We learned the story of Richard Gaywood, the not-so-happy Xbox Live user whose gamertag was banned. Since “RichardGaywood” was both the user’s gamertag as well as his legal, honest-to-goodness given name, Kotaku contacted Microsoft to learn the reason behind the ban.
Hit the jump for their response…

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A friend of mine actually works for Zappos in Las Vegas. He loves his job. Maybe it’s time to move.
It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and [...]

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I’ve always been into scripting things using random numbers based on random functions, like PHP’s “rand()” function… but I’ve never compared these types of functions to true random number generators. Then one day, I stumbled upon Random.org, which is a true random number generating service.
The difference is that most random number generating functions in programming [...]

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“So I recently discovered a great new running trail one evening- beautiful rolling dirt with old, moss-covered trees. Deer and owls, and not another human being to be found. Only problem is that the trail lay beyond a barb-wire fence, and a “No Trespassing” sign.
Went back a week or two later, found the end, and [...]

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Security startup Rohati Systems emerged out of stealth mode today and unveiled a multigigabit-speed network appliance for controlling user access to applications.
Rohati’s Transaction Network System (TNS) appliance, which will ship in July, handles user entitlement management with per-transaction policies across multiple applications. The appliance plugs into the network and doesn’t use client agent software nor [...]

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So you think you know something about data privacy? A lot of Californians did, too — until some law school experts tested them.
In a research paper released yesterday, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law found that the majority of people they surveyed did not know how their personal data might be [...]

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The nation’s biggest electronics retailer has told the Federal Communications Commission that the agency lacks the authority to punish Best Buy for screwing up its digital transition TV selling rules. “The Commission never before has claimed, asserted, or exercised direct or ancillary jurisdiction over retailers, or retail practices, of the nature that is asserted” by [...]

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As a former Verizon customer, I must say I’m very surprised. From what I’ve seen of their track record, Verizon of all providers would be the last one I would expect to embrace openness.
Oh, and if you like this sort of news, I can’t help mentioning Openmoko and their upcoming FreeRunner phone. It’s a totally [...]

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Red Hat’s Fedora Project launched today the new Fedora 9. The new version offers users of the Linux Operating System a whole new set of features, including the KDE 4 desktop environment which represents the system’s main characteristic.
Fedora is a Red Hat Package Manager – based, general purpose Linux distribution with several objectives, including the [...]

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The Fedora Project has released Fedora 9, a significant upgrade for the popular Linux distribution. Fedora 9 packs in a number of new features including an improved package management system, KDE 4 and more.
Perhaps the best part of Fedora 9 is the new live USB options. Fedora has always made it easy to go from [...]

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Why-o-why did they decide to make Debian specific changes to OpenSSL? Seriously, leave cryptography to the people who are cryptographers. Distro-builders should keep the hell away from it. To get cryptography right is already hard enough as it is.
We’re checking our company keys now. If a few of them are invalid we have to get [...]

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Another PSA from Judd Apatow with Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Made for the “Night of Too Many Stars” benefit for Autism Education…

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In that box is Lamborghini Reventon number one of twenty. Apparently, it’s the only example which will be sold privately via a traditional dealership — in this case, Lamborghini of Las Vegas. The other nineteen were all spoken for before ever leaving the factory. We’ve attached a sampling of photos here, but to see the [...]

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