Domain: gmail.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to gmail.com.
Stories · 2,907
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Neuros Audio Firmware Goes Open Source
PDA_Monkey writes "The Neuros Audio team has just released the Firmware code for the Neuros Digital Audio Computer as Open Source! Along with the release comes a message regarding Open Source from Joe Born, President of Neuros Audio, LLC, asking the community of developers to help fully realize the vision of the digital audio computer by aiding in the process to create a GCC target to the TI DSP used in the Neuros and in developing a program loader." -
The Linux Incompatibility List
Jonathan Lassoff writes "The Linux Incompatibility list is a wiki project that attempts to document hardware that is incompatible with Linux rather than list what is compatible. In the wiki, it is possible to add alternitives so as to push hardware manufacturers to make good binary drivers, publish specifications, or even better, publish open drivers." -
How 8 Pixels Cost Microsoft Millions
NubKnacker writes "Economic Times, one of India's biggest business daily's is carrying a story about how a small colouring mistake forced Microsoft to recall 200,000 copies of Windows 95. This wouldn't be the first time that has happened to Microsoft. From the article, "Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation." Ouch!" -
On Training, Recruitment Uses For Army Games
wgrover writes "The New York Times Magazine (reg yada) has a new longform article exploring computer games funded for training/recruitment purposes by the U.S. military, as previously covered on Slashdot. 'For the past three years, the military has been entertaining the surprising idea that video games, even those that you play on a commercial system like Microsoft's Xbox, can be an effective way to train soldiers.' Aside from training, the games also improve young people's perceptions of the military: '30 percent of a group of young people with a favorable view of the military said they had developed that view from playing America's Army.'" -
Best Buy Sued By Ohio
liryon writes "The Register is reporting that the state of Ohio has sued national electronics retailer Best Buy for misleading customers by repackaging used goods and then selling them as new, and for failing to pay rebate claims. The Register report can be found here, and the original story is here. I guess this is what you get for deciding the customer is not always right." See also the Ohio AG's press release. -
PowerBook G4 Battery Recall
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Hobbyist 'Spring' RTS Engine Takes Shape
Dragon45 writes "Some interesting developments have just occurred on the hobbyist RTS game engine scene. The Swedish Yankspankers, long known within the Total Annihilation community for their professional-caliber modifications and add-ons, have released the first screenshots and videos of Spring, a 3D RTS engine under development (and under wraps) for quite some time. It works. Apparently, real-time terrain deformation (Before|After) and network play are already working. Spring HQ has more information, and needless to say, this one is definitely worth a look." The official FAQ explains: "We aim to get an early test release out quite soon (within a month or so)", and the 'About' page explains that, as an initial starting point: "TA Spring reads the [Total Annihilation data] formats directly without conversions needed." -
Jerry Falwell Wins Dispute Over Fallwell.com
setzman writes "According to this article from CNN, conservative minister Jerry Falwell has succeeded in shutting down a web site run by a gay activist on the domain fallwell.com. The judge said it was 'nearly identical' to the registered trademark 'Jerry Falwell' name and was likely to be confusing to Web surfers." (This was a Federal case, held in the 4th Circuit Court.) -
Test KDE 3.3's Public Release Candidate
HulkProtector1 writes "The latest version of KDE beta 3.3 has been released. This version has already received a lot of feedback and has been deemed stable enough for a public release candidate. The KDE team requests that all testers try and break this release as soon as possible, as the bug reports are invaluable to the developers. Please note that binary packages will not be available for this version. Then source code can be downloaded from download.kde.org (or alternately use the excellent Konstruct build tool). For a list of new features skim over the KDE 3.3 Feature Plan." -
NASA Gives OK to Fix Hubble Telescope
Erick writes "NASA has decided to rescue the Hubble. This will come as great news to all of those who have advocated for fixing the ailing 'scopes sensors, gyros, etc. The article states that nine to 12 months of planning will precede a mission to the Hubble Telescope." -
Make Something Unreal Gets Next Phase Winners
