Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment 2008? 2007 more like (Score 1) 659

by allikat_uk (#19787969) Attached to: 2008 - Year of Linux Desktop?
Sorry, but Linux on the desktop's year is this year, it better be this year, or it's never going to happen. Look around, we have Mint, *buntu, PCLinuxOS, SAM and many, many more, desktop oriented distros, many of which are hitting the same usability targets that XP almost got, and Vista may get. Linux is offering a perfectly good desktop environment, cancel or allow? All this DRM discussion is just a smokescreen. There is going to be a killer app for (Gnu)Linux very soon that will play HD content, if you can be bothered to buy the damn things. DVD is fine where I sit, and those play perfectly well on my PCLinuxOS box TYVM. KDE is doing an amazing job right now of providing a desktop that's just as easy to use as winblows, AND secure too! Add to this the improvements in kernel and driver support, and Linux's year on the desktop isn't next year, it's this! I can install Linux on a new machine, have it up to date, and running with apps and 3d support before Vista has worked out what hardware it's limping on, and you can too. I'm no Linux expert, not a programmer, an average user with a brain can do it too. Linux isn't hard any more!
Caldera

SCO Vs. IBM Leaks Exposed 89

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-see-what-yer-packin dept.
Xenographic writes "Remember all the fuss about SCO subpoenaing PJ of Groklaw, where they allege that she's funded by IBM because she once got a publicly available document from a volunteer at the courthouse a little before it hit the Court's website? That's nothing. Groklaw has evidence that other materials have been leaked in this case — but they weren't leaked to Groklaw, and they weren't leaked by IBM. Information about the sealed materials in question made its way to Maureen O'Gara, who wrote a story based on inside information, displaying a positively uncanny insight into what SCO was planning, including far more than just the sealed document a SCO lawyer read out loud in open court. Interestingly, several witnesses report that Maureen O'Gara did not even attend that hearing, leaving us to speculate about her source."
Power

Submission + - Zero-60 in 3.1 Seconds, Batteries Included

Submitted by
FloatsomNJetsom
FloatsomNJetsom writes: "Popular Mechanics has a very cool video and report about test-driving Hybrid Technologies' L1X-75, a battery powered, 600-hp, carbon-fiber roadster that pulls zero-60 times in the neighborhood of 3.1 seconds, and tops out at 175 mph. Of course, there are few creature comforts inside, but that's mainly because the car's 200 mile range is meant for the track, not the road. Nonetheless, Popular Mechanics takes the car for a spin up 10th Avenue in NYC. Oh, and the car recharges via a 110 outlet. They also test-drove Ford's HySeries Edge, a hydrogen fuel-cell powered, plug-in series hybrid that, unlike the L1X-75, is unfortunately at least 10 years away from production and nearly 100 mph slower. The upshot: The exhaust (steam) is great for opening pores! But hydrogen power is available now, to 25 lucky movers and shakers in the U.S.: BMW's Hydrogen 7 runs on a liquid hydrogen (or gasoline) powered internal combustion engine."
Software

Submission + - What is the best bug-as-a-feature?

Submitted by Bat Country
Bat Country writes: The workflow system at the department I develop for was hand-coded by my predecessor in a rather short amount of time, resulting in somewhat unreadable code with a number of interesting "features."

When I took over maintenance of the code base, I started patching bugs and cleaning up the code in preparation for a new set of features.

When I was done however, I got a pile of complaints about features which disappeared which turned out to be caused by the bugs in the code.
So that leads me to ask, what is your favorite bug that you either can't live without or makes your life easier?
Microsoft

Submission + - Why Microsoft Should Fear Apple

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Computerworld's Scot Finnie says that MS should be afraid because Apple has gotten smarter about how it competes. He says that it's the Parallels Desktop software that has been truly transformational for the Mac. Finnie did a simple three-month trial of the Mac last in the fall and realized four months later that he wasn't going back. Since then he's received hundreds of messages from readers who've also made the switch.
PHP

Submission + - Delphi for PHP released

Submitted by Gramie2
Gramie2 writes: Codegear (now a subsidiary of Borland) has just released version 1.0 of Delphi for PHP, a RAD development environment (running on Windows) that produces standard PHP code. It features a large set of built-in components, including ones that use AJAX for database access, and Codegear is encouraging users to develop their own components. The framework, VCL for PHP, is open source, and documentation follows the PHP model.

