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Antivirus is 'completely wasted money': Cisco CSO
2008-05-29 12:33:00
Slashdot It!Companies are wasting money on security processes — such as applying patches and using antivirus software — which just don't work, according to Cisco 's chief security officer John Stewart.Speaking at the AusCERT 2008 conference in the Gold Coast yesterday, Stewart said the malware industry is moving faster than the security industry, making it impossible for users to remain secure."If patching and antivirus is where I spend my money, and I'm still getting infected and I still have to clean up computers and I still need to reload them and still have to recover the user's data and I still have to reinstall it, the entire cost equation of that is a waste."It's completely wasted money," Stewart told delegates.He said infections have become so common that most companies have learned to live with them."There are too many companies in the world that actually believe infection is just a cost of doing business and are getting used to doing it — as opposed to stopping i...
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U.S. corporations massively read employee e-mail
2008-05-29 12:29:00
Slashdot It!In its fifth-annual study of outbound e-mail and data loss prevention issues, Proofpoint found that large enterprises continue to incur risk from - and take action against - information leaks over outbound e-mail, as well as newer communications media such as blogs, message boards, media sharing sites and mobile devices.Outbound e-mail remains a key source of risk for U.S. enterprises with a record 44% of surveyed companies reporting that they investigated an e-mail leak of confidential information in the past 12 months. 41% of the largest companies surveyed (those with 20,000 or more employees) reported that they employ staff to read or otherwise analyze the contents of outbound e-mail. 22% of these companies said they employ staff primarily or exclusively for this purpose. Other key findings in the survey include: * 40% of companies surveyed investigated an e-mail-based violation of privacy or data protection regulations in the past 12 months. * 26% of companies ...
More About: Mail , Read , E-Mail , Corporations , Employee

Microsoft offers cashback search
2008-05-29 12:16:00
Slashdot It!Microsoft is offering "cold, hard cash" to persuade users to shop online using its Live Search engine and help the company catch up to rival Google.The savings range between 2% and 30% on products sold by select retailers through its so-called cashback service.Microsoft's new site is seen as an attempt to convince advertisers it can combat Google's increasing share of the online ad market."2008 is the year that search got competitive," said Bill Gates.Speaking at the company's annual digital ad conference in Redmond, the company chairman laid out details of their latest product and told the audience to expect "big announcements around search to happen every six months"."The overwhelmingly positive feedback from all the partners confirms there is this opportunity for change," Mr Gates said in his keynote speech at the end of the two-day summit.Different enoughUnder the cashback service, the software giant promises to pay back a portion of the purchase price of anything...
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Microsoft shows off multitouch sensor prototype
2008-05-29 12:13:00
Slashdot It!Microsoft researchers on Thursday demonstrated a new, low-cost method for manipulating a digital desktop or wall display with two hands.Called LaserTouch, the prototype is the latest invention of computer vision specialist Andy Wilson, a researcher from Microsoft Research's Redmond, Wash., campus. Wilson has worked on Microsoft's Surface computing, among other projects. But more recently he's developed a sensing technology system that would allow people to retrofit any display--e.g., a desktop or projector--so that they could use their hands, instead of a mouse, to interact with the computer.The system uses a low-cost infrared camera and lasers to track how the user touches the screen in order to prompt a response from the software. The result could be a virtual chess game with a friend over a networked computer, or a better way to show off a PowerPoint presentation, Wilson said."It's a simple technique," Wilson said Thursday during a presentation of the prototype. W...
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Linking to movies leads to $4 million in fines
2008-05-29 11:38:00
Slashdot It!Hollywood has been granted another victory in its war against piracy, this time at the expense of two linking sites that the Motion Picture Association of America believes profited from enabling copyright infringement. Both ShowStash.net and Cinematube.net have been hit with multimillion dollar judgments recently for copyright infringement of various movies and TV shows.Even though ShowStash and Cinematube didn't host any of these files, both were found guilty of contributory copyright infringement, according to the judges' opinions, because they searched for, identified, collected, and indexed links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows. Aside from monetary damages, both sites are now prohibited from engaging in further activity that would infringe upon the studios' work. The damages totaled $2.7 million for ShowStash and $1.3 million for Cinematube, neither of which were particularly well-known to the general Internet community. The MPAA doesn't seem to care muc...
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Open graphics card available for preorder
2008-05-28 16:01:00
Slashdot It!The Open Graphics Project has started accepting preorders for their OGD1, a graphics card with a completely open source design. This initial release is billed as a high-end FPGA prototyping kit specifically designed to test computer graphics architectures. The card has two DVI connectors, S-Video, 256MB RAM, and a 64bit PCI-X connector. The core of the system is a Xilinx Spartan-3 XC3S4000 FPGA. A nonvolatile Lattice XP10 FPGA is used to bootstrap the Xilinx at power up. Here's the layout of the specific components.An open design like this could prove very beneficial to the free software community. The open hardware makes driver development much easier; binary drivers from traditional graphics manufacturers have been very hard to work with in the past. The OGD1 could also be used with CPU architectures that wouldn't be unsupported by normal graphics cards. An FPGA based design means that CPU intensive processes like video decoding could be offloaded to the video card w...
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Moody’s error gave top ratings to debt products
2008-05-28 15:54:00
Slashdot It!Moody’s awarded incorrect triple-A ratings to billions of dollars worth of a type of complex debt product due to a bug in its computer models, a Financial Times investigation has discovered.Internal Moody’s documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in 2007 that products rated the previous year had received top-notch triple A ratings and that, after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four notches lower.News of the coding error comes as ratings agencies are under pressure from regulators and governments, who see failings in the rating of complex structured debt as an integral part of the financial crisis. While coding errors do occur there is no record of one being so significant.Moody’s said it was “conducting a thorough review” of the rating of the constant proportion debt obligations – derivative instruments conceived at the height of the credit bubble that appeared to pr...
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PayPal founder Peter Thiel launched The Seasteading Institute
2008-05-28 15:41:00
Slashdot It!Tired of the United States and the other 190-odd nations on Earth?If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute , an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and legal systems." "Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world," Thiel said in a statement.It might sound like the setting for the videogame Bioshock, but the institute isn't playing around: It plans to splash a prototype into the San Francisco Bay within the next two years, the ...
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Zuneral this Saturday!
2008-05-28 11:33:00
Slashdot It!We regret to report the sudden, unexpected death of Digital Rights Management. Details of the tragedy at present remain unclear, but he was rushed to the hospital following a direct collision with an oncoming future last week at 10 PM. He was seven years old.Zuneral ServicesMay 24th (this Saturday )6:30 PMJFK Park, Memorial DriveCambridge, MA Yesterday, in preparation of the public funeral that will take place this Saturday, members of Harvard College Free Culture entombed the recently-deceased Digital Rights Management in Quincy Courtyard at around 5 PM. As part of the healing process, all the attendees took part in saying goodbye to DRM by constructing its coffin. The Decedents The decedents are encased into their pourable-but-not-too-liquidy coffin The final funeral and burial services for the recently deceased will take place at 6:30 PM on Saturday, May 24th in Cambridge’s JFK Park. A reception will follow to give attendees the chance to reminisce of the short life ...