AskedRelic writes "The winners in Phase 3 of the previously mentioned 'Make Something Unreal' mod contest have been released. Big winners in this $1,000,000 prize pool Unreal modding contest include Red Orchestra for Best FPS Mod and Alien Swarm for Best Non-FPS Mod, as well as Clone Bandits for Best Vehicular Mod. Phase 4 entries close on August 20th, and the grand final entries, awarding $50,000 for the best overall mod, close October 1st." Do you think Unreal will continue to nurture the best/most modding talent, now that Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 mods are looming on the horizon? -
DevMaster.net Presents the 3D Engines Database
desjerlaih writes "DevMaster.net is reporting that it has developed a comprehensive 3D Engines Database that provides detailed and organized information on current game engines. According to the site, the engine database is committed to providing the most accurate and up-to-date information on today's engines. Source (Half-life 2's engine), and Unreal 3 are already on the list, and their listed features are pretty impressive." -
Intel Begins Shipping 64-bit Prescotts
Rucas writes "With a minimum of fanfare, Intel has begun shipping a version of the Pentium 4 with 64-bit instruction set extensions. The news came to light not via an Intel press release, but rather through the spec sheet for a new server from IBM. In the midst of the new IBM eServer xSeries servers based on the recently released 64-bit Xeon is a blade server powered by the 64-bit Prescott. This marks the first product appearance of the new CPU." -
IBM Has 'No Intention' of Using Patents Against Linux
bendelo writes "In his keynote address on Wednesday at LinuxWorld, IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick Donofrio assured the Linux nation his company would not assert its formidable patent portfolio against the Linux kernel and strongly advocated others to promise the same. This comes following an independent study by insurance firm OSRM who revealed this week that the Linux kernel might use up to 283 patented methods. This seems a smart move by the Big Blue to help counter the FUD going around." A zdnet.com.com story has a response from Bruce Perens, who basically says he wants to see it in writing. :) -
'PalmPSOne' Takes PlayStation Into Handheld Domain
Anonymous Coward writes "'Some believe it was brought to Earth in the belly of an asteroid. Some believe it was created in a mad scientist's lab. Some believe Tom Brokaw's name is pronounced Tom Broke-off. These pages contain the real story. The unofficial PalmPSone, a custom-made portable PlayStation, was created over the course of about three months with a few hundred dollars (two units were made). Most would consider the cost of both time and materials to be far too high. Maybe, but it had to be done.'" This project is similar to Ben Heckendorn's PlayStation Portable, and there's an interview with Brian Gardiner, PalmPSOne's creator, over at IGN PS2, in which it's noted: "Gamers shouldn't be too disappointed since the nickel metal hydride batteries that power the PalmPSone provide a whopping one and a half hours of continuous gameplay." -
iTunes For Linux, Thanks To CodeWeavers
pizen writes "The folks over at CNet have the scoop that a new version of CrossOver Office (3.1) now supports Apple's iTunes. The preview version of the software is being tested and is currently only available to current CodeWeavers customers. They expect a final version to be available later this year." Reader snowtigger contributes a link to this screenshot. White demonstrated iTunes on a Linux machine at OSCON as well; a rendering glitch marred that demo, but he was still able to demonstrate playing back a song which he'd purchased from iTMS using iTunes on Linux. -
Apple Updates iPhoto
hrbrmstr writes "Apple released an update to iPhoto, bringing it up to version 4.0.2. From the horse's mouth: 'iPhoto 4.0.2 addresses minor issues with Smart Albums and European books, and provides notification when new versions of iPhoto are available.' Get it from Software Update or from Apple support." -
Finding the Bottleneck in a Gigabit Ethernet LAN?
guroove asks: "I have a small gigabit ethernet network at home, and I spent a lot of money getting gigabit NICs for all my computers and even bought cat 6 cabling. I only have 3 computers on the gigabit network (a Mac, a Windoze machine, and a Linux box) so instead of getting a switch, I triple NIC'd the Linux box, which I use as a gateway and a file server. After the network was complete, I wasn't satisfied with transfer rates, so I started a transfer of a very large file and found that the transfer rate was topping off at just over 145 Mbps (which is a far cry from 1000 Mbps). I'm wondering now where my bottleneck is. Is it the NICs? Are all gigabit NICs really giving us 1000 megabits per second? Is it the driver? Is it Samba? Could it be that the hard drives aren't fast enough? Does anyone have experience with gigabit home networking enough to know where the bottlenecks are? Does the current PCI technology even allow for bandwidth that high" -
Stored Procedures - Good or Bad?
