Slashdot Mirror

JafSquared writes "As sites like MySpace.com gain popularity in young adults, schools all over are finding that taking measures to keep kids blocked out of these websites is becoming increasingly difficult. As this hype continues, proxy servers such as "Box of Prox" are springing up like wildfire. While system admins furiously work to diminish the strain placed on their school's local networks from sites like MySpace, these proxy sites are enabling easy access to restricted areas. However, schools aren't the only places that are feeling the heat. Proxies have also been becoming a bit of a complication in the workplace. To the more advanced user, the proxy server can become a tool for malicious intent as this article, delivering an anecdote with the termination of an employee, so poignantly details."

prostoalex writes "PC World reviewed 17 online file storage services. According to the summary: 'Of the 17 services we tried, our favorite backup service is IBackup, while the GoDaddy Online File Folder is our pick of the storage sites. And for sharing files, we like the free 4shared.com service.'" They're also thoughtful enough to include a warning about the pitfalls of saving your data online.

prostoalex writes "You've read about the 25 worst tech products, now it's time to check out a list of the 100 best tech products of 2006 from the same publication. PC World named Intel Core Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core, Craigslist.org, Apple iPod Nano and Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive the best tech products of this year."

Khammurabi writes "PC World compiled a list of the 25 worst tech products of all time. From the article: 'At PC World, we spend most of our time talking about products that make your life easier or your work more productive. But it's the lousy ones that linger in our memory long after their shrinkwrap has shriveled, and that make tech editors cry out, "What have I done to deserve this?"' Number one on the list? AOL."

Ant writes to mention a PC World article about life on the other end of the tech support line. From the article: "According to interviewees, entry-level jobs at U.S. tech support firms pay about $7 an hour. Workers for a third-party tech support firm in New Delhi, India, make less than half that. Akanksha Chaand, who holds an advanced degree in computer science and had a job fielding calls for Hewlett-Packard at Business Processing Outsourcing in New Delhi, India, made the equivalent of $13,000 a year working in tech support--significantly more money than many less fortunate people in India earn. In contrast, a tech support pro who now lives in Arizona says she was barely scraping by on her $7-an-hour salary with no benefits. The rep, who asked that her name not be used, said it was only a bit better than her previous job--delivering pizzas. She said she received two weeks of training before taking calls from the public. "

Karl Cocknozzle writes "Some users who chose to install Apple's recent beta-offering of Boot Camp without basic precautions (like a full backup) have found themselves unable to boot their Macs to OS X. In a discussion thread on Apple's technical support Web site, more than a dozen users reported that Boot Camp successfully partitioned their hard drive and allowed them to install a working version of Windows, but then would no longer allow them to switch back. The download-agreement page for Boot Camp contains the explicit warning that Boot Camp is still 'Beta' software, and would not be supported if problems arose. On the whole, it sounds like the number of affected users is quite small, but may reflect a common lack of knowledge of what a 'beta' release really is: Not ready for prime-time."

An anonymous reader writes "PC World's Techlog has a short piece talking about the upcoming emergence of 'Windows Vista Capable' PCs." From the article: "The Vista Capable designation doesn't promise that a PC will provide a great Vista experience, or even that it'll support all Vista features or features...just that it'll be able to run Windows Vista Home Basic in some not-very-well-defined-but-apparently-adequate way. At the moment, there are still new PCs on store shelves that don't meet the Vista Capable guidelines--for instance, low-end systems still sport 256MB of RAM in some cases. Wonder if that means that that A) we'll see some cheap systems that still have XP even after Vista ships; or B) the specs on even the cheapest machines will be beefed up; or C) we'll see machines that have Vista preloaded but which don't qualify as Vista capable?"

