Slashdot Mirror

Everything about money? NEVER. China might as well just give up the whole Socialist act they've been a raging capitalist country for awhile now.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Two German women complaining on office email about their partners' poor sex drive found the details of their private lives broadcast to thousands after one of them hit the wrong button, Bild newspaper said Saturday.

"Everyone stares at us now and whispers behind our backs," Anica G., a 21-year-old worker at the Federal Labor Office, told Bild.

The emails between Anica and colleague Christina S., with descriptions on how the women try but fail to arouse their partners, were first sent by accident to other colleagues in their department at the Labor Office.

They were then forwarded to thousands throughout the Labor Office and other government agencies and widely distributed by recipients to people across Germany.

Anica told the daily she and her colleague had not broken any rules because the emails were written on breaks.

From Reuters "EchoStar says appeals court blocks TiVo injunction" as reported on gizmodo. Link h:ere http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.asp x?view=CN&storyID=2006-08-18T161047Z_01_WNAS5904_R TRIDST_0_TECH-ECHOSTAR-URGENT.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna

I was listening to China Radio International this morning, and one of their news stories is about how obesity is becoming a major problem in China.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?typ e=healthNews&storyID=2006-08-18T091627Z_01_HKG6768 4_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-OBESITY.xml

So much for Moms trying to pass along the old "Finish your meal - children in China are starving"....

In a possibly related news story, scientists have determined that Chinese heads are getting smaller.
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2906/2006/08/18/65@128 352.htm

The judge also denied EchoStar's request that the injunction be stayed pending appeal, making it difficult for EchoStar to continue offering its subscribers' DVR functionality without striking a quick licensing deal with TiVo or another DVR maker.

EchoStar must disable DVRs, judge rules

What I see there is a Pakistani woman caught with a water bottle full of "possibly explosive" material. They don't know what the material was yet.

This certainly could be "a terrorist caught with explosives", the conclusion you jump to; given that it was a real possibility, evacuating the airport and investigating further as they have done was of course the appropriate course of action for the time being.

But it also seems possible this is a false alarm, similar to this morning when a bomb sniffing dog detected a suspicious container that turned out to be full of completely ordinary rags, or the day before when an "unruly passenger" was widely reported to have "Vaseline, a screw driver, matches and a note referencing al-Qaeda" and then it turned out she had nothing of the kind and was just having some kind of nervous breakdown and peeing in the plane aisles (?), or a couple days before that when three men of Arabic descent were arrested with a bunch of cell phones on suspicion they were going to blow up a bridge but then turned out only to be buying cell phones to resell in Dallas at a profit.

Again, it could be that this woman arrested in West Virginia was part of a real terrorist plot, and it could be that some unhinged lady was inspired by recent media reports about plane bombs to pour lighter fluid in a couple of water bottles and attempt to board a plane. Perhaps there really was a legitimate threat to passenger safety there. I shall be watching the news on this one with interest to find out exactly what happened.

But until we do find out exactly what happened, it seems awfully odd in this case to say "reality has intervened" when in fact what you mean is "partly speculative media reports have intervened".

Interesting.. looks like this is very breaking

Returns Link

mod parent up

From Reuters:

Trolltech offers fully reprogrammable mobile phone

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Norway's Trolltech AS (TROLL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) has demonstrated the first fully reprogrammable mobile handset to help phone designers innovate as fast as their counterparts in the personal computer industry have done.

A major divide that separates PCs from mobile telephones is that while designers can freely reprogram a computer's software, most of a phone's functions are fixed at the factory.

"(Independent) developers are having a hard time figuring out how to participate in the mobile phone market," Benoit Schillings, Trolltech's chief technology officer, said in an interview after a news conference to unveil the phone on Monday.

Trolltech, the world's top supplier of Linux software for mobile phones, said it will offer a mobile cameraphone running on the international GSM/GPRS standard it calls Greenphone.

