Tokimasa - Slashdot User

Submission + - Open Source archive hits the web (osliving.com) 1

Submitted by

James Campbell

on Monday December 24, 2007 @12:49PM

James Campbell writes: "A silent storm has been brewing on the Open Source front with the recent launch of Open Source Living. Simply put, it's an archive of Open Source and free software ranging from lesser known personal projects to some of the major OSS programs that Web users have come to love.

While the site is clearly still in its infancy, with growth pains and all, it shows signs of becoming a valuable resource. Clean and organized information, plus the ability to raise awareness to OSS alternatives are its key assets right now. But what is really interesting about this case is that the site's author, a UK based blogger and OSS enthusiast, has thrown open the direction of the archive to members of its growing forum community.

The Internet is a perilous place for a fledgling website and avoiding the many pitfalls is no mean feat, but if the right cards are played and the project brings on board multiple authors who share a passion for OSS, then this will be something to watch out for. I suppose at the very least, everyone loves a bit of free gear!"

Submission + - Both Wikipedia and Citizendium under CC-by-sa? (citizendium.org)

Submitted by

Raindance

on Friday December 21, 2007 @08:24PM

Raindance writes: "Citizendium, after more than a year of license ambiguity, has announced its content will be freely available under CC-by-sa. This comes a few weeks after Wikipedia announced the fairly likely possibility of relicensing all homegrown GFDL content under CC-by-sa (as made possible by the new Creative Commons compatibility framework). Good things are happening in the realm of free content."

Submission + - Gmail to fully support IMAP (Via Gmail Help Docs) (google.com)

Submitted by Plasticman0110 on Monday October 22, 2007 @06:31AM

Plasticman0110 writes: Here is a snippet from their IMAP FAQ page: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12762

FAQ

Supported IMAP Client List

What is IMAP?

How do I enable IMAP?

Is there any reason to still use POP?

How is this better than POP?

How does IMAP work?

Why is Google launching IMAP for Gmail?

How much does IMAP cost?

Why should I set up IMAP, and what can it do?

Are you still going to support POP?

Does this work for Google Apps users?

Submission + - Do OpenOffice users save in Microsoft format? (zdnet.co.uk) 8

Submitted by

superglaze

on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @04:00AM

superglaze writes: "Looking through an article on the Series 60 office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft (eg. .doc) format (hence no plans at Quickoffice to support .odf). I guess I can see the rationale for this — it helps if you're sending a document to an MS-using company — but what's the general /.-user's experience of this?"

Submission + - Google Woos Recruits with its C++, Hitler Know-How 1

Submitted by

theodp

on Sunday October 14, 2007 @10:57PM

theodp writes: "Accounts of the opening of a Hitler-themed cafe in Mumbai last year noted India's curious and growing fascination with Hitler. And an earlier Times of India survey found significant numbers of Indian college students rated Hitler as an ideal model for an Indian leader. Which might explain why the Internship Opportunities page at Google India Jobs has been sporting this oh-so-politically-incorrect testimonial for Hitler-savvy Google employees: 'Q. Why do you like working at Google? A. ...there are always people who know more than you, be it C++, Java, Cryptic crosswords or even Hitler' (screenshot)."

Submission + - Microsoft offers glimpse of .NET source

Submitted by Fronsolo on Friday October 05, 2007 @02:14AM

Fronsolo writes: Microsoft intends to reveal parts of the .NET 3.5 source code in its upcoming release of Visual Studio 2008. The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License, which allows a developer to view the source but prevents them from making modifications.

Submission + - Google Overflow on G!

Submitted by

Bashir Raees

on Friday September 28, 2007 @04:02AM

Bashir Raees writes: "What would you do if you wake up one day and see the stocks you bought at just below $16 is now worth $9,223,372,036,854,775,807.00?"

Submission + - School Web Filters

Submitted by know_op on Thursday September 27, 2007 @01:40PM

know_op writes: With the most recent 8E6 web filter update this week, our school has been blocked from accessing even more web sites. Any site with the word "forum" in it is now blocked, and now even some sites like yahoo.com are blocked, classified as a "Portal". The biggest concern that I have, as an educator, is that sites with political views like the Huffington Post are now blocked, while Ann Coulter's site remains unblocked. Blocking of political speech seems a little sinister.

My school's tech coordinator has the ability to unblock sites, but the school district that I work for has decided to trust 8E6's blocked list. My questions for Slashdot are the following ones: do any of your school districts have a process for unblocking web sites? Are you ever successful in getting a web site unblocked, or do schools just prefer to go along with whatever the filtering companies suggest?