superid asks: "I'd like to get opinions and real world experiences that people have had with database centric applications that rely extensively on stored procedures. I believe that most enterprise class databases such as Oracle, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL, DB2 and others implement stored procedures. MySQL has been criticized for not supporting stored procedures and will be adding them in MySQL 5. The ANSI-92 SQL Standard also requires implementing some form of stored procedure (section 4.17). So, I'm asking Slashdot readers: if you were architecting a highly data-centric web based application today from a clean slate, how much (if at all) would/should stored procedures factor into your design? Where are they indispensable and where do they get in the way?" "The arguments for stored procedures are pretty straightforward: 1) Centralized code; 2) Compiled SQL is faster; 3) Enhanced security (as our application is over 15 years old, and consists of much legacy code, reimplementation and feature creep that now includes over 3000 stored procedures). At one time we had a client/server architecture so those three advantages were relevant. However, in the past 4 years we have moved everything to web front ends and I have argued that this is no longer true. Does it really matter if my business rules are centralized in stored procedures or in a set of php/asp scripts (ie, in the web tier)? Is it really important to shave compilation time when connection and execution times dominate? (and overall response is ok anyway?) Since the focal point is the webserver, shouldn't security be done there, rather than the DB?
In addition, you either have to have a dedicated T-SQL or PL/SQL coder who then is the weak link in your coding chain, or your pool of developers must become fluent in both your scripting language of choice as well as the SP language. I have experienced both of these approaches and found this to cause bottlenecks when 'the database guy' is unavailable and learning curve problems (bugs) with new coders getting familiar with the db language.
Finally, after staying with our DB engine choice for all these years we are acknowledging that they may not be around forever. Management has asked us to look into migrating our data and business logic to another DB choice. We'd sure love to just be able to point the web tier at a new data source but that is unattainable due to a convoluted tangle of db specific code." -
Gates Gets Government Guards for Gala
Nick Irelan writes "The home of the world's richest man was a 'temporary security zone' when he held a party for members of the National Governors Association. Bill's guests included Newt Gingrich, Tommy Thompson, and Leon Panetta. Gates also put in $150,000 for the governors' meeting held the next day. News.com covered this story very well." If your invitation to Gates' place got "lost in the mail", you can read about a Microsoft intern who got to have dinner with the big cheese. -
DNA Pioneer Francis Crick Passes Away
Neil Halelamien writes "Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, passed away Wednesday in San Diego. His co-discovery of 'the secret of life' made him one of the most influential scientists of all time. In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness." -
Google Loses Domain Fight Over Froogles.com
steveshaw writes "According to SiliconValley.com, an ICANN arbitration panel has rejected Google's challenge of a Web site named Froogles.com. This means that the Froogles.com name will remain with the current owner. Also, the current owner is opposing Google's attempt to register Froogle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, contending the mark would be an infringement of his Froogles.com mark." The story also notes: "Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., has filed 18 domain name disputes at the ICANN panel, challenging names like 'googlesex.com,' 'google.biz' and 'googleme.com.' It has won every challenge but Froogles.com." -
The Ultimate Nintendo Console
Ngamer writes "Logan West, a member of a fanatical group of gamers known as "The Elite," recently created a Nintendo fan's ultimate dream: his Nintendo Entertainment Console is a composite of the NES, SNES, N64, GC, and Gameboy, all combined into a single system! With no shortage of electrical/carpentry ability, Logan carefully dissected his consoles, wired them to a central unit, then crafted a wooden vessel to host all five systems as one. Logan has already gotten a response from Nintendo after submitting his creation to them--they were quite impressed!" -
How Does Gmail Stack Up In The Webmail World?
