BurzumNazgul - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft Kills Expression Suite (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk on Friday December 21, 2012 @11:05AM

mikejuk writes: Microsoft has announced that the Expression suite of design tools is no more. It has been removed from sale immediately and it has been placed on a maintenance only status until it reaches its end of life. Expression was Microsoft’s offering for designers and competed directly with Adobe products. You can now download the components of Expression — Design 4, Web 4 and Encoder 4 — for free but you can’t buy them. Of course, knowing that you are using "doomed" products, even for free, takes some of the icing off the cake.The central component of the suite the UI designer Blend is to be integrated with Visual Studio 2012 probably along with Update 2. It looks as if Microsoft is giving up on trying to get designers to use its tools.

Submission + - Banks Find Way To Sell Consumers' Shopping Data (forbes.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer on Monday July 11, 2011 @03:25PM

nonprofiteer writes: Banks plan to compete with Groupon and LivingSocial by targeting coupons and deals at credit card holders based on their shopping habits. They found a way to do it without violating financial privacy laws...

"They’re “selling” shopping habits the same way Facebook “sells” personal data about its users: in-network. It’s a clever privacy work-around. Just as Facebook allows advertisers to specifically target certain kinds of users based on their profile information (without actually providing that profile information to the advertisers), banks plan to allow advertisers to send deals and coupons to their customers based on what they’ve bought before. That way, no user data actually leaves the network — instead, deals just enter the network. Each time a customer cashes in on one of those deals, the bank gets a commission."

Submission + - Driven off the Road by MBAs 1

Submitted by theodp on Sunday July 10, 2011 @12:32AM

theodp writes: In his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, legendary car-guy Bob Lutz says to get the U.S. economy growing again, we need to fire the MBAs and let engineers run the show. The auto industry, writes TIME's Rana Foroohar, is actually a terrific proxy for a trend toward short-term, myopically balance-sheet-driven management that has infected American business. In the first half of the 20th century, industrial giants like Ford, GE, AT&T and others used new technologies to create the best possible products and services with the idea that if you build it better, the customers will come. But by the late '70s, if-you-can-measure-it-you-can-manage-it MBAs were flourishing, and engineers were relegated to the geek back rooms. While the whiz-kidding of American business yielded some positives, moving numbers around can do only so much; over the long haul, you've got to invent or improve real products and services to grow. 'Shoemakers should be run by shoe guys,' argues Lutz, 'and software firms by software guys.' Learning that China plans to open 40 new graduate schools of business in the next few years, Lutz quipped, 'That's the best news I've heard in years.'

Cancer Cluster Possibly Found Among TSA Workers 487

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 27, 2011 @04:18PM from the hope-they-offer-good-health-care dept.

OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA employees at Logan International Airport believe they have identified a cancer cluster in their ranks, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They have requested dosimetry to counter 'TSA's improperly non-monitored radiation threat.' So far, at least, they have not received it. The documents also reveal a paper from Johns Hopkins that essentially questions whether it is even safe to stand near an operating scanner, let alone inside one. Also, the National Institute of Standards and Technology says that the Dept. of Homeland Security 'mischaracterized' their work by telling USA Today that NIST affirmed the safety of the scanners when in fact NIST does not do product safety testing and never tested a scanner for safety."

Submission + - LulzSec Document Dump Shows Cops' Fear Of iPhones (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Friday June 24, 2011 @02:30PM

jfruhlinger writes: "People are starting to comb through the details of the law enforcement documents made public by LulzSec. Blogger Kevin Fogarty noticed one interesting trend: The cops seem very anxious about iPhones, particularly apps that would allow encounters with a police officers to be recorded. Ironically, the cops seem extremely concerned with protecting their own privacy, but the documents encourage police to examine iPhones during the course of interacting with the public to see what apps they have."

Submission + - Linux 3.0 Will Be faster Than 2.6.39: Linus (muktware.com) 1

Submitted by sfcrazy on Friday June 24, 2011 @02:07PM

sfcrazy writes: While we were thinking that the announcement of 3.x branch was nothing more than Linus' mood swing, it seems there is more to it.

Linus wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, "3.0 will still be noticeably faster than 2.6.39 due to the other changes made (ie the read-ahead), so yes, the regression itself is fixed."

Submission + - Microsoft Exploits Firefox 4 Uproar, Beats IE Drum (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by

CWmike

on Friday June 24, 2011 @01:35PM

CWmike writes: "A Microsoft executive late Thursday used the furor over Mozilla's decision to curtail support for Firefox 4 to plead the case for Internet Explorer in the enterprise. 'I think I speak for everyone on the IE team when I say we'd like the opportunity to win back your business,' Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft, said in a post on his personal blog. 'We've got a great solution for corporate customers with both IE8 and IE9, and believe we could help you address the challenges you're currently facing.' Bixhorn addressed his open letter to the manager of workplace and mobility in the office of IBM's CIO, John Walicki, who, along with others, had voiced their displeasure with Mozilla's decision to retire Firefox 4 from security support. In a comment appended to a blog maintained by Michael Kaply, a consultant who specializes in customizing Firefox, Walicki called Mozilla's decision to end security support for Firefox 4 a 'kick in the stomach.'"

