Contents

1. Sarah Palin’s Stance On Technology Issues
2. A Setback for ISP Web Tracking
3. Dell To Sell Its Computer Factories
4. Development, Privacy, and Standards for Chrome
5. FAA’s Aging Flight-Plan System Having Problems
6. Comet-Chasing Spacecraft Encounters Rare Asteroid
7. Which Vendors Do You Trust For PC Parts?
8. Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2
9. Canadian DMCA Proposal About To Die
10. A History of the Xbox Red Ring of Death Fiasco
11. CIA, FBI Push Social Networking for Spies
12. NASA To Explore “Secret Layer” of the Sun
13. Researchers Build Malicious Facebook App
14. 5 Years of RIAA Filesharing Lawsuits
15. Google Turns 10

Condoms and Birth Control Pills are Technology - by Jonathan (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Pity she doesn’t support *those*, favoring abstinence instead. That really worked out well for her daughter…

Avoiding the media - by ericspinder (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
She has declined access to all media, and I doubt if we’ll even see her speak with anything but the rabid right pundits who’ll fawn over her. I’m guessing that they only tough questions she’ll face on any subject will be the vp debate.

Having books removed from libraries… - by nog_lorp (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

McCain/Palin 08 
For a future without books.

Re:Having books removed from libraries… - by fremsley471 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
That allegation is simply a *fabrication*. It started on Daily Kos - and it’s utter nonsense.

Sorry to disappoint:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Source http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html

Re:Having books removed from libraries… - by IgnoramusMaximus (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

That allegation is simply a *fabrication*. It started on Daily Kos - and it’s utter nonsense.

How so? They quoted both the former Mayor and the Time magazine, who interviewed other people.

Good but not enough - by schwaang (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread

This needs to be so clearly illegal that no American ISP would have thought about trying it to begin with.

Re:Why… - by Darkness404 (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
If they are really good at what they do, they will have a loyal fanbase that will support them via merchandise or donations. Just look at Homestar Runner, TBC makes a profit solely by merchandise sales.  
 
Not to mention that a lot of sites that have ads (I’m looking at you cable news stations) already have a steady revenue of money from somewhere.

Re:Why… - by Adambomb (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

Actually, I think thats more of a problem of scale. The larger user base you have, the less consumers think of contributing in the name of good will as “ahh they’re doing alright” (and in some cases, that’d be valid to say).

I’m not saying that such a business model would not be profitable, i’m just saying most businesses see it as a diminishing returns kind of model. It will get them to a certain point of profitability but then probably stay there, which is not the kind of thing shareholders want to hear. For someone making a living while producing what they like, this is great. Hell, you could even run a nice private business that way and people would love it so long as you juggled properly. When the words “publicly traded” get into the picture though…well…you wont be hearing the words “eh, we’re comfortable with this level of profit. Lets stick with this”.

Of course this is not an excuse; It’s simply a reason, but I do think it is why we do not see this kind of model being used in more large scale groups.

They have been discussing - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 4, Informative) Thread

who is going to prison for tapping 18,000 people 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/bt_phorm_police_meeting/

this is not including the private actions they will be facing for copyright infrigement, insider trading, fraud

Re:They have been discussing - by Antique Geekmeister (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

No one is going to prison. The British are even more used to overt, and covert, silence in every aspect of their lives than the USA. Look at the NSA tapping of the core routers of UUnet, and the lack of any prosecutions for blatantly illegal government activity.

As long as they cooperate with law enforcement monitoring desires, I’m afraid there’s not going to be any prosecution of any sort.

Looking back on Dell - by jamie (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

CEO Michael Dell, October 2007, on being asked what he’d do if he were CEO of Apple:

“I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

Since then DELL stock has gone up by 72%… while AAPL has gone up 3080%.

Dell’s basic problem has been known for a while. They don’t do anything unique. They were one of the first to “get” just-in-time custom manufacturing and they rode that horse for a long time, but everything they do, others can do better — and apparently do.

Innovation, if it can be sustained, always wins over efficiency, because innovative hardware and software design can empower users by orders of magnitude, while efficiency gains approach an ideal asymptotically.

Re:Looking back on Dell - by TheRaven64 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
I know not being able to RTFA is a requirement for Slashdot editors, but the first paragraph of that article says the quote was from 1997, not 2007. They didn’t shut Apple down after that, instead they paid NeXT $300m to take over the brand. NeXT has done a lot of really great stuff since taking over Apple, but don’t kid yourself that the Apple of today has anything to do with the Apple of 1997.