Yahoo Nominates Existing Board
2008-05-28 11:25:00
Slashdot It!Yahoo nominated 9 of its 10 existing directors for re-election to the company’s board on Thursday, setting the stage for a showdown with dissident shareholders at its annual shareholder meeting.Yahoo also postponed its annual meeting from July 3 and said it now expected to hold it at the end of July.The Internet media company also disclosed in a regulatory filing that shareholders other than the investor Carl C. Icahn planned to nominate candidates to its board. Yahoo said it did not believe these shareholders had complied with its company bylaws.Mr. Icahn, who recently amassed 10 million Yahoo shares and options to buy an additional 49 million, started a proxy campaign last week to replace Yahoo’s board with directors who would reopen merger talks with Microsoft.Microsoft walked away from its sweetened $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo this month.Get Daily Updates via EmailProtect your computer with Windows Onecarehttp://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
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No spring dashboard update this year
2008-05-27 15:37:00
Slashdot It!While we welcome updates and improvements to the infrastructure, we can't help but be a little disappointed. With Sony regularly evolving the PS3's functionality, a single update in a year for the (arguably more fully-featured) 360 dashboard seems a little paltry by comparison.Other news to be gleaned from the Whitten interview: Underperforming XBLA titles will be delisted; the size/price limit of XBLA titles has been upped to 350MB and 1600 MS points, respectively; and a tool to fix the DRM 'fiasco' is due next month.Get Daily Update s via EmailProtect your computer with Windows Onecarehttp://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
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Microsoft Patents Proactive Virus Protection
2008-05-27 15:36:00
Slashdot It!Microsoft has just snared a U.S. patent for proactive virus protection, which is how security software helps secure your PC when it encounters shape-shifting malware not already in its antivirus definition file. What I want to know is, what does this mean for all the other vendors -- like McAfee, Symantec, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro -- that have been selling proactive protection software for years? Do they now have to pay Microsoft protection; I mean, royalties?Here's the quick low-down on the new Microsoft patent. Issued on May 20, patent number 7,376,970 is entitled "System and method for proactive computer virus protection." The inventor is Adrian Marinescu, who was at one point (maybe he still is) a lead developer on the Windows kernel team, heavily involved in the heap manager. He previously worked on Windows NT's object manager, which is a key software traffic-cop managing the interaction among all the executive kernel subsystems. All this is by way of saying tha...
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IT Workers Weigh In on Health Habits
2008-05-27 12:56:00
Slashdot It!Feeling a little, shall we say, sluggish lately? You might be among the vast ranks of IT workers who have put on some extra heft while sitting at their desks.A study by CareerBuilder.com found that half of U.S. IT workers have gained weight at their current jobs. The study, which polled nearly 7,700 participants from Feb. 11 through March 13, found that 34 percent of IT workers report they have gained more than 10 pounds in their current positions. Even more alarming, 17 percent say they have put on more than 20 pounds!Who knew managed services could be hazardous to your health? While the study doesn't specify anything about workers monitoring customer systems remotely, come on, you've got to admit that keeping an eye on a customer's systems from miles away by staring at computer screens surely produces far less sweat than even the minimal amount of walking to and from the truck a technician drives to a customer site for troubleshooting.But let's not get crazy. The c...
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Open-Source File Format Is to Be a Part of Microsoft Office
2008-05-27 08:31:00
Slashdot It!Microsoft was set to announce Thursday that it would make the interchangeable document format of a competitor available in its own market-leading Office 2007 software during the first half of 2009. The company, under pressure from European regulators, national standards organizations and its own government clients, said it planned to give customers the ability to open, edit and save documents in Open Document Format — the main competitor to the Microsoft Word format — through a free update.With the update, consumers will be able to save text documents in ODF format and adjust Office 2007 settings to automatically save documents in the rival format.Next year, Microsoft will also let consumers open and save files in Adobe’s Portable Document Format 1.5 and PDF/A formats.Chris Capossela, a senior vice president in Microsoft’s business division in Redmond, Wash., said the decision stemmed from Microsoft’s commitment to make its programs more compatible with rival s...
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Microsoft Offers Rebates to Shoppers Using Its Search
2008-05-27 08:11:00
Slashdot It!With its share of the Internet search market in steady decline and its pursuit of an alliance with Yahoo in doubt, Microsoft is taking a new approach to jump-starting its search engine: offering rebates to people who use it to find and buy some products.Microsoft executives said the program, called Live Search cashback, is part of a plan to come up with new approaches to areas of the search business where they see opportunities to make inroads against Google, the market leader.The new program focuses on searches for products to be bought online, which Microsoft executives said account for roughly a third of search queries and a majority of search advertising revenue.“This is a very big part of the $20 billion search market,” said the chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates, at an advertising conference run by the company. “Make no mistake, we are about having the best search, having the best results.”Some innovations in the business model of search, like Live Search ca...
More About: Offers , Rebates , Shoppers

