breem42 - Slashdot User

Submission + - For Sale On eBay: One Man's Life (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Monday June 23, 2008 @06:35PM

CWmike writes: "Linda Rosencrance writes, at some point in your life, haven't you just wanted to chuck it all — house, car, job, even your friends — and start over? Of course, after a while, you realized how silly that all sounds and settled back into your familiar existence. No so with 44-year-old Australian Ian Usher. After a painful, failed marriage that lasted five years, Usher, originally from Darlington, England, decided to sell everything he owns — a three-bedroom house, a car and a motorbike — and some things he doesn't own — his lifestyle, job and friends — walk out the door of his home in Perth, Australia, and never look back. And where better to auction off your life than on eBay?"

Submission + - Time Warner Cable Wins State-Wide Cable Franchise (state.oh.us) 1

Submitted by on Saturday December 15, 2007 @09:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: Time Warner Cable has received the second state-wide franchise agreement, covering 260 communities, in 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, for 10 years. AT&T was the first to earn a state-wide franchise contract, after a law was passed in September that allowed operators to negotiate a single state-wide agreement. Normally operators negotiate franchise agreements at the local level.

Submission + - The Epic Battle between Microsoft and Google 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Saturday December 15, 2007 @08:59PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "There is a long article in the NYTimes well worth reading called "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" about the business strategies both companies are pursuing and about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based cloud and about 2,000 companies are signing up every day for Google Apps, simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft's lucrative Office business. Microsoft faces a business quandary as they to try to link the Web to its desktop business — "software plus Internet services," in its formulation. Microsoft will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups but it is "unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating." David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, "a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.""

Submission + - Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team 1

Submitted by Curlsman on Saturday December 15, 2007 @07:55PM

Curlsman writes: Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team

Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.
We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/2316633.html

Is this site worth a write-in campaign?

Submission + - Google reinvents Wikipedia (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by teslatug on Friday December 14, 2007 @12:30AM

teslatug writes: Google appears to be reinventing Wikipedia with their new product that they call knol (not yet publicly available). In an attempt to gather human knowledge, Google will accept articles from users who will be credited with the article by name. If they want, they can allow ads to appear alongside the content and they will be getting a share of the profits if that's the case. Other users will be allowed to rate, edit or comment on the articles. The content does not have to be exclusive to Google but no mention is made on any license for it. Is this a better model for free information gathering?

Submission + - Riding the Failure Cascade

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 14, 2007 @12:13AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Escapist has an article investigating what causes the death of certain guilds called Riding the Failure Cascade.

"Guild leaders function as coordinators and morale officers as much as they do running the group, because volunteers are easier to lose than they are to come by. And once a guild begins to lose a steady trickle of members, it's only a matter of time before that trickle turns into a full-on waterfall. "

For those of you that have been through a guild breakup, has this been your experience?

Submission + - Dutch government adopts open code and standards (google.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Thursday December 13, 2007 @11:37PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "The Dutch government has set a target date of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open standards-based software, the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday, according to a 14 December 2007 Associated Press article by Toby Sterling. Government organizations will still be able to use proprietary software and formats but will have to justify it under the new policy, ministry spokesman Edwin van Scherrenburg said. Microsoft Netherlands spokesman Hans Bos claims that Microsoft's Office productivity suite will still be used widely in the Dutch government until April, and that Microsoft Office will comply with the new Dutch rules once Microsoft's so-called "Open Office XML" standard is approved as an international ISO standard in February, as Microsoft sees it. The Dutch policy directs government organizations at the national level to be ready to use the Open Document Format to save documents by April, and at the state and local level by 2009, according to the AP's Sterling."

Submission + - White House ordered to preserve all e-mail (cnn.com)

Submitted by Verunks on Monday November 12, 2007 @07:29PM

Verunks writes: A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether e-mails have been destroyed in violation of federal law. The issue surfaced in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity

Submission + - Russian hacker gang vanishes once again (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Arashtamere on Monday November 12, 2007 @06:55PM

Arashtamere writes: The shadowy hacker and malware hosting network that only recently fled Russia to set up operations in China has now pulled the plug there and vanished yet again, researchers said. An analyst at VeriSign's iDefense Labs unit who wanted to remain anonymous, leery of retribution from the gang, said IDefense had tracked RBN's migration earlier in the week from servers based in Russia to ones running in China. On Tuesday, RBN's Russian servers went dark as the group relinquished control of its assigned IP addresses, effectively severing its connection to the Internet. By Wednesday, however, RBN had relocated to China and Taiwan after obtaining at least seven net blocks of Chinese IP addresses, said iDefense. According to the security intelligence firm, as of Wednesday, RBN controlled 5,120 IP addresses assigned to Chinese service providers; known RBN clients were even seen using those addresses that day. But with its China move putting media and security community spotlights on the organization, RBN suddenly went offline on Thursday, said the analyst. "They severed connections to six of the seven net blocks on November 8," the analyst said. According to iDefense, RBN as a single organization may be dead and gone....RBN may even now be breaking up into smaller pieces farmed out to multiple countries' Internet infrastructures.

