Escardin - Slashdot User

Submission + - Adobe Flash update pushed out with 280 page EULA

Submitted by ciscoguy01 on Monday June 21, 2010 @03:22PM

ciscoguy01 writes: Adobe sent me a popup today with a flash player update to 10.1.
I always update flash right away because of all the exploits and how flash in general behaves horribly.
This update required me to agree to an EULA that was 280 pages in every language you can imagine:
http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/pdfs/PlatformClients_PC_WWEULA_Combined_20100108_1657.pdf
It goes on and on about it being a binding agreement and all.
Special care is taken in section 4 to prohibit use of flash in any set top box or media player.
AFAIK all media online (youtube, hulu) plays with flash.
Why would Adobe ask users of their "free" software to agree to all these terms?
Is Adobe's real goal to get license agreements out of media player manufacturers?
Is there a reliable replacement for Adobe Flash Player, maybe open source?

Submission + - Researchers Develop 90% More Efficient Air Conditi (inhabitat.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18, 2010 @11:34AM

An anonymous reader writes: Summer is awesome – the jump in our electricity bills from air conditioning, not so much. Luckily for anyone watching their wallets (and for the power grid), scientists at the National Renewable Energy Lab have developed a new air conditioning process that has the potential to use up to 90% less energy than today’s top-of-the-line ACs. The lab used membranes, evaporative cooling and liquid desiccants to achieve the ultra efficient results, which, if passed along to the market, could be huge in terms of saving both power and money.

Submission + - First replicating creature spawned in simulator (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Calopteryx on Thursday June 17, 2010 @05:09AM

Calopteryx writes: "This is arguably the single most impressive and important pattern ever devised," says a Game of Life enthusiast. New Scientist has a story on a self-replicating entity which inhabits the mathematical universe known as the Game of Life. The existence of Gemini could help us understand how life on Earth began, or inspire strategies to build tiny computers

Submission + - Employee Monitoring: When IT is Asked to Spy (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike on Wednesday June 16, 2010 @12:53PM

CWmike writes: It's 9:00 in the morning, or 3:00 in the afternoon, or even 10:00 at night. Do you know what your users are up to? More than ever, IT managers can answer 'Oh, yes' to that query. As corporate functions converge onto IP-based networks, more infractions are happening online. Employees leak intellectual property or trade secrets; violate laws against sexual harassment or child pornography; and waste time while looking like they are hard at work. Michael Workman, an associate professor at the Florida Institute of Technology's Nathan M. Bisk College of Business, estimates that monitoring responsibilities take up at least 20% of the average IT manager's time. Yet most IT professionals never expected they'd be asked to police their colleagues and co-workers in quite this way. How do they feel about this growing responsibility? Workman says he sees a split among tech workers. Those who specialize in security issues feel that it's a valid part of IT's job. But those who have more of a generalist's role, such as network administrators, often don't like it. Computerworld contributor Tam Harbert found a wide variety of viewpoints from IT managers, ranging from discomfort at having to 'babysit' employees to righteous beliefs about 'protecting the integrity of the system.'

Submission + - Flash Destroyer Tests Limit of Solid State Storage (dangerousprototypes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27, 2010 @03:03AM

An anonymous reader writes: We all know that flash and other types of solid state storage can only endure a limited number of write cycles. The open source Flash Destroyer prototype explores that limit by writing and verifying a solid state storage chip until it dies. The total write-verify cycle count is shown on a display, watch a live video feed and guess when the first chip will die. This project was inspired by the inevitable comments about flash longevity on every Slashdot SSD story, like these from earlier this week. Design files and source are available at Google Code.

Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 03, 2009 @11:04AM from the download-compile-reboot-repeat dept.

diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."

ASCIIpOrtal Has Been Released 83

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @12:23PM from the watch-out-for-those-boulders dept.

maclizard writes "After much waiting, ASCIIpOrtal has now been released. Joe Larson, the man behind the game, has made sure to provide numerous mirrors so as to avoid the Slashdot effect that killed his site several months ago. An interview with Larson (part two here) is available as well."

Submission + - Time & Attendance for the Mid-Size Business

Submitted by NuclearRampage on Thursday September 17, 2009 @03:02PM

NuclearRampage writes: I work for a mid-size manufacturing company with ~2000 employee and 7 satellite sites all using leased ethernet barcode clocks with collection software from 1999. Not only is it expensive to lease the clocks, but is very hard to extract data from collection software to get the management customized reports. We started down the road of looking for new systems that we can host in-house and it seams ridiculous that simple clock with bar code scanner ranges from $500 to $1700 just because it communicates with the vendors specific software. Has anyone rolled their own time & attendance system or found a decent vendor that won't charge $100,000 to do time & attendance for 2000 people?

French Police Save Millions Switching To Ubuntu 368

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 12, 2009 @03:04PM from the justified-disdain dept.

Ynot_82 writes "The French national police force, the Gendarmerie Nationale, has spoken about their migration away from the Windows platform to Linux. Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015. Of the move, Lt. Col. Guimard had this comment: '"Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."'"

Submission + - The Ubuntu Craze: Is Linux Desktop Ready?

Submitted by

tdanylak

on Sunday March 18, 2007 @10:54PM

tdanylak writes: "Are Linux Desktop OSes ready for the general users? Does Ubuntu pave the way to the ultimate replacement of Windows in our home's computers or does it still has way to go in terms of ease of use and reliability. The author of this article discusses the above question from the perspective of someone who's comfortable with Linux and gives an example of his father testing out the Ubuntu OS. Based on the two experiences the author answers the above question. What do you think, is Ubuntu Linux ready for the masses?
The Ubuntu Craze: Is Linux Desktop Ready?"

Submission + - National Shutdown Day

Submitted by bpedman on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @02:21AM

bpedman writes: I found this site and idea to be interesting. www.shutdownday.org invites all people that use a computer to shutdown for a complete 24 hours and not use a computer. Over thirty-thousand people have visited the site and committed to either shutdown for the day, March 24th, or not. I am as yet undecided, I do not know how long it has been since I have not powered on my computer or anothers for a full 24 hours. (Think of the electricity alone that would be saved in that one day if all computers were shutdown!)

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