Slashback: Sidekick Justice, Free WebTV, Office Patent 88
Justice for stolen Sidekick victim. chroma writes "Remember the stolen Sidekick from a few days back? When the girl uploaded photos of herself to T-Mobile's service and bragged on IM about having the stolen PDA? Well, after creating a webpage that gathered 400,000 links in less than two weeks, and much runaround from the NYPD, justice has finally been served: the perpetrator has been arrested and the PDA returned. Further information is also available from The New York Times."
Free WebTV test a hit. An anonymous reader writes "Disney has said that their recent ABC free WebTV was a real hit with viewers and advertisers alike. Shows posted on the site received more than 11 million hits in the first month alone. From the article: 'An online exit survey posted the first week of the two-month trial showed that 87 percent of respondents could recall the advertisers that sponsored the episodes they watched. That compares with typical ad recall of about 40 percent for commercials viewed on television, industry sources said.'"
SUSE 10.1 release postponed. An anonymous reader writes "According to a confidential memo, the next release of both the server and desktop versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 will be delayed. The delay is apparently to allow Novell 'to address final issues with our new package management, registration, and update system and also fix the remaining blocker defects.' From the article: 'SUSE has a new update and package management system, which has not worked well in its initial release in the free, community OpenSUSE 10.1 release. Unfortunately, even after a recent set of fixes was released, SUSE's update and new program installation system is still giving many users trouble.'"
Microsoft loses Office patent appeal. xwipeoutx writes to tell us ITNews.com is reporting that Microsoft has lost their appeal in US Federal court over a judgement handed down saying they violated a patent by Guatemalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado. The original judgement stipulated that Micosoft was to pay Amado $6.1 million for violating a patent covering a means to link spreadsheets and databases.
Paypal fixes their phishing hole. Juha-Matti Laurio writes "News.com is providing new information to the previous PayPal XSS hole and reporting that the hole is now fixed." From the article: "By exploiting the flaw, attackers were able to redirect people from a PayPal Web page to an online trap located in South Korea, a representative for the service said. The page actually has a real PayPal URL, but hosts malicious code that presents a message warning members that their account had been compromised. It then redirects them to a 'phishing' Web site."
Sidekick Justice! (Score:5, Funny)
Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't surprise me one bit. I find that when I have a computer with me while I'm watching TV, I'm much more likely to visit an advertiser's page. I find myself poking at the product pages for products that I'd never buy, like the Toyota Yaris or internet services that compete with my own. This leads me to believe that, if TiVo really wants to fill the gap caused by ad-skipping, they should create interactive ads that viewers can poke and prod.
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly, Paul Verhoeven [imdb.com] holds the patent on that one.
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:5, Insightful)
Navigation would be the way web sites should have been, instead of next/back, next/back/up/deeper.
but please, no sound effects for the button pushes =P
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:5, Funny)
"Service guarantees citizenship" - would you like to know more?
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:1)
Long live the new flesh... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:2)
And I bet the
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:1)
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential (Score:4, Insightful)
This doesn't surprise me one bit. I find that when I have a computer with me while I'm watching TV, I'm much more likely to visit an advertiser's page.
I know this doesn't apply to you, but this one falls under the "No Duh" category. Catch me while I have my computer open, and it's likely that I'll follow a link. Catch me when it's closed, and I may just remember your complicated URL, but probably not.
Good advertising campaign for a superhero (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good advertising campaign for a superhero (Score:1)
Honest Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Honest Question (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Honest Question (Score:3, Insightful)
SR (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Honest Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
OT (Score:1)
I've tried Knoppix & various live security oriented distros... none of them work with the three USB & 2 internal laptop wifi cards I have access to.
What can I say, I'm looking for something that just works.
Re:Honest Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Honest Question (Score:2)
Why is SUSE 10 so damn slow?
I tried it. I liked it, everything went smooth in the (1.5 freaking hour) install,
updates worked well (eventually, took an eternity, but it worked)
I tried both the std installer and the ""GM" demo DVD. both worked well, except...
