schklerg - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Really (Score 3, Insightful) 304

by schklerg on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:50AM (#25570393) Attached to: Shuttleworth Says Canonical Is Not Cash-Flow Positive

At my company (not that huge), our preference from the Admin side was Debian on Linux servers (apt dependency handling/updating beats rpm hands down to me) but we were forced to Novell or Red Hat so there would be someone to call & blame if there was issues. Ubuntu was brand new when this decision was made and so not really considered from the VPs. So for production systems its RHEL, for our admin stuff (not considered 'mission critical') it's Debian, and I run Ubuntu on my laptop.

Office 2003 Service Pack Disables Older File Formats 555

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 01, 2008 @10:29AM from the always-so-helpful dept.

time961 writes "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are 'less secure', which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source. Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward 'Do you really want to do this?' dialog boxes to click through. And of course because these are, after all, old file formats ... many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives."

Submission + - Windows Vista SP1 Includes More Than 300 Hot Fixes (informationweek.com)

Submitted by

mytrip

on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @08:46PM

mytrip writes: "Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has released a detailed roster of the contents of its forthcoming service pack for Windows Vista, and the list includes more than 300 hot fixes covering everything from data protection to video performance.

Microsoft marketing VP Michael Sievert told InformationWeek in Marchthat Vista was "high quality right out of the gate" and that the company would likely dribble out small updates as required via its Windows Update service.

Since then, however, users have apparently reported enough problems with Vista to force a change in Microsoft's thinking."

Submission + - Symantec Screwup Is 'Worse Than Any Virus' (pcmag.com)

Submitted by on Friday December 07, 2007 @03:20PM

An anonymous reader writes: Symantec posted an update to their antivirus product that has disabled Internet access for thousands of users. More proof that no antivirus software in infallible... Here's the PC Mag article.

Submission + - Mozilla: when more bugs can mean tighter security

Submitted by biscuitfever11 on Friday December 07, 2007 @01:04PM

biscuitfever11 writes: The outspoken head of Mozilla Europe Tristan Nitot has coughed up a few gems in this interview with ZDNet, not least in the security wars against Internet Explorer. Nitot readily acknowledges the massive number of bugs that affect the open source browser, but says that it's the Mozilla community which makes the browser far safer than IE will ever be. Nitot said: "I'm surprised that bug counting, which is a terrible metric, was used by Microsoft. It isn't easy to assess security, but bug counting definitely isn't the way to do it. I'd rather talk about time to fix the duration of the window where users are at risk, which in our opinion is a much better metric. People within the Mozilla community have a better-than-average understanding of this — we work together and have to trust each other." http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39291344-1,00.htm

Submission + - Wikipedia Admins. Admit "Private" Checkuse (wikipedia.org) 1

Submitted by wikinerdiest on Friday December 07, 2007 @09:19AM

wikinerdiest writes: This Wikipedia Administrative Board discussion tells it all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive114#.22Private.22_Checkuser_use . The admins. secretly and habitually arrange for their Checkuser tool to invade Users' privacy (via so-called "private" requests made to those with the invasive Checkuser status) via back channel email and IRC conversations. The regular Wikipedia users have no idea it's even happening so they can't even complain about a privacy abuse to the token Ombudsman set up on the official Checkuser request page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHECKUSER which seems to be just a ruse for public reassurance that Checkuser use is a transparent process).

Submission + - Camelot introduces a Stupid Tax

Submitted by reow on Monday December 03, 2007 @07:34PM

reow writes: Camelot Group (a UK gambling firm) have been forced to withdraw their new scratchcard Cool Cash, as the British populace are too stupid to understand negative numbers.

To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.

Tina Farrell said: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't. I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher — not lower — than -8 but I'm not having it."

Submission + - Linux POS systems (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by ReallyEvilCanine on Monday November 19, 2007 @05:25PM

ReallyEvilCanine writes: It's been five and seven years since the last articles about running a POS (point of sale a.k.a. cash register system) on Linux and the pickings still look slim. The alternatives are expensive, closed-source systems with proprietary hardware and high monthly licence fees with only enough journaling and data access to keep the tax collectors happy. I don't mind paying for development but the constant fees and the lack of access to my own data are unacceptable.

A serious and useful restaurant POS system must include touch screen support, no fewer than four levels of access (user, power user, manager, admin), user identification via card/key, trainee access (non-journaled), journaling, multiple pricing and tax structures, changes to items and prices on-the-fly, reports, data export for taxes and accounting, inventory control and ordering functionality. Is there anything available yet or even in the works?

