Comment Trac works pretty well (Score 1) 2
In my experience Trac works well, and I am sure there are plenty of other opinions out there for you just waiting to be unleashed.
Submission + - Netbook run machine rolls 1.3 million dice a day
stevel writes: The owner of games site GamesByEmail.com created Dice-O-Matic, "a machine that can belch a continuous river of dice down a spiraling ramp, then elevate, photograph, process and upload almost a million and a half rolls to the server a day.
"The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6x4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom."
While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.) No, it's not running Linux...
"The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6x4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom."
While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.) No, it's not running Linux...
Submission + - Scientists cure paralysis in mice (spinalcordresources.com)
Greg George writes: "Scientists in Australia have cured Floppy Baby Syndrome in mice — for the first time. The team had been searching for the genes that caused the syndrome so that drugs could them be used to possibly correct the problem. Muscular actin was found to be missing in the children with this syndrome, and in it's place heart actin was used in their bodies. this caused the babies to quickly lose control over most of their muscles and essentially were quadriplegics after a few months of life. Once the heart actin was found, the scientists worked on a method to turn on the heart actin in the muscles. After considerable trial and error, they were able, using genetic engineering techniques, to turn on the heart actin in the standard muscle fibers and were successful in mice. Mice that typically would die after a few days were found to live standard lives (about 2 years) after the genetic engineering was used on them. The next step was to find a drug that duplicated the genetic work they created for the mice so that it would be safe for humans. They are presently screening over 1000 already approved"
Submission + - US Army Seizes Vista, Won't Wait for Windows 7
nandemoari writes: "The U.S. Army has announced it will soon upgrade its PC systems to the much-maligned Windows Vista operating system.
The decision to upgrade United States Army PC desktops from Windows XP to Windows Vista was announced yesterday, and early reports suggest the military plans to complete the change by 2010.
The U.S. Army will also upgrade all copies of Microsoft Office 2003 to Office 2007. That means it won't wait until the 2010 version; reports suggest this decision was made for security concerns, a point Microsoft may someday soon need to comment on.
The U.S. Army switch marks one of the biggest mass-upgrades in the history of American computing."
Submission + - Development Process Suggestions?
Evardsson writes: I have been tasked with implementing process for development in my new job. This needs to include time tracking, clear documentation of what it is we are trying to accomplish and enough clear documentation of the process and code that it is reproducible. We currently have a very small development team, but the idea is to get this all into place now so that as we grow we can introduce new developers to a smoothly running process.
Since the majority of the work we do is either internal work (work for the company itself and used only by employees) or (for clients) modifying our application template with a few tweaks to functionality and a fresh skin I was thinking that the idea of doing complex, detailed functional specs and walkthroughs and use case scenarios may be a bit of overkill, but we can do it once for the default application template and mostly not have to repeat that step.
So my thought is that we start with a complete functional spec and use case scenario (based on our default application template) and we use that as the document to record which modifications we are making. Then breaking it down into blocks of tasks in a WBS and using that for our first SWAG on the estimated time to finish (ETF). The WBS would then get pulled into a project plan for better task separation and assignment and give a clearer view of ETF. While the work is ongoing, having each task as an item in Trac (or something similar) might allow a quick way to see how well we are doing on sticking to our project plan.
What have you done that has worked (or not worked) for you? Any suggestions?
Since the majority of the work we do is either internal work (work for the company itself and used only by employees) or (for clients) modifying our application template with a few tweaks to functionality and a fresh skin I was thinking that the idea of doing complex, detailed functional specs and walkthroughs and use case scenarios may be a bit of overkill, but we can do it once for the default application template and mostly not have to repeat that step.
So my thought is that we start with a complete functional spec and use case scenario (based on our default application template) and we use that as the document to record which modifications we are making. Then breaking it down into blocks of tasks in a WBS and using that for our first SWAG on the estimated time to finish (ETF). The WBS would then get pulled into a project plan for better task separation and assignment and give a clearer view of ETF. While the work is ongoing, having each task as an item in Trac (or something similar) might allow a quick way to see how well we are doing on sticking to our project plan.
What have you done that has worked (or not worked) for you? Any suggestions?
Submission + - IT Department Issue Tracking Software Suggestion 2
jollyreaper writes: I work at a non-profit and our IT department. We're currently using Track-It 8.5 and it's a mixed bag, some parts really good and some parts really bad. I took a look at the list of what's out there for issue tracking systems and there are certainly a lot of options! What's everyone here using these days? Is there anything else we should really take a look at or stick with what we have?
Comment Oops? Or clever ploy? (Score 1) 341
Is this really a mistake or is it a clever marketing ploy to get this into the hands of everyone who is running the Windows 7 Release Candidate (which is the Ultimate version, btw).
