Slashback: Sidekick Justice, Free WebTV, Office Patent

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories including, justice for a stolen sidekick victim, free WebTV test a hit, SUSE 10.1 release postponed, Microsoft loses Office patent appeal, and PayPal fixes their phishing hole -- Read on for details.

Justice for stolen Sidekick victim. chroma writes "Remember the stolen Sidekick from a few days back? When the girl uploaded photos of herself to T-Mobile's service and bragged on IM about having the stolen PDA? Well, after creating a webpage that gathered 400,000 links in less than two weeks, and much runaround from the NYPD, justice has finally been served: the perpetrator has been arrested and the PDA returned. Further information is also available from The New York Times."

Free WebTV test a hit. An anonymous reader writes "Disney has said that their recent ABC free WebTV was a real hit with viewers and advertisers alike. Shows posted on the site received more than 11 million hits in the first month alone. From the article: 'An online exit survey posted the first week of the two-month trial showed that 87 percent of respondents could recall the advertisers that sponsored the episodes they watched. That compares with typical ad recall of about 40 percent for commercials viewed on television, industry sources said.'"

SUSE 10.1 release postponed. An anonymous reader writes "According to a confidential memo, the next release of both the server and desktop versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 will be delayed. The delay is apparently to allow Novell 'to address final issues with our new package management, registration, and update system and also fix the remaining blocker defects.' From the article: 'SUSE has a new update and package management system, which has not worked well in its initial release in the free, community OpenSUSE 10.1 release. Unfortunately, even after a recent set of fixes was released, SUSE's update and new program installation system is still giving many users trouble.'"

Microsoft loses Office patent appeal. xwipeoutx writes to tell us ITNews.com is reporting that Microsoft has lost their appeal in US Federal court over a judgement handed down saying they violated a patent by Guatemalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado. The original judgement stipulated that Micosoft was to pay Amado $6.1 million for violating a patent covering a means to link spreadsheets and databases.

Paypal fixes their phishing hole. Juha-Matti Laurio writes "News.com is providing new information to the previous PayPal XSS hole and reporting that the hole is now fixed." From the article: "By exploiting the flaw, attackers were able to redirect people from a PayPal Web page to an online trap located in South Korea, a representative for the service said. The page actually has a real PayPal URL, but hosts malicious code that presents a message warning members that their account had been compromised. It then redirects them to a 'phishing' Web site."

Comments

Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential

[Kaenneth]

Perfect couch potato UI, would be a single button to see more about the topic currently (or just previously) on. pushing the button queues the topic link, so that at the next mark in the video stream (so as not to jump-cut) the stream is pushed down a stack, and the sub-stream on the sub-topic starts. when the sub topic is done, pop the last stream off the stack and continue.

Navigation would be the way web sites should have been, instead of next/back, next/back/up/deeper.

but please, no sound effects for the button pushes =P

Re:Honest Question

[desNotes]

I have used SUSE 10 snce it came out and found it to install easily, no configuration problems and run quickly. I recently installed Ubuntu server and like it a lot but I wouldn't drop my SUSE desktop. When the last few kinks are worked out I will be upgrading.

SuSE is extremely viable

[arete]

We use it, but we're not a terrific data point. We haven't moved to 10 yet at all. But here are some basics:

I'm an Apple fan, and in my opinion SuSE is the Apple of Linux. (Of course, Apple is itself the Apple of *nix-like OSes.) They are not the earliest adopters of new technology, but they do a good job of integrating it. But moreover they make it easy to use and administer.*

Big business wants a Vendor, not a community. In the giant world that's pretty much RH and SuSE, or IBM selling someone else's.

Novell also makes a good business selling networking solutions for you whole office, not making you put them together youself.

SuSE will happily ship with the best available drivers and software, even if those are proprietary. For some people this is a reason not to use SuSE - zealots have their place, and I would not want the strictly OSS distros to go away - but if you are more interested in Linux-as-a-current-tool than Linux-as-a-political-statement to force vendors to open drivers, this is the right choice philosophy for you.

*Let me define "easy to use and administer" more: YaST puts a nice front end on whatever you're doing (package management and basically all other system administration) - with enough power to configure whatever you want however you want and enough guidance that you can do it even if it's not your speciality and you've been awake too long. It's the perfect kind of system that LETS you be knowledgeable but does not REQUIRE you to be knowledgeable. You can seamlessly escalate simple point and click management to advanced point and click management to tweaking files by hand that it then won't screw up.

