Amalas - Slashdot User

Comment It's the hardware (Score 2, Interesting) 340

by espergreen on Thursday September 25, 2008 @08:26PM (#25160295) Attached to: NYT Ponders the Future of Solaris In a Linux/Windows World

Solaris is dying, but it's because of the hardware. The "big iron" sparc hardware is simply obsolete. Paying tens of thousands of dollars for a 2ghz sparc system is looking less and less attractive. Solaris x86, of course, cannot compete with Linux. AIX is still relevant due to the great LPAR virtualization and great POWER hardware. Nothing from HP or Sun comes close.

Comment Flocking (Score 4, Insightful) 182

by paladinwannabe2 on Monday December 03, 2007 @06:49PM (#21566035) Attached to: FCC Chairman Tries For More Media Consolidation

People tend to flock to where the group-think is. Very few people want to be challenged about what they believe on a daily basis- it takes a lot of work, especially if you're willing to admit the possibility you might be wrong. Slashdot tends to have a variety of (highly nerd-centric) views, so it's easy to find a bunch of people who passionately agree with you on issues that most people don't care about: File sharing, the best Star Trek Captain, Emacs vs. Vi, etc. There will be the heretics who disagree with you, but you can always mod up those you agree with and ignore the rest.

That being said, Slashdot would be horrible as my only news source. It's got a huge number of opinions, but most of them are the idealistic ravings of an intelligent but dysfunctional individual with minimal real-world experience. (Something like 80% of non-troll posts are in this category, including most of my own). Then you've got the corporate shills, the grammar Nazis, and the occasional individual who knows what he's talking about. Plus, there are all these rambling posts that are almost on topic, but don't really address the issue at hand- not to mention the article.

The Quest For Glory 35

Posted by Zonk on Monday September 24, 2007 @01:32PM from the hail-adventurer dept.

What happens when you take the dour attitude and put-upon demeanor of an RPG NPC to the mean streets of ... Bath, England? Rock, Paper, Shotgun highlights John Walker's attempt to get the good citizens of Bath to do a quest for a kindly old wizard. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues. "In this time of rejection, I did learn a few useful things, however. Older people are much less likely to see the funny side of something, even when the safety of the universe is in the balance. Couples are far better at avoiding the magically hindered than individuals. Men with grey beards really don't like to be called, 'fellow wizard.' (Although, their wives are likely to find it funny.) And then, hope was restored in the form of a man in his 40s. His reaction was certainly the most peculiar of the day. He resigned himself to helping me as if he had to. Could this man have been a true adventurer? Someone who is aware of the demands of being a hero? Perhaps his acquiescent attitude was due to the low level of the quest, and the relatively poor reward for a man of such experience. But something about the simplicity of the task, and the accompanying XP, must have been enough."

TV Viewing Linked to Attention Problems 301

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday September 05, 2007 @12:57PM from the tired-of-being-told-to-go-play-outside dept.

oDDmON oUT writes "While your mother may have told you that sitting too close to the TV was bad for your eyes, the folks over at New Scientist are reporting that too much television may be linked to a bad attention span 'The study is not proof that TV viewing causes attention problems, Landhuis notes, because it may be that children prone to attention problems may be drawn to watching television. "However, our results show that the net effect of television seems to be adverse."'"

Investors Bailing On SCO Stock, SCOX Plummets 368

Posted by kdawson on Monday August 13, 2007 @04:29PM from the is-it-wetter-underwater-than-when-it-rains dept.

HailDorothy writes "SCO's stock price is plummeting in the aftermath of Judge Kimball's ruling that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights, as we discussed earlier. '[W]e will continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from here,' SCO said in a public statement issued in a futile attempt to calm investors. SCO's stock price has fallen 70 percent during trading today, reaching a 52-week low. It looks like the end is near for SCO, which still owes Novell 95 percent of the SVRX UNIX royalties it collected from Microsoft and Sun through the SCOsource program. As Judge Kimbell noted in his ruling, it's unlikely that Novell will ever be able to collect on those royalties."

New Dynamic Updating Discussions 100

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 19, 2007 @01:39PM from the new-and-improved dept.

Slashdot users of the Discussion2 system now have a new 'Update' button visible on their floating control slider, as well at the end of the discussion. This button will update your page to include comments posted since the page was loaded, so now you can keep discussion pages up to date without doing a full reload. It's nowhere near complete yet, but it's a nice step that goes a long ways towards making it easier to use larger discussions while they are actively updating. If you aren't using Discussion2, you need to log in, and toggle the checkbox visible on every page. You probably need bother only if you are using Firefox 1.5 or 2.x or Safari. You can send bug reports to me if you want.

