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Programming

Ruby 1.9.1 Released 226

Posted by kdawson from the yet-another-gem dept.
Janwedekind writes "Yuki Sonoda yesterday announced the release of Ruby 1.9.1 (Ruby Inside coverage with lots of links). The VM of Ruby 1.9, formerly known as YARV, was initiated by Koichi Sasada and has been in the making for quite some time. Ruby's creator Yukihiro Matsumoto has already presented many of the upcoming features in his keynote at RubyConf 2007. Most notably, Ruby 1.9 now supports native threads and an implementation of fibers. A lot of work also went into encoding awareness of strings. The 1.9.1 version is said to be twice as fast as the stable 1.8.7. It will take some time though until the majority of existing Ruby extensions get ported to 1.9."
Image

South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity Screenshot-sm 849

Posted by samzenpus from the f@#k-those-f@#king-f@#kers dept.
MBGMorden writes "It looks like in an act that defies common sense, a bill has been introduced in the South Carolina State Senate that seeks to outlaw the use of profanity. According to the bill it would become a felony (punishable by a fine up to $5000 or up to 5 years in prison) to 'publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.' I'm not sure if 'in writing' could be applied to the internet, but in any event this is scary stuff."
GUI

Qt Becomes LGPL 828

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-just-adorable dept.
Aequo writes "Qt, the highly polished, well documented, modern GUI toolkit owned by Nokia, will be available under the LGPL starting with version 4.5! It was previously only mainly available under the GPL and a commercial license. Selling licenses was an important part of Qt under Trolltech as it was the company's main source of income, but Trolltech is a fruit-fly compared to Nokia, who want to encourage and stimulate the use of Qt Everywhere [PDF]. This is fantastic news for all commercial developers looking to create cross-platform applications without the need to buy a $4950 multi-platform license per developer."
Businesses

How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out? 1055

Posted by kdawson from the on-the-ground dept.
cellocgw writes "My company is in the process of implementing a version of '9/80,' a work schedule that squeezes 80 hours' labor time into 9 business days and provides every other Friday off. I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies, and how it's worked out for other Slashdot readers. Is your system flexible? Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week? Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep? And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
Perl

Call For Grant Proposals In Perl Development 137

Posted by kdawson from the sand-in-the-oyster dept.
On Elpeleg writes "The Perl Foundation is giving out grants for Perl development ranging from $500 to $3,000 in February 2009. You neither need to have a large, complex, or lengthy project nor be a Perl master or guru. You are encouraged to submit a proposal if you have a good idea and the means and ability to accomplish your Perl project. The deadline for proposal submissions is January 31, 2009."
Programming

The Evolution of Python 3 215

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-growd-up dept.
chromatic writes to tell us that O'Reilly has an interview with Guido van Rossum on the evolutionary process that gave us Python 3.0 and what is in store for the future. "I'd like to reiterate that at this point, it's a very personal choice to decide whether to use 3.0 or 2.6. You don't run the risk of being left behind by taking a conservative stance at this point. 2.6 will be just as well supported by the same group of core Python developers as 3.0. At the same time, we're also not sort of deemphasizing the importance and quality of 3.0. So if you are not held back by external requirements like dependencies on packages or third party software that hasn't been ported to 3.0 yet or working in an environment where everyone else is using another version. If you're learning Python for the first time, 3.0 is a great way to learn the language. There's a couple of things that trip over beginners have been removed."
It's funny. Laugh.

Trojan Found At Torrent Sites Insists "Downloading Is Wrong" 345

Posted by Soulskill from the attack-of-conscience dept.
NoisySplatter writes "Ernesto, founder of TorrentFreak, reports that a new trojan, 'Troj/Qhost-AC,' has been distributed on The Pirate Bay. The virus was disguised as a serial key generator, and the offending torrent has since been removed, but the source has not been identified. Troj/Qhost-AC makes changes to the user's hosts file that redirects The Pirate Bay, Suprbay, and Mininova to 127.0.0.1. In addition to making three popular torrent sites inaccessible, the virus also plays a sound file that says: 'downloading is wrong.' It looks like someone has finally stepped up to the plate to challenge Madonna for the title of 'Most Obnoxious Anti-Piracy Stunt.' Of course, this could just be the software industry's attempt at outdoing the RIAA and MPAA."
Movies

Review of 'MacHeads' Documentary 277

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-in-time-for-macworld-zomg-zomg dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Just prior to its premiere at MacWorld later this week, CNet has a review of MacHeads, the new documentary film covering the obsessive world of Apple fanboyism. MacHeads features commentary from original Apple employees, the self-confessed Apple-obsessed and girls who claim they'll never sleep with Windows users. Summed up by CNet: 'MacHeads is a superb film that will give Apple haters a few cheap laughs, and Apple fans a few cheap thrills. But it'll entertain both equally, while educating everybody else.'"
PC Games (Games)

