Slashdot Mirror

LHOOQtius_ov_Borg writes: "A CNet article discusses Yahoo! considering more subscription-fee based premium services. The article points out that other sites, such as TheStreet.Com, have not had success with this. It also mentions that Yahoo has stated that less than 10% of their current revenue comes from 'pure play' Internet companies and 'financially questionable' advertisers.'" Added to which, ABetterRoss writes, "Submitting to some Yahoo categories is no longer free. from the FAQ: "In our ongoing effort to 1) build a useful, comprehensive Web directory and 2) address the needs of people submitting sites to the directory, we have expanded our fee-based Business Express program to cover all submissions to our main commercial categories: 'Business and Economy/Business to Business' and 'Business and Economy/Shopping and Services.'"

tregoweth writes "CNet has a report about the FBI's release of new information concerning Carnivore, the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Contradicting what the FBI has previously said, Carnivore can capture and archive 'unfiltered' Internet traffic."

Azog, joined by a bevy of like-mindeds, wrote with the news: "ICANN has selected several proposals for new TLDs for further negotiation. The selected entries, and their proposed TLDs, are: JVTeam (.biz), Afilias (.info), Global Name Registry (.name), RegistryPro (.pro), MDMA (.museum), SITA (.aero), and NCBA (.coop)." Here is the unanimously accepted resolution. cyrdog points to Wired's coverage, and pavelivanov points to the story at CNET. And as several people have pointed out, .web is conspicously absent, even though it seems like a shoo-in. Someone, somewhere is going to get that one day ... Update: 11/17 09:48 PM by H :Check out SatireWire's coverage as well *grin*.

beebware writes: "According to this article on C|Net, Tim Bray (co-inventor of XML) has launched Antarcti.ca which renders computer networks in 2 and 3D maps. It's currently running a demo off the ODP data. But will it take off? Will users really like 'country-maps' opposed to listings? (Incidentally Tim used to be vice-president of production at Yahoo! so I think we can tell what his money's on.)"

beebware writes: "According to this article on C|Net, Tim Bray (co-inventor of XML) has launched Antarcti.ca which renders computer networks in 2 and 3D maps. It's currently running a demo off the ODP data. But will it take off? Will users really like 'country-maps' opposed to listings? (Incidentally Tim used to be vice-president of production at Yahoo! so I think we can tell what his money's on.)"

AFCArchvile writes: "NVidia might be giving ATI, the current dominator in the laptop graphics chip sector, a run for its money. This Yahoo article tells about how the release was announced in Vegas, and PlanetHardware has a preview of the chip (a low-power derivative of the GeForce 2 MX), with some technical specs as well. The GeForce2Go, as it has been labeled, performs over half as well as a GeForce 2 GTS (572 Mtexel/s) while consuming much less power (0.8 watts typical, 2.4 watts maximum)."

JeffMagnus writes: "This CNET article talks about the possibility of extending the number of non-country-code top level domains. According to the article of the 47 submissions for top level domains, ICANN is only going to take 24 seriously. Among the TLDs, ICANN doesn't like are .xxx and .kids. The article then goes on to mention a company named Economic Solutions which has filed an injunction to prevent the creation of top-level domains that resemble the Belize country code .bz." I'm surprised by the reaction to .kids a lot more than .xxx, both of which sound like great ideas to me. Will this stuff come to a Net-splitting head?

HiyaPower writes "Netpliance announced that they have thrown in the towel and will no longer produce their internet appliance. This follows the failure of web appliances by Virgin, and a number of others. It looks like even grandma wants a good isp when she logs on the net and that bundling cute hardware with inferior service just doesn't cut the mustard. This will be a sad note to all of those who have yet to buy the unit that cost $400 to produce for a fraction of that amount. Get'm while you can, cuz they don't make'm no more..." CEO John McHale says in that announcement: "We plan to reposition Netpliance from a direct consumer Internet appliance service provider to an enabling infrastructure and managed services company." Perhaps there will be some closeouts? jensend sent in this C|Net coverage as well.

Eric Sun was among the first to point out that as of Thursday evening, VeriSign has begun accepting Chinese, Japanese and Korean domain names. "This increases the possible characters from 37 (26 letters, 10 numerals, and hyphen) to 40,282. Find more information [see this AP story]." snrsamy points to the same story as featured on C|Net . jamie suggests reading the technical lowdown at VeriSign.

BigBragger writes: "Upside has an article declaring that ViA will begin using the Crusoe chip in the wearable computers it currently designs for the US Army. Crusoe will debut in the next version. There's hope for a Transmeta PC yet, but will I have to enlist to get one?" WillSeattle points to C|Net's story on the same thing and adds harshly: "Soldier, when was the last time you compiled this kernel! You are a disgrace to the uniform! Give me 10,000 lines of code, pronto!"