Trolltech's phone is priced at around $690 and comes with all the software and source code necessary to develop a complete mobile phone model, including core Linux operating system controls, a phone dialler, address book and camera application.

The phone is not aimed at consumers, but would allow a wide audience of designers to create new features for future mobile phones.

While the Greenphone, which is due out in September, opens up the field of mobile phone development to small design firms and individuals, it gives large organizations a fully functioning test environment with which to develop new models.

"This industry is in a deadlock over how to make new services evolve on mobile handsets," Schillings said.

FROM GAMES TO INSTANT MESSAGING

Trolltech aims to encourage everything from games to business-level applications to teen instant message devices to be developed using the open design of the Greenphone kit.

A corporation could find it economical to develop a custom phone for say, 1,000 employees, then take the design to a contract manufacturer who would build the phone using standard hardware components according to the design, Schillings said.

Trolltech, which held its initial public offering early last month on the Oslo Stock Exchange, supplies Linux mobile phone software controls to companies such as Motorola Inc. (MOT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the biggest seller of Linux-based phones to date.

The company also supplies a variety of Chinese and Taiwanese electronics manufacturers including Wiston Group, Compal Electronics (2324.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), ZTE (0763.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), China Techfaith (CNTF.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yuhua Teltech, which will build the Greenphone.

Linux is an open-source software system that has been gaining ground among electronics makers seeking common ground among the patchwork of hundreds of different phone designs that have fragmented the industry.

Phone makers have designed 40 models with Trolltech software, resulting in 4 million phones sold globally to date.

This is a myth that has been thouroughly debunked.

Jewish Iran ex-pats have also spoken up to dispell this nonsense.

The original legislation is actually online but it is in Persian.

bablesfish won't help there :) http://www.ilna.ir/shownews.asp?code=305929&code1= 11

Enough independant scholars have combed over it to not leave a doubt that the "badge for Jews" story was a complete fabrication. What the legislation actually tries to promote is native Iranian clothing styles to strengthen the Iranian textile industry.

Nice try on your part though :-) Want to play some more?

However, i don't think this is the same scenario, because video game sales (in revenue) have been decreasing, with only a few companies showing growth. EA is one such company . This site Suggests sales are UP overall as an industry. Now then, are these companies showing growth because they are harder to pirate? Doubtful, as it doesn't seem to matter to piracy inclined people how difficult a game is to pirate, they will do it. So we must look at the content of the games, the originality, stability, re-play aspects, etc.

A game can be spectacular, like Fable but if it has 0 re-play value, don't expect a whole lot. On the other hand, games like TES: Arena (The very fist game in The Elder Scroll Series), TES: Daggerfall, TES: Morrowind, and TES: Oblivion (though I've yet to play Oblivion, can't as of yet afford it), will NEVER go out of style, because they have enormous re-play value. Many of these games you can go through twice, and with the exception of a few main plot-line quests (if you even decide to do those), it will be a totally different game. Games like THAT, are what's missing. Everything is a clearcut path to victory. A clear beginning, and a clear end. This is good for some people, who aren't interested so much in a story, or good gameplay, as they are in just killing stuff to unwind from a long day. But to the gamers, a gamer must have substance. there must be something to it. FPS games are a dime a dozen, RTS games have almost become that, but MMO, and RPG games are doing so well because they can be played radically differently. Clearcut easy games have their place no doubt. But if the gaming industry really wants to reclaim it's 1999-2000 throne of $$$$$, it's going to have to do something about it's content.

And on a side note, if piracy is really killing the PC Gaming industry this badly, why hasn't MS gone under yet from piracy of Windows, Office, their PC Games, and the myriad of other software that they sell, all of which ends up being pirated. MS Seems to be doing OK, in spite of the piracy they are faced with. And how many of you posting here are using XP Corporate, or a copy with wpa killed? I'd wager it's a pretty fair amount. *Shrug* It's just common. It's a reality of business in software. I haven't paid for a copy of Windows in several years, and yet every copy that I do run is totally legit. MS doesn't seem to be hurting for it (even with massive fines from various sources). So one has to wonder, is the PC Gaming industry REALLY in trouble because of piracy? Or are they in trouble for something else, and they're choosing to blame piracy as a scapebgoat? It's better to be seen as a victim, than as lazy and unimaginative.

