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AMD

Submission + - As AMD stuggles, Intel CPU prices stagnate (techreport.com)

Submitted by
crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: "Over the past few years, AMD's desktop processors have struggled to keep up with Intel's. AMD has slashed prices to make its chips more appealing, but Intel has largely held firm. Three years of historical data shows that Intel CPU prices have remained stagnant, especially for models that cost $200 and up. AMD chips, on the other hand, tend to fall in price steadily after they first hit the market. Some drop by up to 43% in the first year. This trend is a byproduct of the unhealthy competitive landscape in the desktop CPU arena, and it's been great for Intel's gross margin. Unfortunately, it's not so good for consumers."
Government

Submission + - RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file-sharing cases:

Last week, Washington, DC federal judge Beryl Howell ruled on three mass file-sharing lawsuits. Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers.

Beryl Howell isn't the only judge to believe this, but her important ruling is especially interesting because of Howell's previous work: lobbying for the recording industry during the time period when the RIAA was engaged in its own campaign of mass lawsuits against individuals. The news, first reported in a piece at TorrentFreak, nicely illustrates the revolving door between government and industry.

ARS Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/riaa-lobbyist-becomes-federal-judge-rules-on-file-sharing-cases.ars
Programming

Submission + - ISO C++ Committee Approves C++0x Final Draft (herbsutter.com)

Submitted by Randyll
Randyll writes: On the 25th, in Madrid, Spain, the ISO C++ committee approved a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) for the C++ programming language. This means that the proposed changes to the new standard so far known as C++0x are now final. The finalization of the standard itself, i.e. updating the working draft and transmitting the final draft to ITTF, is due to be completed during the summer, after which the standard is going to be published, to be known as C++ 2011. With the previous ISO C++ standard dating back to 2003 and C++0x having been for over eight years in development, the implementation of the standard is already well underway in the GCC and Visual C++ compilers. Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, maintains a handy FAQ of the new standard.

Submission + - Limewire being sued for 75 Trillion. (law.com)

Submitted by
DarthVain
DarthVain writes: "Apparently 13 record companies are trying to sue Limewire for 75 Trillion. The NYC judge thinks it is "absurd". Its almost like these media companies are their worst enemy trying to make themselves look ridiculous."
Books

Submission + - Crime Writer Makes a Killing with 99 Cent eBooks

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Joe Konrath has an interesting interview with independent writer John Locke who currently holds the coveted #1 spot in the Amazon Top 100 and has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year which with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k. Locke says that 99 cents is the magic number and adds that when he lowered the price of his book "The List" from $2.99 to 99 cents, he started selling 20 times as many copies — about 800 a day, turning his loss lead into his biggest earner. "These days the buying public looks at a $9.95 eBook and pauses. It’s not an automatic sale," says Locke. "And the reason it’s not is because the buyer knows when an eBook is priced ten times higher than it has to be. And so the buyer pauses. And it is in this pause—this golden, sweet-scented pause—that we independent authors gain the advantage, because we offer incredible value." Kevin Kelly predicts that within 5 years all digital books will cost 99 cents. "I don't think publishers are ready for how low book prices will go," writes Kelly. "It seems insane, dangerous, life threatening, but inevitable.""
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Bans AdSense in Apps (facebook.net)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Three days ago Facebook finalized their list of accepted ad networks for use within Facebook Apps; AdSense being an (unsurprising?) omission from the list, stating that any missing ad network had yet to agree to the Facebook TOS.

Facebook developers were quick to point out the only losers in this cold-war between Facebook and Google are the developers themselves. Other devs go on to clarify that the reputations of some of the accepted networks is shady at best, leaving developers with sub-par options to monetize their work on the Facebook platform."
Media

Submission + - Posting AC - a thing of the past? (indystar.com) 1

Submitted by c0lo
c0lo writes: A Marion County judge has ruled, for the first time in Indiana, that news media outlets can be ordered by the court to reveal identifying information about posters to their online forums.
If you think that this will affect only posting on /. or the like, think again: according to TFA, under threat seems to be no less than the right of the media outlets to protect the identity of their sources.
United States

Submission + - Bradley Manning Charged With Aiding The Enemy

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Washington Post reports that the army has brought twenty-two new charges — including the Article 104 offence of "aiding the enemy" that carries a potential death sentence — against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, a former intelligence analyst accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks. The new charges, filed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, include wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, knowing that it will be accessed by the enemy, that US officials have asserted could put soldiers and civilians at risk. However the prosecution has notified Manning's attorneys that it will not recommend the death penalty and the charge sheet, like the original set of accusations, contains no mention by name of the enemy to which the US military is referring. Manning's supporters reacted to the new charges with dismay. "I'm shocked that the military opted to charge Pfc. Bradley Manning today with the capital offense of 'aiding the enemy,' " says Jeff Paterson, project director of Courage to Resist, which has raised money for Manning's defense. "It's beyond ironic that leaked US State Department cables have contributed to revolution and revolt" in the Middle East, "yet an American may be executed, or at best face life in prison, for being the primary whistleblower.""

Comment Re:Linux fails... AGAIN (Score -1, Flamebait) 168

by Nuno Sa (#35252776) Attached to: London Stock Exchange Price Errors 'Emerged At Linux Launch'

Those *are* facts. The new system is better in every metric. The old system failed several times. Once it crashed and stayed down for the better part of the day.

The cause of the error in unknown... As always.

Anyway, there's no need for the "root cause". It failed. It was slow. Somebody had to eat a frog and scrap the whole system. And in the 90s they said nobody ever got fired for buying MS. Good old days. Too bad for some it's 2011!!

And you don't have to be bitter, MS' stock may hold a few months more with the Nokia buyout. :-)

Comment Easy (Score 1) 1

by Nuno Sa (#35252630) Attached to: Ask Slashdot

The email headers (like To, Cc, Subject) play no part in deciding to whom the message goes.
The message goes only to the recipient pointed in the SMTP conversation, the "RCPT TO:" header.

This example smtp conversation will appear to be addressed to one@example.com but will only be delivered to two@example.com, and not one@example.com
Everything after the "DATA" is useless regarding the final destination of the message:
--- Cut here ---
HELO server
MAIL FROM: linus@linux.com
RCPT TO: two@example.com
DATA
TO: one@example.com
Subject: Got you!

Hello
.
--- Cut here ---

The similar email address is just some creative/random domain substitution ;-)

Comment Re:Linux fails... AGAIN (Score 1, Interesting) 168

by Nuno Sa (#35252448) Attached to: London Stock Exchange Price Errors 'Emerged At Linux Launch'

Btw, they are _upgrading_ to Linux, because the previous system (Windows and .net) failed several times, required MW of energy and was slow.

This new _upgraded_ system is many orders of magnitude faster.

Unfortunately, it appears, it wasn't properly tested... WTH? I'd expect for the system to run only 100x faster, instead of 1000x faster, during the first few weeks. Or maybe that some API from 1990 stopped working. Wrong data is just too much. Maybe the story isn't telling all the facts? ...Hmmm... Maybe the affected clients are running Windows?!!!!!!

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