Comment Not necessarily an announcement (Score 1) 701
Reading that page in context, he's delivering a talk entitled "An Earthshaking Announcement". That doesn't necessarily mean he's making an earthshaking announcement.
Comment Re:This... (Score 3, Informative) 30
Thank you for sparing me that :) We've had "slashdot is dead" thread drift ever since the "what's this slashdot BS, I miss chips & dips" babble died down.
Standards Expert — "Microsoft Fails the Standards Test" 177
levell writes "Alex Brown, Convenor of the Ballot Resolution Meeting on OOXML, has written a blog post saying that Microsoft is failing the standards test. Mr. Brown notes: 'In its pre-release form Office 2010 supports not the approved Strict variant of OOXML, but the very format the global community rejected in September 2007, and subsequently marked as not for use in new documents — the Transitional variant. Microsoft are behaving as if the JTC 1 standardisation process never happened, and using technologies (like VML) in a new product which even the text of the Standard itself describes as "deprecated" and "included... for legacy reasons only"...' He also says that defects are being fixed very slowly and that 'Looking at the text, I reckon it is more like 95% that remains to be done, as it is still lousy with defects.' It's an insightful look at what has happened with OOXML since ISO approved it from someone who was not opposed to its becoming a standard."
Comment Re:Simply, no software required. (Score 1) 483
I think it works better if you don't divide by six...
Comment Re:Stupid!! (Score 1) 298
Directing people to a third-party service which doesn't provide source counts as a "proprietary solution" to me. I understand more and more where Debian's apparent fanaticism about "freedom" comes from, slippery slope and all that.
Crazy Firewall Log Activity — What Does It Mean?
344
arkowitz writes "I happened to have access to five days worth of firewall logs from a US state government agency. I wrote a parser to grab unique IPs out, and sent several million of them to a company called Quova, who gave me back full location info on every 40th one. I then used Green Phosphor's Glasshouse visualization tool to have a look at the count of inbound packets, grouped by country of origin and hour. And it's freaking crazy looking. So I made the video of it and I'm asking the Slashdot community: What the heck is going on?"
Comment Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery (Score 1) 629
Agreed, in spades. Wasting ten (or more) minutes of the seventy on violence-against-women "jokes" seriously undermines an otherwise solid argument. NSFW tag is one thing, what about a trigger warning?
Comment Re:Bubby? Is that you? (Score 1) 859
Note the name of the Wikimedia counsel...I have to wonder if it's that Mike Godwin.
Comment Re:.. and in further news... from 1967 (Score 1) 131
The X-15 used rocket engines (carried its own oxidizer). This is a jet, using oxygen from the air.
Highly-Paid Developers As ScrumMasters? 434
An anonymous reader writes 'At my company, our mis-implementation of Agile includes the employment of some of our most highly-paid, principal engineers as ScrumMasters. This has effectively resulted in a loss of those engineering functions as these engineers now dedicate their time to ScrumMastery. Furthermore, the ScrumMasters either cannot or do not separate their roles as Team Leads with those of ScrumMastery and — worse — seem to be completely unaware that this poor implementation of Agile development is harmful to our velocity. To date, I have chalked this up to poor leadership, a general lack of understanding of Agile, and an inability to change from traditional roles left over from the waterfall development mode. In addition, I have contended that, for a given Scrum Team, the role of ScrumMaster should be filled by someone of lower impact, such as an intern brought in specifically for that purpose. But I would like to put the questions to Slashdotters as to whether they have seen these same transitional difficulties, what the results have been at their respective companies, or whether they just plain disagree with my assertion that principal engineers should not be relegated to the roles of ScrumMasters.'
Comment Re:Descent! (Score 1) 1120
Hi Kevin! I always was a tunnel rat and agree D3 has scale issues. Some open spaces would have been cool, but never getting into the really tight tunnels was annoying. The other BIG problem was the controls; I remember the fights over mouselook. I was (and still am) keyboard-only for D1 and 2, and that never really got working properly in D3. The "ramping" thing improved matters a bit, but I had to switch to a stick for 3 and never felt as comfortable with it. Still haven't finished Mercenary...probably should install one of my copies and do that sometime.
I was thrilled with how solidly Outrage backed OpenGL, including the driver-finding service you guys set up. Too bad Direct3D took hold so strongly.
A Descent reboot would need someone with serious vision to translate the greatness of the game forward a decade(!) The style of play was such a good fit to that era of technology--another issue, I think, with D3. It wasn't mammoth in terms of sales, either, IIRC...odd blend of pure action and cerebral controls (although I did get a kick out of the fact the PC Gamer reviewer puked while playing it.) Seems Volition made the right call going with Red Faction. Wish they'd take that money and make FS3, though.
Good PDF Reader Device With Internet Browsing? 167
ranjix writes "I need a handheld device which would allow me to read ebooks and/or browse the internet while actively and intensely laying in the hammock (and Yes, I do have a hammock in my mom's basement). I'll try to sum up the basic requirements: (good) PDF reader (and ebooks of whatever sort), WiFi connectivity and Internet browser, screen minimum 4.5", readable in sunlight, etc, fairly responsive, at least 4-5 hours battery. Obviously I looked at the usual suspects: Kindle/Amazon tries to grab one into the proprietary formats and their own network (while other ebook readers don't really browse the internet), laptops/netbooks are pretty hard to hold, and the UMPC arena seems a hodge-podge of 'to be released' (Viliv S5? Aigo whatever?) with 'seriously expensive' (Sony, OQO) or plain 'we recommend you don't buy' (Samsung Q1Ex). Is there anything else I could use in the given circumstances?"
Comment Re:Warranty is a differentiating factor (Score 1) 311
TFA does not mention warranty
You mean on the first page of TFA, in the giant chart that compares features, the first line that isn't prices?
Video Game Adaptation In the Works For A Song of Fire and Ice 183
On Wednesday, French game development studio Cyanide announced that they will be working with George R. R. Martin to bring his popular fantasy series, A Song of Fire and Ice, to the realm of video games. The press release implies that there will be more than one game, and the games will come out for PCs and "next-gen consoles." Apparently an HBO television series is in the works as well, in addition to board and card games related to the books.
Comment Cannon is rotten (Score 1) 162
The additional drawings don't address the biggest problem: Cannon is one rotten mountain. It's regularly crumbling apart in pieces large and small. (Sort of the reason the Old Man fell in the first place.) I can't envision trying to build a system of tunnels in crumbly rock and then hanging a walkway out in front. Then there's the question of what happens when a boulder from above hits all that glass.
