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Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates' Management Style

Submitted by replicant108
replicant108 writes: Tom Evslin gives a fascinating account of working for Microsoft in the early 90s:

"So you're in there presenting your product plan to billg, steveb, and mikemap. Billg typically has his eyes closed and he's rocking back and forth. He could be asleep; he could be thinking about something else; he could be listening intently to everything you're saying. The trouble is all are possible and you don't know which. Obviously, you have to present as if he were listening intently even though you know he isn't looking at the PowerPoint slides you spent so much time on.

At some point in your presentation billg will say "that's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." He looks like he means it. However, since you knew he was going to say this, you can't really let it faze you. Moreover, you can't afford to look fazed; remember: he's a bully."
Mars

Submission + - Thermal IR imaging suggest half of Mars has ice

Submitted by
Ixlr8
Ixlr8 writes: "BBC news is running a story that suggests up to half of Mars may have ice. From the article:

Up until now, scientists had been able to search for water deposits using a spectrometer fixed to the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft. However, only readings that are accurate to within several hundred kilometres can be obtained.
By comparing seasonal changes in thermal infrared patterns, detected by the same Odyssey spacecraft, (scientists)[ed] can make readings accurate to within just hundreds of metres."
Debian

Submission + - The Perfect Desktop - Debian Etch (Debian 4.0)

Submitted by
hausmasta
hausmasta writes: "With the release of Microsoft's new Windows operating system (Vista), more and more people are looking for alternatives to Windows for various reasons. In this tutorial I will show people who are willing to switch to Linux how they can set up a Linux desktop (Debian Etch in this article) that fully replaces their Windows desktop, i.e. that has all software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that runs also on older hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_debi an_etch"
Software

Submission + - OpenOffice.org To Replace Microsoft Office?

Submitted by
Tsu Dho Nimh
Tsu Dho Nimh writes: "It has to be true, because it's on the Internet at Associated Content, the fine content provider that brought you the great Ham Sandwich Hate Crime debacle. This article has too many errors for me to explain to the author, a political science student who claims to have "a clear opinion and perspective on many political, cultural, and spiritual issues". Unfortunately he confuses open source with public domain and appears to have only a passing acquaintance with both MS Office and OpenOffice.org.

QUOTES:"OpenOffice.org is open-source. Open-source means that the code upon which the software is built is public domain". "If you require detailed statistical functionality, complicated financial formulas, or other non-standard formulas and functions, Calc may disappoint you", "OpenOffice.org Math ... Microsoft Office equivalent: Visual Basic (sort of)"."
United States

Journal SPAM: Naomi Wolf: Fascist America, in 10 easy steps 5

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Quake Full Speed On Nintendo DS

Submitted by Croakyvoice
Croakyvoice writes: Simon J Hall has updated his port of the Classic First Person Shooter Quake to the Nintendo DS. This release now plays at near full speed and all the levels in the game are now playable and has full support for mods and also wifi network play, via an access point.
United States

Submission + - Geologists discover world's largest fossil forest

Submitted by solitas
solitas writes: The St.Louis post-Dispatch says that geologists have discovered the remains of one of the world's oldest tropical rainforests, preserved in the ceiling of a coal mine 250 feet below the surface.

The four-square-mile fossil forest — the largest find ever — is just south of Danville in Vermilion County, Ill., in the 300-million-year-old Herrin coal bed, a 6-foot-thick strip mined by a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Peabody Coal.

No photos; but a graphic about how they believe it happened.
Television

Submission + - Score one for the legality of ripping DVDs

Submitted by
Jim Buzbee
Jim Buzbee writes: "Ever wanted to rip all your DVDs to a big network server so that you could select and play them back to your TV? Up until now, manufacturers have been wary of building a device to allow this type of usage because they've been afraid a lawsuit. The DVD Copy Control Association had claimed this was contractually forbidden, but now a judge says otherwise stating, "nothing in the agreement prevents you from making copies of DVDs. Nothing requires that a DVD be present during playback." Start ripping boys..."

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