broothal - Slashdot User

Submission + - Water found on the moon

Submitted by

firmafest

on Friday November 13, 2009 @02:11PM

firmafest writes: "According to CNN, significant water has been found on the moon. NASA claims that "The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon". Of course, they are talking about a permanent Moon Base which just took a large step closer. New York times also has an article on the findings including a quote from a professor saying "we got more than just a whiff — we practically tasted it""

Submission + - eBay sells Skype to Netscape founder

Submitted by

Julefrokost

on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @05:45AM

Julefrokost writes: "Computerworld has a story about eBay selling Skype. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape along with a group of investors, are reported to have paid $2 Billion for Skype. According to New York Times, Google was also a potential buyer. Also the original founders of Skype are said to have placed a bid, but Marc Andressen & Co was the highest bidder."

Submission + - Oracle to sell Sun's hardware biz to HP? 2

Submitted by

Underholdning

on Friday August 28, 2009 @12:36PM

Underholdning writes: "With the DOJ approving Oracle's SUN buyour the question arises what Oracle want to do with SUN's hardware business. It's no secret that what Oracle wanted was the software part. Now The Inquired is running a story claiming that Oracle will sell the hardware business of SUN to HP. This will give Oracle a juicy check while HP can increase it's services. However, Larry Ellison denies that it will take place. A source CNN claims otherwise."

Comment FFC (Score 1) 1

by broothal on Tuesday August 25, 2009 @06:25AM (#29184079) Attached to: The Pirate Bay offline

Submission needs FFC (Fat Finger Correction). TPB is the correct abbreviation, not any of the fantastic typos I made above :)

Submission + - The Pirate Bay offline 1

Submitted by

Underholdning

on Tuesday August 25, 2009 @05:05AM

Underholdning writes: "The Register has a story about Swedish court ordering ISPs to disconnect The Pirate Bay or face a massive daily fine. The reason for the shutdown was an upcoming civil lawsuit by copyright holders. As usual, Torrentfreak has an updated story . It seems like the takedown until now has been successful. Even though TPD quickly found a new home, it's still unavailable. At the same time, the selling of TBP seems to be falling to pieces with more and more problems piling up."

Submission + - New Chrome beta

Submitted by

Underholdning

on Thursday August 06, 2009 @03:29AM

Underholdning writes: "There's a new beta version of Google Chrome. From the announcement: "Beyond the improvements in JavaScript execution in this latest beta, there are a host of other improvements that should help Google Chrome make the most of your network connection. For example, when you open a new Web page while other Web pages are still loading, Google Chrome is now smarter about prioritizing the requests for the new page--for instance, fetching text, images, and video for your new page--ahead of the requests from the older pages. Loading pages on this beta release should also be faster than ever with DNS caching, more efficient DOM bindings, and using V8 for proxy auto-config. ". Cnet has an overview as well as PC world.. No mention of adblock though."

Submission + - Social Desktop with KDE 4.3

Submitted by

firmafest

on Thursday August 06, 2009 @03:21AM

firmafest writes: "The new KDE 4.3 nicknamed Caizen furthers the social networking by bringing it closer to the desktop. Facebook and Twitter are here to stay (and let's be honest — we have an account even if we're die hard geeks). The KDE initiatives goes beyond that though and aims to facilitate community-building by providing a vehicle for connecting open source software enthusiasts to each other. Ars Technica has a well written article on the KDE social desktop and description of the API. How would a social networking site of open source enthusiasts look like? Something like: L33tg33k took the "What language are you" quiz with the result "Assembler". Take your own quiz."

Comment More about the IPDRED law (Score 3, Informative) 337

by broothal on Friday April 03, 2009 @02:58AM (#27441711) Attached to: After Sweden's New Law, a Major Drop In Internet Traffic

Read all about ipred.

Submission + - Google's newest venture

Submitted by

Firmafest

on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @08:15AM

Firmafest writes: "Fresh out of the Google Blog is Google Ventures. It's like a Business Angel — only it's not a person, it's a company. And it's Google. Focusing on, but not limited to, IT/Tech, Google looks for entrepreneurs to help them start and grow their business. Check out the official Google Venture Site "

Submission + - When do you know a dev deserves to become partner?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @07:20AM

An anonymous reader writes: We're a small startup company which since day one was self funded by management (with significant risk) and grew into a cash positive and self sustaining business.

Our first employee, also our core developer, has been with us since day one. Throughout, he has had a decent salary that's been increased over time but may still be on the low side for his skill set as we stand today — although he definitely gained plenty of experience while working with us. Now a few years have passed and we've reached a point where he is not motivated enough to continue working (paid, but has been more or less idle apart from minor code maintenance in the past few months) and *wants* a good incentive to keep working with us — either we increase his salary significantly, make him a partner or separate into our different ways.

The question is, how do we know when an employee deserves to become a partner? And if a partner, how do we figure out the % such a person might deserve? Would he deserve anything retroactively?

We would very much appreciate the wisdom of the crowds.

Submission + - WiFi in planes

Submitted by

Firmafest

on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @03:25AM

Firmafest writes: "In USA Today there's a scoop that American Delta Airlines offers WiFi on domestic flights . Price is approx. $10 to get connected. Being a frequent international flyer I hope this will catch on. LA times reports that the cost is about $100.000 to equip a plane . While that number seems high, it will probably be worth it. If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the WiFi enabled one."

Submission + - Shouldn't Every Developer Understand English?

Submitted by

Pickens

on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @12:44AM

Pickens writes: "Jeff Atwood has an interesting post where he says that with the internet whatever country you live in or language you speak, a growing percentage of the accumulated knowledge of the world can and should be available in your native language but that the rules are different for programmers. "So much so that I'm going to ask the unthinkable: shouldn't every software developer understand English?" Atwood argues that "great hackers collectively realizing that sticking to English for technical discussion makes it easier to get stuff done. It's a meritocracy of code, not language, and nobody (or at least nobody who is sane, anyway) localizes programming languages." Eric Raymond in his essay "How to be a Hacker" says that functional English is required for true hackers and notes that "Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following." Although it may sound like "The Ugly American" and be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism, "advocating the adoption of English as the de-facto standard language of software development is simple pragmatism, the most virtuous of all hacker traits," writes Atwood. "If that makes me an ugly American programmer, so be it.""

Submission + - Gmail down worldwide

Submitted by

Firmafest

on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @07:02AM

Firmafest writes: "For the past hour, Gmail has been down as reported by number of users . Google has issued a small statement claiming that it only affects small subset of their users. I've become used to the stability of Gmail, but what happens when you urgently need a piece of your data and the service is down? Is this the price you pay for free, good email?"

Comment My favorite part (Score 4, Interesting) 132

by broothal on Sunday January 25, 2009 @05:59AM (#26596839) Attached to: What, Me Worry? MAD Magazine Going Quarterly

One of the things I always enjoyed from MAD was the fold-in images (they have a name, but that escapes me right now).

I found this overview - very interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html

Submission + - Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!

Submitted by

Underholdning

on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @08:03AM

Underholdning writes: "As part of an experiment security researcher Didier Stevens bought a Google ad six months ago that said, "Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!" 409 people clicked on the ad. Didier writes that during those six months, the ad was displayed 259,723 times and clicked on 409 times. 98% of the machines ran Windows. Now that's a pretty cheap way of acquiring zombies."

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