wisesifu - Slashdot User

Submission + - Born-again Google CEO Larry Page fires 3 top engin (it-reporter.com)

Submitted by

it_reporter

on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @04:48PM

it_reporter writes: "As part of his company-wide renewal process, Larry Page, soon to be reinstated as CEO of Google Inc., has amazed and shocked his management team with a radical clean-up of the top engineering crew, by firing 3 of the highest ranking engineers."

Submission + - Paul Allen Rips Bill Gates in Autobiography (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @01:20PM

itwbennett writes: "Bill Gates was guilty of 'mercenary opportunism' when he schemed with Steve Ballmer to dilute Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's equity in the company while Allen was recovering from Hodgkin's disease. In his upcoming autobiography, 'Idea Man,' which is excerpted in Vanity Fair, Allen paints a portrait of Gates as brilliant, focused, driven ... and ruthless. According to Allen, Gates in the early days twice sought larger equity in the company on the grounds that he 'did more.' Allen says he acquiesced each time, both because he understood his partner's reasoning and to avoid major conflict."

Submission + - SourceForge Open-Sources Their Platform Software (pythonisito.com)

Submitted by

rick446

on Thursday March 10, 2011 @02:06PM

rick446 writes: "In late 2009 SourceForge embarked on a plan to “reboot” our developer tools on an open platform including Python, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, and SOLR. The result was the Allura platform, and was released under the Apache License in February 2011."

Submission + - Surfing 2.0: Sensors in Board Record Everything (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by

kkleiner

on Thursday March 03, 2011 @01:28PM

kkleiner writes: "Internationally known Spanish surf company Pukas teamed up with Spain’s research giant Tecnalia to create a surfboard that records everything that happens to it out on the waves. Think of it as surfing’s equivalent of a jet plane’s blackbox. SurfSens, as the project is called, uses a wide array of sensors – accelerometers, strain gauges, compass, GPS, etc. – to make scientific measurements while a surfer is twisting and shredding. How do they take all this amazing data and translate it into something they can use? The Robot Operating System. That’s right, SurfSens uses ROS to visualize and process their data – open source robotics just broke into professional sports. Watch world renowned surfer Aritz Aranburu and others try out SurfSens in the amazing video."

Submission + - 3DS Launch and Flash Carts Work On It (dcemu.co.uk)

Submitted by YokimaSun on Sunday February 27, 2011 @05:52PM

YokimaSun writes: "The 3DS has just been launched and sold out with over 400,000 being snapped up already but more stock will hit the shops tommorrow,
To the horror of Nintendo and surprise of the hacking community, DS/DSI Flash carts are already known to be working in DSLite mode. DSI Mode at this time hasnt been confirmed to work due to lack of a Japanese region bootstrap. Another Flashcart maker has posted a video of its flashcart working on 3DS. Im sure Nintendo will try and counteract this very soon.

Submission + - WordPress 3.1 released, lots of fun (wordpress.org)

Submitted by

clinko

on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @10:23PM

clinko writes: "The long-awaited fourteenth release of WordPress is now available. WordPress 3.1 Reinhardt is named in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Version 3.1 is available for download, or you can update from within your dashboard.

This release features a lightning fast redesigned linking workflow which makes it easy to link to your existing posts and pages, an admin bar so youre never more than a click away from your most-used dashboard pages, a streamlined writing interface that hides many of the seldom-used panels by default to create a simpler and less intimidating writing experience for new bloggers (visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back), and a refreshed blue admin scheme available for selection under your personal options."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Cracking for Programmers?

Submitted by

trollertron3000

on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @02:54PM

trollertron3000 writes: "I've been a programmer for 15 years and I'm bored. So I'd like to start cracking to bring back the excitement a little. I know my way around both *nix and windows and can code in most of the well-known languages. If you were me, where would you start? I feel this knowledge could really pay off in the long run."

Submission + - Canonical disables Amazon MP3 store in Banshee (networkworld.com)

Submitted by polar_bear` on Tuesday February 15, 2011 @08:09PM

polar_bear` writes: Banshee contributors were happy to have it chosen as the default music player in Ubuntu 11.04. The joy may be short-lived, though. Canonical approached the team with a choice: give us 75% of Amazon affiliate fees, or we disable the Amazon Store in Banshee to avoid competing with Ubuntu One. The Banshee store was on track to raise $10K for the GNOME Foundation in 2011.