Why Game Developers Should Support OS X and Linux 283

Posted by Soulskill from the good-faith dept.
kevind23 writes "Although Mac OS X and Linux have a small (but growing) market share, Jeff from Wolfire Games argues that supporting non-Windows platforms can lead to a huge increase in game sales. Using their popular game Lugaru as an example, he shows how less-popular platforms, or more specifically, their userbase can be a powerful advertising force. This can lead to a dramatic increase in popularity and exposure, which usually means a large boost in overall sales. The short article is an interesting read, especially for those working in game development and sales."

Comment Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score 4, Insightful) 458

by slittle (#26314795) Attached to: More Climate Scientists Now Support Geoengineering

The side effects of geoengineering could kill EVERYTHING.

The side effect of not geoengineering will kill everything.

Geoengineering is a skill we will need to master sooner or later. One day, whether we're the cause or not, this planet will not be inhabitable. We have three options: 1) direct our planet towards a consistently inhabitable state, 2) create an inhabitable world elsewhere, 3) die.

I don't really consider (3) to be much of an option, and (2) is so far beyond our current capabilities even experimentation is not a consideration. That leaves option (1).

Personally I'd rather we start our apprenticeship now by correcting our own effects on the environment rather than waiting until the planet makes it an unavoidable necessity regardless.

There should be at least some care taken before any major operation is undertaken, with that in mind.

It's sad that you think this might not be the case. We've spilled far worse into the oceans than iron, so try not to be offended when people that know what they're doing dismiss out of hand this hysteria over small scale experimentation.
Communications

IPv4 Address Use In 2008 258

Posted by Soulskill from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The world used 197 million new IPv4 addresses in 2008, leaving 926 million addresses still available. The US remains the biggest user of new addresses, but China is catching up quickly. Quoting Ars Technica: 'A possible explanation could be that the big player(s) in some countries are executing a "run on the bank" and trying to get IPv4 addresses while the getting is good, while those in other countries are working on more NAT (Network Address Translation) and other address conservation techniques in anticipation of the depletion of the IPv4 address reserves a few years from now. In both cases, adding some IPv6 to the mix would be helpful. Even though last year the number of IPv6 addresses given out increased by almost a factor eight over 2007, the total amount of IPv6 address space in use is just 0.027 percent.'"
Windows

Configuring a Windows PC For a Senior Citizen? 823

Posted by kdawson from the keeping-it-simple dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I would like to know if there are any resources on the Web or elsewhere describing how to configure a Windows PC for an older parent not living in the same household. Assume little computer familiarity or aptitude. Some stuff is obvious, like using only a few large icons for favorite Web sites, or an icon perhaps for composing email and another for checking email. Other considerations are eliminating nuisance messages from Windows update and antivirus/firewall. What works and what doesn't? Can anyone who has worked/volunteered at a senior center offer some insights?"
Internet Explorer

A First Look At Internet Explorer 8 RC1 271

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-lookit-that dept.
bogaboga writes "TG Daily reports that Microsoft quietly released the first update to its IE8 beta 2 to its closest partners last week. This new version only scores a dismal 12/100 on the Acid 3 test, though the score improves significantly if one leaves the [browser] window open for at least a minute. It is marked as 'Release Candidate 1.'"

Comment Re:Suicide Question (Score 1) 115

by slittle (#26142333) Attached to: Intel Quad-Core Price and Performance Showdown

I first heard about the electron migration problem as a reason for not overclocking back in the 386 days.

And yet my Celeron 300A has been running stable (first under OS/2, then XP) at 450Mhz since I bought it, 10 years ago.

Record uptime was ~650 days under XP, before a disk failure got it. And that disk was essentially "DOA" (visible bad sectors) but rather than RMA it I decided to see how long it lasted (obviously it's not a very important box).

PowerMax and NTFS/chkdsk recovered the initial damage and marked about 400k worth of visible bad sectors. It then survived another 4 years before SMART started reporting errors again, and it took another 6 months before it finally actually crashed.

SeaTools reset 102 problem sectors, NTFS/chkdsk reports no new visible bad sectors and recovered minor inconsistencies due to the crash. System is back online once again.

So it would seem modern tech is a little more resilient than we give it credit for, especially if the software doesn't shit itself as a result (this experiment would have failed miserably on ReiserFS).

</anecdote>

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