Corsair DOMINATOR Hits 2462MHz
2008-05-26 17:10:00
Slashdot It!Corsair , a worldwide leader in high performance computer and flash memory products, announced today that Corsair Labs has set the world record for the highest achieved DDR3 frequency.Verified and validated by CPU-Z, Corsair Labs achieved an astounding speed of 2462MHz at CL=9 with a single-rank 1GB module. This new world record eclipses all previous CPU-Z validated memory benchmarks. This record was set using Corsair's award winning DOMINATOR DDR3 memory module paired with an Asus P5E3 Premium motherboard based on the Intel X48 chipset. This is now the highest achieved DDR3 frequency of all time. Validated results and setup details can be found at http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?i d=361829. "Corsair is obsessed with pushing memory technology to its limits and beyond," said Martin Mueller, Senior Director of Engineering, Corsair. "This World Record demonstrates the overclocking and high speed memory expertise within Corsair Labs and definitely pushes the memory en...
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Should YouTube censor al-Qaida?
2008-05-26 16:34:00
Slashdot It!Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., called Monday for YouTube to take down al-Qaida videos that users had posted, but the site said most of the videos his office had flagged did not contain material that violated their guidelines and rejected his request that they act to remove all material from U.S. designated terror groups.In a letter to Eric Schmidt, the chairman and chief executive officer of Google Inc., which owns YouTube, Lieberman urged the popular video-sharing service to enforce its own "community guidelines" against "graphic or gratuitous violence" and said the company should change its rules "to address violent extremist material."In the letter, released to the media and dated Monday, Lieberman wrote that removing videos produced by al-Qaida and other extremist groups should be straightforward, because "so many of the Islamist terrorist organizations brand their material with logos or icons identifying their provenance."In a blog posting, YouTube said it welcomed...
More About: Youtube , Al-Qaida , Al Qaida

