beejhuff - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Wireless? You've already ruled me out (Score 1) 569

by beejhuff on Friday July 10, 2009 @09:54AM (#28649011) Attached to: Best Mouse For Programming?

I know I may get blasted by the MS haters that lurk here, but I have to say the MS / Razer Habu I picked up at the local Fry's on sale (1/2 price!) has served me well. It's "technically" a gaming mouse (or that's how they market it, anyway), but I've found it works really well at high resolutions on my dual displays in both Windows XP & Ubuntu. I had to do a little bit of configuration in Ubuntu to map all of my keys, but it has 6 programmable keys, great resolution (1600 DPI) and the programmable keys are in positions (IMHO) that really are useful to me whether I'm fraggin zombies in Left 4 Dead or banging out code in Eclipse / VS.

The one thing that DID bum me out was that the firmware update utility only runs on Windows (or at least it did when I bought it a year or so ago), but I mean, this is a MS product, so I kind of figured that. Once I updated the FW, though, Ubuntu detected it fine, so I'm not complaining too loudly.

It's a wired mouse (I'd hate to think how heavy it would be with enough batteries to get that high of a laser DPI), but it does have a really nice long cord and is pretty ergonomic. YMMV, but that's my 2 cents.

Comment Re:How many years have they been working on this? (Score 5, Insightful) 247

by beejhuff on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @09:56AM (#27401327) Attached to: NASA Shows Off Mock-Up of Mars-Capable Spacecraft

I (for once) RTFA, and from what I gathered, they've developed this module and updated launcher to provide an effective round trip mechanism for Moon expeditions, where they will practice the operations that will be required when a full scale Mars mission is executed (sometime around between 2020-2030). I think the important point is that NASA is realizing that the shuttle is not an effective mission system for the next generation of Moon missions, which are a pre-req for any future Mars missions.

To me, this actually sounds like a sober assessment - and one that is long overdue.

Was Standardizing On JavaScript a Mistake? 525

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 21, 2008 @11:10AM from the hindsight-is-twenty-twenty dept.

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions the wisdom of standardizing on a single language in the wake of the ECMA Committee's decision to abandon ECMAScript 4 in favor of the much less ambitious ECMAScript 3.1, stunting the future of JavaScript. Had the work continued, McAllister argues, it could have ushered in an era of large-scale application development that would ensure the browser's ability to meet our evolving needs in the years ahead. 'The more I hear about the ongoing efforts to revise the leading Web standards, the less convinced I am that we're approaching Web-based applications the right way,' McAllister writes. 'If anything, the more we talk about building large-scale Web applications, the more we should recognize that a single style of programming will never suit every job.' McAllister's simple truth: JavaScript will never be good for everything — especially as the Web continues to evolve beyond its original vision. His solution? 'Rather than shoehorning more and more functionality into the browser itself, maybe it's time we separated the UI from the underlying client-side logic. Let the browser handle the View. Let the Controller exist somewhere else, independent of the presentation layer.'"

Timing Technology Behind Olympic Record Results 118

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 21, 2008 @10:02AM from the even-clocks-are-at-least-sixteen dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We've been on the edge of our seats cheering on the athletes at the Beijing Olympic games — but so often do athletes' victories and defeats rely on accurate timing. As the athletes compete on the world stage behind the scenes technology records their results. This interview with Omega's Christophe Berthaud (video) — the company's 23rd time as official Olympic timekeeper — explores how far the technology has come since the first time it was used in 1932."

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