eldavojohn writes "One thing you might notice on Slashdot is that when someone submits a story linking to nytimes.com, it doesn't always work. While it's not truly a paywall, it appears to stop the user and require registration... sometimes. If you noticed this and it's seems to be non-deterministic in when and where it asks you to login, you're simply noticing the latest strategy of 'first click free' being employed. We've heard that normal paywalls are a miserable failure (the Wall Street Journal's, one of the more successful, only lets you see the first paragraph online). Will the drug pusher approach work out for The New York Times? The CEO seems to be certain that this blogger (and Slashdot) friendly paywall is the correct option and will keep The New York Times as a 'part of the conversation' online when news is rapidly circulating." I will tell you that if I am asked for a password, I almost always reject the story immediately, or go find a better URL. Heck, yesterday I rejected a NY Times story for this exact reason. So we'll see how it pans out.

John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, made some revealing comments in an interview with Kotaku about how the company's attitudes are shifting with regard to software piracy. Quoting: "Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA. But around that cloud Riccitiello identified a silver lining: 'There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,' he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it. The EA boss would prefer people bought their games, of course. 'I don't think anybody should pirate anything,' he said. 'I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do.' So encourage those pirates to pay for something, he figures. Riccitiello explained that EA's download services aren't perfect at distinguishing between used copies of games and pirated copies. As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer."

An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

An anonymous reader writes "Not content to simply follow the 'anything to protect American lives' mantra, freshman Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has introduced a bill to prohibit mandatory full body scans at airports. Chaffetz states, 'The images offer a disturbingly accurate view of a person's body underneath clothing ... Americans should not be required to expose their bodies in this manner in order to fly.' He goes on to note that the ACLU has expressed support for the bill. Maybe we don't need tin-foil sports coats to go with our tin-foil hats. For reference, the Daily Herald has a story featuring images from the millimeter wavelength imager, and we've talked about the scanners before."

Hugh Pickens writes "Fox News reports that 'Vice President Joe Biden, well-known for his verbal gaffes, may have finally outdone himself, divulging potentially classified information meant to save the life of a sitting vice president.' According to the report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old US Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president. Although earlier reports had placed the Vice-Presidential hide-out in a highly secure complex of buildings inside Raven Rock Mountain near Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, Fox News reports that the Naval Observatory bunker is believed to be the secure, undisclosed location former Vice President Dick Cheney remained under protection in secret after the 9/11 attacks. According to the report, Biden 'said a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment.' According to Eleanor Clift, Newsweek magazine's Washington contributing editor 'the officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn't be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.' In December 2002, neighbors complained of loud construction work being done at the Naval Observatory, which has been used as a residence by vice presidents since 1974. The upset neighbors were sent a letter by the observatory's superintendent, calling the work 'sensitive in nature' and 'classified' and that it was urgent it be completed on a highly accelerated schedule."

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Mozilla Links "Mozilla has started a new project to make Firefox split in several processes at a time: one running the main user interface (chrome), and another or several others running the web content in each tab. Like Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 which have implemented this behavior to some degree, the main benefit would be the increase of stability: a single tab crash would not take down the whole session with it, as well as performance improvements in multiprocessor systems that are progressively becoming the norm. The project, which lacks a catchy name like other Mozilla projects (like TaskFox, Ubiquity, or Chocolate Factory) is coordinated by long time Mozillian, Benjamin Smedberg; and also integrated by Joe Drew, Jason Duell, Ben Turner, and Boris Zbarsky in the core team. According to the loose roadmap published, a simple implementation that works with a single tab (not sessions support, no secure connections, either on Linux or Windows, probably not even based on Firefox) should be reached around mid-July."

Solarch writes "NASA is holding a contest to name ISS Node 3. Being a Browncoat myself, I should hope that the choice of names would be obvious. As of the 7:30 PM EST on 2/25, the name Serenity has over 80% of the vote. From the site: 'Node 3 will connect to the port side of the Unity Node and will provide room for many of the station's life support systems, in the form of eight refrigerator-sized racks. After Node 3 is installed, the station's crew will transfer over many of the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) currently stored in various places around the station.'"

An anonymous reader writes "I have been in a software engineering position at a large company for approximately seven years. Recently, for a variety of reasons, I accepted a new job working for a local software company. I have given my employer three weeks' notice, instead of the standard two, as a courtesy. In return, it has been implied that, in spite my record of above-average performance appraisals and promotions, I will be marked as leaving the company 'on bad terms' if I refuse to extend my departure date further. With only three weeks remaining, I am hesitant to rock the boat by contacting our HR department, but this concerns me and seems like an extremely unethical practice. I live in an 'at-will' employment state, so I know that they have no legal recourse to keep me. I am concerned about the references they could give in the future; having spent a large majority of my career at this company, I will be dependent on them for references to verify my career experience. Has anyone ever run into this kind of situation before?"