So to me, "easy to use" means that I can use, in each instance, a system that is as automatic or as manual as I want, based on how much expertise I have in that area, and how much time and attention I have for the issue "right now"

Configuration entirely by manually touching files/registries/whatever is a little like walking through a minefield... get too tired, make a typo and all sorts of stuff might explode, and you've making a large number of changes. But I'd take it any day over a Windows GUI-only system where IF it explodes and, say, doesn't boot you have a much harder time putting it back together than you do with a text editor. But YaST is the ideal hybrid - it reduces your chances of stupid mistakes without limiting your power. You edit what you want, let YaST edit what you don't. It's not by far the only piece of software to do this, but I think it's a good example.

( I think much of OS X is similar. Can you enter complex firewall and packet forwarding configurations in their little GUI? No. Does their GUI work for most people? Yep. Does their GUI still use the standard BSD firewall, which you can configure however you want? Yep. )

Re:Free WebTV advertiser potential

[OECD]

This doesn't surprise me one bit. I find that when I have a computer with me while I'm watching TV, I'm much more likely to visit an advertiser's page.

I know this doesn't apply to you, but this one falls under the "No Duh" category. Catch me while I have my computer open, and it's likely that I'll follow a link. Catch me when it's closed, and I may just remember your complicated URL, but probably not.

Re:Honest Question

[Petrushka]

Well, in my country SUSE is the distro of choice for government departments deploying Linux.

Sigh... Pathetic mother

[technoextreme]

"They told him to come pick it up," said Ms. Gomez, speaking in the apartment of her building's superintendent last Thursday. She said she had bought the phone for $50 on a subway platform in Queens and had given it to her daughter. "We said he could have it if he gave the money we paid for it," she added.

Why? It's his property. He has every right to get back because it's his!!!!!!!! Not yours. You have no right to charge anyone money because YOU GOT RIPPED OFF.

Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother

[porkThreeWays]

Common sense, ethics, and the law are completely lost on these trashy people. I visit our PD sometimes (I work in municipal gov't), and there are actually people who believe if they paid 50 bucks for a stolen sidekick from a guy on a subway they should get their money back. At the same time, this girl was pregnant at 15 (maybe 14), writes like a bumbling idiot, and probably won't graduate high school. No, Evan doesn't need the law, this girl's real life has been punishment enough.

Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother

[Apotsy]

Actually, they do deserve their money back ... from the guy who sold it to them in the subway. And he should be charged with sale of stolen property.

Too bad they'll never catch him.

Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother

[Svartalf]

Odds on, the "I bought it" is more of a pathetic ruse to cover up for the
fact that they pocketed it themselves.

Too many of the interchanges, obviously not contested by them, and the
conflicting stories from them lead one to believe that Luigi or mom
pocketed the Sidekick, not thinking that they'd get caught up with.

Re:Sigh... Pathetic mother

[Svartalf]

Oh, and buying a $400-500 retail phone from a "psst...wanna buy a cell phone" type vendor in the Subway
constitutes purchasing stolen goods if it is in fact not the person's to sell- it's a known or should
have known" issue which means "Mom" is guilty of a misdemeanor or worse (depending on how NY views that
sort of thing) herself- and she should clam up and count herself lucky that the NYPD doesn't have an
interest in pursuing her alleged trafficing in stolen goods (The purchase or sale is that- both sides
are typically actionable on that little equation, but an honest mistake on the part of the purchaser
is a defense to prosecution. She's got nothing of the sort to lean back on...).

Re:It's like finding a credit card

[TehBrian]

Except for the fact that a rectangular piece of plastic has little or no intrinsic value, as evidenced by your suggestion to use it as a ice scraper, a coaster, or a shim. A mobile phone _does_ have intrinsic value which is made obvious by the fact that later the mother claimed that she bought it ($50 worth of intrinsic value) from a shady subway merchant. (There have been many stories as to how the sidekick wound up in the possession of the girl, none of which I can believe because they are so wildly divergent from each other)

On a side note, I think this "disposable mentality" that one would simply dispose of a valuable electronic device because it requires the least amount of effort is quite a sad statement about both a man's respect for other men (and their possessions), and man's respect for the environment.