Re:Apple - by Jorophose (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

All of Apple’s parts are Foxconn, except the intel processors, and $somebody’s hard drives.

Congratulations, you have parts made from the bottom-of-the-barrel of the shittiest components maker, Foxconn. Nobody would touch that with a 10-foot poll when they have Gigabyte.

Apple cuts its costs to make a profit, too. Or you thought an iMac really costs 1000$ to make?

Absolutely right - by Crazy Taco (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Congratulations, you have parts made from the bottom-of-the-barrel of the shittiest components maker, Foxconn. Nobody would touch that with a 10-foot poll when they have Gigabyte.

Absolutely right. No one who has built computers for any length of time feels comfortable putting a Foxconn board in over the alternatives. Not saying a Gigabyte board or an Asus board will never go bad (I’ve had them go out on me before), but just hop over to newegg, search for motherboards, filter to those manufactured by foxconn, and just take a look at the number of stars (or eggs) they get. Then go in and look at the comments, and take a look at how many have died within a few months, or were just DOA.

I bet Apple daily ships boards back to Foxconn by the truckload as they show up dead on arrival and fail QA, but you’ve got to know that a lot of those 1-3 months of life boards are getting through. Have fun with Apple products!

And as a side note, if Apple products are so awesome, explain the whole iPod battery fiasco a few years back where iPod batteries were all dying shortly after the warranty, and Apple was just telling everyone to go buy a new iPod. Or go look at all the forums full of people complaining about how their iPod shuffle just randomly bricked itself one day (orange and green flashing light issue), sometimes due to the new version of iTunes, and sometimes just because. And how Apple’s solution again was to tell everyone to go buy a new Shuffle. I had one of those, and I basically said, “Screw the crappy, short lived Apple products with no support, I’m buying a Zune.” As All State might say, “I was NOT in good hands”, and I was not about to be taken by Apple again.

Re:Price, the only consideration? - by Crazy Taco (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

“Contract manufacturers can generally produce computers more cheaply because their entire operations are narrowly focused on finding efficiencies in manufacturing, as opposed to large firms like Dell, which must also balance marketing and other considerations.” - So Are Marketing and Other (Design, Reliability, QC? ) considerations no longer important?

This is simply incompetence, or idiocy, I’m not sure which…

I work for a very large food company that has about 40-50 manufacturing facilities worldwide. These facilities make almost all of our products. We make millions upon millions of items every day… in the facility I work in, we make something like 1.5 million items a day, just by ourselves. In an average grocery store, we manufacture around 500 distinct products, to say nothing of the variety of goods we provide to food service establishments such as hospitals, restaurants, hotels, military bases, etc.

In the current bad economic climate, our stock price is rising rapidly. Why? Analysts attribute it to our ability to find efficiencies in manufacturing and operations. We don’t look at finding efficiencies as an impossible burden to be outsourced to others; we instead look at it as an opportunity to increase profits without having to raise costs on consumers (which is especially important in this economic climate). And we’ve gotten quite good at it over the years, despite the fact that, perhaps even more than Dell, we do spend a lot of time and energy on marketing, sales, finance, coupons, and everything else. I can guarantee you that you see a lot more of our commercials each year than Dell’s.

So I think Dell is really being incompetent here. Instead of looking for savings and learning to make its operations efficient, it is going for the quick fix of contracting out. But my guess is that it will contract out to a number of different facilities throughout the nation or world, and while each of those facilities will be good at focusing on itself, they will not have the advantage of seeing learnings from ALL the facilities across the organization, and they will miss things. I know our plants keep tabs on each other and call each other all the time to see how some project or other went. Typically one plant will take the plunge on some experimental idea, and the rest will be watching to see if it works out, which is a lot better than siloed contract plants potentially trying the same failed idea at each facility due to lack of communication. Had Dell kept manufacturing, it would have had the advantage of seeing the whole organization, and they could potentially have saved more in the long run by manufacturing everything themselves, but instead they are taking the incompetent way out. Frankly, I’m glad I work for a company with better leadership than them.

Re:Bug - by DancesWithBlowTorch (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread

I don’t accept this excuse from Google, because they have effectively destroyed the concept of a beta version. Even gmail is still in beta, and it’s probably among the world’s top three email providers now. 
 
Google, please do official releases of your products. Or, if you really need to childishly continue to call them development versions, invent a new category. Maybe, call them “gamma” versions. You are spoiling a useful metaphor for everyone else.

