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Windows

Submission + - What yet-to-be-written software do you need?

Submitted by
Indebi
Indebi writes: "I'm a beginning .NET developer and I wanted to ask Slashdot what kinds of software they need that hasn't been written or hasn't been written well and I may write it if it looks like it may be needed. Note: This software would have to run under Windows or Mono."
Transportation

Submission + - Autopilot responsible of Air France 447 accident?

Submitted by anubios
anubios writes: Spanish pilot Pedro Guil has formulated an hypothesis (sorry, link on spanish) of Air France 447 accident based on his own personal experience. He was flying a Boeing 747-300 about the same zone of the accident crossing the Intertropical Convergence Zone with medium to strong turbulence when the air temperature suddenly rose up causing the plane to stall, he had to disconnect the autopilot as it tries to maintain the altitude increasing engine power. They were on the Coffin corner. If the autopilot were not disconnected possibly the plane could have been crashed. Although it only happened once in 40 years flying he thinks is possible. Note that Airbus recommendation is to NOT disconnect the autopilot with strong turbulences but a situation like that is not expected to occur.
Idle

Submission + - Apple gets pwned by DVD-Jon's guerilla marketing (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Techcrunch has an article today about the ultimate real-life Apple hack. DVD-Jon's company doubleTwist put up a huge ad on the wall outside of the Apple Store in San Francisco.

The ad invites passersby to try "The Cure for iPhone Envy", which they can use to access their "iTunes Library on any device. In Seconds". It's clearly a message that Apple doesn't want anything to do with. We're hearing that Apple employees are currently scratching their heads as to how this appeared.

Apparently the window technically belongs to BART, the Bay Area's commuter transit system. doubleTwist got in touch with an ad agency that BART deals with and leased the window, giving them the chance to plaster their ad just below the Apple logo in its full glory. This is apparently the first time the window has been used for this purpose (before it just sat bare). And because everything was done legally, Apple's going to have a hard time getting rid of it.
Microsoft

Submission + - Ballmer Threatens to Pull Out of U.S. 2

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is threatening to move Microsoft employees offshore if Congress enacts President Obama's plans to curb tax avoidance by U.S. corporations. 'It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,' complained billionaire Ballmer. 'We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.' According to 2006 reports, Microsoft transferred $16 billion in assets to secretive Dublin subsidiaries to shave billions off its U.S. tax bill. 'Corporate tax is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland,' acknowledged Ballmer in 2005. 'It would be disingenuous to say otherwise.' Tax havens, tax havens, tax havens!"
Linux Business

"Good Enough" Computers Are the Future 515

Posted by timothy from the adequate-for-light-word-processing-and-small-sums dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Over on the PC World blog, Keir Thomas engages in some speculative thinking. Pretending to be writing from the year 2025, he describes a world of 'Good Enough computing,' wherein ultra-cheap PCs and notebooks (created to help end-users weather the 'Great Recession' of the early 21st century) are coupled to open source operating systems. This is possible because even the cheapest chips have all the power most people need nowadays. In what is effectively the present situation with netbooks writ large, he sees a future where Microsoft is priced out of the entire desktop operating system market and can't compete. It's a fun read that raises some interesting points."
Power

Three Mile Island Memories 309

Posted by Soulskill from the if-it-ain't-broke,-send-it-through-congress dept.
theodp writes "Thirty years after the partial nuclear core meltdown at Three Mile Island, Robert Cringely describes the terrible TMI user interface, blaming a confluence of bad design decisions — some made by Congress — for making the accident vastly worse. While computers could be used to monitor the reactor, US law prohibited using computers to directly control nuclear power plants — men would do that. So, when the (one) computer noticed a problem, it would set off audible and visual alarms, and send a problem description to a line printer. Simple, except the computer noticed 700 things wrong in the first few minutes of the TMI accident, causing the one audible alarm to ring continuously until it was shut off as useless. The one visual alarm blinked for days, indicating nothing useful. And the print queue was quickly flooded with 700 error reports followed by thousands of updates and corrections, making it almost instantly hours behind. The operators had to guess at what the problem was."
Hardware