Submission + - Intergalatic Clouds of Missing Mass Missing Again

Submitted by

Ponca City, We Love You

on Sunday November 04, 2007 @11:45PM

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Researchers at the University Of Alabama In Huntsville have discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of "warm" gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons leaving the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter than previously calculated. In 2002 the same team reported finding large amounts of extra "soft" (relatively low-energy) x-rays coming from the vast space in the middle of galaxy clusters. Their cumulative mass was thought to account for as much as ten percent of the mass and gravity needed to hold together galaxies, galaxy clusters and perhaps the universe itself. When the team looked at data from a galaxy cluster in the southern sky, however, they found that energy from those additional soft x-rays doesn't look like it should. "The best, most logical explanation seems to be that a large fraction of the energy comes from electrons smashing into photons instead of from warm atoms and ions, which would have recognizable spectral emission lines," said Dr. Max Bonamente."

Google's Young Brainiacs Go Globe-Trotting 175

Posted by Zonk on Sunday November 04, 2007 @11:25PM from the nice-gig-if-you-can-get-it dept.

theodp writes "To train a new generation of leaders, Google sends its young associate product managers on a worldwide mission. Newsweek's Steven Levy tagged along and reports on the APMs' activities, which included passing out candy, notebooks and pencils to poor Raagihalli children, a 'Rubber Ducky' group sing-along at 2 a.m., and competitions to find the weirdest-gadget-under-$100 in Tokyo. The APM program, which seeks brilliant kids and slots them directly into important jobs with no experience necessary, was formed after Google's attempts to hire veterans from firms like Microsoft had awful results. 'Google is so different that it was almost impossible to reprogram them into this culture,' says Google CEO Eric Schmidt of the experienced hires."

Submission + - Forbes 400 targeted by ID thieves. (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17, 2007 @10:43PM

An anonymous reader writes: Numerous media outlets have been reporting this story, about an ID theft ring which targeted the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans. It seems that Igor Klopov a 24 year-old Russian citizen was the ring leader and was caught after attempting to pick up $7 million in gold that he was using to launder the money. I guess it goes to show that anyone can be the target of identity theft, I mean they even went after the President of Transunion one of the credit reporting bureaus.

Submission + - Patent threat looms large over OOXML (nzoss.org.nz)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16, 2007 @07:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: "If OOXML goes through as an ISO standard, the IT industry, government and business will encumbered with a 6000-page specification peppered with potential patent liabilities" said New Zealand OSS President Don Christie. "Alarm bells are going off in many parts of the world over OOXML. Normally ISO draft standards would be drawn up by a number of stakeholder organisations, involving an often slow process of consensus building and knowledge sharing. Since many aspects of the office document format remain proprietary, OOXML has not taken this development track."

Submission + - Journalists sue HP for invasion of privacy

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Thursday August 16, 2007 @07:26PM

Stony Stevenson writes: Four journalists and one of their family members are suing Hewlett-Packard for obtaining their personal phone records.

The journalists filed lawsuits in California this week. They claim that HP invaded their privacy. HP acknowledged in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing last year that it investigated journalists in order to find out who, inside the company, had been leaking information to the press.

The reporters' own publications have reported that HP representatives said they were disappointed the reporters did not take a settlement and decided to sue instead. The company said it plans to defend itself against the lawsuits.

Submission + - Orwellian 'Behavior Detection Officers' for TSA (msn.com) 1

Submitted by

Stanistani

on Thursday August 16, 2007 @06:29PM

Stanistani writes: "According to Newsweek, at US airports some security personnel will be observing passengers for facial expressions which indicate malicious intent. If they believe you look like you might be thinking of causing harm, you can be taken aside for further questioning. Welcome these new overseers: 'Behavior Detection Officers.' Their potentially life-changing decisions will be based on the pseudoscience of 'micro-expressions.'"

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