Re:Chrome is a resource hog - by David Gerard (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

How’s it run on a lesser box? Using available resources to do their job is what apps are supposed to do, after all …

Re:Completely good and noble - by kestasjk (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread
I don’t see why a rendering engine can’t have security vulnerabilities, just like any other software which processes input from an untrusted source.

Re:Completely good and noble - by David Gerard (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

Even KDE’s switching to WebKit, at least as an option. It appears to be sinking into Apple’s head that they can 0wn this project, but playing nice with others is more likely to get them something that works well. You know … open source.

Re:Say “no” to Google spyware - by David Gerard (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

Direct Google link to standalone installer.

Note that this doesn’t install under Wine - you need the binary Zip file (which I can’t find a direct link to) to try it under Wine. And it still doesn’t actually work, so find the missing functions and get to work writing them for Wine ;-)

Re:Overhaul or upgrade? - by red_dragon (Score: 4, Informative) Thread

Just how old is the current system? DOS era computing? CTOS? ENIAC?

The FAA’s flight plan system uses two Philips DS714 computers. Network World ran an article in 2005 when the FAA announced that they’d be replacing them with two Stratus ftServer boxes. It’s not difficult to imagine that they haven’t come close to that goal yet.

If you want to see how creaky the DS714s are, take a look here.

Re:Four page article? - by HangingChad (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

, but the article doesn’t give any real suggestions.

People probably won’t like my suggestion, which would be to regulate air travel again. Cut the routes, limit take off and landing slots, increase the seat and isle widths and let airlines raise prices to the market level of support. Add a gas tax to keep the cost of gasoline above $3.50/gallon and take the money pay for building a high speed train system across the US. To me that would be worth going into debt for, short term anyway. It would create jobs here and give people an alternative to our broken air transportation system.

The trains could handle the commodity traffic and airlines could compete for luxury traffic, just like the old days. We have to do something. We have 3% of the world population and use 25% of the gasoline. Without alternatives we’re never going to get people out of their cars. If I could go anywhere in the continental US in 24 hours, I’d never fly again.

With the added bonus of keeping air traffic at a predictable level for the FAA.

Re:Four page article? - by NoPantsJim (Score: 4, Informative) Thread
TCAS isn’t so much “in flight radar” as it is “holy shit last minute saver of your ass”. TCAS doesn’t do anything until a collision is basically imminent, at which point it gives instructions on how to avoid said collision. 
 
ADS-B is the real in flight radar.

Crashes - by mollymoo (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
I do wish TFS would make the distinction between software crashes and aircraft crashes.

Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II - by ahankinson (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
It doesn’t need to make sense to me. If I handed a page of C++ to my grandmother, she couldn’t make sense of that either. The weather report is concise and practical, giving a lot of information with the fewest amount of words. Once you can read it, you find it valuable to not have to sift through mounds of useless or redundant information (like adjectives, verbs, etc.) 
 
Just because you can’t read and understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value to someone. 
 
And what’s that shit you posted at the end of your comment? Black People suck? Grow up, asshole.

Some Nice pictures - by mbone (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

Here are the first results. The asteroid has a nice crater chain on it and looks roughly like a cut diamond.

Re:Some Nice pictures - by meringuoid (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
This series of craters really looks strange. What’s the probability of this?

A lot of asteroids are fairly loosely built, more like heaps of rubble than large boulders. So: let such an asteroid have a close encounter with a planet on its travels, let us say Jupiter. Let it pass close to the planet, and be torn apart by tidal forces, and then escape on the other side. It’s now a strung-out row of smaller bodies - remember Shoemaker-Levy 9? Then passing through the main asteroid belt, let it collide with a more solid asteroid. Result: a chain of impact craters.

You see similar things on larger bodies - there are impact chains on the Moon, for instance - but these are attributed to debris ejected from a larger impact falling back to the surface further along from the impact site. On an asteroid I doubt gravity would pull anything back, so we’d need a third party to have arranged for a series of impacts instead.

E-type? - by cheebie (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

From the linked Wikipedia entry:

# X-group

        * M-type (16 Psyche) metallic objects, the third most populous group. 
        * E-type (44 Nysa, 55 Pandora) differ from M-type mostly by high albedo 
        * P-type (259 Aletheia, 190 Ismene; CP: 324 Bamberga) differ from M-type mostly by low albedo

So, the probe has encountered a shiny metal asteroid. Has anyone informed Bender?

