Overkill Nbuta - Slashdot User

Groklaw's PJ Says SCO's Demise Greatly Exaggerated 152

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 01, 2008 @03:48PM from the still-looking-for-a-fat-lady dept.

blackbearnh writes "Last week, the net was all abuzz with speculation that SCO was finally gone and done for. With the final judgment in SCO v. Novell in, and SCO millions of dollars in the hole to Novell, it seemed like the fat lady had finally sung. But like most things in the legal system, it isn't nearly that simple. O'Reilly Media sought out Groklaw's Pamela Jones, and got a rundown of what's still alive, and why a final end to the madness may be many years away. 'Summing up, it looks bleak for SCO at the moment, but let's enter the alternate realm of SCO's best-case scenario in its dreams: in that realm, SCO wins on appeal, which one of SCO's lawyers indicated might take a year and a half or five years, and the case is sent back to Utah for trial by jury, which is what SCO wanted (as opposed to trial by judge, which is what it got), then everything listed above (except for the IPO class action) comes alive again, presumably, depending on what the appellate court decides. Then SCO is in position once again to go after Linux end users, as well as IBM, et al.'"

MySQL in a Nutshell 86

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 01, 2008 @03:01PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

stoolpigeon writes "MySQL is frequently touted as the world's most widely used relational database management system. Many of the best known web applications and web sites use MySQL as their data repository. The popularity of MySQL has continued to grow while at the same time many were concerned by the lack of many features considered essential to a 'real' rdbms. Such naysayers have done little to impede the growth or development of MySQL. The first edition of MySQL in a Nutshell, published in 2005, gave users a handy reference to using MySQL. The second edition, published in 2008, covers many new features that MySQL fans proudly proclaim as an answer to all those critics clamoring for a better-rounded rdbms." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

MySQL 5.1 Released, Not Quite Up To Par 175

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 01, 2008 @01:28PM from the time-to-fix-the-org dept.

Mad Merlin writes "It's no secret that MySQL 5.1 has been a long time in the making, with the first beta release being in Nov 2005, but MySQL 5.1.30 has finally been released as GA. MySQL users can expect new features such as table/index partitioning, row based replication, a new plugin architecture, an event scheduler and a host of performance improvements from 5.1." Monty also had a blog post outlining some of the challenges faced in 5.1, including crashing bugs and a beta quality to most new features.

Submission + - Acer buying Gateway for $710 million

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27, 2007 @10:32AM

An anonymous reader writes: Acer plans to acquire Gateway in a deal worth $710 million that Acer says will make it the world's third-largest PC vendor. Acer's acquisition deal with Gateway also derails rival Lenovo Group's plans to acquire Packard Bell. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/082707-bulle tin-acer-to-acquire-gateway.html

Submission + - Mars Phoenix Spacecraft Corrects Course (space.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @12:36PM

Raver32 writes: "NASA's Mars-bound Phoenix lander completed its first and biggest course correction planned during the spacecraft's journey. The second of the remaining five planned adjustments prior to landing is scheduled for mid-October. "These first two together take out the bias intentionally put in at launch," said Brian Portock, Phoenix navigation team chief at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Phoenix blasted off Earth aboard a Delta 2 rocket on Aug. 4 and now careens through space at 74,200 mph (33,180 meters per second)-a speed necessary to cover the 422 millions miles (679 million kilometers) between Earth and Mars by May 25, 2008."

Submission + - Some Gmail accounts quietly jump to 10GB?

Submitted by MikeMulligan on Thursday August 09, 2007 @01:02PM

MikeMulligan writes: Last week I actually started getting worried that at 80%, I'd soon fill my gmail's >2GB capacity. Today I logged in to find I'm only using about 25% of my 9030MB! I searched the google blogs and other sites, but found only references to google's paid premium google apps accounts that provide 10GB of storage. Is it just me? Is this permanent? And why isn't there more news about it? At 10gb, that destroys most other free email services out there (again), and competes with other paid-for services (*cough* Apple).

Submission + - NeoJoomla - A new Template released : WeddingTime (neojoomla.com)

Submitted by

Olivia

on Thursday July 19, 2007 @11:08AM

Olivia writes: "The summer is often sign of love and of wedding, this month the template club is dressed to kill and proposes you WeddingTime, an elegant and ornamented design which adapt perfectly with the sites of ceremonial scale such as weddings, communions, baptisms or births. Like all our others templates, this last make it possible to personalize its color and its width, as well as the type of posting (flash or HTML) and the titles of the heading."