Millennium writes: "San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stuart Pollack has ruled that eBay is not liable for bootleg music sold on its site. The interesting thing about this ruling: Judge Pollack based his opinion on the CDA, of all things."

WH writes: "Over at CNET there's an article about how PSINet and other huge ISPs have been secretly signing deals to provide spammers with internet connections." The other one I've seen is AT&T signing a contract with someone -- there were restrictions, but it's still troubling to see people's appetites for money overwhelming their ability to discern good vs. bad business practices.

mcryptic writes "Cnet News has this story about how IBM now tops the top 500 list with the new ASCI White supercomputer. The machine has 8,192 CPUs, weighs 106 tons and takes up two basketball courts' worth of floor space." And it's for Seti@home...er...no.

mcryptic writes "Cnet News has this story about how IBM now tops the top 500 list with the new ASCI White supercomputer. The machine has 8,192 CPUs, weighs 106 tons and takes up two basketball courts' worth of floor space." And it's for Seti@home...er...no.

Icebox writes: "Cnet is offering up this bit from GartnerGroup that includes their predictions for the next few years in the OS market. Their predictions are aimed stricly at the business side of this but it is interesting to see how their ideas stack up against what Slashdot's readership expects. Pay particular attention to Factor #9."

denominateur writes: "According to this story, Rambus now made a licensing agreement with memory market leader Samsung that will allow Rambus to collect royalties on virtually all the computer memory produced by the market leader. Who will stop Rambus from getting more and more money on patents that basically don't make ANY sense?" Well, evidently, Micron and the two other companies fighting the Rambus patents in court seem like possibilities. I wonder what happens to those royalty deals, though, if the company goes Rambust ...

8127972 writes "News.com is has a story on a survey that describes the perks that coders and other IT types want. According to the survey, they want their companies to spring for membership to health clubs, a free car, wireless phone, and anything that aids telecommuting. Foosball, ping-pong, billiards and other rec-room staples ranked at the bottom of the list--even lower than free dance lessons. The full survey is at Techies.com. Maybe this should be sent to the PHB's?"

sheckard writes: "News.com reports that IBM has suspended a project geared toward releasing a ThinkPad notebook with a Crusoe processor. This could be a very bad thing for Transmeta, since their IPO is rapidly approaching." The Transmeta IPO is supposed to be on the sixth of November - IBM has been doing work on examining it, but have decided to put off plans for it for the time being.

sheckard writes: "News.com reports that IBM has suspended a project geared toward releasing a ThinkPad notebook with a Crusoe processor. This could be a very bad thing for Transmeta, since their IPO is rapidly approaching." The Transmeta IPO is supposed to be on the sixth of November - IBM has been doing work on examining it, but have decided to put off plans for it for the time being.

Barondude writes: "Steve Fox at CNET Insider wrote The CueCat: When Free Isn't Worth the Price. Besides mentioning Slashdot, he brings to the general public many of the points that have been made here."

Masem writes: "According to this story at CNet, the latest version of AOL 6.0's Web browser does not allow the user to set a home page, nor click on a button to go to the home page. Instead, the user is forced to start up through AOL's start page. AOL claims this was an aesthetic move prompted by user input, but many are crying foul in light of the proposed TW/AOL merger; such a move gives AOL too much of an edge on content control. At least they could have left such a change in an advanced dialog box for experienced users ..."

Lyserjic seems to have been first with the news. Some linkage: CNET. CNN. AP. MSNBC. BBC. MSNBC's story is a copy of the Wall Street Journal article which apparently broke the news - it's the most complete.What's known - the passwords were being sent to St. Petersburg, Russia. They probably had access for about three months.

87C751 writes "Cnet has a preachy, whiny piece bemoaning the peer to peer "phenomenon" and its lack of commercialization potential. The humor comes when they claim that bandwidth limitations will ultimately doom P2P (as though bits that traverse through a server somehow take less bandwidth than bits sent from one box directly to another). " Alright, I'm a little softer then the submittor, although I agree with some points. The area that I do question is how much is actually shared - most of the people I see out there are taking, not contributing to the Gnutella and the like.

BjB writes "CNet has an interesting article on Cell phone radiation. More interesting is that they've included a chart of the radiation levels that various models of cell phones produce. They've even gone through the trouble of showing the highest and lowest on separate pages. It's lovely to see that your cell phone is #2..." Mine is in the middle of the pack... course, I'm not exactly reassured by that fact.

BjB writes "CNet has an interesting article on Cell phone radiation. More interesting is that they've included a chart of the radiation levels that various models of cell phones produce. They've even gone through the trouble of showing the highest and lowest on separate pages. It's lovely to see that your cell phone is #2..." Mine is in the middle of the pack... course, I'm not exactly reassured by that fact.

