Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Upstart Bloggers at Microsoft Moving On 129

Posted by Zonk from the less-talk-from-the-depths dept.
SJasperson writes "A few weeks ago Mini-Microsoft decided to stop tweaking his corporate masters, having won the astounding victory of getting free towels returned to the locker rooms in Redmond. Now uber-blogger Scoble is moving on to work with a podcasting startup, having apparently tired of his supposed role as Vista evangelist and self-appointed corporate revolutionary. The company still has 3,000 bloggers left, but Microsoft has apparently figured out how to keep them safely within the rules, blogging about the wonders of product renaming and coming features instead of anything that might challenge the party line. There's a lesson here for those starry-eyed adolescents who think the power of the blog is going to triumph over the power of the boardroom."

Real Life Spy Gadgets That Anyone Can Buy 171

Posted by CmdrTaco from the show-cams-and-pen-grenades dept.
Ant writes "Here is a collection of "spy equipment" found for sale around the Internet. Everything listed is completely real, is sold at online stores, and almost any item listed here costs less than $500, and often times can be bought for less than $200. Seen on Compfused."

Chipmakers Admit Your Power May Vary 138

Posted by Zonk from the mileage-too dept.
Dylan Knight Rogers writes to mention a News.com story discussing the realities of chip power consumption. From the article: "Assessing only pure performance is passe. The debate these days is about performance-per-watt, which seems like it should be a simple miles-per-gallon type of calculation. However, miles are miles, and gallons are gallons. There's no one simple way to measure processor performance, and measuring the amount of power output by today's chips is proving just as difficult."

Lower Saxony KDE Migration 119

Posted by Zonk from the upper-saxony-jealous dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet reports on a recent German Linux migration by the tax authority in Lower Saxony which has made the decision to migrate an impressive 12,000 desktops to SuSE Linux using KDE. The project, which is now in process converting 300 desktops daily, moves systems from Solaris x86 version 8, which the organisation has been running since 2002. The migrations are reported as going well thus far. KDE's Kiosk desktop customisation, source code access and licensing costs were cited as key reasons for the decision. Congratulations to all involved, and best of luck going forward with this effort!"

Web 2.0 As A New Wave of Innovation? 174

Posted by Zonk from the learning-2.0 dept.
Vitaly Friedman writes "In his article in the recent Educause magazine, Bryan Alexander, Director for Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE), presents a comprehensive analysis of the rising web 2.0 companies and describes the emerging of web 2.0. From the article: ' ... larger players have entered the field, most notably Yahoo, which has been buying up many projects, including Flickr and del.icio.us. Microsoft is considering a massive extension of RSS. And Google has been producing its own projects, such as the Lens RSS reader and Google Maps. Meanwhile, academic implementations are bubbling up, like the social bookmarking and search projects noted earlier. This Web 2.0 movement (or movements) may not supplant Web 1.0, but it has clearly transformed a significant swath of our networked information ecology.'"

Future of Video Games Outside the Home, DisneyQuest 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the taking-your-quarters dept.
gatzke writes "Some interesting developments have been coming online with new technology being developed that may lead to new and exciting gaming outside the home. DisneyQuest in Orlando mixes classic / modern video games with virtual reality and interactive games. MagiQuest in Myrtle Beach is an immersive interactive treasure hunt environment with a simple wand interface."

IL School District to Monitor Student Blogs 438

Posted by CowboyNeal from the teaching-grammar-and-ethics dept.
tinkertim writes "According to a Yahoo article, a school district in Libertyville, IL will be holding students accountable for illegal actions discussed in their MySpace blogs even if such actions in no way involved the school or another student. A spokesperson for the school district was quoted as saying: 'The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron,' he said. 'It is called the World Wide Web.' Supposedly, no direct monitoring or snooping will be done unless the school receives a report from a concerned parent, community member or other student."

Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons 240

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the popular-to-be-free dept.
minitrue writes "Pearl Jam released their first music video in quite a while under a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to "legally copy, distribute and share the clip" for noncommercial purposes. Creative Commons thinks this may be the first video produced by a major label ever to be CC-licensed. So although the file is only available as a free download via Google Video through May 24, fans can continue sharing it online themselves in perpetuity."

Ship Logs Suggest Upcoming Polar Reversal 349

Posted by CowboyNeal from the straight-on-till-morning dept.
Nyerp writes "Researchers are using naval logs dating back as far as 1590 to arrive at better estimates of the decline of Earth's magnetic field. The results suggest that there may be a reversal of earth's magnetic field in about 2000 years." Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!

Chinese Company Produces $150 Linux PC 325

Posted by Zonk from the inexpensive-penguins dept.
srinravi writes to mention an Ars Technica article about another ambitious 'inexpensive computer' project. A Chinese manufacturer, YellowSheepRiver, is aiming to make available a $150 Linux PC built with inexpensive hardware components. From the article: "Urging potential customers to 'Say no to Wintel,' YellowSheepRiver is devoted to using its own Linux distribution and hardware designed and manufactured by Chinese companies. YellowSheepRiver hopes to close the "digital divide" by making computer technology available to the Chinese public at an affordable price. The Municator, which comes with 256MB of RAM, uses a unique 64-bit CPU with an instruction set based on a subset of the MIPS architecture. Designed by a Chinese company called BLX, the the cheap chip is clocked at 400 or 600MHZ and supposedly provides performance comparable to that of an Intel P3."

Under the Hood of AT&T's Monitoring System 416

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the running-commentary dept.
pkbarbiedoll writes "The recent discovery of AT&T's monitoring program has raised more than a few eyebrows. While the class action suit filed by EFF is pending (as well as a seperate suit filed against the NSA filed by the ACLU), interested parties are taking the time to learn more about the scope of this massive invasion of privacy. Bewert examines the Narus architecture used by AT&T in their previously shadowed (and ongoing) collaboration with the NSA."

RIAA Recommends Students Drop out of College 869

Posted by CmdrTaco from the always-has-your-best-interests-at-heart dept.
boarder8925 writes "An MIT student accused of copyright infringement has been documenting her struggles with the RIAA. Upon trying to negotiate her settlement, a representative told her that "the RIAA has been known to suggest that students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford settlements.""

MS Announces Open XML Formats Developer Group 84

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the monkey-see-microsoft-do dept.
Andy Updegrove writes to tell us that Microsoft has responded to the recently formed ODF Alliance with a group of their own, the Open XML Formats Developer Group. From the article: "At launch, the new forum has either 39 or 40 members (the site is internally inconsistent on this point), the most prominent of which are Apple, Intel and Toshiba. [...] Despite the long list of founding members, it appears that the forum is purely informational in nature. A review of the site indicates that no specific initiatives are planned to be undertaken by the forum. Instead, it will provide information and provide a place for developers to pose questions, post content, and engage in discussion."

Slashdot Top Deals

The cost of feathers has risen, even down is up!

Close