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Submission + - FreeBSD 10.1 has been released (freebsd.org)

Submitted by aojensen
aojensen writes: The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team have announced version 10.1 of FreeBSD, a free and open source Unix-like operating system. As this is the second release of the stable/10 branch, it focuses on improving the stability and security of the 10.0-RELEASE, but also introduces a set of new features including: vt(4) a new console driver, support for FreeBSD/i386 guests on the bhyve hypervisor, support for SMP on armv6 kernels, UEFI boot support for amd64 architectures, support for the UDP-Lite protocol (RFC 3828) support on both IPv4 and IPv6, and much more. For a complete list of changes and new features, the release notes are also available.

Submission + - Windows 10 gets a package manager for the command line (extremetech.com)

Submitted by aojensen
aojensen writes: ExtremeTech report that the most recent build of Windows 10 Technical Preview shows that Windows is finally getting a package manager. The package manager is built for the PowerShell command line based on OneGet. OneGet is a command line utility for PowerShell very similar to classic Linux utilities such as apt-get and yum, which enable administrators and power users comfortable with the command line to install software packages without the need for a graphical installer. ExtremeTech emphasise that "you can open up PowerShell and use OneGet to install thousands of applications with commands such as Find-Package VLC and Install-Package Firefox" — a missing feature, which Linux advocates for long have used to argue for Windows inferiority in terms of automation and scale. It appears that the package manage is open to any software repository and is based on the Chocolatey format for defining package repositories.

Submission + - GitHub open sources Atom, their text editor based on Chromium (github.com) 1

Submitted by aojensen
aojensen writes: GitHub have decided to release Atom, a programmer's text editor based on Chromium. Atom is released under the MIT license. GitHub announced the following on their blog:

"Ten weeks ago we debuted Atom, the new text editor that's deeply programmable but also easy to use. Starting today, Atom is available for download to everyone–completely free and open source. Because we spend most of our day in a text editor, the single most important feature we wanted in an editor was extensibility. Atom is built with the same open source technologies used by modern web browsers. At the core of Atom is Chromium, the open source project behind Google Chrome. With that comes all the power and innovation being developed for the web. But more importantly, extending Atom is as simple as writing JavaScript and CSS, two languages used by millions of developers each day."

Apart from being extensible via HTML, Javascript, and CSS, Atom also offers out-of-the-box Node.js integration, a modular design with a built-in package manager (apm), and extensive features such as file system browser, themes, project-wide search and replace, panes, snippets, code folding, and more. Launched only 10 weeks ago, Atom seems to have a well-established ecosystem of packages and extensions already.

Atom is currently available for Mac (OS X 10.8) and can be downloaded from https://atom.io/.

Submission + - Oregon switching from own failing healthcare exchange solution to Healthcare.gov (theverge.com)

Submitted by aojensen
aojensen writes: A while ago we brought a story (http://m.slashdot.org/story/200897) about how Oregon is having trouble getting it's troubled online healthcare exchange ready for prime time — the reasons beating difficulties managing the expensive vendors and consultants delivering the solution. Now it seems, according to The Verge (http://feedly.com/k/1rvB8Np), they have ditched their own solution for Healthcare.gov, the US federal government solution, which became famous because of its own odd technology platform and notable performance issues ( http://m.slashdot.org/story/19...): "Oregon is giving up on its state-run online health exchange and switching over to the federal website, making it the first state to make the jump, according to the Associated Press. Oregon's health exchange, known as Cover Oregon, has reportedly been plagued with issues and hasn't even been able to fully process new applications online â" those enrolling have apparently still had to fill out paper forms as well. Fixing Cover Oregon reportedly would have cost a staggering $78 million, while transitioning over to Healthcare.gov will only cost between $4 million and $6 million." In exchange for the adopting the federal solution, however, Oregon will have to give up some control of its own policies.

Comment Networking, networking, networking... (Score 1) 173

by aojensen (#38141184) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Which Ph.D For Work In Applied Statistics / C.S.?
Coming from the enterprise IT consulting field, I can tell you that what is just as important is the network that you build up through your education and work. It sounds like the Ivy League University is going to give you better network opportunities plus a really good way of branding yourself in future interviews. From a career perspective, I would go with the Ivy League option.

Comment Once Again: The relevance of J. Searle (Score 2) 729

by aojensen (#36259320) Attached to: Does Quantum Theory Explain Consciousness?
The journalist and prominent thinkers behind this article ought to read the paper 'Is the brain a digital computer' by John Searle (http://philosophy.wisc.edu/shapiro/Phil554/PAPERS/Is%20the%20Brain%20a%20Digital%20Computer.htm). Not only is it relevant to current research into strong/weak AI paradigms and philosophy of cognition --- it also provides a nice counterargument against physicalistic reductionism around human cognition.

Comment Re:Firefox is a stinking pile of garbage (Score 1) 258

by aojensen (#27238409) Attached to: 2.0 Beta Chrome On Windows, Chromium On Linux
I completely forgot about the person who left Netscape with his last words "You can't polish a Turd" after Netscape open sourced their browser and morphed into Mozilla Foundation.

Besides the fact that your technical comparison is correct, it's incredible how fast people are at ditching Firefox for being slow -- while at the same time embracing Firefox when a new version of Internet Explorer is released. I'd call it the fallacy of browser competition.

I'd love to use Chrome. I actually tried the latest stable release on Win32 a couple of time, and it's incredibly fast. But I use Mac OS X on my desktop, and Google haven't ported the browser yet.

Google, keep up the good work and port the browser to Mac OS X as soon as possible!

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