The only issues I could NOT overlook/overcome were actual speed of DOING anything---
my perviously speedy-enough 2800+ Barton box was suddenly filled with molasses.
OO.org tool even LONGER to load, Mozilla took ~2X as long, etc.
I
Re:Honest Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Honest Question (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Honest Question (Score:2)
Re:Honest Question (Score:2)
Re:Honest Question (Score:3, Interesting)
SuSE is extremely viable (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an Apple fan, and in my opinion SuSE is the Apple of Linux. (Of course, Apple is itself the Apple of *nix-like OSes.) They are not the earliest adopters of new technology, but they do a good job of integrating it. But moreover they make it easy to use and administer.*
Big business wants a Vendor, not a community. In the giant world that's pretty much RH and SuSE, or IBM selling someone else's.
Novell also makes a good business selling networking solutions for you whole office, not making you put them together youself.
SuSE will happily ship with the best available drivers and software, even if those are proprietary. For some people this is a reason not to use SuSE - zealots have their place, and I would not want the strictly OSS distros to go away - but if you are more interested in Linux-as-a-current-tool than Linux-as-a-political-statement to force vendors to open drivers, this is the right choice philosophy for you.
*Let me define "easy to use and administer" more: YaST puts a nice front end on whatever you're doing (package management and basically all other system administration) - with enough power to configure whatever you want however you want and enough guidance that you can do it even if it's not your speciality and you've been awake too long. It's the perfect kind of system that LETS you be knowledgeable but does not REQUIRE you to be knowledgeable. You can seamlessly escalate simple point and click management to advanced point and click management to tweaking files by hand that it then won't screw up.
So to me, "easy to use" means that I can use, in each instance, a system that is as automatic or as manual as I want, based on how much expertise I have in that area, and how much time and attention I have for the issue "right now"
Configuration entirely by manually touching files/registries/whatever is a little like walking through a minefield... get too tired, make a typo and all sorts of stuff might explode, and you've making a large number of changes. But I'd take it any day over a Windows GUI-only system where IF it explodes and, say, doesn't boot you have a much harder time putting it back together than you do with a text editor. But YaST is the ideal hybrid - it reduces your chances of stupid mistakes without limiting your power. You edit what you want, let YaST edit what you don't. It's not by far the only piece of software to do this, but I think it's a good example.
( I think much of OS X is similar. Can you enter complex firewall and packet forwarding configurations in their little GUI? No. Does their GUI work for most people? Yep. Does their GUI still use the standard BSD firewall, which you can configure however you want? Yep. )
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SuSE is extremely viable (Score:2)
Re:SuSE is extremely viable (Score:2, Informative)
Mac OS X is fully POSIX
It
- is
a *NIXRe:SuSE is extremely viable (Score:2)
Re:SuSE is extremely viable (Score:1)
netinfo and other 'PITA' stuff is there to deal with Mac-specific issues, you do not need to use those if you do not wish. Other things (e.g. OpenLDAP) can be substituted as needed.
Also, you can use OS X client to do exactly same things as a server; server just got a GUI config suite, and server-oriented default configs. If you do not mind vim'ing a bit, the client will do exactly same things.
Re:Honest Question (Score:4, Interesting)
And please don't take this as a flame, but what distros were you thinking were more relevant? I mean, for servers, RedHat and Debian would arguably be, Ubuntu maybe for some home-user desktops, I can't think of too much else that would actually be used by normal companies too much.
Of course, I'm sure a lot of people will go on about how they love Gentoo or Slackware, but how many businesses really use those distros? I'm not saying they aren't fine distros (I personally wasn't impressed too much by Slackware, and I don't have time to install Gentoo), but outside of the really hardcore Linux people, I don't think they get much usage.
Has nothing to do with the OS itself (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Honest Question (Score:2)
SUSE is the other very well known (because of Novell) corporate choice besides Redhat.