Get 'em hooked now, and then when the preview version expires hope that turns into sales ...
Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 821
What holds true for low-end hardware holds true for VMs as well.
I tried Vista on Parallels. I really tried to like it, but I just couldn't keep it running. I went back to XP.
Now I am trying Windows 7 on Parallels. And I am impressed. It runs stable, it runs smoothly in a VM and (so far) plays nice with the virtual environment. No aero in the VM, but that is of the least importance.
Being that I am usually on the other side of the argument re: MS/OS X or MS/*nix, I have to honestly admit that so far I really like Windows 7. Mostly because it works in the environment in which I use it (Parallels) and works at least as well as XP. I have not had any of the temporary freezing issues with 7 that I have had with XP, so at least in that regard it is working slightly better.
My $.02
Comment Criticizing which part? (Score 1) 1127
The biggest problem with finding "Linux Critics" is (IMO) determining what exactly they should be criticizing. In my mind, a Linux Critic has specific criticism about the kernel. If you are talking about the Desktop Environment there are plenty of /Gnome | KDE | Enlightenment | XFCE | etc/ critics out there. If it is Applications there are plenty of those as well. If it is the default programs loaded on install then you are talking about specific Distributions and again, there are plenty of /Ubuntu | Gentoo | Fedora | SuSE | RedHat | Mepis | etc/ critics out there.
Linux is not like Windows or Mac OSX where the OS, Desktop Environment and default application load are all handled by one organization. Instead, all of this is distributed. If you don't like the default desktop environment in your distro of choice you can change it, or select another distro. Same goes for default application load. If your gripe is truly Linux I suggest you look into the Kernel Developers forums and mail lists. Not only will you find plenty of critics, but you will also find lots of developers who are willing to take that criticism into consideration.
Linux is not like Windows or Mac OSX where the OS, Desktop Environment and default application load are all handled by one organization. Instead, all of this is distributed. If you don't like the default desktop environment in your distro of choice you can change it, or select another distro. Same goes for default application load. If your gripe is truly Linux I suggest you look into the Kernel Developers forums and mail lists. Not only will you find plenty of critics, but you will also find lots of developers who are willing to take that criticism into consideration.
Comment Better to 'p1mp' your mount (Score 5, Funny) 119
... than to mount your pimp.
Unless you are into that sort of thing.
Comment I miss the old days (Score 2, Interesting) 220
I miss the old days when the web was all text, and if you wanted to see an image you downloaded it and opened it in a separate image viewing app. At least then you knew that web authors (for such they were in those days) were at least trying to focus on content.
But alas, the days of content are long gone.
Comment Re:TOTALLY worthless (Score 1) 244
From Mac The Ripper - you can use DVD2One to create a burnable image. (If you like.)
That is the reason that all my import DVDs are stashed away safely in storage and I watch on copies burned on DL DVDs. That way when the disk gets damaged it costs me around fifty cents to replace (since I buy the discs in the 50 or 100 packs when they are on sale) rather than paying another 20 - 30 dollars for a new copy of the import.
Submission + - OLPC Game Jam for a XO Laptop
An anonymous reader writes: OLPC anounced a three-day "game jam" scheduled to begin June 8 on the campus of Olin College, an engineering school in Needham, Massachusetts. The game jam is an opportunity for developers to create new types of games that rely on features of the XO's design such as mesh networking between nearby users, an integrated still or video camera, and a tablet mode for mobile gaming.
"There aren't too many games right now that take advantage of mesh style networking," said Klein, referring to the XO's ability to use Wi-Fi to communicate with other users up to a kilometer away, and display them as icons on its Sugar interface. "There are networked games, sure, but they aren't sensitive to the ability to display the presence of other users depending on where they are in relation to you, or to pop up on the screen when they are close enough."
Beyond creating games that teach specific tasks like counting or reading, OLPC hopes the contest will produce templates that allow kids to build their own games, according to OLPC's development guidelines.
Oh yea, the grand prize is a a free OX laptop and all games created at the weekend-long event under the open-source GNU General Public License, and post them on the SourceForge site.
Submission + - Novell/Microsoft deal omits OpenOffice.org
An anonymous reader writes: Novell has released the terms of its controversial non-license patent license deal with Microsoft. The deal specifically excludes patent protection for Novell's OpenOffice.org customers.
Submission + - New AACS crack. This one is undefeatable.
Tuoqui writes: With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number people may be ignoring the biggest weakness in the AACS armor. Apparently some hackers have figured out how tocrack AACS in an undefeatable way that revoking all the keys would not protect against.