Relatively rare? - by bigtallmofo (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Steins is one of the relatively rare E-type asteroids.  
 
The summary says they’re rare, but the Wikipedia article indirectly linked says they form a majority of the asteroids “inward of the main belt”. I’m very confused! 
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-type_asteroid

Re:Relatively rare? - by cp.tar (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Not that I know anything about them, but the asteroids inward of the main belt seem to be a minority, compared to all the other asteroids in the main belt and beyond it. A majority of that subset can still be a relative minority. 
Insert voter population analogy here.

Ok, I have to ask… - by multimediavt (Score: 3, Interesting) Thread

You have a system now. It works. So why are you worried about parts arriving at different times? This makes sense in a business sense, but doesn’t make sense from a personal/gaming machine sense. If you’re worried about parts not working before you have all of them, heaven forbid you test them in the machine you do have before their 30-day return date passes. I also don’t understand that logic. The parts are all warranted through their respective manufacturers. If something doesn’t work, get it replaced. If you are returning things for other reasons, then you really need to do more homework before you buy.

Getting back to the topic, if you want parts to arrive in a certain amount of time then you’re going to have to hunt for the resellers that have them in-stock and ready to ship. It’s called due diligence. You will probably not find a single vendor to get all the parts from. Yes, some have more influence over distributors and can get parts sooner, but if the manufacturer is having supply problems, then so will the rest of the chain all the way down to the consumer. No way around that unless you go straight to the manufacturer. For a single, personal gaming system I think you’d be out of luck trying to get preferential treatment on supply direct from a vendor, but you might have the pull, don’t know you.

Newegg.com - by moxley (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

I really cannot say enough good things about newegg.com.

I have been using them since 2001; my order history with newegg.com is over 20 pages long (at least) and I have ordered well over 200k worth of items from them. In all that time I have never had a problem. We’re talking hundreds of orders. I have been through every conceivable situation - I have had to return things for refund or exchange, I have had to call them once and that call was handled very well.

Here are the general reasons why i think newegg.com is awesome:

1. Price (their prices will be as good or better than most other vendors, online or brick and mortar). 
2. Shipping cost and shipping time: They have a lot of free shipping, and even when you are paying the prices are excellent - they generally ship things the same day you order, if not then then by the next days, always. 
3. Stock, selection, and the technology behind their store and website - They have their own super high tech system for processing orders. I have seen video of how it works and it is very impressive - THey generally never make errors, their website is always up to date with what is and isn’t in stock. I have never ordered something from them only to get a notice that it isn’t in stock. It just doesn’t happen becuse their site seems to be updated in real time. 
4. Customer product reviews - you can get a great idea about particular products you may not know anything about by reading the customer reviews.

All in all I just can’t think of any other retailer which I have dealt with that has their act more together than newegg and that has consistently flawless. I order personal stuff, I order stuff for the IT dept that I run, I order gifts and things for family and friends.

Don’t just take my word for it - check out www.resellerratings.com for unbiased ratings of newegg.com and most other online stores. You will find that newegg consistently is on the top of their list of tens of thousands of stores. Generally with a score just below a perfect 10.

I also live in TN… - by doit3d (Score: 3, Informative) Thread

…and I feel your pain when it comes to paying tax on items ordered online. I have built several systems through the years, and I, like you, am building another one now to replace my old P4. After you have done your research and decided what you want, here are some places to compare prices which will not charge you tax when shipped to TN:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp

http://www.directron.com/

http://www.ewiz.com/index.php

For specialty items, like heat sinks, I sometimes buy here:

http://www.frozencpu.com/index.html?id=wdw9Exum

Above all though, compare prices using these useful sites, for you may find the same part elsewhere even cheaper:

http://www.pricewatch.com/

http://www.google.com/products

Newegg is great for comparing parts and reading detailed specs/reviews, but the tax and shipping generally lead to the parts being more expensive than if they were ordered elsewhere.

Where are you? - by Antique Geekmeister (Score: 3, Insightful) Thread

Most cities, or even states, have a local vendor they can recommend. Local, where you can walk in and lay your hands on parts and ask solid advice, is wonderful and beats the best web vendors hands down, and these shops need your support. If you don’t know of one, talk to your local Linux user groups. They are likely to have the best knowledge and experience of odd issues to give you good references.

If you don’t have such a local resource, I believe you that NewEgg is good. I’ve also done OK with www.pcwarehouse.com, but that’s for commodity level components, not server components where I actually do need specific parts with very specific specifications.

