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Oracle

Team Oracle Penalized For America's Cup Rules Violations 190

Posted by Soulskill from the boat-tried-to-install-Ask-Toolbar-to-the-ocean dept.
whoever57 writes "On Saturday, Oracle Team USA and Team New Zealand will begin racing for the America's Cup in the amazing AC72 boats. However, the Oracle team starts with a significant handicap. It was recently discovered that members of Oracle Team USA made illegal changes to the boats used in the America's Cup Series (which is sailed in the smaller AC45 boats). After a hearing on Friday, the International Jury has decided on the penalty: Team Oracle will have to pay a fine and sail without some team members. More significantly, they lose two points before starting the America's Cup races against Team New Zealand. A tiny amount of weight had been added to the kingpost, in violation of the measurement rules for the class. This was reported to the measurement committee some weeks ago after its discovery by boatbuilders working for America's Cup Regatta Management (ACRM), not members of Oracle Team USA."
IT

Ask Slashdot: IT Staff Handovers -- How To Take Over From an Outgoing Sys Admin? 195

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-use-the-words-lame-duck dept.
Solar1ze writes "I've just started a role in an IT services firm. I'm required to take over from an incumbent who has been in the position for three years. What are some of the best practices for knowledge transfer you have used when you've taken over from another IT staff member? How do you digest the thousands of hosts, networks and associated software systems in a week, especially when some documentation exists, but much of it is still in the mind of the former worker?"

Comment Re:Well if you've nothing to hide... (Score 1) 923

by raydobbs (#44449697) Attached to: Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks: Get a Visit From the Feds

Many many many reasons you'd want to make your own soap. Perhaps you want a scent that isn't sold at your local outlets. Perhaps you want to make a more natural, less polluting product for your own use (simple soap recipes can be pretty eco-friendly if you plan them right). Perhaps the parent sells homemade soap at farmer's markets and local health food stores?

Comment ...and in others news... (Score 5, Funny) 205

...the incident of violent vandalism aboard trams and trains rose exponentially after the introduction of technology that, to paraphrase a gibbering offender led away in a straight jacket, '...puts goddamn voices in your head..." Advertisers are calling it a new age in advertising and psychotropic drug manufacturers report a boom in sales. More at 11...
Input Devices

Man Campaigns For Addition of 'Th' Key To Keyboard 258

Posted by Soulskill from the not-Th-first-to-try-messing-with-Th-keyboard dept.
beaverdownunder writes "Melbourne restauranteur Paul Mathis has developed a one-character replacement for the word 'The' – effectively an upper-case 'T' and a lower-case 'h' bunched together so they share the upright stem – and an app that puts it in everyone's hand by allowing users to download an entirely new keyboard complete not just with his 'Th' symbol, but also a row of keys containing the 10 or 15 (depending on the version) most frequently typed words in English. Mathis has already copped criticism from people who claim he is attempting to trademark a symbol that is part of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced 'tshe,' the letter represents the 'ch' sound found in the word 'chew')."
Apple

Apple Shows Off New iOS 7, Mac OS X At WWDC 607

Posted by samzenpus from the round-up dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off his company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco with a short video emphasizing the importance of design, particularly that which evokes some sort of emotional connection such as love or delight. But that sentimental bit aside, this WWDC was all business: huge numbers of developers attend this annual event, packing sessions designed to help give their apps an edge in Apple's crowded online marketplace (some 50 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, Cook told the audience during his keynote). Apple also uses its WWDC to unveil new products or services, attracting sizable interest from the tech press.

This time around, the company introduced Mac OS X 'Mavericks,' which includes 'Finder Tabs' (which allow the user to deploy multiple tabs within a Finder window—great for organization, in theory) and document tags (for easier searching). Macs will now support multiple displays, including HDTVs, with the ability to tweak elements between screens; Apple claims the operating system will also interact with the CPU in a more efficient manner.

On top of that, Apple rolled out some new hardware: an upgraded MacBook Air with faster graphics, better battery life (9 hours for the 11-inch edition, while the 13-inch version can draw 12 hours' worth of power). Apple has decided to jump into the cloud-productivity space with iWork for iCloud, which makes the company's iWork portfolio (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) browser-based; this is a clear response to Office 365 and Google Docs.

And finally, the executives onstage turned back to iOS, which (according to Apple) powers some 600 million devices around the world. This version involves more than a few tweaks: from a redesigned 'Slide to Unlock' at the bottom of the screen, to the bottom-up control panel that slides over the home-screen, to the 'flat' (as predicted) icons and an interface that adjusts as the phone is tilted, this is a total redesign. As a software designer, Ive is clearly a huge fan of basic shapes—circles and squares— and layering translucent elements atop one another."
IT

Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prove an IT Manager Is Incompetent? 331

Posted by samzenpus from the terrible-bosses dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry. After just a little scratching, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question. (This has led to countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive.) How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department? The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose, but should be able to run a project. Are there objective methods for assessing this ability?"