Fourth house...

Fifthhouse...

This fakery is getting a little ridiculous.

Just google "green helmet guy".

Is any information coming out of Hezbollah-controlled areas trustworthy? We've seen death tolls drop from 60 to 23 at Qana and from 40 to 1 at Houla:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Monday that one person was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Houla, not 40 as he had earlier reported.

Don't let your delusions get in the way of your posting. Slashdot ran this story. What does that say about their "lefist" agenda? (Not that you understand what lefist means, but please do go on.)

Is this part of the "lefist" agenda?

Btw, an alternate interpretation of the doctoring of a photograph to increase the smoke and apparent destruction in the aftermath of Israel attacking Lebanon: perhaps Hajj is trying to convince the Lebanese people that Israel is inflicting major damage so they might be more apt to consider acceding to Israel's demands. On the other hand, probably not.

Still, from the end of that article, one might get the impression that GOP-linked blogs are in fact trying to discredit the media reporting on death and destruction from the war in Lebanon:

[Hajj] was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30 have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media's coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Reuters and other news organizations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.

Well obviously, one was her vacation home. Poor woman. What are the chances of BOTH your homes being destroyed within 2 weeks?
Wait, this looks like her again!
and so does this!
Of course, there may be more scar-cheeked-crooked-nosed ladies around than I realize.

Well obviously, one was her vacation home. Poor woman. What are the chances of BOTH your homes being destroyed within 2 weeks?
Wait, this looks like her again!
and so does this!
Of course, there may be more scar-cheeked-crooked-nosed ladies around than I realize.

The AP-Google deal is for a future news product not the current news content that is used in the current Google product. A reuters article explains. From the Reuters article, "'It's a licensing agreement that lets us use original AP content in new ways than we have used in the past for Google News,' Google spokeswoman Sonya Boralv said."

I think the button is hidden somewhere...

http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsAr ticle.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-06-27T214849Z_01_N 27216845_RTRIDST_0_TECH-DELL-LAPTOP.XML&rpc=66

http://www.estadao.com.br/tecnologia/informatica/n oticias/2006/jun/28/321.htm

And here ya go .... as predicted M$ and Xen get chummy under the sheets ... :D

http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?s toryID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060718:MTFH04767_2 006-07-18_05-30-01_N18352906&type=comktNews&rpc=44

Yeah, "stagnation in market growth..."

I'm surprised so many posts are confident they wont ban it since it brings in the money. I think its highly likely to pass and is being lobbied by the richer, established brick and mortar domestic casinos who suspect they lose business to online gambling. (which may or may not be true, much like the music piracy debate).

I miss the fiscally conservative small state Republicans....

From Reuters (linked in Article), More Info Here in yesterday's article

According to the FBI as reported by Reuters. The FBI said that the DB hadn't been accessed since the date it was stolen. Keep in mind, too that laptop thefts are no different than any other and the vast bulk are crimes of opportunity. So it most likely that the laptop was just at the worng place at the wrong time and the tweaker responsible had no idea as to its value.

It's now posted on Reuters and confirmed by Comedy Central, if it makes you feel any better.

> You have sources for any of those suppositions?

Don't you remember this story about the infamous PowerPoint presentation?

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx ?type=technology&storyid=nN07296137&imageid=&cap=

And I quote:

> Copies of the notes were captured by a handful of bloggers and
> shared around the Web. The company subsequently took down its
> original PowerPoint slide presentation and replaced it with a
> 94-page Adobe Acrobat file, devoid of the speaker notes.

