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Comment MS is more clever? (Score 0) 91

I'm finding it hard to believe that MS brought down the behemoth by secretly bringing down those domain names.

On the other hand, maybe the little miscreants that created this botnet actually made the assumption that the domains couldn't be suspended. That still brings up the question, how long can this court-ordered suspension really last? Indefinitely is not a definite answer.

Going to go check my spam folder now... maybe it's got less crap in it now.

Comment How many years? (Score 2, Insightful) 223

I'm actually curious how log this has been going on. It seems like the corporations, and legal bodies could find more creative ways to spend the money. I would think paying more money to lawyers would be an obvious negative by now.

The comedians of this world have already written hundreds of jokes about lawyers and their self-serving nature. Maybe these litigious companies will realize, one day, there's a reason why.

Comment Re:They should have kept the price high (Score 1) 104

Who should have kept the price high? InterNIC? So, the booty of the late 90's, and now the early 21st century is a bad thing? Rather than snarl at the squatters, they should have made squatting less attractive by allowing more TLDs. A lot of people might be pleased that .xxx will be opening up soon. Imagine the possibilities now! se.xxx sells.
Programming

Journal Journal: Good Employees: Confidence Versus Ego

One of the challenges of being a CTO is finding quality people for your development team. When the search began for employees for our new venture, the pickings were slim. What we needed was a star. We also needed someone that would trust us, and not be argumentative about new concepts. It's pretty easy to pick out the "bad eggs."

Portables

Delete Data On Netbook If Stolen? 459

An anonymous reader writes "I have just moved overseas on a 2-year working holiday visa and so I picked up a netbook for the interim, an MSI Wind U100 Plus running WinXP. I love it to bits. But as I am traveling around I am somewhat worried about theft. Most of my important stuff is in Gmail and Google Docs; however, I don't always have Net access and find it useful to gear up the offline versions for both. Ideally I would like to securely delete all the offline data from the hard drive if it were stolen. Since it is backed up in the cloud, and the netbook is so cheap I don't really care about recovery, a solution that bricks it would be fine — and indeed would give me a warm glow knowing a prospective thief would have wasted their time. But it's not good if they can extract the HD and get at the data some other way. All thief-foiling suggestions are welcome, be they software, hardware, or other."

Comment The Solution Here (Score 5, Insightful) 330

A lot of people misinterpret what "freedom of expression" means.

People believe they have the write to "express" themselves as they please in the workplace. That simply isn't the case. Our rights -- our freedoms -- are protected against government interference not private interference. Your employer -- even a government office -- can silence you. There are laws for the workplace that take precedence over your rights. The law protects employees against being discriminated against or being harassed because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, disabilities, sexual orientation, and gender. Those aren't rights, however. You don't have a right not to be harassed. You are protected by laws.

Quite simply, these officers are out of line, and have broken laws. They don't have a choice but to change their behavior. If they want to frequent this site from home in their private time that is when their right to express themselves is enforceable. However, we all know there are consequences to actions in our private lives as well. But trying to make people behave to serve their best-interest is just a futile effort at protecting "stupid."

The comments about this story are already ridiculous (search news.google.com, and blogs.google.com). Everyone thinks they know their rights, but I can tell by the comments none really know what their rights are, or what a right is.

Comment Re:I wonder... (Score 1) 128

Good catch there.

When I wrote that I didn't stop to think about the difference between the S&P 500 and NYSE.

I was actually curious about McGraw-Hill, not the S&P 500 as an entity. It's moot now since we'll likely be moderated down anyway.

Comment I wonder... (Score 0) 128

...does the S&P 500 use Linux?

I seem to recall that NYSE does. Then again, I'm old.

They may have switched to Linux at some point.

I think too much significance is being given to this announcement. Linux has already been quite dominant on the web for some time now. But most people couldn't care less about what delivered their content. How would you even know? Aside from server side errors.

RedHat's best contribution is Tom Lane to PostgreSQL.

Social Networks

Journal Journal: Social Contribution: ZooLoo, a new way to socialize

Just over one year ago the adventure began. We set out to create a new way to connect with others on the internet. There were a lot of blogs, and social networks to choose from. Then there were the less often used hosting companies where you could set up a very personalized presence on the web.

Earth

Scientists Surprised to Find Earth's Biosphere Booming 692

radioweather writes "An article from the Financial Post says that recent studies of biosphere imaging from the NASA SEAWIFS satellite indicate that the Earth's biomass is booming: 'The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometers — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square meter of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.' Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, fertilizing the biota and resulting in the increased green side effect."
Power

Latest "Green" Power Generation — Your Feet 189

gbjbaanb writes "Remember those ideas that suggested hooking gym machines to the power grid? Well, the Times is reporting that something like this to harness free energy is about to become a reality — the footfall of trudging shoppers is to become the latest source of emission-free energy. 'Engineers who have modelled the effects of the technology at Victoria Underground station in central London have calculated that the 34,000 travellers passing through every hour could power 6,500 lightbulbs. ... The plans for heel-strike generation follow successful trials last year at a bridge in the Midlands where generators converted energy from trains passing above into electricity powering a flood detector.' Possibly the most important thing for the readership is at the end: 'There could also be a range of domestic uses, for example powering iPods by plugging them into batteries placed in the owners' heels, using technology which is already available.' Obviously you'd have to get up and walk around, but, as they say, it's the thought that counts."
Networking

Is Streaming Video the Real Throttling Target? 190

snydeq writes "Responding to legal pressure over its throttling of P2P traffic and other dubious practices, Comcast says it will now punish the most abusive users rather than particular applications. Yet its pilot tests in Pennsylvania and Virgina, which would 'delay traffic for the heaviest users of Internet data without targeting specific software applications,' raise greater concerns over net neutrality, ones that belie a potential preemptive strike against the cable company's chief future competition: streaming video. 'Despite the industry's constant invocation of the P2P bogeyman, at present, the largest bandwidth hog is actually streaming video,' writes Mehan Jayasuriya at Public Knowledge. 'Clearly, the emergence of online video is something that cable video providers find very threatening and by capping off bandwidth usage, they're effectively killing two birds with one stone; discouraging users from using their Internet connections for video while increasing the efficiency of the network. Is this anti-competitive? It sure seems like it.'"
The Internet

EBay Pressured To Block Sales of Ivory Products 261

RickRussellTX writes "eBay is being pressured by an animal welfare group to ban sales of ivory and animal tooth products on its site. Although eBay is in compliance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species when it warns users that such postings may be inviolation of national and international law, the International Fund for Animal Welfare is demanding that they go a step further to search for and delete any posting of ivory products."

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