Vista laid low by new malware figures
2008-05-26 16:33:00
Slashdot It!It looks as if Vista 's reputation for improved security could be heading for the pages of history. PC Tools has renewed last week's attack on the platform with new figures that appear to back up its claim that Vista is almost as vulnerable as its predecessors.According to analysis from the Australian company's ThreatFire user base, 58,000 PCs running Vista were compromised by at least one piece of malware over the six months to May 2008, equivalent to 27 percent of all Vista machines probed. Vista made up 12.6 percent, or 190,692, of the 1,513,502 machines running Windows in the user base.In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.Only a week ago, PC Tools revealed that Vista was as likely to be h...
More About: Malware , Figures

‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails
2008-05-26 16:30:00
Slashdot It!A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts.The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.Home Office officials have discussed the option of the national database with telecommunications companies and ISPs as pa...
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Why we can't stop playing a computerized card game.
2008-05-26 16:18:00
Slashdot It!In a 2000 Wall Street Journal essay, Slate's founding Editor Michael Kinsley wrote that this here magazine once "thought of adopting the slogan 'Slate: The Thinking Person's Solitaire,' but rejected it as too honest." This is a reasonable assessment of our audience—you are reading this alone; you are brilliant—but a bit uncharitable when it comes to solitaire. The canonical single-player game is an easy punch line, most often cited as the preferred hobby of the office slacker or the intellectual playground of dullards. (George W. Bush was known to play the occasional hand while governor of Texas.) But the poor, benighted game is also—according to a Microsoft employee who worked on reprogramming it for Windows Vista—the most-used program in the Windows universe. We mock solitaire because it is our secret shame.Though on its face it might seem trivial, pointless, a terrible way to waste a beautiful afternoon, etc., solitaire has unquestionably transformed the w...
More About: Card , Game , Stop , Card Game

Tevo Headset
2008-05-24 16:58:00
Slashdot It! Here is the video review of the Tevo Headset Get Daily Updates via EmailProtect your computer with Windows Onecarehttp://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

Lamptron Neon Light
2008-05-24 16:57:00
Slashdot It!Here is the video review of the Lamptron Neon Light Get Daily Updates via EmailProtect your computer with Windows Onecarehttp://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

Macs Defy Windows' Gravity
2008-05-24 16:31:00
Slashdot It!Consider this: Apple's retail market share is 14 percent, and two-thirds for PCs costing $1,000 or more.Should I repeat those numbers? The share data is for first-quarter brick-and-mortar stores, as tabulated by the NPD Group. Apple's market share is but one measure of success. Sales growth is way up, while Windows desktop PC sales are way down."In notebooks they're growing two times the market," said Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis. "Windows notebooks are pretty much flat right now." For the first quarter, Windows notebooks had "zero percent" growth year over year, Stephen said. By comparison, Apple notebooks had "50 to 60 percent growth." On the desktop, "They're up 45 percent," he continued. "The [overall] market is down 20 percent. Windows desktops would be down 25 percent." The figures are also for first quarter. I spoke with Stephen earlier this afternoon. He remarked: "iMacs are growing and the Windows desktop ain't. No matter how yo...

Gold Watches
2008-05-24 16:26:00
Are you looking for a gold watch now? Then you better read this review as I am going to review this website that is selling gold watches at a very cheap price. CHeaper then the rivals online. gold watchesThe website I am going to review today is called jewelelegance.com They are a nice bunch of people trying to sell gold watches to people like you and me at a very cheap price. Free ShippingAll the watches come with free shipping on them. So no worries about shipping costs. Check them outhttp://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
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Former AOL Executives Sued in Ad-Revenue Case
2008-05-24 16:18:00
Slashdot It!In a reminder that the wreckage of the disastrous merger between America Online and Time Warner is still being sifted, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday filed fraud charges against eight former AOL executives, saying they had inflated online advertising revenue by more than $1 billion.The specific allegations made by the S.E.C. in two civil lawsuits are well-trodden territory. The company settled the charges three years ago. But the action is the most far-reaching yet against executives, who are accused of inflating revenue at AOL around the time of its 2000 announcement that it planned to merge with Time Warner.The allegations involve a series of online advertising transactions beginning in 2000 — a time when AOL was under increasing pressure to reach revenue targets to justify its merger with Time Warner — that eventually led to several earnings restatements. The lawsuits were filed Monday in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan.The action...
More About: Case , Revenue , Executives , Sued