Also, to be fair, adoption of writely is picking up very quickly, mostly because it does something Word can't do: put a shared document somewhere where a lot of people can simultaneously make edits to it, without the horrid wiki interfaces. And most text is composed within e-mail apps, not a word processor. And why would you use Word for anything that is predominantly straight text, for which HTML does very nicely? I guess what I'm saying is, word processing, which was the first "killer app" for personal computers, isn't so killer anymore. And, of course, not everyone has a Windows machine, since the default for most Googlers is a Linux box, and usually it's your laptop that runs Windows - though only if you opt for a Windows machine instead of a PowerBook.

But, you know, other than that.... If you have a Windows box, AND you don't need to collaborate with your document, or share it through a predominantly HTML medium, AND it's not so simple that you could do it with HTML and <B>, <I>, and <U> tags, then, you know, definitely you would reach for Word, and not OpenOffice or Adobe Arcobat. ("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln... how'd you like the play?"... Sigh.)

jbx

ps Just as a sidenote, I worked at MacBU within Microsoft, and our shipping bonus for Mac Office 2004 was an iPod. Only a few months later, the fuss about Microsoft employees using iPods erupted; I almost made T-Shirts that said "Microsoft gave me my iPod"!

Here's the link to the story that they forgot. A pity, though. They're only opening up the IM for extra, user made, modules. I was hoping they published code for the Yahoo messenger for the community. Hell, I'd be happy if they'd just update the linux version or at least make the current versions more WINE friendly. I'd like my voice chat and video, please.

Despite the other replies, Italy is one of the few that has Italian players...
http://football.guardian.co.uk/theknowledge/story/ 0,,1785937,00.html
Playing with foreign players can cause some distrust when they do not perform at away games...
http://worldcup.reuters.com/spain/news/usnL2772974 4.html
An interesting blogg about the last World Cup's national mix...
http://usasoccer.blogspot.com/2006/05/world-cup-20 02-roster-breakdowns.html
A Time article about the French team for the 2002 World Cup noted that they only had one French player...
http://www.time.com/time/worldcup2002/020128/index .html

I could go on but I think you should get my point by now.

Gore appeared at the Cannes film festival to promote his film and warn of the dangers of global warming. He then drove five separate, gasoline-burning cars the 500 meters from his hotel to the theater, during heavy traffic. uh huh.

If we ever get there, a few specimens such as these would be indispensable.

Birthrates in Europe are way below replacement. I don't remember exact figures but they were very low. Europe's population has been aging rapidly.

I guess you could say declining welfare state is an opinion, but it's difficult to see how it could be different. Declining population means a smaller number of people to pay benefits to a large population of retirees, and therefore eventually lower benefits and the decline of a system simply unable to sustain itself.

Thanks to China's "one child" policy and the favoritism towards male children, China is about to become a horrible place to live, at least if you (like most Slashdotters) are a guy. There is about a 20% shortfall of women in the current Chinese generation. Another demographic disaster.

Japan is in a death spiral. There is a birth rate of 1.1 person per woman. For the population to stay the same, you'd have to have 2.1 people per woman. They have decided to develop robots to care for their elderly instead of importing nurses from other countries.

Here's the French unemployment rate, 9.3%.
http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx ?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nL3145021&imageid=&ca p=

The US unemployment rate is about half that - under 5%.

The French unemployment rate for muslim immigrants is in the 25-30% range, which is much of the reason for the recent unrest.

These are all facts. Unpleasant facts, but facts nonetheless. And they fully support my adjectives.

D

Lenovo says its losses are due to the $1.25B it paid for IBM's PC division. Its revenues are growing at "double digit rates", while its losses are steady. And everyone faces a tough PC market, with so many competitors, some extremely good, and a saturated market, including so many older PCs still working past their planned "obsolete" dates.

That's all a lot rosier picture than IBM painted for its own profitability when it sold the division. But then, IBM originally dismissed the entire PC market when it created its modern version in 1981.

According to this there are enough in the Netherlands to make a political party.