BjB writes "CNet has an interesting article on Cell phone radiation. More interesting is that they've included a chart of the radiation levels that various models of cell phones produce. They've even gone through the trouble of showing the highest and lowest on separate pages. It's lovely to see that your cell phone is #2..." Mine is in the middle of the pack... course, I'm not exactly reassured by that fact.

BjB writes "CNet has an interesting article on Cell phone radiation. More interesting is that they've included a chart of the radiation levels that various models of cell phones produce. They've even gone through the trouble of showing the highest and lowest on separate pages. It's lovely to see that your cell phone is #2..." Mine is in the middle of the pack... course, I'm not exactly reassured by that fact.

TwP writes: "In the U.S. it is illegal to operate an online casino or sports betting page due to interstate restrictions on gambling. It seems that a company called Virtgame.com has been able to prove to the Nevada gaming commission that its software would prevent any bets from being placed beyond state boundaries. Read the full scoop here on CNet. How soon before someone cracks their proprietary dial-up connection?" Without commenting on the morality of gambling laws, it's interesting to note that many states consider betting so immoral that they not only prohibit private gambling organizations, but thoughtfully provide their own. How soon 'til Pick-4 is available from your local ".gov" domain?

TwP writes: "In the U.S. it is illegal to operate an online casino or sports betting page due to interstate restrictions on gambling. It seems that a company called Virtgame.com has been able to prove to the Nevada gaming commission that its software would prevent any bets from being placed beyond state boundaries. Read the full scoop here on CNet. How soon before someone cracks their proprietary dial-up connection?" Without commenting on the morality of gambling laws, it's interesting to note that many states consider betting so immoral that they not only prohibit private gambling organizations, but thoughtfully provide their own. How soon 'til Pick-4 is available from your local ".gov" domain?

Ant points to this CNET story, a snippet from which reads thus: "[S]ecurity experts say many employees would be surprised to know that Web-based email services also offer little privacy. Messages sent via a Yahoo or Hotmail account, or through instant messaging products, such as ICQ or America Online's Instant Messenger (AIM), are just as accessible to nosy employers." I know some people who this ought to make nervous;)

ggrappone writes: "CNet has a story on the first Transmeta notebook." Looks to be the same as the mini Sony VAIO picture book. Runs a 600Mhz Crusoe chip, and they claim substantial battery improvements with no performance hit. But apparently they'll be available in the states soon, so we can see for ourselves.

Scooter[AMMO] was one of the first with this report: "According to Turbolinux CEO Paul Thomas, the future will see Linux boiled down to one generic distribution. Catch the scoop here. How can this claim be made? How can a system like Debian throw away all its guidelines to create a generic distribution? I won't give up apt, and I sure don't see RH accepting it. Why should Peter let the uber-stable power user-oriented Slackware head towards the bug infested hail-the-script-kiddies Red Hat? Standards are great, but aren't the ideals of different distributions what give Linux its flavour?"

thrillbert writes: "According to this article, Red Hat is claiming to be the starter of the open-source movement." The article talks about several companies in the area (include the one that owns this site). I don't have the heart to comment on this. I can't say I'm surprised, but I'd tend to think a lot of others might deserve more credit. RMS (sure he'd hate the term Open Source, but he deserves credit). ESR will just take the credit.(Update:Its a joke! I was kidding! Stop flaming!) But Linus isn't even mentioned. I mean, Michael Tiemann and Red Hat deserve lots of credit for helping make Linux mainstream, but starting it?

Quite a number of people have written in about about the vote to pass more H1-B Visas for the USA. The vote means an additional 80,000 visas, bringing the total to 195,000. So -- good thing? Bad thing?

Masem writes "In another Supreme Court refusal to hear a case, a ruling from a lower court stands that AOL and other ISPs are not considered to be common carriers (akin to telephone and cable services), and therefore may not be regulated by the FCC. This can be taken both ways, but moreso on the better side: ISP competition will still be a major factor, helping to keep connection prices low."

Wakko Warner writes "According to this article, Napster lawyers (and RIAA lawyers) were grilled today by appellate judges. What's more interesting, though, is that, to appease the RIAA, Napster may institute a subscription-based service. Would you pay $4.95 a month to use Napster? "

hobbs writes: "The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Sony, suing Connectix (Bleem) for reverse engineering their PlayStation BIOS. This wasn't about copyright, just reverse engineering, which the courts say fell under "fair use". CNET Article
I find this interesting in the States since reverse engineering here is not usually well accepted/protected legally." This seems like a small clearing in the creeping intellectual property tangle. Of course, that law suit probably wasn't any help to Bleem, despite the outcome. [Updated 3rd Oct 0:13 GMT by timothy] Thanks to the several readers who have pointed out by e-mail or in comments, as Kufat does, that "Bleem is not made by connectix. Connectix makes Virtual Game Station; Bleem is a competitor to VGS."