Wrecks writes "Flexbeta compares several email services that promise 1 GB of storage to see how they measure up to Google's Gmail. The review mentions how one service, ShireMail, offers far less features than SpyMac yet cost 10 times as much. The article also mentions how well Gmail is able to filter spam messages." Among the webmail options not mentioned in this review (the authors compare a total of five offerings) is another gig-of-mail offering from the Indian rediffmail. -
FreeBSD Moves to X.Org
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Ted Turner's Beef With Big Media
pizen writes "Washington Monthly has an article from Ted Turner where he talks about the problems with the media conglomerates and calls for them to be busted: 'At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates.'" -
BT Blocks 10,000 Child-Porn Site Visits A Day
jb.hl.com writes "The BBC is reporting that British Telecom, the predominant telecommunications company in the UK, is blocking 10,000 attempts to access child pornography a day. In the first three weeks of the system being operational, BT allegedly blocked 250,000 attempts to view such pages. They apparently have no idea how many of these hits were accidental, or caused by malware. The block affects 2.5m of BT's customers. Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, said with regards to privacy concerns that "we don't know their motives or who does it and honestly we don't want to know"." onion2k reminds us that we first mentioned the block in June. -
Online Storage Solutions for Home Users?
A not-so-anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "Like many Slashdot readers, I have accumulated a lot of data over the years. Emails, documents, 'media' etc. Although I try to keep up with backups, I still feel I need some other place where I could dump my data without worrying about hard drive crashes and other problems. Googling reveals that there is a whole slew of online storage providers. But most are around $10 a month with a couple of gigs of space. So what does Slashdot recommend for sites that offer plenty of storage and fit the budget of a poor home user?" -
Cooling a Digital Camera?
thusson asks: "I work at a lab doing intrinsic signal imaging of cat and mouse visual cortex (brains). We are using a Dalsa 1M60P camera, and we want to cool it about 30-50 degrees C to improve picture quality by reducing noise. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to do this? So far, heat sinks have helped but only by a few degrees. I figure the overclocking community is a good place for novel ideas." -
Sun's "Java Powered" Campaign
scapermoya writes "eWeek is reporting that Sun has started blitzing consumers , trying to increase public awareness about Java, with everything from accosting pedestrians to "Java Powered" logos begining to appear on some devices that are J2ME (Java 2 Media Edition) compatable. Tiny cup logos will now be pasted on everything from cell phones to microwaves." But not on Space Invaders clones. -
Build Your Own Electric Etch-A-Sketch
mhaisley writes "Ok, case mods are cool, monitor mods are nifty... but an Electric Etch-a-Sketch beats either. Students at Cornell University built an electronically controlled etch-a-sketch, controllable by a PC mouse. This was part of a group of class final projects featured by their instructor." -
More on Toronto's Linux-only Computer Store
bluethundr writes "The Register today is running a story about what we first thought (but thought incorrectly as it turns out) to be the world's first Linux-only computer store. Who knew that they were also running a Linux-powered car wash in the back? Heh." -
Mexican Attorney General Gets Microchip in Arm
novakreo writes "Rafael Macedo de la Concha, Mexico's Attorney-General, now has a non-removable microchip in his arm, to track his movements and to give him access to a new crime database, according to Bloomberg. The article says that eventually around 160 Mexican officials will have a chip implanted." (Wired and CNN are both running the very similar Reuters report, too.) -
Diebold Sued (Again) Over Shoddy Voting Machines
icypyr0 writes "Computer programmer Jim March and activist Bev Harris have filed suit in California state court against Diebold under a whistle-blowing statue. This is another in a series of blows dealt to the ailing company. March and Harris allege that Diebold 'used uncertified hardware and software, and modems that may have allowed election results to be published online before polls closed.' They are seeking full reimbursement for all of the voting machines purchased in California. March and Harris could collect up to 30% of the reimbursement, under the whistle-blower statute. In an interesting turn, the two are requesting that the state of California join the lawsuit. State officials have spent millions on the paperless touch screen machines; Alameda County has spent at least $11 million alone." -
What is Your Favorite RSS Reader?