"Last year, Sweden banned the downloading of copyright material after being singled out for criticism by Hollywood. The issue of file sharing and copyright has been emotive in Sweden, a hi-tech country with a tradition of openness." See Reuters Link

Bug reports about the government from it's workers, Whistleblowing, is now less protected.

Talk about closed source government...

Just wait for the perpetual war, that'll be fun.
(emphasis mine)

You mean this?
or this?
perhaps this?
how's about this?
It's been almost 5 years, has anyone seen this guy lately?
And do you really think this is going to end any time soon?
The war on terror is by its definition unwinnable. It is based on the sound tenats of the Powell Doctrine unwinnable. I believe the United States resources to be virtually unlimited to fight this war, since they will not withdraw and cannot win or be annihilated, the war must therefore be perpetual.

Last I checked, Brightcove had deals with Sony/BMG, Discovery, Tribeca Film Festival, MTV/Viacom's The N, plus a syndication offering with Reuters that lets you put news stories directly on your own webpage.

Not to mention their Commercial Preview, which allows anyone to upload and host high quality video in customized video players TODAY!

Okay, for full disclosure, I work for Brightcove. However, it's more true to say that Internet TV is just getting warmed up. The announcments give us a taste for what is to come when this format really explodes over the next 1-3 years

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?typ e=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-30T201936Z_01_N3043 1831_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-MIDWEST.xml&rpc= 22
Notice it's posted on that well-known, ultra rightwing network known as Reuters. (And I say that, dripping with sarcasm.)

I know that due to your leftwing bias it's difficult to understand, but just because a news story doesn't fit your worldview that doesn't mean it's untrue. Try to be open minded and do some research before hurling insults.

Besides, the Weekly World News is known for reporting different types of Aliens.

Shares in Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) slid more than 11 percent on Friday, their biggest drop in more than five years, after the software giant said earnings would be hurt by increased investments aimed at fending off rivals such as Google Inc. ... The move shocked Wall Street, which had hoped to benefit from the company's biggest product releases in years, with its Vista operating system and Office 2007 scheduled for January. ... "This is still a company that is extremely profitable. What people are worried about is whether that ever flows through ... to the benefit of shareholders, or does the company spend that money," said Charles Di Bona, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

No doubt disspointing reviews of Vista and DRM'd content are part of the fizzle.

The long predicted downward spiral has begun. Employees are leaving for greener fields, product sucks and the competition is better. It will only get worse for them. They had their chance to fix things back when they promissed to take care of security four (five?) years ago. Instead of fixing, they wasted their time and energy with more anti competitive junk like Bitblocker, Paladium and lock box media. Their efforts to expand into the server market flopped and so will their efforts to expand into the kinds of services they derided back in 2000. Such a spiral could not have happened to a nicer company.

The Microsoft idiots thought they were going to come out swinging and are surprised that people are tired of being punched in the nose.

Because you hate making money? You make a good fanboy, but you'd make a poor analyst. Nintendo's stock has been climbing for the past three years. Selling it three years ago would have been the worst choice you could have made, as almost exactly 3 years ago this month was their lowest in the past 5 years. Nintendo has weathered the changing video game market fantastically. They're not the top console manufacturer in sales by a long shot, but that doesn't matter on a P&L statement. They're consistently turning a profit quarter after quarter after quarter. Fanboys like you have been predicting the "demise of Nintendo" since the N64 and it hasn't happened yet.

As the BBC story did not contain the ciphertext I copied it from another story at Reuters if you look at the bottom of that page the paragraph reads-

He said Smith told him to look back at the first paragraphs. The italicized letters scattered throughout the judgment spell out: "smithcode Jaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz".

So actually it was Reuters or the BBCs mistake not mine.

I have used Google news and from the reports it seems there is not a consistant agreement on the ciphertext for example-

smithycode JaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzviMi

Smithycode Jaeiextostgpsacgreaamqwfkadpmqzv

I don't have time to go through the whole pdf, so I'm not going to guess which one is correct. And yes, I added spaces to get round the lameness filter, ignore them.