This alone is attractive - yes, one could have used Debian, Ubuntu or Slackware, but it is a lot easier to explain to business people that you go with Novell, if yo
Re:Honest Question (Score:2)
Q. What is its "killer app"?
A. Linux.
Re:Honest Question (Score:2)
Macroshaft Orfice (Score:2)
ABC's shows online done well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Patent loss (Score:3, Informative)
You mean they just thought of that last year?
It was the first time that Microsoft had updated its software for purely legal reasons.
It may have been the first time Microsoft had to update the software for legal reasons, but lest we forget the antitrust case. The settlement of United States v Microsoft did not require Microsoft to change any of its code, although Microsoft did have to make its own concessions. The article makes it seem like it's Microsoft's first run-in with the courts.
what's wrong with this picture? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what's wrong with this picture? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that in order to get a particular type of story up on slashdot it must be submitted by many people. This way the editors get a vote of confidence about stories they would not normally publish. Rest asssured that there is no way Slashdot would have led the pack on this one.
Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It's his property. He has every right to get back because it's his!!!!!!!! Not yours. You have no right to charge anyone money because YOU GOT RIPPED OFF.
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad they'll never catch him.
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:3, Insightful)
fact that they pocketed it themselves.
Too many of the interchanges, obviously not contested by them, and the
conflicting stories from them lead one to believe that Luigi or mom
pocketed the Sidekick, not thinking that they'd get caught up with.
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:4, Insightful)
constitutes purchasing stolen goods if it is in fact not the person's to sell- it's a known or should
have known" issue which means "Mom" is guilty of a misdemeanor or worse (depending on how NY views that
sort of thing) herself- and she should clam up and count herself lucky that the NYPD doesn't have an
interest in pursuing her alleged trafficing in stolen goods (The purchase or sale is that- both sides
are typically actionable on that little equation, but an honest mistake on the part of the purchaser
is a defense to prosecution. She's got nothing of the sort to lean back on...).
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:2)
I don't know that it's that simple.
The base retail price of a brand new Sidekick may be around $350, but with rebates and new service contract deals, it's not unreasonable that one could obtain a handset for a net cost of under $100. Heck, when I signed up with T-Mobile for my Sidekick s
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:2)
Those deals are being made by the legitimate seller to get you to buy the service- the razor versus the razor blades deal.
In the case of the dude in the subway, there's NO good reason to be selling a phone to a random stranger for $50 under
most circumstances- because typically, a brand new Sidekick is attached to 2 year service contracts for that special
price, subject to penalties or the like if you close out your account prematurely- except under extenuating circumstances
such as going som
Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother (Score:1)
It's like finding a credit card (Score:2)
I can use the card as an ice scraper, a coaster, or a shim for a wobbly appliance. The physical item (piece of plastic) is mine.
There are certain exceptions. Real property (land) does not become mine as I discover it. Neither do the bushes and trees planted on the property. Vehicles are conventionally left parked on the street, and thus do not become mine. Humans are special too, and not really owned in any case.
Cell phones a
Re:It's like finding a credit card (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's like finding a credit card (Score:1)
-----------------
Quit picking on men, bub. It was a woman who left her valuable device in the cab.
And if it were so damn valuable, why dispose of it in a cab?
(And do you think she claimed it as an insured loss?)
Re:It's like finding a credit card (Score:1)
Man in this sentence, of course, refers to mankind.
See #2, 4, and 5 Here:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/man [reference.com]
Oh, and I think you may be confusing me with this person:
http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/Bubs [hrwiki.org]
Yeah, I think I was trying to say that if someone found an expensive device they should try to return it to the owner instead of throwing it out. I was _not_ trying to say that someone should dispose of _anythi
Re:It's like finding a credit card (Score:1)
Vehicles left on the street longer than 3 days (in some places) can be towed and stored and if not claimed within a certain period, sold to pay storage fees.
Slavery still exists, but if you leave humans parked on the street they tend to wander off.