Cyberhwk asks: "What is your favorite RSS reader? I've been trying to find a nice RSS reader. I am most intrested in an rss reader that can be run on OS X but I'm also intrested in Linux and Windows XP as well. I'm mostly interested in freeware because I'm currently going to college and I can't afford anything at the moment. So what do you use for an RSS reader? What does it run on? Most importantly is it free?" -
Browser Wars 2004
J. Hobbs writes "Recent posts on David Hyatt's site describing the new technology he's working on for Dashboard, coupled with recent announcements from the newly formed WHAT-WG alliance (Apple, Mozilla, and Opera) could add up to a potentially new kind of application development and deployment that I explore in this highly speculative essay. See if you don't agree..." -
New Google Groups in Beta
qwe writes "Google has apparently launched a new version of their Google Groups, currently in beta. It looks a lot like Gmail. One can attach a star to message threads. One can even create new groups, although they aren't actual Usenet groups." -
Counter-Strike Source Beta Set for Late Summer
fistfullast33l writes "Valve has announced via Steam that a Beta version will be launched for Counter-Strike: Source, the multiplayer counter-terrorism mod that will now be updated for release with the Half-Life 2 powering Source engine. It is expected to be kicked off around late summer. Apparently: 'The beta will first be open to subscribers of the Valve Cyber Café Program, and then extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.' Seems like a good time to find out where the nearest gaming parlor is." This move is interesting in light of allegations of Valve bullying cybercafes - we also recently covered the South Korean unveiling of Counter-Strike: Source over at Slashdot Games. -
Dell to Ship Linux Desktops in Europe
Anglophile writes "Looks like Dell has launched a new line of desktop computers. The Dell Optiplexes will be sold in Europe, come with the Linspire operating system and include a one year free membership to their download warehouse. " -
Fedora, SuSE And Mandrake Compared
gmuslera writes "This weekend 2 comparisions were made between latest Fedora, SuSE and Mandrake Linux distributions. The first one was done by FlexBeta and in general goes deep, done by people that seem to know Linux, and good around its 9 pages. The later one was done by The Washington Post (yahoo news link) and shows another view of those 3 distributions, from someone that seems to dislike Linux and don't know enough about it. In what of those extremes are the average new user experience with those distributions?" Update: 07/06 01:01 GMT by T : Note that long-time Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegaroro doesn't seem to dislike Linux -- far from it; he's just writing what he sees as truth. -
Taiwanese Makers Will Squeeze DVD Recorder Prices
GeXX points out this PC World article predicting vastly lower prices on DVD recorders, in large part because cheap, high-volume Taiwanese manufacturers will have a greater percentage of the market, currently dominated by Japanese makers. -
China Deploys IPv9 Network
jeber writes "At the New Generation Internet Ten-Digit Network Industrialization & Development Seminar held on June 25th at Zhejiang University, it was announced that China's Internet technology, IPv9, had been formally adapted and popularized into the civil and commercial sectors. Based on a ten-digit computing method, IPv9 has its own address protocol, nameplate protocol, transitional protocol, and digital domain name regulations and standards as stated by Mr. Xie Jianping, founder of the IPv9 protocol and leader of the Ten-Digit Network Technology Standard Team. Along with being compatible with IPv4 and IPv6, IPv9 can also realize logistic separations between them and safely control them. On small-scale trials in Shanghai's Changing and Jinshan Districts, IPv9 technology has proven stable and safe." -
Drilling Under the Sea
prof_peabody writes "The IODP (Intergrated Ocean Drilling Program) is about to get rolling in a couple of days. If you live in one of these countries then your tax dollars have contributed to the construction of the giant drillship Chikyu, which was launched a little while back (project timeline). The American contigent website is loaded with info and obligatory acronyms. The first leg of the IODP will investigate how water flows through rock formations beneath the seafloor during an eight-week expedition this summer to the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of British Columbia. Some of you geeks with beards may remember the DSDP (Deep Sea Drilling Project) or the recently completed ODP (Ocean Drilling Program). The real advance in the new program that will cost well over a billion dollars is the IODP riser drill ship that 'will provide a way to drill into continental margins where oil and gas deposits can cause drilling safety concerns and into regions with thick sediment sections, fault zones, and unstable formations.' A good overview of the IODP can be found here, and the necessary references to Megalodon and none other than The Core." -
Slashback: Civilians, Rubyx, Restrictions
Slashback this evening brings you a dose of updates and clarifications to previous stories about Yahoo!'s block on third-party messaging products, the Ruby-based Linux distro called Rubyx, and a few notes of caution on "unlimited" wireless internet service.Do they have the original Coneheads novels? seattlenerd writes "Largely lost in the TV coverage and media hype surrounding Friday's opening of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle is the fact that SFM celebrates books as much as TV/film SF, according to at least one review. Lots of first editions and several manuscripts are on display as the font of SF ideas. Also not covered much: There's no fantasy or horror. It's all science fiction, with no apologies. And ain't it cool that someone has acknowledged that there are actual writers behind some of the best science-fiction depictions? And that some of these writers are on SFM's advisory board?"