Seoulstriker writes "Google has introduced an AJAX web-publishing application called Google Page Creator. The app is great for getting whatever photos, information, files you want published, and it doesn't have to be in the typical blog format. The published site is hosted at the gmail user page. There are several templates and page formats to work from, and as far as I can tell, everything is WYSIWYG. The published HTML is very clean, but it does have some leftover fragments from editing pages repeatedly. If you want to be precise, you can manually edit the HTML. There is a Google Groups page available for the service. It took about 30 seconds to get a rudimentary page online." PC World has a quick rundown on the service at their site.

worb writes "The tiny mobile browser Opera Mini was officially released worldwide today. Opera is known for its PC and mobile browsers, but even the cell phone version Opera require more memory than most phones today are capable of. Opera Mini works by passing pages through Opera's servers to strip them down before they are displayed on the phone. Also, the Register has a story on how this actually means that Opera now offers a reason not to buy a smartphone, a market Opera currently has a strong foothold in."

Resident Egoist writes "Via PCWorld the news that two new Metafile bugs have been found, just a week after the patching of previous critical WMF issues." From the article: "All three flaws concern the way Windows renders images in the Windows Metafile (WMF) format used by some CAD (computer-aided design) applications, but these latest flaws are far less serious than the vulnerability that Microsoft patched last week, according to security experts. That vulnerability was serious enough to cause Microsoft to take the unusual step of releasing an early patch for the problem, ahead of its monthly security software update."

fishdan writes to tell us that while most Slashdotters have their own trusted sources for gear there is a growing concern that all consumers should look out for. According to PC World, more and more counterfeit hardware is coming to market each year. From the article: '...batteries aren't the only tech item that counterfeiters love. In October 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Anchorage, Alaska, seized 20,000 suspected fake Memorex USB memory key thumb drives from Asia. And last year, Miami officials seized 900 allegedly phony laptops valued at $700,000. "Maybe it's a laptop, an MP3 player, or a component like a DVD drive--anything in the digital world can be counterfeited," says Therese Randazzo, a U.S. Customs Service counterfeiting expert.'"

IZ Reloaded writes "MIT has picked Taiwanese firm Quanta to manufacture its $100 laptop. From PCWorld: 'Under terms of an agreement with One Laptop Per Child, Quanta will devote engineering resources to develop the $100 notebook design during the first half of the year, according to a statement issued by the group. At the same time, Quanta and the non-profit organization will explore the production of a commercial version of the laptop.'" Apparently they don't think it's ineffectual either.

Peaceful_Patriot writes "PCWorld's list of the 'Best Products of 2005' is out and Firefox tops the list. Also notables are GMail at number 2, Apple OS X, Tiger at number 3, Skype ranks in at 8 and Ubuntu at 26!" From their Firefox article: "Are you sick and tired of Internet Explorer? Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? Are you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century? Yeah, me too."

mixmasterjake writes "The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear a Microsoft appeal in the software company's ongoing Web browsing patent dispute with the University of California and Eolas Technologies. The dispute arises over the Eolas patent for 'a system allowing a user of a browser program ... to access and execute an embedded program object.' From the article: "With today's decision, the Supreme Court decided not to hear Microsoft's argument relating to how damages in the case should be calculated. Microsoft had been asking the court to reject a previous ruling that damages should be awarded based on Microsoft's U.S. and foreign sales, saying that the Eolas patent should only apply to U.S. products. The Supreme Court did not give a reason for its rejection of Microsoft's appeal."

An anonymous reader writes "At Intel's Developer Forum in Taiwan, Intel introduced a new Non-volatile caching technology called 'Robson'." The new Robson cache technology allows computers to start up almost immediately and load programs much faster. Intel declined to comment on the specifics of how the technology works only saying that 'More information will be revealed later'.

insensitive clod writes "PC World published its top 100 best products of 2005. These include Firefox(1), GMail(2), OSX 10.4(3), Alienware Aurora 5500(6), Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive(7), Skype(8), PalmOne Treo 650(10), Google(16), PSP(19), GeForce6600GT(20), Ubuntu(26), iTunes(34), Half-Life 2(38), Wikipedia(60), ThinkPad X41(67), Mac Mini(75), Acronis True Image(83), Opera(88). Surprisingly, iPod only has IPod Photo at 78."

