popularity on the site of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper. The original thought was that stock manipulation may have been behind the incident, but this suspicion seems to be fading.
Image

Childless Adults In Park To Be Interrogated 15

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-children dept.
Every time I start feeling bad about crazy overreaching laws here in the US, the UK does something that makes me even sadder. Park wardens at the Telford Town Park in Shropshire, have been ordered to stop and interrogate anyone who is not accompanied by children. Visitors who can't explain their childless presence in the park risk being thrown out or reported to police. Former childcare social worker John Evans said: "It is authoritarian madness which can only be based on ignorance. It is absurd, it is insulting and it is dangerous as it panics people about the dangers their children face." I envision a new black market rent-a-kid service designed for an unmolested park experience.

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