(Reader Comte offered a sneak peek at the museum last week.)
That's why it's called software. An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits."Simon Crean of Mobile security company Jamanda wrote to say that his company is also has "just delivered a comprehensive fix to the widely publicised mobile virus Cabir and made this fix available to the public via its website at www.jamanda.com. As a gesture of goodwill and to maintain market confidence, concerned mobile users can currently download and install this fix at no charge."
Speaking of quick fixes, baudilus writes "The good folks at Cerulean Studios have already released a patch for Trillian, addressing the block attempt by Yahoo!. In half a day they've outdone Yahoo!'s latest scheme. How's that for support?"
Click two ISOs together, go /home. awalrond writes "Rubyx is a source-based Linux distro which achieved far too much interest a couple of months back after a mention on Slashdot. The author had to pull the plug due to the massive bandwidth costs of users downloading all the sources. Well now it's back, fully converted to use the new White Water bandwidth-sharing download utility. A line has been drawn in the sand, and this e-gauntlet thrown back at Slashdot.
Rubyx can be downloaded, built and installed with a single command to the small rubyx script (written in the ruby language) The same script handles all subsequent package management, and can even create a bootable ISO image of the distro."
I want to see the floating candy instead. Mike Taht writes "Bruce Damer, curator of the Digibarn, got some stunning pictures and movies of the historic SpaceShipOne launch event on Monday. Check it out!"Also in civilian space news, Walkiry writes "The Russian Space Comittee has rejected Gregory Olsen, who was set to become the third space tourist, due to health reasons. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that Olsen himself seemed quite condfident about his performance during the physical training and claimed that the hardest part was actually learning Russian. A real shame."
(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)
His meaning is clear. Matheus Villela writes "Sergio Amadeu, Brazilian president of ITI, the third authority in Brazilian government being below only of Brazilian president and the minister of civil house and recently sued by Microsoft have released an official note to Brazilian and international press; here's a translation of what he said:' In atention to the demands of national and international press, which seens solidary with Brazilian Govern at this moment with no precedences in the history, when a controller of an important public institucion of this country personally suffers the action from those interested in mantain a hegeomonic model, i come, after hear my federal lawyers and solicitors, say that the judicial provocation moved against my person is, by itself, so insultant and improper, that does not deserve reply.
By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows. emtboy9 writes "If you happen to live in the Raleigh-Durham area, Nextel is now officially offering wireless Broadband via its cell towers. With all the discussion about BPL as of late, its refreshing to finally see someone in my local area doing wireless which is a much better mechanism for broadband access.
For other hand, i would like to register that the act of contract software preserving the values freedom and opening is, for the Brazilian Government, a question of indissolvable form to the democratic principle.
And because a long and painful way was covered to arrive at the current period of stage of development of the democracy in this Country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value replect of ideology, is not never an insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, is a dream of which this Country never will wake up again.
The future is free.'"Nextel's coverage area looks to be about the same as the trial area they had been running, but if this takes off, it shouldn't be too much longer until they are offering this coast to coast, especially with coming pressure from Cingular Wireless."
