utills - Slashdot User

Google Propping Up Typosquatting Biz? 279

Posted by Zonk on Sunday April 30, 2006 @03:20PM from the i-love-shopping-at-amezon.com dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google is making oodles of cash placing ads on a vast sea of otherwise vacant Web sites that do little more than capitalize on misspelled domain name names, according to a story in today's Washington Post. From the story: 'Google Inc., which runs the largest ad network on the Internet, is making millions of dollars a year by filling otherwise unused Web sites with ads. In many instances, these ad-filled pages appear when users mistype an Internet address, such as BistBuy.com. This new form of advertising is turning into a booming business that some say is cluttering the Internet and could be violating trademark rules.'"

Da Vinci Code Message Revealed 96

Posted by Zonk on Sunday April 30, 2006 @05:55AM from the funny-judge dept.

Ironsides writes "The message embedded in the Da Vinci Code ruling earlier this week has been cracked. The message reads 'Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought' and is a reference to an event from about 100 years ago. The encryption scheme itself was based on the Fibonacci number Sequence which is the same one used in the novel."

Verizon Ruling May Tax Dial-Up Customers 147

Posted by Zonk on Friday April 28, 2006 @07:01PM from the no-pipe-for-them dept.

cellocgw writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that a court ruling in Verizon's favor could effectively allow phone companies to charge dial-up users on a per-minute basis." From the article: "About 68 percent of US internet users now connect via broadband, according to the latest data from Neilsen//NetRatings. That still leaves millions of users connecting the old way, in which modems in their home call local numbers over a telephone line to access the Internet. Precisely how many people were affected by the court ruling is unknown. Good said the number was in the thousands, but that Global NAPs did not have exact numbers and could not disclose the identities of all the companies that relied on Global NAPs for dial-up numbers."

Rockers Sue Sony Over Download Royalties 360

Posted by Zonk on Friday April 28, 2006 @04:34PM from the mp3-breakage dept.

Ohreally_factor writes "According to an AP article, groups Cheap Trick and The Allman Brothers allege that Sony is paying them less than what they deserve for music downloaded from popular download sites such as iTunes. Because Sony counts such sales as the equivalent of a physical phonorecording sale, they deduct costs for packaging (20%) and breakage (15%) from the artists' royalties, just as they would if they were selling CDs through more traditional means. Seeing as how there is no physical packaging, nor physical inventory that might suffer breakage, one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges."

Comment Re:MS redefines the interface (Score 1) 416

by utills on Thursday November 17, 2005 @01:51PM (#14054148) Attached to: Microsoft Office 12 Beta 1 Is Out

Basically its something that is more akin to how humans think. When we are designing something we have the goal in front of us (or in our mind) and then we break the tasks down into sizeable chunks to achieve that goal.
This is effectively the same thing...in that it gives you a view of the finished article...so that you can customise it more to what you want.

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