wellington map writes "The state of Massachusetts has finalized a proposed move to an open, nonproprietary format for office documents, a plan that involves phasing out versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite deployed in the state's executive branch agencies. Massachusetts expects its agencies to develop phased migration plans away from productivity suites that do not support OpenDocument, with a target implementation date of January 1, 2007. Looks like it's finally cemented after some heated discussions."

njcoder writes "In a PC World article it is disclosed and confirmed by Intel that Dell is dropping support for Itanium processors. 'After Advanced Micro Devices demonstrated that 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set offered a smoother transition to 64-bit computing, Intel released a version of Xeon with similar technology, and Dell now offers 64-bit Xeon processors across its product line.'" More from the article: "The chip maker has since backed off its original statements about Itanium and is now promoting the chip as a high-performance replacement for reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors in Unix servers from companies such as Sun Microsystems and IBM. Hewlett-Packard, a co-designer of the processor, has embraced Itanium as the processor of choice for its high-end servers. Fujitsu. and NEC are also among the system vendors that sell servers with the processor." The story is also being reported at Ars Technica.

SumDog is one of many to let us know, PC World is reporting that Sun is expected to reveal the first few of their new 64-bit servers at their quarterly product rollout. From the article: "Formerly code-named Galaxy, the Sun Fire X2100, X4100, and X4200 servers represent the company's bid to woo customers, particularly the financial industry sector, away from rival server vendors Hewlett-Packard and Dell."

theodp writes "PC World spills the beans about a bunch of things technology companies would rather you didn't know, including the lowdown on exploiting Windows' bad security, unlocking cell phones, using an IPod to move music and useless specs." Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.

theodp writes "PC World spills the beans about a bunch of things technology companies would rather you didn't know, including the lowdown on exploiting Windows' bad security, unlocking cell phones, using an IPod to move music and useless specs." Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.

theodp writes "PC World spills the beans about a bunch of things technology companies would rather you didn't know, including the lowdown on exploiting Windows' bad security, unlocking cell phones, using an IPod to move music and useless specs." Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.

theodp writes "PC World spills the beans about a bunch of things technology companies would rather you didn't know, including the lowdown on exploiting Windows' bad security, unlocking cell phones, using an IPod to move music and useless specs." Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.

theodp writes "PC World spills the beans about a bunch of things technology companies would rather you didn't know, including the lowdown on exploiting Windows' bad security, unlocking cell phones, using an IPod to move music and useless specs." Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.

theodp writes "On Thursday, the USPTO revealed that Amazon is back at the patent trough, this time for a System and method for obtaining information relating to an item of commerce using a portable imaging device. Sounds an awful lot like ScoutPal, which drew raves from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, doesn't it?"

Lord Haha writes "In an announcement (warning: links to a PDF) last night, the Blu-ray Disc Association, led by Sony, representing one of two competing high-definition DVD formats (the other being HD-DVD, led by Toshiba), stated it will simultaneously embrace digital watermarking, programmable cryptography, and a self-destruct code for Blu-ray disc players. Will this be the continuation of the trend into more and more restrictive DRM? Or something that will fade away like Betamax Tapes? Two articles on the topic can be found at Tom's Hardware and PC World."

Avery writes "Several sites are reporting that Google has announced in their blog today that they will provide RSS and Atom feeds in their news section. Previously the only way to get RSS/Atom feeds from Google news was through third party scrapers. Now, you can get feeds for any of Google's news areas as well as feeds for a news search. (The news search is basically the same concept as Google news alerts, only in RSS.)"

DontClickHere writes "According to data from Mercury Research, AMD has finally cracked the 10% mark in x86 instruction set server CPUs. AMD's Chairman had hoped that their server sales would hit 10% at the end of 2004, but they had only reached 5.7%. Some of this gain can be attributed to AMD's introduction of dual core chips in April this year. With Intel only due to ship dual core chips for low end servers later this year, AMD has been handed a golden opportunity to take a larger share in the server market."

jason writes "In preparation for a possible legal challenge, The Electronic Frontiers Foundation is requesting your help in identifying which printers are embedding traceable information in the documents they produce. Printer manufactures added this technology under persuasion from the government inorder to help combat counterfeiting operations, however this technology defeats the presumed anonymity most people expect from the documents they print."