What Does a $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway? 495

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the half-the-cost-was-windows-server-liceses dept.
justechn writes "Tom's Hardware has an article about custom PC maker Puget Systems, who had just finished a custom $16,000 PC for one of their clients. So what exactly goes into a $16,000 system? How about: Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case. In addition to all that hardware, it also runs very quiet and very cool. The temperature of the CPUs is 36 C at idle, 45 C at load."
Operating Systems

What Normal Users Can Expect From Ubuntu 8.10 511

Posted by timothy from the abnormal-users-can-expect-whatever-they-want dept.
notthatwillsmith writes "With Ubuntu 8.10 due to be released in just a few days, Maximum PC pored through all the enhancements, updates, and new features that are bundled into the release of Intrepid Ibex and separated out the new features that are most exciting for Linux desktop users. Things to be excited about? With new versions of GNOME and X.Org, there's quite a bit, ranging from the context-sensitive Deskbar search to an audio and video compatible SIP client to the new Network Manager (manage wired, Wi-Fi, VPN, and cellular broadband connections in one place)."
Patents

Amazon Patents Humans Assisting Computers 236

Posted by kdawson from the mechanical-turk dept.
theodp writes "Amazon's latest patent, the Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement, reads like scary sci-fi, with claims covering the use of humans 'of college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated' to perform subtasks dispatched by a computer. From the patent: 'For examples, the task on hand requires French speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.' Yikes."
Programming

Python On Planes Supersunday Release 135

Posted by Zonk from the sunday-sunday-sunday dept.
SlashRating©
CowboyNeal
slashdottit! tm
spo0nman writes "The PythonOnPlanes release team has just published PythonOnPlanes-1.3.07 aka. 'the SuperSunday' release. For those in the know PythonOnPlanes is a rapid development framework for Python which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association DataMapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables Python users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.'Major highlights in the release include Active Scrum Manager 1, Sanity Preserver 3.13 and Lart 22.21. This is also the first release with the *PythonOnPlanes Live CD Installer* officially debuting on the x86 platform.'"
Communications

Microsoft set to Announce Zune 360 and 180 66

Posted by Zonk from the moving-up-in-the-world dept.
SlashRating©
5318008
slashdottit! tm
Blueberry Bob writes "Just in time for the iPhone June launch, Microsoft is planning to launch the Zune 360 and 180. The 360 will be a widescreen video and music player available in 40 and 80 GB models, whereas the 180 will be a smaller device similar in size to the iPod nano. Oddly enough, only the 180 model will feature a cellphone — Microsoft believes that the combined cellphone/music player market is better served in compact players. 'Although the default behavior will be to connect the Zune 360 and 180 to a Windows machine and use the default Zune software (which is also undergoing a revamp) it will be possible to put the Zune 360 in to disk mode and the device will be treated like any ordinary USB storage device and will therefore be accessible from Mac and Linux machines too. The built in indexing in the 360 will allow you to easily search for songs, however out of the box it's not possible to create playlists on the 360 itself, they still need to be managed by the Zune software.'"
Role Playing (Games)

World's First Gold Farming RPG 91

Posted by Zonk from the dispensing-with-the-illusion dept.
SlashRating©
Lambda
slashdottit! tm
Kevlar_Sindome writes "Verse Studios announced today that they have officially 'changed everything', with the release of their first game: Fool's Gold. Fool's Gold lets players take on the role of the heroic gold farmer seeking profit from gold hungry characters who seem to have an unlimited amount of money to spend, but never enough time to spend it. Touted as the first Gold Farming Role Playing Game ( GF-RPG ), Verse Studios hopes to get a jump on starting a new game genre. Fool's Gold is free for download off the Verse Studios website."

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