Comment Re:Join MSDN Technet (Score 5, Insightful) 293

by raydobbs (#43928961) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Getting Exchange and SQL Experience?

Sadly, personal experience != 'experience' in the corporate sense. I've had this fight with IT recruiters and headhunters - they want experience in a corporate setting with corporate problems, not 'I dorked with it at home for x months or years'. Of course, people who actually know what the hell they need value ANY experience, so its not a complete waste - just getting to interview with them versus the HR drone can be the biggest problem.

Good advice on TechNet though - helps you get a leg up on new OSes and obscure software without having to buy those licenses separately. BIG COST SAVINGS!
Earth

Researchers Regenerate 400-Year-Old Frozen Plants 77

Posted by Soulskill from the how-are-they-in-a-salad? dept.
Several readers sent word of a group of University of Alberta researchers, who were exploring the edge of the Teardrop Glacier in northern Canada when they noticed a 'greenish tint' coming out from underneath the glacier. It turned out to be a collection of bryophytes, which likely flourished there the last time the land in that area was exposed to sunlight before the Little Ice Age. They collected samples of plants estimated to be 400 years old, and the researchers were able to get them to sprout new growths in the lab (abstract). "The glaciers in the region have been receding at rates that have sharply accelerated since 2004, at about 3-4m per year. ... Bryophytes are different from the land plants that we know best, in that they do not have vascular tissue that helps pump fluids around different parts of the organism. They can survive being completely desiccated in long Arctic winters, returning to growth in warmer times, but Dr La Farge was surprised by an emergence of bryophytes that had been buried under ice for so long. 'When we looked at them in detail and brought them to the lab, I could see some of the stems actually had new growth of green lateral branches, and that said to me that these guys are regenerating in the field, and that blew my mind.'"
Technology

Ask slashdot: Which 100+ User Virtualization Solution Should I Use? 191

Posted by samzenpus from the best-of-virtual-class dept.
Gonzalez_S writes "Let's say you need to give access to 100+ users to create their own virtual machines and devices (eg. switches, .., ms windows or linux family) in a manageable and secure way. Which virtualization solution would you choose? There are vmware, xen, kvm, .. based solutions, but which one would you prefer and why? The solution should be stable, manageable, scriptable and preferably have ldap integration. In this case I also need to setup a playground for IT students, next to hosting production servers on the same system."
Nintendo

Nintendo Hijacks Ad Revenue From Fan-Created YouTube Playthroughs 297

Posted by Soulskill from the pay-it-backward dept.
mcleland writes "The BBC reports that Nintendo is now using the content ID match feature in YouTube to identify screencap videos of people playing their games. They then take over the advertising that appears with the video, and thus the ad revenue. Nintendo gets it all, and the creators of these videos (which are like extended fan-made commercials for the games) get nothing. Corporate gibberish to justify this: 'In a statement, the firm said the move was part of an "on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media."'"
Television

When Vote Counting Goes Bad 128

Posted by timothy from the it-increments-the-database-or-else-it-gets-the-hose dept.
ZipK writes "Television singing competition The Voice disclosed on Wednesday 'inconsistencies' with the tallying of on-line and SMS-based voting. Although host Carson Daly claimed the show wanted to be 'completely upfront,' the explanation from their third-party vote counter, Telescope, was anything but transparent. In particular, Telescope claims that disregarding all on-line and SMS-based voting for the two nights in question left no impact on the final results, but they haven't provided any detail of the 'inconsistency' or their ability to predict a complete lack of impact. Sure, it's only The Voice; but tomorrow it could be American Idol, and by next month, America's Got Talent."
Networking

Syria Falls Off the Internet Again 68

Posted by Soulskill from the going-dark dept.
New submitter briancox2 writes with news that all internet traffic from Syria has disappeared. Umbrella Security Labs explains: "Routing on the Internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP distributes routing information and makes sure all routers on the Internet know how to get to a certain IP address. When an IP range becomes unreachable it will be withdrawn from BGP, this informs routers that the IP range is no longer reachable. For example, one of the name servers for the DNS zone .SY is ns1.tld.sy with IP address 82.137.200.85. Normally our routers would expect a BGP route for 82.137.192.0/18. Currently that route has disappeared and we no longer have a way to reach the nameservers for .SY that reside in Syria. ... Currently there are just three routes in the BGP routing tables for Syria, while normally it’s close to eighty. ... Effectively, the shutdown disconnects Syria from Internet communication with the rest of the world."

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