Kingston for memory - by LM741N (Score: 4, Informative) Thread

As far as I know, the memory business is a giant scam. The high priced stuff like Kingston and some others have the least defects- thus are prime binned for a higher price, and the cheap stuff causes problems as soon as it is installed as it was sorted into bins that were under-spec. Memtest86 has consistently proven this to me.

HTML 5 video - by aliquis (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Great! Now all of Opera, Safari and Firefox support the video element, can we please kill flash already?

I doubt youtube, game trailers, southpark studios and friends will demand this real soon now because people in general suck but I can wish can’t I?

Re:Firefox’s bottleneck isn’t JS - by haruchai (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

http://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM_improvements_in_Firefox_3

It seems they have been focusing on extending the DOM support but TraceMonkey will eventually be used to enhance FF’s DOM performance

(Excerpt from this page: http://ejohn.org/blog/tracemonkey/)

Right now there isn’t any tracing being done into DOM methods (only across pure-JavaScript objects) - but that is something that will be rectified. Being able to trace through a DOM method would successfully speed up, not only, math and object-intensive applications (as it does now) but also regular DOM manipulation and property access.

Um, no - by amake (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

All of the possibilities you mentioned are not the same word as “Shiretoko.” Did you even notice as you typed them differently from the actual name?

shireitoko != shirettoko != shiiretoko, and none of those are actual words, much less homonyms.

AFAIK Firefox releases use place names, and Shiretoko is a peninsula in Hokkaido. See: Shiretoko Peninsula.

Re:Still somewhat disappointed in Firefox! - by lazy_nihilist (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

The commercial plays fine, that’s all what matters.

We ain’t dead yet! - by mcrbids (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

So here we have the Moz FF team saying: “We ain’t dead yet!”.

With IE as the undisputed champion, nothing happened. FF brought the “browser war” back, and suddenly IE starts getting new features.

Google’s Chrome brings the browser war to a white heat - suddenly FF is being given a run for its money as the undisputed browser feature champion!

Here’s what I’d like to see:

1) Process-per-tab. It sucks when some JS in some tab gets hung up, bringing everything else in the browser to its knees! Chrome is the only game in town here.

2) Fast (native-speed) JS execution. (Chrome? FF?)

3) Excellent plugin compatibility. Both FF and IE have this down.

4) Cross Platform support. I’m a Win/Mac/Linux guy, I expect my software to work equally on all three. FF is the clear winner here.

4) Ubiquity. For me, this is FF, because it’s the first thing I download after a fresh OS install, regardless of the OS. But for most people, this is still IE.

What am I going to use? Firefox has my money, still. I type this in Chrome, but I usually am not using Windows, so Chrome, Safari, and IE are non-starters for me.

But Chrome makes it obvious: the browser is the next O/S.

Technically… - by Brickwall (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
The government did not “fall” - that is, it was not defeated in the House of Commons on a confidence measure. PM Stephen Harper is expected to request an election writ tomorrow, but the Governor-General is under no obligation to dissolve the house. She could ask the opposition parties if they could form a coalition government (unlikely, but possible), or she could refuse, and send Mr. Harper back to the House, where he could either dare the opposition to defeat him on a confidence measure (which would likely have to be a bill so contentious as to hand the opposition a ready-made election issue), or wait until Mr. Harper’s own law which set an election date for late 2009 comes into effect.

Again, technically, once back in the House, Harper could introduce a confidence motion, and then ensure enough of his MP’s were either absent or abstained so that he was defeated, but this would be so transparent that many Canadians would be annoyed, and not support him at the ballot box. Parliamentary democracy is so much fun!

Ok, two thoughts. - by jd (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

First, there’s never going to be a “good” DMCA, at least not in those terms. The copyright holders (not the artists, who generally get less from DMCA than they did prior to such laws) are trying to have their cake and eat it. Doesn’t work.

Second, if you absolutely have to have such a law, or ANY law on technology, then it has to be written in collaboration with technologists who can help politicians understand what will and won’t work, and what is and is not enforceable. You CANNOT EVER make a good law in a vacuum. Every single time politicians and a single special-interest side of the debate try to control everything, it falls apart. If you don’t listen, you cannot learn. If you do not learn, you cannot hope to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Oh well… - by Safiire Arrowny (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
I wrote my MP for nothing.  
 
