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Was the Yahoo-Google Deal a Ploy To Weaken Yahoo? 82

Posted by Soulskill from the reply-hazy-ask-again dept.
JagsLive writes with a link to a BetaNews story about a US Senator who is questioning whether the deal between Yahoo and Google was brokered with less than honorable intentions on Google's part. The advertising deal came under scrutiny from the Department of Justice recently for potential antitrust violations. The deal has now been delayed in order to allow investigators more time for evaluation. Meanwhile, rumors are circulating that Yahoo will cut as much as 20% of its workforce after an internal memo from CEO Jerry Yang called for "discipline" and said the company was "getting fit" for the long term. For their part, Google has launched a site endorsing the deal and attempting to smooth the way for its approval by providing facts and positive reactions from experts.

Comment Re:College (Score 1) 124

by Mark_MF-WN (#23569613) Attached to: Doughnut-Shaped Universe Back In the Race
Ah, the classic argument of the intellectually incompetent: using a single case to prove a general principle.

But if really think that single examples prove something, let me use myself as a counterexample.

I'm the only person in my extended family who is in college right now -- and my college is very small and doesn't provide access to stuff like that from outside the intranet. There's only one person in my family who does research, and he and I don't speak. My friends in college were mostly lit and business students, and those who've graduated still aren't working in labs with access to research journals... for some reason.

Basically, your bizarre argument seems to boil down to one or more of the following:

  • Everyone on /. is in college.
  • Everyone on /. who isn't in college hangs out with people who are.
  • Everyone on /. works in a scientific field, because amateur interest in science is inconceivable.
  • It's entirely reasonable to expect people to have to break the law in order to participate meaningfully on /..
Networking

Submission + - Does the internet need a major capacity upgrade?

Submitted by wiggles
wiggles writes: According to the Chicago Tribune, the recent surge of video sites such as youtube and Google video are pushing the limits of the internet's bandwidth, or soon will be. Pieter Poll, chief technology officer at Qwest Communications, says that traffic volumes are growing faster than computing power, meaning that engineers can no longer count on newer, faster computers to keep ahead of their capacity demands. Further, a recent report from Deloitte Consulting raised the possibility that 2007 would see Internet demand exceed capacity. Admittedly, this seems sensationalistic, but are we headed for a massive slowdown of the whole internet?

Feed MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
A jury's $1.52 billion judgment against Microsoft hangs a sudden, unexpected cloud over MP3. This could be the opening open-source advocates have been waiting for. By Eliot Van Buskirk and Evan Hansen.


Education

Submission + - "Cyberbullying" laws raise free speech que

Submitted by Chad_DeVoss
Chad_DeVoss writes: States across the country are working on laws to rein in cyberbullying, claiming that electronic harassment has led even to the suicides of some children. But what about the First Amendment? Surely schools can't control what kids say to one another? It's an easy argument to make, but the reality is more complicated. From the article: "The issue is further complicated by questions about whether cyberbullying takes place on school property or not. School officials do not generally have control over what students do outside of school, but, as the First Amendment Center reports, even this issue is complicated. Students who threaten or harass other students using school equipment or during school time can most likely be sanctioned, but even students who do such things from home face the possibility of school discipline under the 'substantial disruption of the educational environment' ruling from the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case from 1969."

Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee 171

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-good-things-must-end dept.
The New York Times is reporting that Skype has said it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. From the article: "As a promotion, Skype began allowing its users to place free domestic 'SkypeOut' calls from their computers to traditional and mobile phones last May. At the time, the company said the promotion would extend only through year's end. The company is offering a half-price subscription to those who sign up before Jan. 31. Calls from one computer to another have been and will continue to be free."
Businesses

FTC To Investigate 'Viral Marketing' Practices 299

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the take-what-ya-can-give-nuthin-back dept.
mcflaherty writes "The Federal Trade Commission has stated that it is going to investigate the use of 'Viral Marketing' by corporations. This is the type of advertising that seeks to start a word of mouth campaign for the product via consumers themselves. Previously, consumers themselves set the buzz. But lately advertisement firms are stepping up to the plate themselves, seeding the market with buzz that looks independent of the company, but is in fact funded by them. The crew at Penny Arcade contend that corporate generated buzz is not Viral Marketing, and perhaps Guerrilla Marketing would be a more apt term. Either way, it appears to be a profitable advertising model."
The Courts

