Comment Food! (Score 1) 256
Particularly rumaki.
Comment Uniball Vision Micro (Score 2) 712
While I prefer the larger tipped version, I've used the micro before and it has a nice, clean small line. Great line of pens in either size.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: OSS, Web-based Time Tracking and Invoicing
Rydia writes: I am the partner in charge of the IT for my small (3 partners) law firm. We have used ClearOS (formerly ClarkConnect) with great satisfaction for the past three years, but with the new version our current groupware solution (Horde) is deprecated in favor of a new mail stack centered around Zarafa. Horde (being php-based) upgrades through PEAR, but attempts to upgrade from the most current supported version (3) to a reasonably current version (4) breaks everything due to the modifications the ClearFoundation folks have made to the php system.
My roadmap was to install Horde 4, which includes a time tracking/invoicing platform (time tracking and invoicing being a huge part of our business), but that is clearly no longer in the cards. Zarafa is a fine groupware suite for everything but that. My question is: are there any good web-based solutions for time tracking and invoicing, preferably OSS, available? Do any of them integrate with standard address books so we wouldn't have to double-book client information? Does this thing even exist?
My roadmap was to install Horde 4, which includes a time tracking/invoicing platform (time tracking and invoicing being a huge part of our business), but that is clearly no longer in the cards. Zarafa is a fine groupware suite for everything but that. My question is: are there any good web-based solutions for time tracking and invoicing, preferably OSS, available? Do any of them integrate with standard address books so we wouldn't have to double-book client information? Does this thing even exist?
Comment What? (Score 1) 206
Wait, there is a slashdot article on the front page detailing how to violate various broadcasters copyrights? I mean, I know it's preaching to the choir, but I'm astounded this is an actual article.
IPlayer in particular isn't region-locked because the BBC hates foreigners; the service is paid for by television licenses, which people outside of England (obviously) aren't paying. It's much more than just defeating a region-locking scheme, it's basically piracy. Seeing it front and center is crazy.
Comment Wha? (Score 2) 134
This is the most incoherent summary I've seen on slashdot yet. Maybe because it's so far in tinfoil hat territory, but still, wow.
Comment Oh yeah? (Score 3, Funny) 137
Well, Anonymous is going to start their OWN pastebin! With hookers! And blackjack!
Campaign Urges People To Send MPAA and RIAA Copied Currency 413
An anonymous reader writes "In response to the still-raging MPAA & RIAA, a kind of reverse piracy campaign has arisen. The "Send Them Your Money" campaign urges pirates and landlubbers alike to send scanned images of American currency to these agencies. According to the campaign's webpage, 'They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original.' The operation gained fame via sites like Reddit and Tumblr, inspiring citizens of other countries to send their legal tender to the MPAA and RIAA."
Comment Redundancy (Score 1, Insightful) 113
While I appreciate the thought that all software should be open-source, I can't shake the feeling that FOSS advocates are wasting their time and talent attempting to endlessly reinvent the wheel. I'm sure that avoiding proprietary blobs would be great, but it is worth all this effort with so little gain? You'll have a (very) small audience that will download it and put up with the inevitable incompatibilities, but why is so much effort being thrown at projects like this and nouveau; projects whose ideal result is something that perfectly mimics something that has already been made and is already in widespread use. Since ideal results are never possible, you are inevitably left making the excuse "sure, it's not as good, but it's more ideologically pure!" which is only really convincing for the most hardline ideologues.
Instead of endless FOSS projects just trying to replicate things we already have, I'd like to see these supremely generous and talented people work on new projects. Why spend time on nouveau when you could work on, say, a new cross-platform graphics API? I just don't think FOSS will ever gain significant mindshare as long as it is continuously trying to emulate functional applications that people are already using.
Comment What? (Score 2, Funny) 355
Really? This is cause for outrage? The insane idea that the government might look at something you wrote and hunt you down using a printer serial number and some possible registration information? This isn't a "the innocent have nothing to hide" argument, this is a "any government agency that actually used this for anything other than the stated purpose is insane" argument. There are hundreds of far more efficient, reliable and accurate ways to figure out who you are and what you have been up to.
Reading through the comments, about how your printer is going to betray you when the fascist power grab comes, it is abundantly clear that a sizable portion of slashdotters enjoy nothing more than working themselves up by finding whatever scant excuse to go on hyperbolic rants about how the government is just waiting to come and take them away to gitmo, and that the only way to avoid this is to compete to see who is the most paranoid.
The sad thing is when the government DOES overstep its bounds and quash our freedoms, these people will have negative credibility because everyone else know that, to them, everything is a sinister government plot.
Tesla Reveals Its Model X Gullwing SUV 306
thecarchik writes "The new, all-electric Tesla Model X crossover, which was introduced on stage by Tesla CEO Elon Musk (also the man behind SpaceX), isn't exactly a step toward the mass market. But it does take on premium utility vehicles with three rows of seating for up to seven, better maneuverability than a Mini Cooper, and a 0-60 mph time of just 4.4 seconds—that's faster than a Porsche 911, Musk jeered. But the real oohs and ahs of the evening came when Musk showed the Model X's much-anticipated 'falcon doors' — essentially gullwing rear doors, behind normal hinged front doors." The expected price before tax-credit shenanigans? $60,000-$90,000.
Comment Eagerly Anticipating (Score 1) 254
I'm looking forward to the next edition of Ask Slashdot: "How to Inform a Non-Auto Mechanic about Multiple-Bypass Surgery."
Comment Yes? (Score 4, Insightful) 392
I'm astounded that people are, uh, astounded by this possibility. Do you seriously think posting things on YouTube is a right? The site is a service provided by a corporation and is almost certainly awash with "secret" agreements, just because of the subject matter of the site and how popular it is. I use sarcasm quotes for secret because Google has no obligation to disclose its contractual relationships with third parties because you, the user, aren't party to them.
Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty skeezy agreement, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that YouTube is different from any other business asset. Its operation is governed by a load of inter-party contracts, it is controlled with no external oversight, and it exists to make money. The only difference is that we are now both the resource and the consumer, and I don't think people have quite internalized the logical conclusion of that relationship. Google doesn't owe you anything or exist to safeguard some specious rights. Everything between you and them is business, nothing more and nothing less.
Comment Duh. (Score 1) 139
They could've just asked me. I was there when the second moon left, after all!
Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size? 1070
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"
Comment Re:Has anything been accomplished? (Score 1) 288
A bunch of crackers got a hold of boatloads of personal information that they can sell for cash money.
That is what it's done. There may be some sort of vendetta, and there definitely is the feeling that Sony is a personal information pinata, but that's really what it is at its core.