Anonymous Coward writes "Apple technology drives a new fully-autonomous vehicle developed for a major U.S. competition. From the article: 'Team Banzai is one of just 40 teams selected from 118 entrants from around North America to have made it through to the semi-finals of the 2005 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge.'"

pointbeing writes "Just read this article about a company called Blue Security that essentially floods a spammer's website with requests to unsubscribe members - we're talking thousands of requests per day - the company's CEO says that fighting back by "inducing loss" against spammers is the only way to eventually stop them. Although I hate spam as much as the next guy, is participating in a DDOS attack the way to bring spammers to their knees? If it's okay in this instance, it it okay to DDOS the next guy who does something we don't like? "

itraor writes "PC World has previewed Longhorn, not the first one out I guess. Among the few noted features is that Windows now offers translucent UI, finally catching up with Apple. "

Ant writes "Broadband Reports reports a PC World article on the best and worst Internet Service Providers (ISPs). More than 6,000 PC World readers rated major providers for its speed, technical support, and more. The article also reveals which broadband and dial-up services make the grade and which fall flat."

Ant writes "Broadband Reports reports a PC World article on the best and worst Internet Service Providers (ISPs). More than 6,000 PC World readers rated major providers for its speed, technical support, and more. The article also reveals which broadband and dial-up services make the grade and which fall flat."

Joshua53077 writes "Microsoft announced today a plan to 'extend the RSS standard to better support the publishing of ordered lists of information...' This feature will be included in Longhorn. It appears as though they will be including RSS support in Internet Explorer, which will come over a year and a half after the same technology was introduced in Apple's Safari RSS." From the article: "Gary Schare, director of strategic product management in the Windows division of Microsoft, says that while RSS is a reliable standard for updating information in message form, it currently has no logical way to organize that information in a way that could help subscribers keep track of what is being fed to them."

No France writes "The two ways for an email virus to spread is to use an exploit, or entice the user to click the link/executable. Of course the latter is the easiest, and is the most effective when used in conjunction with a celebrity's name. Despite the recent Jackson suicide emails, Britney Spears is the one to recently edge out Bill Gates as the top virus celebrity. The top 10 (in descending order): Britney Spears, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Osama Bin Laden, Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Anna Kournikova, Paris Hilton, and Pamela Anderson."

theodp writes "In seeking yet another patent related to 'single-action ordering of items,' Amazon asked the USPTO to consider a number of documents, including Doonesbury cartoons, which Amazon earlier claimed vindicated its 1-Click patent. Ironically, much of this material was collected and edited by BountyQuest, which reportedly received $1+ million from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the name of patent reform. A USPTO examiner dutifully considered the material, and on Tuesday U.S. Patent No. 6,907,315 was issued to Amazon."

Iorek writes "PC World lauds Tor, an anonymous Internet communication system, as better than its paid competitors, and one of the best 100 products of 2005. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is supporting Tor development, has a press release as well."

geekboxjockey points "This is a link to a story about a hybrid hard-drive technology from Samsung that involves the use of flash memory and conventional storage. A very interesting idea that could provide noticeable energy useage/speed improvements for HDD-based portable devices."

destuxor writes "After years of Windows users abusing administrative accounts out of necessity, Microsoft promises that Longhorn will make better use of user permissions in what sounds exactly like what UNIX/Linux users have been doing for years. Hopefully this will fix the long list of applcations that cannot be run by a Least-Privilege User Account (LUA) while giving a much-needed security boost. Too bad "MS-root" can't watch over your grandmother when she opens emails."