The point is, property owners have certain responsibilities, and one of those is to secure their possessions. Society has no expectation that it h
SuSE 10.1 Update (Score:4, Interesting)
Bringing up the software install tool takes 150MB of RAM. This is excessive.
Then OpenSuse keeps moving repositories around, or deleting them. They removed the KDE 3.5.3 repository recently, for example.
I'm almost ready to switch to another distribution, maybe Kubuntu or some other up-to-date KDE based distro.
Re:SuSE 10.1 Update (Score:1, Informative)
https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?query_form at=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all_ _&product=&content=suse+10.1 [novell.com]
I used to be a long time Suse user but as you pointed out they have a few problems to iron out.
Linuxquestion's suse forum has long discution related to the way yast workse these days.
I'm testing ArchLinux rightnow. Installing KDE is a bit tricky . If you do go the archlinux rout qtpckg,srcpack and aurbuild
Re:SuSE 10.1 Update (Score:2)
From what I heard the package manager looks for a Zenworks server via NDS and emulates it if your not on a novell network (like a home ). Thats just dumb and reminds me of Microsoft integrating everything with IE and OCX. Then the worms hit.
Miguel was hired to do the gui and integration and also continue working on gnome. Also KDE 3.5.2 has alot of problems. Ubuntu made the mistake of
SIDEKICK (Score:4, Interesting)
~
Actually, here's another recent story. My girlfriend, who works as a cashier at a local Dollar General, just got interviewed by the police and FBI for selling 25 cellphones to some customer. I assume they were Tracphones or such pay as you go things.
The question is, why would they be interested in such things. Maybe he needs them as a contractor for his business, maybe he resells them to imigrants who can't speak English (and he can, say for example, speak spanish), maybe they were at a great deal and he's going to resell them elsewhere. Since when is it illegal to buy cell phones?
I told her not to tell them anything. For one, its none of their business. For two, Dollar General hired her to ring up merchandice they sold and that's what she did, her job. There is no policy about how many of anything to sell to anybody, or anything singling out cell phones. She said they were all sweet and so and called her sweetheart and sweetie... I told her the only person that has any business doing that is me, her boyfriend, and that they are two faced scumbags looking for anything to prosecute her who has nothing to do with anything, just is just a cashier like a dozen others there.
Re:SIDEKICK (Score:4, Informative)
The FBI now believes that throw-away cellphones are now the primary communication mechanism for terrorist cells in the United States, as they are disposable and generally untraceable.
How hard was that to google?
Re:SIDEKICK (Score:2)
Did they say it was illegal?
It apparently is their business, otherwise they wouldn't have been asking her.
Really? When was the last time you heard of a Dollar General cashier being arrested for selling cell phones? Do you think the FBI has nothing better to do than talk to your g
Re:SIDEKICK (Score:2)
Funny they didn't.... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Funny they didn't.... (Score:1)
This place has always been only useful as a means to waste time. I'm not sure it's ever had any relevance as an actual site for NEWS. Everything is so half assed here I'm surprised it's still around. At least they finally updated the design. Now it only feels two years out of date instead of 10.
Alternative Sidekick Source (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to read the Sidekick story without having to log in at the NY Times, the same reporter (Nicholas Confessore) has written another article [iht.com], delivered up by the good folks over at the International Herald Tribune.
Support login-free reading on the Internet!
Re:Alternative Sidekick Source (Score:1)
They do protect the names of adults who have weddings planned, apparently. Must be a strange Engagements page!
Paypal / EBay needs to adopt SPF or equivalent (Score:2)
It was a "Web TV" trial, not a "WebTV" trial (Score:1)
spacing and capitalization are important (Score:2)
I was confused about why the Slashback headline and story summary both mentioned WebTV. Microsoft renamed that product to "MSN TV" years ago, and it didn't make any sense that ABC would be giving out hardware for free.
It wasn't until I read the source article that I discovered that they meant "web TV" (television programming watched over the web) rather than "WebTV" (the underpowered and obsolete set-top email and web browsing box).
Thanks for making the story less clear than it actually was, Slashdot. I a