Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Walled Garden (Score 2) 199

It's more than 2-3 extra lines. IE8 and IE9 don't have XHR2, so you have to use the XDomainRequest ActiveX control, which behaves differently, doesn't support anything other than GET and POST, and is riddled with silly bugs like, "if the progress handler isn't set, requests won't be processed at all in IE9, with no errors."

Never mind the fact that the XHR object in IE8/9 is broken as all hell.

Comment Re:It can be fixed (Score 1) 202

Even outside the area of software and genetics patents, it's hard to make a case that patents meet the requirements of the Constitution, which states that they must exist to encourage invention for the betterment of culture and society. Patents do not engender innovation (invention does happen without patents), and the monopoly protection they afford does not improve culture and society, and in fact results in lower quality, higher prices, and less innovation (since no one is truly permitted to improve on an invention).

Comment Re:Still playing catch-up to C#. (Score 1) 385

What's the patent FUD, specifically? I'm not talking about some obscure part of the Winforms API, I mean in the core language itself.

Microsoft made some veiled threats a few years ago, intimating that their deal with Novell for Mono was exclusive. No one is really privy to the terms of that arrangement, but it made a lot of people really nervous.

And you forget that C++ has a giant environment to install as well, but due to age, that is generally part of the OS as is.

C++ is quite capable of operating entirely without a run-time environment. It depends only on the C++ standard library and the C standard library, which, while implemented by the OS, are completely optional.

In time, modern generation languages will end up in the same category. In fact, Windows Vista and 7 already come with .NET pre-installed, so there's no need to download anything to run a .NET app.

But this is not the case on non-Windows platforms.

Comment Re:Design by Committee (Score 1) 385

The FQA gives the word "disingenuous" a bad name. The author spends a lot of time with red herrings, straw men, and minutiae, and never actually seems to have a point. Worse, many of his claims and assertions are flat-out wrong, or at the very least, badly misleading.

Calling it a "pack of lies" would be unfair to packs of lies.

AMD

Hidden Debug Mode Found In AMD Processors 154

An anonymous reader writes "A hidden (and hardware password protected, by means of required special values in processor registers) debug mode has been found in AMD processors, and documented by a reverse engineer called Czernobyl on the RCE Forums community today. It enables powerful hardware debugging features long longed for by reverse engineers, such as hardware data-aware conditional breakpoints, and direct hardware 'page guard'-style breakpoints. And the best part is, it's sitting right there in your processor already, just read the details and off you go with the debugging ninja powers!"
Operating Systems

Can Windows, OS X and Fedora All Work Together? 375

greymond writes "In my ever growing job responsibilities, I've recently been tasked with documenting our organization's IT infrastructure, primarily focusing on cost analysis of our hardware leases and software purchases. This is something that has never been done in our organization before and while it's moving along slowly, I'm already seeing some places where we could make improvements. Once completed, I see this as an opportunity to bring up the topic of migrating the majority of our office from Windows 7 to Linux and from Exchange to Gmail. However, this would result in three departments each running a different system: Windows, OS X, and most likely Fedora. Has anyone worked in or tried to set up an environment like this? What roadblocks did you run into? Is this really feasible or should I just continue to focus on the cutbacks that don't require OS changes? (The requirement for having three different systems is that the vast majority of our administration, who rely solely on an install of Microsoft Windows, Word and Excel, are savvy enough that if they came in and saw Gnome running on Fedora with Open Office they'd pick it up fast. However, our marketing department is composed entirely of Apple systems, and the latest Adobe Creative Suite doesn't seem to all work under Wine. The biggest issue is with the Sales department though, as they rely on a proprietary sales platform that is Windows only — and generally, sales personal give the biggest push back when it comes to organizational changes.)"
Input Devices

Kinect Hacked, Adafruit Bounty Won 262

scharkalvin writes "Adafruit has announced a winner to their bounty for an open source driver for the MS Kinect. From the article: 'We have verified that it works and have a screenshot from another member in the hacking community (thanks qdot!) who was also able to use the code. Congrats to Hector! He's running all this on a Linux laptop (his code works with OpenGL) and doesn't even have an Xbox!'" We talked about Adafruit's bounty yesterday.
Games

Steam Not Coming To Linux 520

dkd903 writes "A rumor has been going around for about four months that Valve was working on a Linux version of Steam and this had a lot of people in the Linux community very excited. But, Valve has now officially killed the rumor. And it is not what people wants to hear – there is no Linux version of Steam in development. Doug Lombardi, the Marketing VP of Valve Corporation, in an interview, has put an end to all the rumors by saying that they are not working on Steam for Linux right now."
Games

Submission + - Confirmed: Steam Not Coming To Linux (digitizor.com) 5

dkd903 writes: A rumor has been going around for about four months that Valve was working on a Linux version of Steam and this had a lot of people in the Linux community very excited. But, Valve has now officially killed the rumor. And it is not what people wants to hear – there is no Linux version of Steam in development. Doug Lombardi, the Marketing VP of Valve Corporation, in an interview, has put an end to all the rumors by saying that they are not working on Steam for Linux right now.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Linux Distribution Popularity Trends Plotted (linuxtrends.com)

__aajbyc7391 writes: In order to get a sense of the popularity of various Linux distributions over the past several years, LinuxTrends entered their names into Google’s search insights tool and grabbed images of the resulting graphs. The graphs display some fascinating trends and bode well for the future of Linux, particularly its ability to adapt to changing requirements and opportunities. What’s especially noteworthy is that Android is the first Linux spin to take on a life of its own within consumer devices. It’s certainly not the first use of Linux as an OS for devices; what’s unique, however, is that it’s the first branded Linux-based OS to be widely marketed to consumers.
AMD

Submission + - Open-Source 2D, 3D For ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: AMD has now rolled out open-source 2D and 3D drivers for their ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics processors. As described at Phoronix in length, it's taken nearly a year to complete but there is now public code released that enables 2D, 3D, and video hardware-acceleration for this latest generation of ATI GPUs. For now this code is intended for developers and enthusiasts but with time it will make its way into stable Linux distribution updates. AMD's open-source developers are also beginning to work on ATI Radeon HD 6000 series support, which is hardware not to be released until late in the year.

Slashdot Top Deals

"I got everybody to pay up front...then I blew up their planet." "Now why didn't I think of that?" -- Post Bros. Comics

Working...