Joking aside, she did write me back a with a proper letter and said she was against the bill and would vote no, so I suppose I should get off my ass and vote for her party in this election? (The NDP if you’re wondering).

Make it tolerable? - by Gr8Apes (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

Make it tolerable … By rejecting it and rolling back copyrights to their original limited lifespan of 14 years after registration. (Although I don’t mind the automatic copyright granted which should last for no more than one year pending registration, nor the application/grant of one extension for another 14 years)

Oh, and I would increase registration requirements and a provision to provide library copies with actual submissions in open source storage formats completely free of DRM.

IOW, the only tolerable DMCA is a dead DMCA.

Re:Make it tolerable? - by mellon (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Of course, the problem isn’t people who want to live off their works for the rest of their lives. It’s people who want those works to remain under copyright protection for half a century or more after the author has died. And it’s all of the works that nobody is making any money on anymore, but that nevertheless are lost to the world because, since they are under copyright, and the owners of the copyright can’t be located, the works can’t be digitized.

Great mis-statement in article - by bigstrat2003 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

FTFA: “Microsoft has still sold more Xbox 360 consoles than Sony to date.”

Damn, I never saw that coming!!!

Good thing they’re not getting away with it! - by PotatoSan (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Thankfully the average consumer is well-enough informed to boycott such a deeply-flawed product, thus preventing Microsoft from profiting off of this business model! I mean, can you imagine if they were selling millions of 360s, taking broken units back, and still making money?

Re:+1 yes I am a sony/apple fanboy. - by bigstrat2003 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

First off: Mario is not a “kiddie” game. It’s a platformer, but that doesn’t make it childish.

Second: Zelda, Smash Bros, Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 3, and Mario Kart are kiddie games? Damn, why didn’t someone tell me?

Are you one of those gamers who defines “kiddie” to be “doesn’t include lots of gore and/or swearing”?

Interesting timing - by daemonenwind (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

I wonder at the timing of a Xbox-critical article on the exact day the latest price cut hits, bringing the Arcade version under the price of the Wii.

The first two questions to ask about any news story: 
Why am I hearing about this, and why now?

It’s amazing how much is revealed by these 2 questions.

TFA is written by nitwits - by moderatorrater (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Right, just like a defective Audi will drive people towards purchasing a Toyota Yaris. Nintendo and Microsoft aren’t competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn’t realize that. The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming. Might as well say that peggle is taking sales from Half Life 2. 
 
The XBox360 is getting a lot of negative press, but I think they made the right call by launching early. They’ve been able to displace a lot of the negative press by extending the warranty and making sure that people get their xbox’s replaced. Also, the PS3 is too expensive and the controllers are crap; it gives an overall feel of not being worth the money. The mass exodus as exclusive titles left Playstation to go multi-platform says it all, really.

A Space? - by fishthegeek (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Does this mean that 13 year old girls are going to pretend to be FBI agents now?

Social networking?? - by Chineseyes (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
The KGB is a pirate become a pirate today. 
Aldrich Ames and the the CIA are now friends 
Robert Hanssen and The FBI are now friends 
Aldrich Ames and The KGB are now friends they found each other through the soviet consulate in Washington D.C. 
Robert Hanssen and The KGB are now friends they found each other through The GRU 
Robert Hanssen is sharing The FBI’s secrets with The Espionage Application 
The FBI is wondering why his business is all in the streets. 
Aldrich Ames is going to Moscow!!! 
Aldrich Ames just got busted (Aspace Mobile) 
Robert Hanssen LOL @ Aldrich Ames, amateur 
Aldrich Ames has joined Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex 
Robert Hanssen is wondering what took the FBI so long (Aspace Mobile)

Re:Applications? - by Skapare (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

They should create a parallel site like Slashdot, called Spydot, where intelligence can be moderated (Score 5: Funny).

Re:James Bond in the 21st Century. - by meta-monkey (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

If the hot Chinese “spy” says she’s 14, James can be pretty sure it’s really Chris Hansen.

“Have a seat, Mr. Bond.”

Re:Hacker Target - by tenchiken (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

It would not be on the web - it would be on SIPRnet, the governments own secure IP network that (at least in theory) doesn’t touch the public web.

I expect that they will actually have multiple different systems. Top Secret really isn’t all that secret. It’s once you get to eyes only levels above that things are interesting.

Probe Me, Please - by Kesch (Score: 4, Funny) Thread

Did anyone else get aroused reading the summary?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the sun gets me pretty hot.