Comment And for musicians (Score 1) 123

by BurzumNazgul on Wednesday June 22, 2011 @02:05PM (#36532044) Attached to: USB Foot Controls

The pedal looks a lot like an effects pedal board. It could be useful for "home studio" type stuff.

WordPress.org Hacked, Plugin Repository Compromised 110

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 22, 2011 @09:19AM from the ok-that's-kinda-scary dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April hackers gained access to the WordPress.com servers and exposed passwords/API keys for Twitter and Facebook accounts. Now, hackers gained access to Wordpress.org and the plugin repository. Malicious code was found in several commits including popular plugins such as AddThis, WPtouch, or W3 Total Cache. Matt Mullenweg decided to force-reset all passwords on WordPress.org. This is a great reminder for all users not use the same password for two different services."

Submission + - AMD Rejects Industry Recognized SYSmark Benchmark (marketwire.com)

Submitted by

Deathspawner

on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @03:54PM

Deathspawner writes: "In an unusual move, Advanced Micro Devices has issued a press release rejecting its endorsement for the industry recognized benchmark SYSmark 2012. Developed by BAPCo and backed by industry heavyweights such as Dell, Intel and Hewlett-Packard, AMD has stated that BAPCo both has tuned SYSmark to create bias in favor of its competitor, and that its benchmarks are not relevant for the audience it targets. Also noted is a complete lack of heterogeneous CPU+GPU testing. Techgage tears apart AMD's claims to see if they are valid, while also evaluating the overall usefulness of SYSmark and the impact it can have on consumers."

Submission + - An Entirely New Genre Of Aircraft Arrives (gizmag.com) 1

Submitted by fergus07 on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @02:38PM

fergus07 writes: Austrian research company IAT21 has presented a new type of aircraft at the Paris Air Show which has the potential to become aviation's first disruptive technology since the jet engine. Neither fixed wing nor rotor craft, the D-Dalus uses four, mechanically-linked, contra-rotating, cylindrical turbines for its propulsion, and by altering the angle of the blades, it can launch vertically, hover perfectly still, move in any direction, and thrust upwards and hence "glue down" upon landing, which it can easily do on the deck of a ship, or even a moving vehicle. It's also almost silent, has the dynamic stability to enter buildings, handles rough weather with ease, flies very long distances very quickly and can lift very heavy loads. It accordingly holds immense promise as a platform for personal flight, for military usage, search and rescue, and much more.

Submission + - Mozilla Ships Firefox 5, Meets Rapid-Release Plan (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @01:47PM

CWmike writes: "Mozilla delivered on Tuesday the final version of Firefox 5, the first edition under the new faster-release regime it kicked off earlier this year. The company also patched 10 bugs in Firefox 5, including one in the browser's handling of the WebGL 3-D rendering standard that rival Microsoft has called unsafe. Firefox 5 looks identical to its predecessor, Firefox 4, but Mozilla's made changes under the hood. Mozilla has denied copying Google Chrome's upbeat schedule but analysts have noted the similarities and pointed out the need of all browser makers to step up the pace. Because of the shorter development cycle, Mozilla called out relatively few new features in Firefox 5."

Submission + - SkyDrive drops Silverlight (i-programmer.info) 3

Submitted by mikejuk on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @12:27PM

mikejuk writes: Microsoft's SkyDrive, a web service that provides cloud storage for end user files, has just acquired a revamped user interface — and it is HTML5 based. Yes, another Microsoft website has dropped Silverlight. How can Microsoft expect independent developers to base their future on Silverlight when Microsoft itself is abandoning it like a sinking ship? Whatever happened to "eating your own dog food"? It seems that now Microsoft would rather eat dog food made elsewhere....

Submission + - SCOTUS: Clean Air Act Trumps Emissions Lawsuits (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1 on Monday June 20, 2011 @01:28PM

schwit1 writes: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration.

The justices unanimously overturned a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that the lawsuit now involving six states can proceed in an effort to force the coal-burning plants to cut emissions of gases that contribute to climate change.

In a defeat for environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the clean air laws.

The ruling stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit claiming the five electric utilities have created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The lawsuit wanted a federal judge to order them to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.

Submission + - Microsoft to dump .Net for HTML5/JavaScript? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by joelholdsworth on Monday June 13, 2011 @11:34AM

joelholdsworth writes: Microsoft seem to be set on adopting HTML5 and JavaScript as its main application development tools for Windows 8 — is this the end of .NET?" "Microsoft developers feel left in the dark and very angry at the way they are being treated. You only have to browse the Microsoft forums to discover how strong the feeling is: forum post 1, forum post 2 and an open letter.

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