Submission + - Fury over Groupon's tasteless SuperBowl Tibet ad (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou on Monday February 07, 2011 @01:42PM

Stoobalou writes: Groupon, the online discount voucher firm, has been accused of cashing in on China's repression of Tibetan people

Submission + - Hudson Becomes Jenkins; Oracle Declares A Fork (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruhlinger on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @02:14PM

jfruhlinger writes: Hudson, an open source Java project formerly hosted on Java.net, has been transformed into Jenkins as a result of a name dispute with Oracle. Although the project's source code is open, Oracle claims ownership (inherited from Sun) of the Hudson trademark. Although nearly the entire developer community has moved to the Jenkins project, Oracle says that Hudson still exists, and Jenkins is a mere fork.

Submission + - OPIE back from the dead after two years (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by

TuxMobil

on Tuesday December 14, 2010 @04:08AM

TuxMobil writes: "The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (OPIE) is not dead anymore. Since more than two years a fresh update is available finally. OPIE aims at making an universal graphical framework for most (embedded) distributions available. As reference platforms, HP's iPAQ and Sharp's Zaurus PDAs are directly supported. OPIE also moved from handhelds.org to SourceForge."

Submission + - Can Firebird gain against MySQL? (marcocantu.com)

Submitted by mAriuZ on Tuesday November 16, 2010 @06:50AM

mAriuZ writes: MySQL is now really an Oracle product, price included. Which is a big chance for all other "really free" database servers, like Firebird and PostgreSQL.

MySQL is now really an Oracle product, price included. In fact the company announced cutting the lower-level license and support plans, basically raising the minimum price 4 times at 2,000 USD per server. Not cheap for a database most people think it is free, while it is free only for open source projects (OK, the story is more complex but I blogged and debated this already a few times, don't want to get back to it: In short, if you write and distribute a vertical client/server Delphi application against this database it is likely that you or your customers will have to pay for the MySQL license).

Not only this announce is bad because of the extra money many MySQL users will have to pay, but also because it shows a clear signal Oracle wants to kill the cheap competition... and you never know what's next. Perception is important, and the effect of this move is quite bad. By the way, they also removed the transactional engine from the free "community" offering for open source projects [well, seems I was misled on this by an article I read]. I just migrated my Delphi open source accounting package (the Italian GO) to it, will probably have to revert back...

Read for example the long blog post " The Decline of MySQL ". I know my longtime friend Zack Urlocker (and MySQL product manager) will disagree, but I guess things are not looking at the best in the long run, while in the short run the company is likely to raise some money.

Now, this could be a very good opportunity for all of the other open source database servers (and also some of paid ones!), particularly the most popular ones like Firebird and PostgreSQL. I'm particularly fond of Firebird (the InterBase offspring) and use it in many projects and did a lot of consulting to Delphi developers using it. Can this be the rise of Firebird? MySQL with its huge popularity has certainly obscured it, so it could be a good time to act.

Which means promoting Firebird more and making sure it works at best with one of the environments that has pushed it a lot, that is, Delphi. If Delphi now has an official Firebird driver for dbExpress, that is not enough and more could be done in terms of interoperability, cross-breeding, and cross-promotion. Owning InterBase, I can understand Embarcadero is quiet on this, but at times it seems to me that the Firebird community forgets how many Delphi developers use their database and like it a lot!

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S Finally Gets Froyo Update (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 05, 2010 @06:02PM

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung UK has begun the rollout of the Android 2.2 (Froyo) mobile operating system to its flagship handset, the Galaxy S.

Samsung UK made the announcement via its official Twitter feed. “Froyo starts rolling out today; everyone will have it by the end of Nov. To prepare, get the latest version of Kies.” it said.

Kies is Samsung’s proprietary upgrading solution which is needed to update the handset’s software.

Feed Ars Technica: Linux beyond X: Shuttleworth contemplates Wayland (arstechnica.com)

From feed by feedfeeder on Friday November 05, 2010 @09:32AM

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth wrote a blog post this week contemplating the possibility of making Ubuntu's new Unity shell work on the Wayland display system, with the aim of eventually shipping Wayland as Ubuntu's standard display manager. A transition of such enormous scope isn't going to happen in the near future, but it certainly can't hurt to start thinking about it now.

The X Window System (X11) is a cornerstone of graphical Linux computing. It is a display server that is responsible for showing graphics on the screen and mediating user input. The ubiquitous X.org implementation of the X Window System is included in all mainstream desktop Linux distributions. The problem with this venerable component of the Linux technology stack is that it was created in the 80s and hasn't been able to shed the superfluous accoutrements of yesteryear computing.

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Submission + - OpenOffice Forked As LibreOffice (digitizor.com)

Submitted by dkd903 on Tuesday September 28, 2010 @10:15AM

dkd903 writes: Today the OpenOffice community made a big decision to break away from Oracle and have formed The Document Foundation. This means that the previous OpenOffice community will now be known as “The Document Foundation” and the software suite will be known as LibreOffice, for now. They have also invited Oracle to become a partner of the foundation and to donate the OpenOffice brand.

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