Submission + - General spreadsheet bug (feature?) 1

Submitted by sztuczny-kot on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:56AM

sztuczny-kot writes: It seems that many spreadsheets have a sort of a bug in automatic creation of arithmetic series which can be replicated as follows:

Select a cell, say A1 and input a value of 10. Then go to the cell below it (in this case A2) and input 9.8. Now select the two cells and drag the lower-right corner of the selection down to create arithmetic series. Drag until you get to cell A60. Then look at the numbers below 8.6. For example, insted of 0 you might get something like 3.5527136788005E-14. Other cells with numbers lower than 8.6 will most likely also contain a value that is somehow close to the one you would expect, but not the one. I guess that this bug might be somehow caused by floating-point number representation. Or perhaps it should be called a (rather unintuitive) computational feature and there is nothing to make fuss about?

As far as I could check, this applies to the following spreadsheets:
Microsoft Excel — versions 4.0, 97, 2007
Gnumeric 1.6.3
Open Office Calc 2.0.4

Submission + - Customize RSS to Receive More Content/ Postings

Submitted by

SlothB77

on Monday September 24, 2007 @05:20PM

SlothB77 writes: "Increase Quantity of Postings/ Headlines Received in Single RSS Feed

I subscribed to the Yahoo! Finance RSS feed for a NYSE traded firm. It gave me the last 20 headlines. Better than Google Finance's (Beta) 10 headlines or MSN Money's 7 headlines. But I want A LOT. Like 100. Or 500 headlines. How can I change the customization on the RSS feed to get the last 500 headlines instead of the last 20? Can it be done? Is there a site that provides that service?

Thanks,

S-

Arlington, VA"

Submission + - The Semantic Indexing Project (SEO) (abcarticledirectory.com)

Submitted by blue234 on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:10PM

blue234 writes: During the past five years, a team of linguists and computer scientists at NITLE and Middlebury College has developed a prototype Semantic Engine. This prototype was designed to address the universal problem of accessing and organizing large amounts of unstructured digital text. Using mathematical algorithms to index the latent semantic content of documents, the prototype engine has been demonstrated to drastically reduce, if not eliminate, the need for expensive and time-consuming metadata tagging, and to produce results superior to keyword searches in limited test domains. http://abcarticledirectory.com/blogspot/the-semantic-indexing-project-seo.htm

Submission + - Call 9-1-1, get yourself killed (livejournal.com)

Submitted by ajb44 on Saturday September 15, 2007 @02:58PM

ajb44 writes: What do you do if you discover a crime, and the criminals haven't seen you yet? Call 911 on your mobile. Problem is, some recent mobiles now squawk loudly when you do this, potentially alerting the criminals to your presence. A FOAF had this happen to her. Fortunately the criminals had already left, but she's now worried about using 911 when checking her woods for criminal activity. Verizon and Casio techs claimed that this is an FCC mandate, but it's not really clear yet. Please help tell the FCC, Verizon and Casio that this is a dumb idea.

Submission + - Stealthy Windows update raises serious concerns

Submitted by UniversalVM on Saturday September 15, 2007 @02:29PM

UniversalVM writes: What is the single biggest issue that bothers open source advocates about proprietary software? It is probably the ability of the vendor to pull stunts like this. Windows has stealthily updated components of the operating system using its update service. The update will not be flagged even if you have set up your update to notify you and only execute if permitted.
The weak explanation seems to be a great exercise in circular logic "Had we failed to update the service automatically, users would not have been able to successfully check for updates and, in turn, users would not have had updates installed automatically or received expected notifications." News.com is reporting that all of the updated files on both XP and Vista appears to be in windows update itself. This is information that was independently uncovered by users and still not released by Microsoft.
More interestingly could this be construed as a hacking of Windows users' systems? Does the EULA specify that Microsoft has the right to silently break into my machine, change components of the operating system and ignore any settings that explicitly prohibit this sort of behavior? Seems like a good argument could be made for Microsoft breaking into a system without the users' permission.

Submission + - Smaller and more lightweight software is better?

Submitted by on Friday September 07, 2007 @01:20AM

An anonymous reader writes: I prefer software that takes as little hardrive space and RAM as possible. I can't stand bloated software like iTunes, as compared to Foobar or classic Winamp; or Windows Media Player, as compared to VLC or Media Player Classic. What are some of your favorite applications which are virtually bloat-free?

Submission + - Vista SP1 and XP SP3 - Leaked by Microsoft? (neosmart.net)

Submitted by Mariam Hollander on Saturday August 11, 2007 @05:04AM

Mariam Hollander writes: Microsoft's two most awaited releases: Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1. Betas for both leaked just days apart. A big coincidece or a Microsoft master plan?

NeoSmart's analysis of both the XP SP3 and Vista SP1 leaks is quite interesting: were these two builds leaked (unofficially) by Microsoft in an attempt to unofficially guage the response of the online community to these releases, fix some bugs before they officially even exist, and deliver a perfect service pack? Most importantly, is this Microsoft taking advantage of its last chance to save face and fix what has been the most-criticized version of Windows to date, before it gets out of hand?

[J]ust how likely is it that the two most valuable products still in development and without a single official release would leak to the internet just days apart? Especially when the Windows Vista build ships as a time-bombed release, it makes us wonder: Is Microsoft really in the practice of time-bombing internal development releases that only exist in the hands of people who have access to hourly builds?

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