1 Billion PCs by End of 2008 175

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:38AM from the most-in-landfills-by-2012 dept.

javipas writes "Acording to a study published by Forrester Research, 2008 will be the year in wich a psychological barrier will be surpassed. By the end of next year there will be 1.000.000.000 computers all around the world, a number that will double itself in just five more years. The reason: the emerging markets of countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible for 775 million new PCs and laptop computers. Part of them, of course, coming from projects like the OLPC's one."

Microsoft Slaps Its Most Valuable Professional 474

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 05, 2007 @10:47PM from the schizophrenic-is-one-word-for-it dept.

Violent Offender writes with a touching story in The Register about Microsoft's awarding of its Most Valuable Professional credential to a British hobbyist, Jamie Cansdale, then turning around and threatening him with a lawsuit for the very software that won him the award. The article links to the amazing correspondence from Microsoft on Cansdale's site.

Microsoft Patches 19 Flaws, 6 in Vista 307

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @11:23AM from the many-patches-makes-os-work dept.

Cheesy Balogna writes "Microsoft has just released seven advisories — all rated critical — with patches for at least 19 vulnerabilities affecting the Windows operating system, the widely deployed Office productivity suite and the dominant Internet Explorer browser. Six of the 19 vulnerabilities affect Windows Vista. 'There are patches for 7 different vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution attacks against Word, Excel and Office. Users of Microsoft Exchange are also urged to pay attention to one of the critical bulletins, which cover 4 different flaws. A cumulative IE update addresses six potentially dangerous bugs. There are the six that apply to IE 7 on Windows Vista. The last bulletin in this month's batch apples to CAPICOM (Cryptographic API Component Object Model) and could also put users at risk of complete system hijack attacks.'"

EFF and Dvorak Blame the Digg Revolt On Lawyers 262

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 06, 2007 @10:26PM from the jet-fuel-on-a-fire dept.

enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."

AACS Vows to Fight Bloggers 601

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday May 04, 2007 @10:09AM from the guerilla-bloggers dept.

Jonas Wisser writes "The BBC is carrying the story that AACS has promised to take action against those who have posted the AACS crack online. Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.' The AACS website tells consumers how they can 'continue to enjoy content protected by AACS' by 'refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players.'"

Google to Hold Worldwide Developer Day 60

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @08:43AM from the there-better-be-punch-and-pie dept.

Incon writes "Google is holding a day for developers to meet and learn from Google staff at its various worldwide offices. Places at the event are sure to go quicker than hotcakes, so get in quickly. Locations that Developer Day will be held at are: Beijing, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Tokyo and of course at Google HQ in Mountain View."

Popular HD DVD Disc Hits a Snag 286

Posted by Hemos on Monday April 02, 2007 @11:00AM from the tear-your-pants-on-that-snag dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Following weeks of headlines touting strong sales for Blu-ray discs, rival next-gen format HD DVD looked like it had its own success story in the making with this week's HD DVD release of the cult hit 'Children of Men.' The disc recieved a stellar review at High-Def Digest, and went on to out-sell the most popular Blu-ray discs on Amazon. But now comes word of apparent incompatibility issues with the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, with some (but not all) consumers reporting that even multiple returns of the disc are unplayable on the format's leading playback device."

Regrowing Lost Body Parts Getting Closer All the Time 210

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 19, 2007 @04:49PM from the go-go-gadget-hand dept.

[TheBORG] writes "There are two stories on Yahoo! News about regrowing lost body parts. One is about regrowing lost fingers & limbs and the other one is about regrowing teeth. The story about regrowing lost fingers and limbs talks about the experimental use of powdered pig bladder to regrow fingers and eventually lost limbs for soldiers and others in need from information that Pentagon-funded scientists hopefully learn from studying the salamander. The story about regrowing teeth talks about how Japanese scientists used primitive cells and injected them into a framework of collagen. Once grown to a certain point, scientists implanted the growths into mice where the teeth developed normally."

Groklaw No Front for IBM 206

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday February 15, 2007 @08:31PM from the killing-the-messenger dept.

A Groklaw Reader writes "After all the wild speculation SCO put forth about Pamela Jones, her alleged subpoena by SCO, and her recent vacation due to illness, we now have Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols writing to say 'Yes, there is a PJ.' In his own words, he says, 'Let me address this directly. Yes, Pamela Jones is a real person. I've met her several times [...] I consider her a friend. She is not a front for anyone.' Hopefully, this statement will be enough to put those SCO-induced conspiracy theories to rest."

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