Dell Takes a Hit on Bad MoBos

But the motherboard replacement program will account for the bulk of the charge, or about $300 million, he said.The replacements are necessary as some capacitors on some motherboards shipped in its GX270 and GX280 systems failed after a period of months. The failure, which is evidenced by a PC that won’t boot, comes when the capacitors bulge and fail.

Dell Warns of Layoffs, Motherboard Replacements

There was a lengthy discussion on this very topic on teknoids back in September and folks were generally not happy with the situation.

New Personal Aggregator

fyuze is a personal information aggregator that automatically collects information from the internet so you don’t have to. Sign up for an account, tell fyuze what you’re interested in, and you’ll be able to — at a glance — see what’s new on the web every time you log on.

fyuze.com

Open Source Audio/Video Production Tools

The ‘Open Source IPTV Production Suite’ is an ensemble of high-level animation, 3D, compositing and editing tools that are available as free, open source GPL applications. However, this is not a direct attempt to duplicate the production tools found in Apple’s Final Cut Studio. It’s an attempt to create a fully functional, professional software suite that is capable of generating high end VFX and 3D animation like those found in Shake and Motion and Maya. Don’t be fooled, just because the software is open source doesn’t mean that it isn’t of professional grade.

MAKE: Blog: HOW TO – Assemble an Open Source IPTV Production Suite

Bluetooth Driven Presence with Asterisk

At the very least, when we’re finished, you’ll be able to walk out of your home or office carrying your bluetooth phone or headset and have your Asterisk server automatically transfer your incoming calls to your cellphone. And, when you return carrying your bluetooth phone or headset, Asterisk will automatically cancel the call transfers and reactivate delivery of incoming calls to the designated phones in your home or office. As simple as this concept may sound, the devil is in the details.

Nerd Vittles » Follow-Me Phoning: Implementing Bluetooth Proximity Detection with Asterisk, Part I

OS iPod Control

YamiPod is an application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. It also has extra features such as lyrics support (with Web search), RSS news and podcast support, removal of duplicates, an easy note editor (with multi-page support), song synchronization, playlist export, and much more.

freshmeat.net: Project details for YamiPod

Grokster Shuts Down

Grokster Ltd., a leading developer of Internet file-sharing software popular for stealing songs and movies online, agreed Monday to shut down operations to settle a landmark piracy case filed by Hollywood and the music industry, The Associated Press has learned.

Grokster Downloading Service Shuts Down – Yahoo! News

MSFT Patches Glitches In Image Rendering

Three image-rendering flaws in the Windows operating system could put millions of Internet-connected users at risk of PC takeover attacks, Microsoft Corp. warned on Tuesday.The flaws could be exploited via any software that displays images, including the widely used Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer programs.

Critical Windows Patch Fights Takeover Attacks

Ebay Adds RSS to Stores

first off is the coolest new thing on the eBay platform: RSS Feeds. With eBay Stores that enable RSS, you can now subscribe to a feed of the newest items listed in that store. PetriFinds is one of the stores that has turned on the feature already, and you can see the RSS link at the bottom of the store page.

Alan Lewis: RSS in eBay Stores, Baby

Explain this to me?

Library Stuff has a great list of Q and A sites.  You have a question, ask it there and maybe you’ll get an answer.  Most seem to suffer from the lack of quality control you’d expect.  John has thought about doing something like this using legal ed as a background.  “Would someone explain estoppel to me?”, that sort of thing.  Could work since focus would help with quality.

CLasscaster Gets ALE’d

The feature topic for the November ALE central meetingwill be an overview of Classcaster, a blog system supportingtelephony messaging and podcasting

Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts » Blog Archive » ALE Central for November 10, 7:30pm

That’s right, Classcaster gets its first non-legal ed airing on Thursday evening as I trot it out for the Linux users group.