Initial database connectivity is for MySQL and Interbase (Codegear's commercial database that spawned the open-source Firebird), but more are promised.
Announcements

Submission + - Astronomers Explode Virtual Supernova

Submitted by
DynaSoar
DynaSoar writes: "Scientists at the University of Chicago's Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes have created a simulation of a white dwarf exploding into a type 1a supernova http://space.com/scienceastronomy/070322_stellar_e xplosion.html. Using 700 processors and 58,000 hours, they produced a three second movie showing the initial burst that is thought to be the source of much of the iron in the universe. Understanding these supernova is also important to testing current cosmological theories regarding dark matter and dark energy, as their brightness is used as a measurement of distance, and discrepancies found in the brightness of very distant supernovae consistently seem to indicate a change in the speed of expansion of the universe over time."
Patents

PTO Rejects Instant Live Patent 77

Posted by CowboyNeal from the tapers-section dept.
Jivecat writes "Instant Live, a service of the concert promotion company Live Nation, makes recordings of live concerts that are rapidly burned onto CDs to be sold to the audience before they leave the venue. It's a nice service for fans, but Live Nation holds the patent for a technology that places markers between songs so they can be written as separate tracks rather than one big track — in effect giving them a monopoly on in-concert recordings. Now, thanks to the efforts of the EFF and a patent attorney, who found prior work of similar technology, the U.S. Patent Office has revoked Live Nation's patent. This is good news for those who consider Live Nation to be the Evil Empire when it comes to concert promotion."

Is Assembly Programming Still Relevant, Today? 676

Posted by Cliff from the mov-eax,1 dept.
intelinsight asks: "Consider the following question given the current software development needs, and also the claims of the Assembly lovers for it being a language that gives one insights of the internal working of a computer. How relevant or useful is it to learn Assembly programming language in the current era? "
Oracle

Oracle Sues SAP for Spidering Their Support Site 148

Posted by CowboyNeal from the knock-it-off dept.
TodoInSATX writes "Oracle has filed a lawsuit against SAP. Among the claims made against SAP are violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Unfair Competition, Intentional and Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Civil Conspiracy. From the actual complaint: 'SAP has stolen thousands of proprietary, copyrighted software products and other confidential materials that Oracle developed to service its own support customers. SAP gained repeated and unauthorized access, in many cases by use of pretextual customer log-in credentials, to Oracle's proprietary, password-protected customer support website.'"
Puzzle Games (Games)

The Godfather of Sudoku 47

Posted by Zonk from the brain-twisting- dept.
circletimessquare writes "The New York Times profiles 55 year old Maki Kaji who runs Nikoli, in its article Inside Japan's Puzzle Palace. Nikoli is a puzzle publisher that prides itself on 'a kind of democratization of puzzle invention. The company itself does not actually create many new puzzles — an American invented an earlier version of sudoku, for example. Instead, Nikoli provides a forum for testing and perfecting them.' Also notable is how Mr. Kaji describes how he did not get the trademark for Sudoku in the United States before it was too late. But reminiscent of a theme many Slashdotters will find familiar about intellectual property: 'In hindsight, though, he now thinks that oversight was a brilliant mistake. The fact that no one controlled sudoku's intellectual property rights let the game's popularity grow unfettered, Mr. Kaji says.' Will Nikoli be the source of the next big puzzle fad after Sudoku?"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Interesting MagLev URLs... (seen in Slash)

Journal by davidsyes

Riding the Superconducting Maglev Train - Linear Motor Car

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2926400396387878713&q=maglev

A Ride on Shanghai's Maglev Train

http://video.google.com/url?docid=959894664286059234&esrc=gvpl&ev=v&q=maglev&vidurl=http://video.google.com/videoplay%3Fdocid%3D959894664286059234%26q%3Dmaglev&usg=AL29H23DSgJtfKXRZLyakwmCsWBGgcpiJQ
Windows

Surprise, Windows Listed as Most Secure OS 499

Posted by Zonk from the opposite-day dept.
david_g17 writes "According to a Symantec study reported by Information Week, Microsoft has the most secure operating system amongst its commercial competitors. The report only covered the last 6 months of vulnerabilities and patch releases, but the results place Microsoft operating systems above Mac OS X and Red Hat. According to the article, 'The report found that Microsoft Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored in the last six months of 2006.' The article continues to mention the metrics used in the study (quantity and severity of vulnerabilities as well as the amount of time one must wait for the patch to be released)."

Slashdot Top Deals

Where there's a will, there's a relative.

Close