John Jorsett writes "cnet news has an article about Sony announcing the Airboard, a wireless web pad with a 10-inch touch screen that also doubles as a television and a remote control for other appliances. The Airboard will be introduced in Japan on December 1. Interesting, but judging by the picture, it's not entirely flat, so it will be more of a counter-top appliance, rather than a knee-top."

John Jorsett writes "cnet news has an article about Sony announcing the Airboard, a wireless web pad with a 10-inch touch screen that also doubles as a television and a remote control for other appliances. The Airboard will be introduced in Japan on December 1. Interesting, but judging by the picture, it's not entirely flat, so it will be more of a counter-top appliance, rather than a knee-top."

zensonic noted that Intel has announced that they are cancelling the Tinma chip. It was an integrated chip that would be used in low end systems... they cited market demand and design problems as the reason.

An anonymous reader noted that CNet has a story saying how the Pentium 4 will be impossible to get for manufacturers wanting to ship them over the holidays. Apparently the system makers aren't that happy... but considering what Intel was charging for the things, I can't imagine who would buy one.

valmont: "The folks at cnet have this article about Sony's latest toy: The Airboard. It seems to merge all kinds of wild stuff in a pad hooked to a base station with TV Antenna and wireless modem: simultaneous TV and Internet/web browsing, remote-controlling of home appliances. Looks pretty nifty ..." And considering that Sony is hep to Transmeta, I wonder what chip and OS will power this thing.

valmont: "The folks at cnet have this article about Sony's latest toy: The Airboard. It seems to merge all kinds of wild stuff in a pad hooked to a base station with TV Antenna and wireless modem: simultaneous TV and Internet/web browsing, remote-controlling of home appliances. Looks pretty nifty ..." And considering that Sony is hep to Transmeta, I wonder what chip and OS will power this thing.

MrX writes: "In this story about a study on CNet news, it says the labor shortage in IT is more a management problem then anything else. 'The unhappy truth, the study points out, is not that there are few people available to do IT work, but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed. In addition, many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave.'"

MrX writes: "In this story about a study on CNet news, it says the labor shortage in IT is more a management problem then anything else. 'The unhappy truth, the study points out, is not that there are few people available to do IT work, but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed. In addition, many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave.'"

David G wrote in to say that Microsoft plans to revise the spamming "Feature" that we mentioned yesterday on Slashdot after all the criticism. My favorite quote from this article is "We got a rude awakening today and we thought ... 'Let's make this clearer for the consumers'"

rf600r writes: "In a NutShell: Akamai does content delivery. Digital Island does content delivery. (DI, however, actually has a network, too. Not just boxes.) In order to effectively deliver content to the end-user from the best server, Akamai uses a 'secret sauce' they say they invented. Digital Island uses a 'secret sauce,' too. Now, Akamai has sued Digital Island saying they stole Akamai's 'secret sauce.' DI responds with a counter-suit saying Akamai actually stole the idea from them. Is it even the same technology? Who knows ...

Markv writes: "CNET has an article about a peer-to-peer e-mail system called SafeMessage(TM) from AbsoluteFuture.com that could confound law enforcement. Not only is it peer-to-peer, the message is encrypted before it leaves the sender's computer, and the decoder key is destroyed. According to the article, AbsoluteFuture's SafeMessage system would potentially allow people to operate below the radar screen of the FBI's Carnivore program." So Carnivore may be good for something after all! Actually, though, how is this different (or less complicated) than, say, using PGP and an IRC client (with DCC) to effect the same sort of transfer?

Markv writes: "CNET has an article about a peer-to-peer e-mail system called SafeMessage(TM) from AbsoluteFuture.com that could confound law enforcement. Not only is it peer-to-peer, the message is encrypted before it leaves the sender's computer, and the decoder key is destroyed. According to the article, AbsoluteFuture's SafeMessage system would potentially allow people to operate below the radar screen of the FBI's Carnivore program." So Carnivore may be good for something after all! Actually, though, how is this different (or less complicated) than, say, using PGP and an IRC client (with DCC) to effect the same sort of transfer?

An anonymous reader sent us a story running over at cnet about the privacy issues with the CueCat. The article gives them a (somewhat undeserved) benefit of the doubt as it talks about various privacy groups being concerned about what DC is doing. Fortunately there are instructions online about how to modify the cat to disable its internal identification code (its not any more difficult then decrypting their split-invert-xor "Intellectual Property") by simply cutting one wire. Or you can just use one of the many free programs floating around. Oh, and since their server was cracked a few days ago, not only are they sniffing all this data, but crackers probably have a copy too. I would have been sick of this story weeks ago, but it just keeps getting funnier every time it pops up.