Unknown Lamer - Slashdot User

Submission + - Debian Founder Ian Murdock Has Died

Submitted by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:11PM

Unknown Lamer writes: After a Twitter meltdown yesterday, it has been confirmed that Ian Murdock has died. From the Docker blog: "It is with great sadness that we inform you that Ian Murdock passed away on Monday night. This is a tragic loss for his family, for the Docker community, and the broader open source world; we all mourn his passing. ... Ian helped pioneer the notion of a truly open project and community, embracing open design and open contribution; in fact the formative document of the open source movement itself (the Open Source Definition) was originally a Debian position statement. It is a testament to Ian’s commitment to openness and community that there are now more than 1,000 people currently involved in Debian development."

Submission + - Cyanogenmod Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Unknown Lamer on Thursday April 16, 2015 @01:38PM

Unknown Lamer writes: Microsoft and Cyanogenmod Inc have announced a partnership to bring Microsoft applications to Cyanogenmod. "Under the partnership, Cyanogen will integrate and distribute Microsoft’s consumer apps and services across core categories, including productivity, messaging, utilities, and cloud-based services. As part of this collaboration, Microsoft will create native integrations on Cyanogen OS, enabling a powerful new class of experiences." Ars Technica comments "If Cyanogen really wants to ship a Googleless Android, it will need to provide alternatives to Google's services, and this Microsoft deal is a small start. Microsoft can provide alternatives for Search (Bing), Google Drive (OneDrive and Office), and Gmail (Outlook). The real missing pieces are alternatives to Google Play, Google Maps, and Google Play Services. "

Rather than distribute more proprietary services, how about ownCloud for Drive, K-9 Mail for Gmail, OsmAnd for Maps, and F-Droid for an app store? Mozilla and DuckDuckGo provide Free Software search providers for Android too. With Google neglecting the Android Open Source Project and Cyanogenmod partnering with Microsoft, the future for Free Software Android as anything but a shell for proprietary software looks bleak.

Submission + - Sixteen Years Later: GNU Still Needs an Extension

Submitted by

Unknown Lamer

on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @10:38AM

Unknown Lamer writes: "Fresh from the 2011 GNU
Hackers Meeting, Andy Wingo has written a long piece on the status
of Guile Scheme, the
woefully underutilized official extension language of GNU. Wingo
argues that Guile
is the best choice for extension in GNU given the ability of
Scheme to adapt to change over time. Presented with using
e.g. Javascript instead of Scheme for its popularity: 'We should also
consider the costs of using hastily designed languages. JavaScript has
some crazy bad stuff, like with, var hoisting, a poor numeric model,
dynamic this scoping, lack of modularity regarding binding lookup ... Finally, we have the lifespan issue. If GNU had chosen Tcl because
it was popular, we would have a mass of dead code.' Perhaps after Emacs has been
ported to Guile the philosophy of extension will spread to other
parts of the system."

Submission + - Earthquake Hits East Coast of the US

Submitted by

Unknown Lamer

on Tuesday August 23, 2011 @02:07PM

Unknown Lamer writes: "At 1:58 p.m. EDT a 5.8 magnitude earth quake hit Northern Virgnia. Initial reports indicate it was felt from Virgnia to MassaMassachusetts. My monitor and floor definitely wobbled a bit down here in Raleigh NC."

Submission + - HP Spinning off WebOS and Exiting Hardware Busines

Submitted by

Unknown Lamer

on Thursday August 18, 2011 @03:45PM

Unknown Lamer writes: "A number of readers submitted rumors about a few announcements HP was to make today. Now that has actually happened and the news looks grim. For starters they are exiting the tablet and phone market and repositioning webOS for use in appliances and vehicles. They also confirmed they are in talks to acquire Autonomy. Finally, they are considering exiting the PC hardware business entirely in order to focus on their software business."

Submission + - Nokia Killing Symbian and S40 in North America (allthingsd.com)

Submitted by

Unknown Lamer

on Tuesday August 09, 2011 @04:11PM

Unknown Lamer writes: "In interview with AllthingsD, the head of Nokia's US operations declared that Nokia will be focusing exclusively on Windows Phone devices in North America. Reasons cites include the low profit margins of the ubiquitous low-end Series 40 devices and lackluster sales of Symbian based devices. This also means that the N9 won't be making it to North America either."

Submission + - Google+: Tools, Names, and Facebook 1

Submitted by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @04:34PM

Unknown Lamer writes: Several readers submitted stories about Google+ today. CWMike writes in with an article about the lack of developer APIs from Computerworld Currently, external developers don't have any Google+ APIs or tools to tinker with. A Google spokeswoman said, 'We definitely plan to involve developers and publishers in the Google+ project, but we don't have specific details to share just yet. Please stay tuned.' The spokeswoman declined to say specifically if Google+ will be compatible with the company's OpenSocial set of common APIs for social networking applications. An anonymous reader notes that Google is requiring real names for profiles, and may have suspended some users. Anita Khanna writes "Facebook is trying real hard to block users migrating to google+. Although the recently announced Google+ social platform is still in private beta, it has generated enough excitement to have Facebook making some preemptive measures. Shortly after the announcement, Facebook made a peculiar change to their TOS that resulted in the . Over the weekend, another personal data migration tool, Open-Xchange, has also been deactivated."

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