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Education

Keeping a PC Personal At School? 695

Berto Kraus writes "As one of the most tech-oriented students in my art-oriented institution, I'm usually the one with the laptop. This causes frequent requests from other students to read mail, check some site, or connect it to the projector to display a file from their Flash drive. For the sake of my privacy, the health of my laptop, and my own peace of mind, I'm reluctant. But telling my compatriots to go to our building supervisor and ask him for a desktop-on-a-cart, as they should do, is considered rude and unfriendly. Now, I could dual-boot Ubuntu, or carry around a Linux-on-a-stick. Or I could embed the computer in my skull. For many reasons, none of these solutions is ideal. So I'm asking you, insightful and funny Slashdotters, what would you do to keep your PC personal at school?"

Comment Re:like every other sales demo (Score 1) 210

See, now I know you're lying. You could have said three years and maybe you could have fooled some people. But you had to go with a completely unbelievable 18 months. Ridiculous! Preposterous! Unpossible!

On a more serious note, I've witnessed a SAP implementation as a replacement of an in-house developed application. Original development took two years, SAP took four years. And after those four years the application still didn't have all the functionality of the original app. You might take a guess at the costs involved, but I assure you that it was a lot higher than that. Guess again and you're still not thinking in the same ballpark.

SAP, that name still sends shivers up my spine.

Comment Re:A billion years? (Score 2, Informative) 239

After extensive testing to find a durable DVD-RW I can honestly say that none of the ones I tested was completely readable after two years in storage. All had defects to some extend. Most surprising find was that there was no correlation between price and low error count. At all.

If you have experience with a brand that lasts for a lot longer I'd really appreciate to hear about it.

Comment Re:"functional programming languages can beat C" (Score 1) 502

I'm sure nobody will call you on this one. It's obvious C has a lot of drawbacks compared to more modern languages. But for raw performance there isn't much that can keep up. I'm even willing to up the ante by saying that the solution in C will be at least twice as fast as the other competitor. And that is a conservative estimate.
Security

Malware Found On Brand-New Windows Netbook 250

An anonymous reader alerts us to an interesting development that Kaspersky Labs stumbled across. They purchased a new M&A Companion Touch netbook in order to test a new anti-virus product targeted at the netbook segment, and discovered three pieces of malware on the factory-sealed netbook. A little sleuthing turned up the likely infection scenario — at the factory, someone was updating Intel drivers using a USB flash drive that was infected with a variant of the AutoRun worm. "Installed along with the worm was a rootkit and a password stealer that harvests log-in credentials for online games such as World of Warcraft. ... To ensure that a new PC is malware-free, [Kaspersky] recommended that before users connect the machine to the Internet, they install security software, update it by retrieving the latest definition file on another computer, and transferring that update to the new system, then running a full antivirus scan."
Security

Should Developers Be Liable For Their Code? 517

Glyn Moody writes "They might be, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal, which suggests 'licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions,' becomes law. The idea of making Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage caused by flaws in its products is certainly attractive, but where would this idea leave free software coders?"

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