I_am_Rambi writes "On Tuesday, April 12, Microsoft will turn off the blocking feature that has made it possible for some enterprises to block Windows XP Service Pack 2 downloads by employees who use Automatic Update. That means in companies that used the blocking tool, SP2 will be downloaded automatically to desktop computers that use Windows' Automatic Update feature." An anonymous reader adds "Microsoft has published a list of known software that will not work with Service Pack 2. Most of the software will either not run or will display a blue screen of death during installation of the software or when you start up your computer." That may be why, as ErichTheWebGuy writes, "In a survey of PCs at 251 businesses in the U.S. and Canada, asset tracking company AssetMetrix of Ottawa found that only 24 percent of the systems running Windows XP had been upgraded to Service Pack 2."

spewey writes "The Federal Trade Commission has shut down MaxTheater, Inc., alleging the company participated in fraudulent practices with its Spyware Assassin site, which purportedly scanned user machines for spyware and reported infections, even though no scan was done and in most cases, the user machine was clean. The site then offered the user a $30 product to remove the spyware, which the commission reports 'didn't do a thing.'"

zaxios writes "The New York Times is reporting that Apple has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, and will use Blu-ray in upcoming versions of iMovie and Final Cut. The move puts Apple among Sony, Matsushita, Dell, HP and Walt Disney in supporting Blu-ray; companies including Toshiba, NEC, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, Universal and Paramount are pledged to adopt the competing HD-DVD format. Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop, but the division in Hollywood and notebook manufacturers between the two HD videodiscs will ensure the bona fide format war we were all secretly pining for."

marksilverman writes "Steven Levy at Newsweek is reporting that his iPod Shuffle seems to favor certain songs. Is Apple receiving kickbacks to promote certain artists? Apple denies it, of course, and Levy had the good sense to ask a mathmatician and a cryptographer who explained that it's probably just humans finding patterns where there are none." Less neurotically, both CNet and PCWorld have discussions of the Shuffle's interior spaces.

News for nerds writes "Following the news of Sony slashing its profit forecast due to the underperforming AV & PC divisions, Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) known by the PlayStation brand, admitted he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because Sony had music and movie units that were worried about content rights. The PSP by SCEI is one of the first Sony products that support non-proprietary standards such as MP3 or H.264, and now SCEI considers opening up the UMD disc format employed in the PSP."

Spy Handler writes "On Wednesday during the launch of its new Sonoma Centrino Mobile, Intel put on a demonstration running a video game on a laptop. It matched the performance of a high-end Pentium 4 desktop running the same game, declared Intel. The contenders were a laptop sporting a 2.13 GHz Pentium M processor, 1GB RAM, and the Alviso chipset versus a desktop with a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 with hyperthreading, 1GB RAM, and the Grantsdale chipset. Is this a testament to how far the Pentium Mobile architecture has come, or a sad comment on the clockspeed-pushing design of the Pentium 4?"

PSP411 writes "It was announced today that Sony has decided to open up the UMD format in a limited fashion as a formal standard. According to a PC World article, companies interested in releasing movies and music on UMD may soon be able to do so. Those interested in developing games and software are still out of luck, however, as the format for 3rd parties is still being limited to movies and music." UMD stands for Universal Media Disc, the media format used for Sony's new handheld gaming console (the PSP).

Bootsy Collins writes "In the first such criminal convictions in the U.S., two peer-to-peer hub operators have pled guilty to conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. The two men were subjects of raids last August after Department of Justice investigators downloaded content valued at US$25,000 retail from their servers, the Movie Room and Acheron's Alley. They face sentences of up to five years in prison, and up to US$250,000 in fines, in addition to the possibility of being forced to pay restitution to copyright holders.

RichardX writes "Overpeer, the organization responsible for seeding many peer to peer networks with damaged, corrupt and fake files has now found a way of hiding spyware and adware inside Windows Media files by using a DRM loophole and is using this technique to further pollute p2p networks." Several readers sent in a PCworld article on the same subject.

cobravenum2 writes "Boeing is planning to add live television to its Connexion by Boeing service during 2005, The television programs will be delivered across the Connexion network, which uses satellites to provide high-speed data connections between aircraft in-flight and ground stations linked to the Internet. The service entered commercial use earlier this year and provides a 5 megabits per second shared downstream and 1 mbps shared upstream connection to suitably equipped aircraft. You'll be able to view up to four channels of live TV over your laptop."