Liquid Terror Charges Dropped 364

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the in-other-news-forgers-now-charged-as-terrorists dept.
A Pakistani judge has decided to drop terrorism charges against the man described as a "key figure" in the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London using liquid explosives. Instead of facing charges of terrorism for the plot, which forced many travelers to follow strict guidelines with respect to liquids, Rashid Raud now faces charges such as forgery. From the article: "Several commentators said the threat was deliberately exaggerated to bolster the anti-terror credentials of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and that it helped to demonise British Muslims of Pakistani origin. The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK said the dropping of charges against Mr Rauf in Pakistan would "make no difference" to the case against the men charged in Britain."
Book Reviews

Developing Java Software 170

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Simon P. Chappell writes "It's good to learn a programming language, but it's a far better thing to learn to write programs in that language. What the world needs are less programming language books and more books on programming with the language of your choice. Enter Developing Java Software, 3rd edition by Russel Winder and Graham Roberts. Dr. Winder is the primary author and I became aware of this book when he mentioned it on the Groovy mailing list. Knowing him to be an intelligent and helpful member of the Groovy development team, I rushed to suggest that I could review it for him." Read the rest of Simon's review.
Space

The Sierras of Titan 167

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the titans-of-titan dept.
eldavojohn writes "Cassini has detected the tallest mountains on Titan, a large moon of Saturn. More importantly, clouds have also been detected in Titan's atmosphere. Why is this news important? Well, as scientists scan the skies for the easiest piece of mass to colonize, things that resemble Earth's geology & atmosphere are going to require the least effort & resources. These mountains mean that Titan may have tectonic plate movement similar in some ways to earth's. From the article, '"You can think of Titan as the Earth in deep freeze," said Dr Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar team member at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It has a lot of the geological processes that Earth has. In fact, it is more Earth-like than anywhere else in the Solar System. But the surface is very cold; it's about minus 178C."'"
Science

White Dolphin Functionally Extict 868

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the gone-the-way-of-the-dodo dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in nearly fifty years another mammal, specifically an aquatic mammal, has gone extinct. In this case, it was the white dolphin, also known as the Baiji, which used to live in the Yangtze River in China. The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."
Science

New Zealand's First Land Mammal Discovered 154

Posted by kdawson from the furry-feet dept.
Bob Beale writes to clue us to big news from New Zealand. The country has long been thought to have been devoid of land mammals until recent times. No mammal fossils had ever been found there; but now one has. From the article: "Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called 'land of birds' was once home to mammals as well. The tiny fossilized bones — part of a jaw and hip — belonged to a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known... The fact that even one land mammal had lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals."

Online Store to Sue Blogger Over Google Ranking? 365

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-this-effort-could-have-gone-to-fixing-his-site dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An online business owner is threatening to sue blog owner Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) because he is upset that the blog owner is doing better than his business in the Google search rankings. After an initial threat, Dean received a follow-up threatening to take legal action against him. So far Dean has elected not to name and shame this business owner."
Databases

MySQL Quietly Drops Support For Debian Linux [UPDATED] 339

Posted by kdawson from the any-color-as-long-as-it's-black dept.
volts writes "MySQL quietly deprecated support for most Linux distributions on October 16, when its 'MySQL Network' support plan was replaced by 'MySQL Enterprise.' MySQL now supports only two Linux distributions — Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.' We were told that 'Generic Linux' in MySQL's list of supported platforms means 'generic versions of the implementations listed above'; not support for Linux in general." Update: 12/13 20:52 GMT by J : MySQL AB's Director of Architecture (and former Slash programmer) Brian Aker corrects an apparent miscommunication in a blog post: "we are just starting to roll out [Enterprise] binaries... We don't build binaries for Debian in part because the Debian community does a good job themselves... If you call MySQL and you have support we support you if you are running Debian (the same with Suse, RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu and others)... someone in Sales was left with the wrong information"
Windows

Vista's TCP/IP Promises and Perils 183

Posted by kdawson from the packet-to-go dept.
boyko.at.netqos tips us to a new writeup on Vista's TCP/IP stack, which is called Compound TCP/IP (CTCP). From the article: "...security policy will come from a centralized source. When you get your DHCP lease, your computer will report to the stack what OS you're using, what version level, what patches, what anti-virus software that's active — all that kind of stuff. It will have the ability to restrict your network access if you have a down-level machine... We could see a lot of our customers with much higher WAN network utilization because of this new TCP/IP stack... CTCP can be enabled/disabled from the command prompt but there has been no mention of tuning parameters which leads us to ask the question: How are you supposed to configure this setting in Vista?... What worries us... is that Microsoft is basing this on packet round trip time. The round-trip time from the client-side will have the server processing time in it; but the clients aren't likely going to be the running the CTCP at first. If you have a server-to-server backup running, for example, CTCP may think its part of the round-trip time and it'll throw the delay window through the roof..."

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