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Feed Semel's Ouster Does Little To Enthuse Yahoo Shareholders (techdirt.com)

It's gotta be a bit humiliating for any chief executive when their company's stock jumps after their departure. Fortunately for Terry Semel, it doesn't look like this will be something he has to endure. After an initial jump, Yahoo's stock has given back all of its gains, as the realization sets in that the ascension of Jerry Yang won't be some magic bullet to turn the company around. The market's muted reaction echoes the sentiment among many folks, who feel that the announcement did little to inspire confidence. If anything, the handling of the announcement only furthered the impression that Yahoo is unaware of its own troubled state, as the change was presented as if it were the next logical step along its existing path. Some of the company's language could be chalked up to typical corporate puffery, but the market obviously wanted something much stronger than it actually got.
Puzzle Games (Games)

Submission + - Old islamic tile patterns show modern math insight

arbitraryaardvark writes: "Reuters reports Medieval Muslims made mega math marvel.
Tile patterns on middle eastern mosques display a kind of quasicrystalline effect that was unknown in the west until rediscovered by Penrose in the 1970s.
"Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry."
It isn't known if the mosque designers understood the math behind the patterns.
page 2 of story."

Comment My interpretation of this move by Microsoft (Score 1) 534

I have a feeling this is just a form of Microsoft protecting its self against anti-trust lawsuits.

With more active "competition", Microsoft could perhaps be seen as a smaller target for the DOJ to aim at for antitrust lawsuits, anti-competitive behavior etc.

"We can't be anti-competitive! Just look at Novel and Apple! We compete!"

How Practical are 20-inch Laptops? 274

GeneralPacket writes "A 20-inch laptop might sound perfect for a game of Grand Theft Auto on the way to work, or navigating a mammoth spreadsheet. But are they really usable as laptops, or are they just luggable desktops? This week CNET attempted to work on the super-sized 20-inch Dell XPS M2010 laptop while travelling across London on the subway. The resulting video review is hilarious. This is not your typical tech video review — it's actually funny, and, refreshingly, completely advertising-free. The reviewer is in constant fear that anti-terrorism police are about to swarm him. Would you use a 20-incher?"

Zombies Blend In With Regular Web Traffic 117

An anonymous reader writes "Hackers controlling farms of zombie computers are now trying to blend in with web traffic, News.com reports. Instead of traditional IRC controls, many zombie farms are moving to simple web-based control schemes, which makes them harder to track down." From the article: "The change in tactics makes it harder to identify zombies on a network, and it becomes tougher for security professionals to use the hackers' own tools to spy on them. In addition, the switch to Web-based control increases the threat of zombies to enterprises and other organizations, as that method can't be blocked as easily as the previous technique."

Scientists Make Item Invisible to Microwaves 219

Vicissidude writes "A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow."

Visa Cuts Off AllOfMp3.com 394

denebian devil writes "On the heals of allofmp3.com's press conference trying to clean up its image, Visa has suspended its credit card service to allofmp3.com. From the article "[Allofmp3 is] no longer permitted to accept Visa cards," said Simon Barker, a Visa International spokesman. "The action we've taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and international copyright law." Almost simultaneously, allofmp3.com has announced that it is shifting over to an ad-supported model. For those who don't want to (or can't) buy allofmp3's DRM-free music, they are providing DRM-laden music that can be played only within a restricted player provided by the website."

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