Solar Probe Plus - by Geoffrey.landis (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
It’s worth a note that another upcoming NASA mission, Solar Probe Plus, will actually probe the corona, not just look at it.

See data and reports on Solar Probe Plus

Re:Solar Probe Plus - by fyoder (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

Spock: She has sentience, Jim, but not as we know it. I would recommend you not have sex with this one.

Kirk: But Spock, she’s so hot!

Spock: Yes, Jim. Too hot.

Kirk: I’ve yet to meet…

Spock: Don’t make me nerve pinch you, Captain.

Re:Obligatory Weak Joke - by philspear (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

I was going to say they should respect the sun’s privacy. We shouldn’t be investigating parts of the sun where the sun don’t shine.

Reminds me of an interesting site - by causality (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
The Surface of the Sun. Viewed using a 171 angstrom filter, the sun appears to actually have a solid surface beneath the gas layers. It also seems to be electrically active. This is one of the more fascinating astronomy sites I’ve seen, mainly because they don’t seem to start with a bias of “what we know can’t be so”. That always appeals to me, especially since “what we know is 100% impossible” is something that’s been proven wrong, again and again, although that doesn’t seem to stop anyone from asserting that this time we really have it right.

Mod the main article down. It is redundant. - by CFD339 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

They built a malicious face book application. Big deal. They’re all malicious and annoying. The whole damn site is a marketing work to pull personal data about interconnected relationships together for marketing.

“Malicious Facebook App” is like “Table Mesa” (a place in Arizona). Its redundant Mesa means Table in Spanish.

Oh that’s nothing - by joe_n_bloe (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

I used to serve a 2mb file of zeros at favicon.ico. I even used a bogus MIME type to give MSIE a fighting chance. Of course MSIE ignored the MIME type and charged ahead anyway.

more direct malicious app - by Narnie (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

Why not build a more aggressive app and call it something like “Facebook Botnet Webapp Client 2.04.2” and then reward people minion points for delivered spam, DDoS attack packets, and friend referrals. No need to hide it as a beneficial application, people want to belong to something—why else are they on facebook?

BFD(?) - by CWRUisTakingMyMoney (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
So, some researchers used Facebook as a singularly inefficient method of DDoSing someone. Anyone who wants a site taken down will use a botnet or something more reliable (and high-volume) than counting on Facebook users to add the latest greatest app of the day. Am I missing something, or is this really not nearly serious enough even to make /.?

Re:BFD(?) - by BitHive (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
No, this is absolutely retarded. This is like saying I’ve uploaded malicious content to slashdot by telling everyone to click here for free porn where “here” is my victim’s website.

my direct experience with a large TV network - by TheGratefulNet (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

I am a software engineer who shoots photography in a ‘serious amateur’ mode.

like many, I have a public sharing site (I use flickr but others are basically the same kind of ‘publish and show’ concept).

the cool thing about the public networking sites is the amount of eyeballs that view them.

a few weeks ago, I got email from a representative from a cable tv network (a large well-known one that has a 3 letter ‘call sign’, sort of like how HBO uses 3 letters to ID their network. it isn’t HBO but its along those lines and just about as big). the rep said that they found my photo (or set of photos) and thought they might be useful in a tv ‘spot’ that they were producing and airing in the next few months. they wanted to get my permission to use it in some way on their show.

of course, I was flattered. I asked what their terms would be and what kind of payment they would have in mind. remember, this is a for-profit TV network (ie, not PBS) and they *should* have proper budget for things, even ancillary things like my still photo.

well, we went back and forth on email for a few rounds and I even consulted some folks in the biz that are in touch with common practices in this industry. it turns out that, more and more, media companies are trolling the free photo sites and trying to take advantage of ‘amateurs’ by offering NO PAYMENT but only trinkets (tee shirts, comp dvd of the show, and stuff like that) but no payment, no royalties and basically asking for unlimited rights to do whatever they want with the work of art, even on ‘future media types’ not yet developed. perpetual license - and I, the artist, get spud-nutz (so to speak).

is that fair?

I hear all this talk, over and over again, about artists should be paid. so I returned the sentiment back to papa media and papa slammed the door in my face.

I asked for a simple low-value (relatively) one-time payment and immediately the reply was ‘sorry, but all the others we contacted offered their photos for free and we have no budget to pay guys like you’.