So they chose 100 male undergrads. This demographic has some general qualities that are relevant here. The first is that they often are risk-taking individuals, and this comes from the general mindset of young males out on their own for the first time. More specifically, and this might be a shocker to some of you, a lot of undergrad males drink and use drugs.

This Reuters article quotes Dr. Brady as saying "what this study suggests is that they might increase any type of risk-taking behavior.". Now, I don't know her personally, but she sounds a little out of touch with the people she's studying, and also seems to not understand the scientific method very well. Where is the control group (people who didn't play any games)? Where are the comparisons to general surveys of college males?

The stink of the NTP/RIM debacle is still fresh. Legislators are starting to pay attention.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?typ e=politicsNews&storyid=2006-04-05T234837Z_01_N0534 4856_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-PATENTS.xml&rpc=22

Take a wild guess at which president said:

"He's used the word 'win-win,' and that's a very important concept when it comes to economics that are mutually beneficial."

It is truly amazing when you consider which one has been speaking his native language. God Bless America...cause if He doesn't we're even more screwed than I thought!

According to this, the 360 is going nowhere in Japan (note: I can't vouch for the accuracy of the page, but I have no reason to doubt it). And these are recent numbers, about a month old. In addition, remember this:

"Microsoft's head of games division, Peter Moore, has repeatedly said that there would be no true success for Microsoft without Xbox's success in Japan," Sensui said.

Taken from a recent article here.

Ok, so the 360 has been selling about 1000 a week in Japan. We're like, what, 15 weeks into the year? That puts them on track to have around 150,000 units sold by the end of the year. Sure, as the Reuters article states, they're going to release more games, but once people already think you've bombed and the PS3 and Rev are getting really close, who in their freakin right mind is going to jump on the 360 bandwagon (in Japan)? For reference, the DS Lite sold over 100K IN ONE WEEK. The PSP has sold over 3 million in Japan, and is still a luke-warm success (being outsold by the DS + DS Lite 5-1 week by week).

I'm having trouble finding non-Japanese numbers, but MS themselves said they needed success in Japan, and the numbers just don't look good.

Well, "spaz" and "watermelon" both qualified in the past 24 hours.

Spaz makes sense, but...watermelon? Is there something I don't know? Is that like fried chicken, or is the throwing the problem? Either way...I defend my right to make political math jokes without having people call me racist...

Reuters is a very reputable news source and they are reporting the same thing.

http://yahoo.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsAr ticle.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060405 :MTFH84939_2006-04-05_22-17-54_N05357049&symbol=MS FT.O&rpc=44

So instead of reuters or the washington post or, shit, even cnet, we get a nobody gamer site with an article that has no links to anybody credible. Brilliand reporting from slashdot, as usual.

Streaming media

http://www.streamingmedia.com/patent/

But it now

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060312-6364 .html

Netflix vs blockbuster

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?typ e=internetNews&storyID=2006-04-06T014212Z_01_N0538 7732_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NETFLIX.xml

As fate would have it... http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx? type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-04-03T033819Z_01_ NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-243350-1.xml

Maybe they should be out of work... Apparently hot dogs are all it takes to make them indicate something.

... It's this "I must have the biggest opening weekend" mentality that Hollywood pushes that's killing movies. Lets make a flashy film, push it really hard for the opening. Who cares if it sucks, by the time the people realize it we will have made our money back.

A good movie should be able to draw people in over time. It shouldn't require a massive advertising blitz and a huge opening weekend to be successful.

That mentality is a response to the fact that Hollywood is making bad movies. They have to get massive numbers of people to go to a film during the opening weekend, before word of mouth warns them that the film is crap. They have to do this because they're makeing bad films. They don't want to make films that entertain us, they want to make films for which their fellows will praise them. They are proudly out of touch.