Comment Already happens in Canada (Score 1) 867
Sorry Guys but the unions logic doesn't fly. Yellowknife NT. gets block mail boxes and so does a vast majority of Canadians and we have harsher weather than Boston!
Comment Really!! (Score 1) 436
I am so sick of hearing all about these things.....wish I could have the IP to the right to sue!
Comment Pathetic (Score 1) 271
Why? I miss the old liberal government for one and only on reason, They told of the American Ambassador Public over trying to influence us they need to say the same thing here.
I understand that this goes on in the world with Iran and climate change and other topics but I enjoy our copyright laws.
I guess we (Canadians) need to examine our copyright laws and ask who do they serve? and who do they protect? and where would all the money go to? and last is this going to promote business or make it a legal bog!
Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
Comment Depends on your life direction (Score 1) 410
Really your being given a chance to be a leader, but recognize that you can now be the bosses "fall guy" as well. So take that into account.
But really the question is do you want to be a manager with all the benefits and problems versus doing what your doing?
my father in an unrelated career has chosen to pass up promotions not because he wasn't capable (neither are you) but he loved what he is doing, plus he did not like the way his upper management runs things so he is staying where he is and is happy.
You can say "No" and give them a reason "no right time in my life" or "want more experience first" but realize that when the position comes up again you may not be asked again.
Student Orchestra Performs Music With iPhones 65
A course at the University of Michigan ends with a live concert featuring students using iPhones as instruments. “Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble“ teaches students to code musical instruments for the iPhone, using the Apple-provided software-development kit. Georg Essl, assistant professor of computer science and music, says, "What’s interesting is we blend the whole process. We start from nothing. We teach the programming of iPhones for multimedia stuff, and then we teach students to build their own instruments.”
Modded Xbox Bans Prompt EFF Warning About Terms of Service 254
Last month we discussed news that Microsoft had banned hundreds of thousands of Xbox users for using modified consoles. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has now pointed to this round of bans as a prime example of the power given to providers of online services through 'Terms of Service' and other usage agreements.
"No matter how much we rely on them to get on with our everyday lives, access to online services — like email, social networking sites, and (wait for it) online gaming — can never be guaranteed. ... he who writes the TOS makes the rules, and when it comes to enforcing them, the service provider often behaves as though it is also the judge, jury and executioner. ... While the mass ban provides a useful illustration of their danger, these terms can be found in nearly all TOS agreements for all kinds of services. There have been virtually no legal challenges to these kinds of arbitrary termination clauses, but we imagine this will be a growth area for lawyers."
EA Flip-Flops On Battlefield: Heroes Pricing, Fans Angry 221
An anonymous reader writes "Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica is reporting that EA/DICE has substantially changed the game model of Battlefield: Heroes, increasing the cost of weapons in Valor Points (the in-game currency that you earn by playing) to levels that even hardcore players cannot afford, and making them available in BattleFunds (the in-game currency that you buy with real money). Other consumables in the game, such as bandages to heal the players, suffered the same fate, turning the game into a subscription or pay-to-play model if players want to remain competitive. This goes against the creators' earlier stated objectives of not providing combat advantage to paying customers. Ben Cousins, from EA/DICE, argued, 'We also frankly wanted to make buying Battlefunds more appealing. We have wages to pay here in the Heroes team and in order to keep a team large enough to make new free content like maps and other game features we need to increase the amount of BF that people buy. Battlefield Heroes is a business at the end of the day and for a company like EA who recently laid off 16% of their workforce, we need to keep an eye on the accounts and make sure we are doing our bit for the company.' The official forums discussion thread is full of angry responses from upset users, who feel this change is a betrayal of the original stated objectives of the game."
Haskell 2010 Announced 173
paltemalte writes "Simon Marlow has posted an announcement of Haskell 2010, a new revision of the Haskell purely functional programming language. Good news for everyone interested in SMP and concurrency programming."
Comment Re:My job used to be like this.... (Score 2, Insightful) 1006
I would have to agree with your approach...develop a budget and heck buy computers with office installed if you have to. I worked for a company that I slowly added OSS alternatives where I could.
Also Document your concerns that way if any legal issues come up it all points to the management...not you.
Comment Past experience (Score 1) 932
I have had the similar situation, How every I would beg to ask a simple question.
1) If your getting Malware and Viruses why haven't you installed better anti-virus and anti-spam?
My parents Motherboard died and all they do is surf the net and e-mail so I installed Ubuntu and thunderbird. They were really happy and with openoffice they are currently learning how to use it. They bought a newer machine and it has windows now on it so they are back to that but they did have a positive experience with Ubuntu and Linux in general.
I would ask them to spend the money on a active scanning Anti-virus and Anti-Malware software. And of course have them use Firefox as a browser!!!
Comment So when is SCO going to Die (Score 2, Insightful) 458
I guess the question is when is SCO going to die? I know it is close to Halloween but this is one zombie that needs a bullet in the head!!
Comment What about the Country Folks (Score 1) 200
My Brother is in the Country and the only ISP is a small niche provider giving him ADSL or wireless (I believe) because Bell, Shaw, Telus, Rogers refuse to run lines out there. if that provider goes down his choices are Satellite or buying one of those mobile USB sticks and nothing else!! We do need the right for competition and Choice, often though the small guys lease from the bigger guys so really what is the choice? the big guy is just cutting out the middle man and giving you worse service.
A Galaxy-Sized Observatory For Gravitational Waves 190
KentuckyFC writes "Gravitational waves squash and stretch space as they travel through the universe. Current attempts to spot them involve monitoring a region of space several kilometers across on Earth for the telltale signs of this squeezing. These experiments have so far seen nothing. But by monitoring an array of pulsars throughout the galaxy, astronomers should be able to see the effects of gravitational waves passing by. They say such an array of pulsars should effectively shimmer as the gravitational waves wash over it, like a grid of buoys bobbing on the ocean. That'll create an observatory that is effectively the size of the entire galaxy. These observations should be capable of monitoring how galaxies and supermassive black holes evolve together, and shed light on the physics of the early universe. Best of all, the next generation of radio-telescope arrays should be capable of making these observations at a cost of around $66 million over ten years. That's a small fraction of the hundreds of millions that Earth-based observatories have already cost."
Developer Exposes Copyright Infringers On Twitter 164
snitty writes "Wil Shipley, developer of Delicious Library, found some applications on the iTunes App Store that were using without permission some images from his popular desktop application. He outed them on Twitter. The team at Technically Legal broke down the story and the take-home messages for using other people's images."
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Little known fact about Middle Earth: The Hobbits had a very sophisticated computer network! It was a Tolkien Ring...
