HappySmileMan - Slashdot User

Fairpoint Pledges To Violate Net Neutrality 249

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 27, 2008 @03:46PM from the we'll-read-it-to-you-over-the-phone dept.

wytcld writes "Fairpoint Communications, which has taken over Verizon's landline business in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, has announced that on February 6, 'AOL, Yahoo! and MSN subscribers will continue to have access to content but will no longer be able to access their e-mail through the third-party Web site. Instead, Yahoo! and other third-party e-mail will be accessed directly at the MyFairPoint.net portal.' Since Verizon spun off its lines to Fairpoint in a maneuver that got debt off of Verizon's balance sheets by saddling Fairpoint with it, there was concern by the public service boards of the three states about how Fairpoint would deal with that debt. Fairpoint's profit plan: force all Webmail users through Fairpoint's portal, by blocking all direct access to Webmail portals other than its own. Will Fairpoint's own search engine portal be next? What can stop them?"

Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @05:42PM (#26194143) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

Co$ wouldn't have to lawyer up, they aren't involved. Forcing the practice of Scientology at work is against California law. But Scientology didn't do it, DisKeeper did.

Exactly, the person responsible will take the fall, resign from his position in WISE and give a load of money to the Church of Scientology, and then he'll find a different way to get new members and be right back in the Church's arms probably.

Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @05:39PM (#26194123) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

Religious discrimination isn't prohibited, per se. Try applying for a job at your local Catholic church if you're an atheist and see what I mean.

A church is a non-profit organisation, Diskeeper can't make this claim.

Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @05:38PM (#26194103) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

It's a software company though, a kosher restaurant has a lot more links to Judaism than disk defragmenting has to do with Scientology.

Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @05:34PM (#26194065) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

Mod points aren't that important but you seem to be a whore for them in every article. Are you a scientologist or something?

What an appropriate article to post those 2 sentences in.

Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @05:01PM (#26193739) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

So. That means you get to practice your religion in the cube next to me, but I get to carry my handgun in case you try to ritualistically sacrifice me?

Erm... Yes, exactly, as long as he doesn't force his religion on you, and you only use your gun if needed in self defense.

Although they can say you can't bring a gun in of course.

What I really want to know is what the fuck the point you're trying to make it, discriminating against people of a different religion when hiring is a crime, regardless of whether your a Christian, a Muslim or a Scientologist, if a company forced it's employees to go confess to a priest or go to Church it would get sued also.

Comment Re:Wow (Score 3, Interesting) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @04:43PM (#26193565) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

He's saying the church of Scientology does it, and the owner of the company funds them.

If you look into it you'll see a history of child abuse in the Church of Scientology, they claim that it hasn't happened in over 20 years (Not that it never happened) but there've been quiet a few (now ex-)members of the church testifying that it's happened more recently than that.

As for kitten killing I'm not as sure, just googled and found http://www.solitarytrees.net/pickets/sp992a.htm, but no idea how many of those stories are true, and I don't really care enough to go and look into them, I've heard of the first story before a few times though and it seems likely that at least that one is true.

Comment Re:Wow (Score 3, Funny) 779

by HappySmileMan on Sunday December 21, 2008 @04:34PM (#26193493) Attached to: Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

Does Microsoft hold Windows users at gunpoint? Who, exactly, is forced to use Windows?

People with jobs. You've probably met a couple and never even realised it.

Comment Re:Snarky article (Score 1) 293

by HappySmileMan on Tuesday December 16, 2008 @04:03PM (#26136665) Attached to: 100 Years Ago, No Free Broadband Pneumatic Tubes

Saying that "A government owned X is a good idea" is not the same as saying "All X should be government owned without any competition".

You can have a government-owned business as well as privately owned ones, in competition.

Comment Re:Battle for Wesnoth (Score 1) 634

by HappySmileMan on Monday December 15, 2008 @07:05PM (#26126127) Attached to: Great Games To Put On a Free PC?

The whole point is that YOU don't need to do the maths, it's done for you, big red bars mean you'll probably hurt(or be hurt) a lot, big green bars don't.

Or simpler and more accurate, big bars at top mean you'll miss a lot, big bars at bottom mean you'll hit a lot.

Can You Be Denied the Right To Support OSS? 212

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 22, 2008 @02:21PM from the oss-enterprise dept.

jerico.dev writes "I am currently selecting a CM tool for a project. Important condition: the software must be OSI compliant. I considered Alfresco, since they call themselves 'open source.' Then I heard from several of Alfresco's partners that they are not allowed to do projects based on Alfresco's GPL edition because their partnership contract denied them the right to do so. They only can support Alfresco's enterprise edition. But Alfresco's VP of business development Matt Asay told me that their enterprise edition is not OSI compliant. Does anyone in the Slashdot crowd have experience with partner contracts of other OSS vendors? Is it normal that Sun, Red Hat, etc. force their partners to decline projects based on their open source editions? It's probably legal to do so, but do you think it is legitimate and fair?"

Comment Re:you're joking, right? (Score 1) 138

by HappySmileMan on Monday November 17, 2008 @08:28PM (#25795121) Attached to: New Top 500 Supercomputer List

Yeah, they should've just included the amount of Linux systems in the summary instead of forcing everyone to RTFA.

Press Favored Obama Throughout Campaign 1601

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 10, 2008 @09:29AM from the kudos-for-owning-up-to-it dept.

narcberry writes "After complaints of one-sided reporting, the Washington Post checked their own articles and agreed. Obama was clearly favored, throughout his campaign, in terms of more favorable articles, less criticism, better page real-estate, more pictures, and total disregard for problems such as his drug use. 'Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics. The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama's battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that. McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.'"

Looking At Changes In the Newest GCC 54

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 30, 2008 @02:32PM from the keeping-abreast dept.

cyberpead writes "With GCC 4 comes a new optimization framework (and new intermediate code representation), new target and language support, and a variety of new attributes and options. Get to know the major new features and their benefits in this article."

Submission + - Are you proud of your code? 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09, 2007 @07:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: I have a problem and I am hoping /. group therapy is the cure, so get on with the +5 comments, post haste! I am downright embarrassed by the quality of my work; specifically, my code. It is buggy, slow, fragile, and a nightmare to maintain. Documentation, requirements, automated tests? Does not exist. Do you feel the same way? If so, then what is holding you back from realizing your full potential? More importantly, what if anything are you planning to do about it? This picture, which many of you have already seen, captures several project failure modes. It would be humorous if it weren't so depressingly true. I enjoy programming and have from a young age (cut my teeth on BASIC on an Apple IIe). I have worked for companies large and small in a variety of languages and platforms. Sadly the one constant in my career is that I am assigned to projects that drift, seemingly aimlessly, from inception to a point where the client runs out of funding and the project is abandoned. Like many young and idealistic university graduates I hoped to spend my life programming passionately, but ten years later I look in the mirror and see a whore. I'm just doing it for the money. Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices? I'm not talking about the methodology-of-the-week, I'm referring to good old fashioned advice like keeping SQL out of the UI layer. For the big prize: has anyone convinced their superiors that the customer isn't always right and saying no once in awhile is the best course of action? Thanks in advance for your helpful advice.

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