Submission + - Making OSS More Humane: 10 Do's and Dont's (humanized.com)

Submitted by

Jono DiCarlo

on Friday October 05, 2007 @04:36PM

Jono DiCarlo writes: "I'm a professional software developer and UI designer, and I rely on open-source software for my daily work. While some OSS software does indeed have terrible UI, there are certain OSS programs that I use precisely because they have better usability than their commercial counterparts. Tired of arguments about whether or not open-source software has a general usability problem, I decided to look into the background of my favorite and least favorite OSS projects to try to figure out what is it about the design philosophies, the development styles, or the personalities of the teams themselves that leads some projects to turn out wonderful user interfaces while others are a pain in the neck to use. This article attempts to distill examples from across the open-source world into a list of concrete suggestions about what an open-source project can do to improve the user interface of its product."

Submission + - Adobe.com Wide Open

Submitted by exeme on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @06:46PM

exeme writes: For several hours Adobe's Shockwave download servers were wide open, with anyone able to access any file on the system using a simple web browser. The attack involved a poorly set up web server running on an old version of Solaris, which was venerable to a simple ../ attack. This has since been fixed in the last few hours, trying the attack results in the message "We are unable to locate a Web player that matches your platform and browser". Below is an example URL that was able to be used (no longer functioning, provided for educational reasons):

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=../../../../../../../../..//usr/local/apache/conf/ssl.key/www.adobe.com.key%00

Ouch!

Submission + - Scientists freeze water at body temperature (physorg.com)

Submitted by

Spy der Mann

on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @06:20PM

Spy der Mann writes: "Harvard physicists have shown that specially treated diamond coatings can keep water frozen at body temperature, a finding that may have applications in future medical implants. The process works only for layers of ice of two to three nanometers, depending on the temperature."

Submission + - Your RSS is very slow to update (yourrssisveryslowtoupdate.com)

Submitted by

Your RSS is very slow to update

on Monday September 24, 2007 @03:25PM

Your RSS is very slow to update writes: "Your RSS feed needs to update for more often than it does. Often the latest story in the feed is hours old. This is not an issue with my RSS reader of choice, I've checked with different RSS readers. For example right nowthe latest story in the RSS feed is this one: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/24/054241&from=rss the latest story on Slashdot is this one: http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/09/24/1657258.shtml Theses stories were posted more than seven hours apart yet the RSS feed has only updated once in all that time."

Submission + - Lenovo follows Dell with pre-installed Linux

Submitted by

Coryoth

on Monday August 06, 2007 @01:34PM

Coryoth writes: "The BBC is reporting that Lenovo is following Dell in offering pre-installed linux for its hardware. Lenovo will be offering Thnikpads with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop pre-installed. In contrast to Dell's largely home and general consumer focus for their linux foray, Lenovo is clearly targetting business users with the laptops models offered. As the BBC article points out, while desktop linux is largely the domain of "technology specialists" the moves by major hardware manufacturers such as Dell and Lenovo point toward a growing wider acceptance. Certainly dektop linux is increasingly gaining recognition amongst the broader computer using community."

Submission + - Are Industry Standards really this low?

Submitted by

segafreak

on Monday August 06, 2007 @01:22PM

segafreak writes: "I'm a Software Engineering Student from the UK about to enter my final year. During this summer I have been on placement at a large software company (which shall remain unnamed), and while my experience hasn't been entirely negative, I'm appalled by some of the practises that seem commonplace — minimal or non-existant documentation, prototype quality code being sold to customers, lack of comments in code, and worst of all large projects coded and maintained by a single programmer! Having spoken to several of my classmates, I've discovered the situation to be similar all across the region. So fellow Slashdotters, my question is this: is our Industry really this bad? Or have my classmates and I just been shockingly unlucky?"

Submission + - Free as in free milk (freesoftwaremagazine.com)

Submitted by

mrcgran

on Monday August 06, 2007 @01:15PM

mrcgran writes: "FSFDaily is running a story about Microsoft's business practices in developing countries: 'A first draft of this article has been sitting for months in my hard disk. I decided to finish it after reading that Microsoft will offer its operating system and office suite for $3 per machine to developing countries. That made me think of the way the giant software company "helps" these countries by giving licenses of its proprietary software almost for free, and that in turn made me think of free milk. Let me tell you about it.'"

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