I just LOVE this double-standard. when someone downloads a song for free, there are THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS being asked for in damages. but its ok for a major studio network to ask for FREE WORK even though its original, creative and of value.

so, it seems, my photos won’t be seen on that nationally airing show, but I also have what I wanted from this exchange. I sent a message, however small, that what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander. I don’t expect my protest to count for a lot, but I did what I could do and denied them free use of my creative work. I’m sure they’ll move on to the next guy on the list but I have at last made my statement and stood my ground. and I still have the fun compliment of knowing they WANTED to use my work on national TV (and on the eventual dvd that always gets made from TV specials).

do I have any more respect for the big media companies? in fact I have lost even more respect for them - and I didn’t think that such a thing was mathematically possible.

big media says artists should be paid. but they clearly don’t believe this - my direct recent experience is proof of that.

A failure? - by Stickerboy (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Depends on your perspective… definitely not a failure for the trial attorneys billing by the hour.

Pretty much fail - by Etrias (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Not sure how you could measure it by anything but a failure. All of the various ways of measuring it given by RIAA itself pretty much indicate failure. 
 
If they meant to reduce file sharing, total failure there as there’s been no slowdown. If they meant to give back to the artists, failure on their part as any winnings/settlements has only gone to fund more litigation. Not only that, they only have one substantive win which may be declared a mistrial as the judge reconsiders his orders to the jury. 
 
The campaign is a failure. This would have been money better spent on actual innovation on distributing music.

Re:Pretty much fail - by thermian (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Actually, faliure or success depends on your viewpoint.

From the viewpoint of stopping piracy the failure is total. However, from the viewpoint of the companies hired to monitor and pollute p2p networks, its been a financial success, they’ve made many millions. Lawyers too, they’ve raked it in.

So failure is a matter of viewpoint. Hell, if I could have come up with some crackpot way to ‘end piracy’ I’d have sold it to them too and walked away richer, fully aware that all I sold them was snake oil.

What doubt? - by Sockatume (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
“Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure.” 
 
Some?! Wondering?! To date they’ve convinced the internet audience they so desperately wanted that the entire music industry, most telecoms companies, and quite a few governments are a parade of cash-guzzling corporation-fellating litigation-whores, and done absolutely nothing to peer-to-peer file sharing itself. Where is there any room for doubt as to its failure? It’s like trying to give a guy CPR, but realising after hours of effort that you’ve brutally beaten the guy and his entire living bloodline to death with their own shoes instead.

“Don’t be evil” - by Animats (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

The problem with Google is that their “don’t be evil” claim is hard to take seriously any more. Ads at the right of search results weren’t too bad, but then it went downhill. They created the “content-related ad” industry, which resulted in a vast number of “made for AdWords” junk sites and blogs, the “domaining” industry, and a vast amount of crap. Even real advertisers don’t like it; the smarter ones opt out of the Google Content Network and stick with the search result ads.

From there it went downhill. Google doesn’t do much to qualify their advertisers, and as we point out occasionally, about 35% of them are “bottom feeders”, where you can’t even identify the real business behind the ad.

Then there’s Google Checkout. They accept very marginal businesses. They ought to be doing the kind of validation a bank does of its clients, but clearly, they don’t.

Google’s real problem is that they went public at the top of their game. Google was #1 in search when they went public, so they couldn’t grow in their main business area. They had to expand to justify their high P/E ratio, and none of their expansion areas (YouTube, GMail, etc.) made money. So they had to figure out how to get more revenue per search result. At that point they started to turn to the dark side.

do you Yahoo? - by opencity (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

Remember Yahoo’s big ad campaign to become a verb. No one Yahoos, everyone Googles

Stanford, the venture capital firm - by Animats (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

Google started off running on Stanford equipment, and was spun off, as happens frequently at Stanford. Sun and Cisco also started with Stanford people and equipment.

Stanford has become a real estate company and a venture capital firm that runs a university on the side for the tax break. It’s working out very well; they now have $21.6 billion in investment assets, including a big chunk of Google. This started around 1991, when the financial management operation was spun off as a separate company. The financial operation invests in venture pools, which in turn fund venture capitalists, which fund startup companies, some of which become big. They can draw on expertise from the academic side to help evaluate investments. It’s working quite well; annualized returns for the past decade were 15.1%. Tax free!

In related news… - by gmuslera (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Google Beta Turns 15

It’s easy to forget - by SlashDotDotDot (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
how bad search really was before Google. For that matter it’s easy to forget that it used to take work to find information at all. Our culture has just barely begun to come to terms with how revolutionary this change really is.

Signal to Noise ratio over time