However, be choosy about wireless internet service, which can come with some hidden snags: HEXAN writes "With all the recent hubub over wireless access at broadband speeds, I decided to check out Verizon's plan. Although the price is a bit steep, it seemed ok until I got to the "Terms and Conditions."
Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games" [Ugg], "Web camera posts or broadcasts" [No camgirls], "telemetry applications" [No GPS], "substitute or backup for private lines" [No VOIP]. If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for? More importantly, how badly will they impinge on my privacy to enforce this agreement? P.s. You cannot reach that special agreement until you go beyond the "front door". The gotcha clauses are not mentioned in the standard, consumer friendly, litigation-approved agreement."
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Streaming Your Cable TV Over the Net?
johnrob asks: "I have a TV tuner card, and would like to run a daemon on my computer which will stream the tv signal (reduced resolution) over the network. The idea is to poke a hole in my home firewall, and be able to connect to my static IP from any wired place in the world and watch my cable/satellite tv. Here is my question: does anyone know of any software that will take a tv card as an input and serve streaming content to connected clients (i.e. real media, windows media, or some other client)? Or, perhaps there is a specific TV tuner card which comes with this software?" -
'Open MS Passport': MyUID Goes Beta
mastergoon writes "MyUID, which has been refered to as an "open MS Passport", has opened their doors to public beta testing. MyUID is a user database system, with the purpose of allowing virtually anyone to refer to its records using only HTTP or HTTPS. Many companies have unified login systems, like Yahoo! and Microsoft, but unlike MyUID, these databases cannot be put to use by any site. As of now there is an alpha release PHP4 connectivity API, which while not feature rich is in full working order. APIs should be available in your favourite language soon. You can view this example of a site remotely connecting to MyUID using the alpha API, and give a go at spoofing a login. They want the security of the login methods tested extensively before going production." -
Gmail Spam Filter Testing
An anonymous reader writes "What can you do with 1000MB of e-mail space on your Gmail account? One guy, by the name of Aaron Pratt ( prattboy@gmail.com ), has decided to test the spam filters of Google's Gmail service by having his Gmail account blasted with every kind of spam imaginable. He is testing to see how well Gmail's spam filters can sort out the spam from legitamate email (yes, he does get personal emails from people). As of May 25th, he was at about 30% of his Gmail account's 1GB capacity. You can track his progress on his website, http://gmail.prattboy.net (Google cache of this site: cache: gmail.prattboy.net). Here is also an article talking about Aaron's efforts from webpronews.com" -
Programming For Terrified Adults?
makeitreal writes "My mom is getting bored with learning the basics of email and has mastered Solitaire. She asked me what I do on my computer and I told her that I was teaching myself programming in Scheme. She expressed an interest in learning what I was doing, but I tried to teach it to her with the HtDP and we didn't even get past the introductory chapter. Everything I've looked at so far seems too complicated (Scheme, Python, VB) or too childish (Logo, Squeak, Lego Mindstorms). Is there anything in the middle that is also cheap/free and suitable for adults? Or should I give up the whole idea?" -
No $50 iPod Clone From Microsoft
dncsky1530 writes "In a previous Slashdot story, the Denver Post ran an article talking about a portable music player that would have the look and feel of an iPod. Microsoft stated that they will not be manufactoring such a device, Mehdi, "I've spent time with a bunch of hardware manufacturers who will launch hardware products when we ship our service that will look and feel as good as the iPod product. And they will undoubtedly be a little bit less expensive and so head-to-head against Apple..."" -
Playing GTA On Phone Leads To Bomb Threat?
SteelGator writes "You're playing a relaxing game of Grand Theft Auto with a friend's child. You're also on the phone with a co-worker who's at a restaurant. As a warning to the child, you say "There's a bomb in the building. Everyone needs to get out!" Your co-worker thinks it's a real bomb threat. Uh oh!" While awaiting trial, perhaps this guy could check out a new screenshot from GTA: San Andreas, showing lead character Carl Johnson (extravagant rumors claim to be voiced by 50 Cent?) "outside the Los Santos convention center, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the home of E3."