Google CEO bullish on mobile Web advertising
2008-01-28 16:14:00
Slashdot It!The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said."It's the re-creation of the Internet, it's the re-creation of the PC (personal computer) story, and it is before us--and it is very likely it will happen in the next year," he told a panel at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland.Current estimates for mobile advertising are cautious, with consultancy Forrester predicting revenues of under $1 billion by 2012.But Schmidt said this figure was too low and failed to take into account the fact the mobile Web was reaching a tipping point.Google aims to be a prime mover by bidding for coveted airwaves to launch an open U.S. wireless network, pitting it against established telecommunications players. The move will take the Silicon Valley-based company well beyond its core Web search and online advertising franchises.Some analysts are worried at the...
More About: Mobile , Advertising , Mobile Web , Web Advertising

Windows 7 coming out next year?
2008-01-28 10:39:00
Slashdot It!A recently-release roadmap for the next major Window release – Windows 7 – indicates that Microsoft is planning to release the new operating system in the second half of 2009, rather than the anticipated release date of some time in 2010.There are apparently three “milestone” builds planned for 2008, and the first one – M1 – has already shipped to key partners for code validation. M1 is for the English language build only, but is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will most likely be the last Windows operating system available in 32-bit, and given the rapid advances Windows Vista is making in the 64-bit computing market, this seems a sensible decision. is this Windows 7: this screenshot, floating around on online forums, purports to be from an alpha of Windows 7. Probably fake, but interesting nonetheless.M2 should ship around April/May, and M3 some time in the third quarter of 2008. There’s no available roa...
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Lotus Notes for iPhone not ready yet
2008-01-28 09:49:00
Slashdot It!Despite reports that the launch of Lotus Notes for the iPhone and iPod Touch is imminent, IBM says it is not quite ready to release the software.A formal announcement of Lotus Notes for Apple's portable devices was to occur at IBM's Lotusphere conference this week, with the software available free for users with a Lotus Web-access license or on a yearly subscription basis for new users.IBM is, however, not ready to put out the software. "It's not something that (is) ready to go out and market or launch," an IBM spokesperson told ZDNet Australia.The spokesperson said that speculation over the release may have been prompted by an earlier demonstration of the software by IBM.The release of Lotus Notes for the iPhone and iPod may drive adoption of the devices by business users. Analyst house Gartner recently warned enterprises against adopting the iPhone, saying the device could "punch a hole" through corporate security systems.However, Kevin McIsaac, an analyst at resear...
More About: Iphone , Ready

AMD Aims Three Graphics Cards at Budget Gamers
2008-01-28 09:30:00
Slashdot It!AMD's ATI graphics division launched three new PC graphics cards that are designed to provide gaming performance at a budget price.The new products undercut the existing ATI Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. Directly below the two existing cards in terms of performance is the ATI Radeon HD 3650, priced at between $79 to $99. Two new cards, the new Radeon HD 3450 and Radeon HD 3470, both offer DirectX 10.1 support, but at prices as low as a suggested price of $49. What's interesting is AMD's approach: although the company plans to launch the ultra-high-end HD 3870 X2 soon, AMD's emphasis in its early 2008 launches is effective use of mainstream, budget graphics."The good thing is that we've been very consistent in where we want to lead the visual experience," said Pat Moorhead, AMD's vice president of advanced marketing. "The key thing is to expand the definition of the visual experience; games are important to us, but so is video."A key facet of this is what the company cal...
More About: Graphics , Budget , Cards , Gamers

EBay's retiring chief may run for California governor
2008-01-27 17:12:00
Slashdot It!As she prepares to depart from EBay after a decade at the helm, Chief Executive Meg Whitman appears to be investigating a new career -- in politics.Whitman has talked with top Republicans about the possibility of a run for California governor in 2010, according to three operatives who have had discussions with her. Whitman is said to be asking detailed questions about the logistics of a run and the effect she could have as governor, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the conversations.Whitman did not make herself available for comment. A source close to her said she had been talking with Republicans around the state and had become "fascinated" by politics in her work as a fundraiser for GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and a former colleague of Whitman at the consulting firm Bain & Co.The source close to Whitman, however, downplayed the seriousness of the convers...
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