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Slashback: Film, Solaris, Contention

Slashback with a load of updates for you tonight on modchips for Xbox, Nigerian spam-scams, missing Mozilla hackers, Guillaume Laurent on Murray on Guillaume Laurent, and more. Read on for the details.

Sun giveth and taketh away. axehind writes: "This ZDNet article tells us StarOffice will no longer be free. The decision completes the transition of the StarOffice suite back to being a paid product, as it was when Sun bought the software along with its maker, Germany's Star Division, in 1999. Sun says it will stop free downloads of StarOffice 5.2 at midnight on Wednesday night."

On the other hand, The Pi-Guy writes: "It has been confirmed by Sun that Solaris 9 will be on Intel platforms - you can get it for free on DVD here. Quite surprising considering that a few months ago they were saying 'No S9 at all on x86!'"

Update: 05/29 03:03 GMT by T : As several readers have noticed, the page no longer indicates Solaris 9 once you've chosen x86 as your platform of choice -- looks like a case of mistaken identity.

Strong opinions tend to draw answers. Guillaume Laurent writes "Given that Murray mentions me in his interview, and that I disagree with most of what he says, I felt the need to reply. Enjoy."

Six seems a tad low. supafly613 writes: "Six people were arrested in South Africa over the weekend on suspicion of being involved in the infamous 'Nigerian' e-mail and letter fraud. Four of those detained were Nigerian, one was Cameroonian and the sixth was South African. Police in South Africa believe that the six are part of an international fraud and drug-dealing cartel, sending out thousands of e-mail and letters in an attempt to defraud."

Lost in cyberspace ... Mindphunk writes "Six hackers remain to be found so that Mozilla can be relicensed under the LGPL and GPL as well as the MPL original license. This is really important if Mozilla is going to interoperate readily with all kinds of free software. Perhaps the power of Slashdot can find them in time for the 1.0 release?? The missing hackers are:

  • David Nebinger
  • 'Uncle George'
  • Sanjay Gupta
  • Makoto Kato
  • Thierry LeBouiland
  • Jiwei Wang"

This is a followup to our earlier mention of the missing hackers.

Still waiting for NetBSD :) llordsmiff writes: "According to this, the world's first Xtender Xbox modchip preorders were shipped today (24 May). There are installation pictures also. "It plays back all import and backups on all worldwide sold Xbox machines." It's also supposed to play any DVD, regardless of region."

Wonder if this will be 'content protected.' neema writes: "Just a bit of an update to an older post, but Revolution OS will apparently be released on DVD (region free) in September for 20 dollars. Trailer and first 8 minutes can be found here. I, for one, welcome the chance to see it."

5 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Solaris 9 really for intel? by pythas · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmm. I looked at the sun link provided above, and it gives you 2 choices:

    Solaris 9 for Sparc
    Solaris 8 for Intel

    Are you sure they're releasing 9 for intel?

  2. For News Stories... by gvonk · · Score: 5, Funny

    FROM THE DESK OF: MR. WORGEE G. SHUB
    Corporate (Special) Trust Fund,
    United Political Parties of America,
    Contract Award Committee,
    Washington DC USA

    Dear Esteemed Nigerian Sir:

    I am the Chairman of the Contract Award committee and my committee is solely responsible for awarding and payment of contracts on behalf of the United Political Parties of America. My Committee has received payments from Enron, Microsoft, Walt Disney, and many other large American companies that we then disbursed in accordance with United States law to the intended politicians in return for government services rendered to The Corporations. We overshot the contracted sum by USD35 Million. We have paid the politicians and withholding the balance of Thirty-Five Million United States Dollars. Since the existing domestic laws forbid civil servants from opening, operating and maintaining foreign accounts, we do not have the expertise to transfer this balance of funds to a foreign account.

    Due to the salubrious investment and taxation climate in Nigeria, as outlined in FMF A26 Unit 3B paragraph "D" of the Auditor General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Report of NOV. 1999 about annual estimated petroleum revenues of 28billion US Dollars, and especially opportunities relateed to the late Head of State General Sani Abacha who died on 8th June 1998, which we have become aware of through various emails we have received from your countrymen about the supply of Agricultural Machines and spare parts to the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, we have prepared to pay a commission to a worthy individual like yourself equal to 25% of the total sum transfered while 5% will be reserved for incidental expenses that both parties will incur in the course of actualizing this transaction and the balance of 70% will be kept for the Committee members.

    If you know you are capable of helping us actualize our life's dream, you should send to me immediately the details of your bank particulars or open a new account where we can transfer the money(US$35M)which you will hold in trust for us until we come over there for our own share.

    As soon as you open the account, send by e-mail to me immediately the details of the account viz: Name of bank, address, routing number, telex number, Account number, Tel and Fax number.You should also include the name of your company, your personal address, Tel and Fax numbers for further communication.

    Note that this transaction will be concluded within 10 working days from the day you give your consent.

    Sincerely yours,

    Worgee G. Shub
    Chairman of Disbursements,
    Corporate (Special) Trust Fund,
    United Political Parties of America,
    Contract Award Committee,
    Washington DC USA

    tel: 1-900-CON-4YOU

    NOTE THAT FOR THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF THIS TRANSACTION, WHEN YOU CALL ME THE FIRST THING YOU DO IS FOR YOU TO ASK ME WHAT IS THE CODE, AND MY RESPONSE WILL BE (055).IF I DO NOT TELL YOU (055) THEN KNOW YOU ARE NOT
    TALKING TO ME. DROP THE PHONE IMMEDIATELY AND CALL ME BACK TILL I GIVE YOU THE CODE WORD. THIS IS DUE TO JAMMING TELECOMMUNICATION DEVICES IN YOUR COUNTRY AS A RESULT OF THE BOMB EXPLOSION IN A LAGOS MILITARY BASE.

    (Thanks to RobLimo)

    --


    El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
  3. Coincidence? by NickRob · · Score: 5, Funny

    6 Mozilla hackers missing.... 6 People arrested for the 'Nigerian' email.

    Juxtaposition saves the day.

  4. Re:Surprised by Zeinfeld · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm actually surprised that any of them were really Nigerian. I would have expected the scam to be run by some guy named Tony living in New Jersey that had set up a psuedo-corporation in Nigeria.

    The info I got on the scam was that there is a definite Nigerian connection. A number of people duped in the scheme have gone off to meet people in Nigeria, some have disappeared entirely.

    Scams of that sort are much easier to conduct in a country where laws are not exactly diligently enforced so Nigeria would be a much more likely base than the US. Compared to the Nigerian mafia Tony Soprano is a real small time player, all he has is a garbage business and a strip joint, in Nigeria they run the country.

    --
    Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
    Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
  5. StarOffice Free by grahamsz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    StarOffice may no longer be free but Open Office will remain free.

    I think this is part of some master plan to conquer the problem of corporations who dont like free software because nobody is acountable.

    Seems like a win-win situation - we get openoffice, corps get staroffice, microsoft get less sales.