Submission + - Engineers and scientists as political leaders

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19, 2007 @11:04AM

An anonymous reader writes: The outgoing President of India, Abdul Kalam, is an oddity in the political world. He has a great deal of brains as well as hardcore geek credentials. Abudl Kalam studied Aero Engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology and later contributed to the design, development and management of India's first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle. A technological visionary he has the kind of background that I would love to see in a political leader. While the President of India is a largely ceremonial position, its the Indian Prime Minister (currently an Economist) who has the power, its still remarkable that a geek can ascend to such a position of political prominence. Is there any hope for America that something similar will one day ensue? Will we someday have a geek as the Vice-President or a viable Presidential candidate? Can America put aside its prejudice of anti-intellectualism and support somebody with a strong background in science and/or technology? If not, do you see this harming America's competitiveness in the future?

Submission + - Microsoft caught using pirated software in XP (urbandictionary.com) 2

Submitted by Ariastis on Tuesday June 26, 2007 @10:56PM

Ariastis writes: Microsoft have been bust yet again. They have been using a cracked version of Sound Forge to create files that are inside the Windows Tour folder. (Tested on XP) Reading the lat bits of the file in Notepad reveals the cracker info. These files have been made with Sound Forge 4.5 (The cracked version) first cracked by a cracker called "Deepz0ne".

Submission + - Israeli researchers map the whole Internet

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26, 2007 @12:53PM

An anonymous reader writes: Israeli researchers have created a topographical map of the Internet by enlisting more than 5,600 volunteers across 97 countries who agreed to download a program that tracks how Internet nodes interact with each other. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=alphadogg s

Submission + - What to do with lots of old computers? 3

Submitted by talentless geek on Thursday June 21, 2007 @12:40PM

talentless geek writes: I recently started a new Network Admin job and came to discover that I have no fewer than 60 old Pentium 2s and Pentium 3s that are doing nothing. It seems to me there has to be something better than filling up land (i.e. take them to the dump) that all these machines can do. I looked into a few donations sites, but I'm not even sure they would take computers this old. I've thought about building a cluster or 2, but I can't come up with any reason why i would want to do that other than the coolness factor (although, the coolness factor is a pretty good reason...). So, i guess my question is, what would you do with 60 really old computers?

Submission + - ATT/Cingular block Google411 1

Submitted by

mcraig88

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @12:22PM

mcraig88 writes: "Hello everyone...

In case any of you didn't know this, Google has a voice operated directory assistance service. I have been trying to use this from my Cell phone and have been receiving a "Network is busy" message, instead of getting through. I have been able to call from Work, home, and other non-cingular cell phones just fine.

On a whim, I called Cingular's customer service, and they confirmed that they are blocking Google's service. "Google is a competitor, so we have blocked their phone number"

This is absolutely ridiculous. I can't think of another time that a Phone/Cell company has ticked me off so bad.

And people complain about Microsoft's anti-competitive practices!

Try it for your self if you have a Cingular cell phone.

Google's web page about new service: http://labs.google.com/goog411/

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. (Except ATT/Cingular)"

Submission + - Server Room Follies ..

Submitted by

rs232

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @12:21PM

rs232 writes: ""One of the most memorable server rooms we compromised pertained to an organization that had remote locations across a large geographic area"

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=126 823&WT.svl=column1_1"

Submission + - Time for the "Slashdot Party"? 2

Submitted by

evil_aar0n

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @10:11AM

evil_aar0n writes: "(I didn't see a "Your Rights On-line" topic, so I went with Slashdot.org.)

Is it time to form a "Slashdot Party"? It's clear we can't sit idly by and do nothing while career politicians, at the behest of their corporate masters — see recent story re: Google and their nascent lobbying efforts — run this country, and the rest of the world, into the gutter, all in the name of greed.

I've read Slashdot for years and one thing that continually amazes me is the breadth and depth of knowledge contained within this community. It's a shame — almost criminal — not to organize and harness this staggering accumulation of brain-power (don't let the compliments go to your head, though). I think we, the Slashdot crowd, could actually solve some of the problems in this world. It's just one technical issue after another, right? Just a day at work for us.

Some questions I have:

How would we do this? How would we organize our "nerd forum" into a political force?

Would it kill Slashdot as we know it? I think not. We're already somewhat fractious and disjoint in our opinions, anyway; that's what makes the site interesting. We just mod people down when they get a little too "out there." In fact, I suspect it would make us stronger: our opinions would actually carry some weight.

As a localized political entity, should we allow people from other parts of the world to contribute? Actually, as we, as a society, become more and more global, the boundaries between countries become blurry. Certainly, the actions of one country are less and less contained to just that country. I think, since all of us have to live with the consequences, we should all be given a say. How 'bout we leave it open for debate?"

Submission + - T.I.E. Fighter tracking the Space Shuttle Atlantis

Submitted by

farrellj

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:56PM

farrellj writes: "The NY Times has a photo of the space shuttle Atlantis here which seems to show a Star Wars T.I.E. Fighter behind the shuttle. You can see it in the picture just above the right OMS pod. Has the Empire found our planet?!?!?"

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