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Submission + - The Eight-Hour Day: An excuse for poor planning?

Submitted by
athloi
athloi writes: "On a technical writing mailing list, insane deadlines became a controversial topic when it was suggested that working more than eight hours a day encouraged higher-ups to take advantage of that extra time when scheduling projects. This causes a spiral into more work with less time, and causes burnt-out workers. On every job I've ever had, I have found that without the meetings, politics, and goofing off, what I needed to do could get accomplished in three hours. Would we all be happier and more productive if we worked less but harder? If we eliminated more boredom and created a more playful, more challenging workplace, might we get less of the bloatware and other signs of burnt-out employees that currently plague technology? I wanted to Ask Slashdot for some feedback from the experienced developers and writers here."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Cyber Homeless People

Submitted by
alberion
alberion writes: "In Japan a new social class has emerged. People who are not unemployed, but can no longer afford a place to live. Their solution? Living on cyber cafes."
Security

Canadian Coins Not Nano-Tech Espionage Devices 412

Posted by CmdrTaco from the reality-is-always-funnier dept.
Necrotica writes "An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department's false espionage warning earlier this year. The odd-looking — but harmless — "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP."
Windows

Submission + - Vista vs. XP Game Stability and Performance

Submitted by
boyko.at.netqos
boyko.at.netqos writes: "HardOCP does a side-by side comparison with a battery of games to check stability and framerates in Windows XP and Windows Vista. In addition to the lowered framerates in Vista, they had stability issues in Need for Speed: Carbon and Prey. From the article:

As you can see, some games fared better than others with the new OS. For some titles, especially Company of Heroes and Need for Speed, we saw dramatic framerate discrepancies. What's more, both of these titles have recently released patches! Other titles showed a slight, but essentially negligible difference, such as BF2142, World of Warcraft, and Prey. Really, there was only one instance where Vista was able to pick up a few more frames than XP — World of Warcraft at greater than 90fps, where the human eye can't even see the difference. To see this overall trend against Vista is very interesting and makes us wonder as to the cause."
Communications

Submission + - Fring support for SkypeOut Unlimited

Submitted by phtb0y
phtb0y writes: Fring says it now supports "SkypeOut Unlimited" in the USA. I use Fring on my Nokia E61i and received an email this morning from Fring support. Apparently we can now enjoy making calls via WiFi/EDGE/3G using Fring and SkypeOut unlimited for $29 per year. This previously was not possible as Fring calls were routed via the UK and SkypeOut Unlimited was restricted to calls originating from US/Canada IP address space. Fring says they have some servers stateside now and it should be possible to use this service. Fingers Crossed!
Debian

Submission + - Making Ubuntu Usable

Submitted by
mikemuch
mikemuch writes: "ExtremeTech has posted a tutorial on making Ubuntu usable. It includes stuff like changing the startup music, background, fonts, icons, and colors, as well as navigating the Nautilus file manager — on both PCs and Macs."
Security

Submission + - Mystery behind Canadian spy coins revealed

Submitted by Exp315
Exp315 writes: Remember those stories that surfaced last year that defense contractors travelling to Canada had received Canadian coins with embedded radio transmitters in them? Apparently the coins used some kind of advanced nano-technology, according to initial reports. Well, it turns out that the "advanced nano-technology" was the anti-wear coating on the red poppy centres of the special coins released by the Canadian mint for Remembrance Day (Veteran's Day). The coins looked so unusual that it raised some suspicions! http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070507.wspycoins0507/BNStory/National/home
Space

Submission + - Fat Planet Discovered

Submitted by ExE122
ExE122 writes: Scientists have discovered an unusually fat planet approximately eight times the size of Jupiter. The planet, HAT-P-2b, is the largest planet discovered to date. This new discovery contains "so much gravity a 150-pound person would weigh in at more than a ton".
Privacy

Submission + - Canadian Poppy Quarter Caused 'Spy Coin' Warning

Submitted by
gambit3
gambit3 writes: "An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defense Department's false espionage warning earlier this year. The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy — Canada's flower of remembrance — inlaid over a maple leaf. Fear of these coins led to a sensational warning from the Defense Security Service, an agency of the Defense Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances."
GUI

Submission + - Cross platform XML GUI. What to choose?

Submitted by mindflow
mindflow writes: Sooner or later most of the new software development with Microsoft as platform will be done after the dot.net 3.0 model. This means the ability to better organize software projects towards matching designer and programmer roles. I believe this is an important move and one which I will try to pursue. However I still believe that cross platform ability is important. A quick search for xml gui java on google results in a plethora of interesting projects. At this point it seems difficult to predict what will become a popular standard, if any. Therefore I would like to try this question on the readers of slashdot. What should I pursue if I want to develop cross platform xml based gui applications? And will any of these technologies become a standard for web applications?
The Internet

Submission + - Use Web search engines to locate XML

Submitted by IndioMan
IndioMan writes: XML was designed for the Web, and so it follows that XML is meant to be found by Web search engines. You might need to take advantage of this when you seek a particular XML document. Or perhaps you need examples of XML in a particular format. You have a variety of advanced Web search engine features to use in such cases. In this tip I'll present a variety of techniques and gotchas to help you in your quest.

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