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Comment Re:15 years or so ago (Score 1) 1127

by dpaton.net (#27562301) Attached to: Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In?

Same kind of deal, but I was rewriting embedded code for a data collection system. In Iowa. In February. In the middle of a field. At night, so I didn't disturb the daytime readings. It took 3 days to catch the error in-situ and correct it (off by 1 in some obscure data mangling function as I recall), and I quit the next week when they told me I was going to go out and do it again.
Patents

USPTO New Accelerated Review Process 218

Posted by samzenpus from the take-only-one-cookie dept.
Intron writes "Perhaps you have been lying awake worrying that your software patent on bubble sort might spend too much time being "examined" or "peer reviewed". You will be pleased to know that the US Patent and Trademark Office has launched their accelerated review process. "Applicants' submissions enjoy a presumption of patentability" says the patent office. Applicants are also responsible for disclosing any prior art."
Graphics

Microsoft Move to be the End of JPEG? 447

Posted by CowboyNeal from the just-a-little-bit-better dept.
jcatcw writes "Microsoft Corp. will submit a new photo format to an international standards organization. The format, HD Photo (formerly known as Windows Media Photo), can accommodate lossless and lossy compression. Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - ESR Gives up on Fedora

Submitted by tmc4inphilly
tmc4inphilly writes: Eric S. Raymond's frustration with Fedora reach a breaking point that resulted a letter that he sent to a number of Linux-related publications and mailing lists. "After thirteen years as a loyal Red Hat and Fedora user, I reached my limit today, when an attempt to upgrade one package pitched me into a four-hour marathon of dependency chasing, at the end of which an attempt to get around a trivial file conflict rendered my system unusable."
Space

Submission + - NASA signs memorandum of understanding with Virgin

Submitted by
caffiend666
caffiend666 writes: "Tuesday, NASA signed a memorandum of understanding with Virgin Galactic. Although not a partnership, it is interesting to see NASA work with even more private spaceflight companies. The cryptic agreement includes that 'The memorandum is only a framework to explore potential collaborations. It does not include training of NASA astronauts, an agreement to buy seats on a Virgin Galactic flight, or provision of technical advice by NASA to Virgin Galactic.'"
Businesses

Submission + - AT&T and BellSouth to Merge...Here comes Ma Be

Submitted by kangdangalang
kangdangalang writes: News is amuck about a merger between AT&T and BellSouth AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and BellSouth Corporation (NYSE:BLS) announced today an agreement to merge the two companies, a combination that will create a more effective and efficient provider in the wireless, broadband, video, voice and data markets. The merger will streamline the ownership and operations of Cingular Wireless, which is jointly owned by AT&T and BellSouth. The new company will be more innovative, nimble and efficient, providing benefits to customers by combining the Cingular, BellSouth and AT&T networks into a single fully integrated wireless and wireline Internet Protocol network offering a full range of advanced solutions. Seems like AT&T is trying to reacquire all the baby bells to get back to being the communications supergiant of decades past, do you think this will be allowed by the FCC or will this get shot down because of fear of AT&T becoming a monopoly once again?
Television

Submission + - Senator to FCC: no broadcast flag for you!

Submitted by Flag waver
Flag waver writes: Senator John Sununu (R-NH) will introduce legislation that will prevent the FCC from creating technology mandates for the consumer electronics industry. As a result, the FCC would be hamstrung in its efforts to revive the broadcast flag. '"The FCC seems to be under the belief that it should occasionally impose technology mandates," Sununu said in a statement. "These misguided requirements distort the marketplace by forcing industry to adopt agency-blessed solutions rather than allow innovative and competitive approaches to develop."' Sen. Sununu previously tried without success to remove the broadcast flag provisions from the massive telecommunications bill that died before reaching the Senate floor during the last Congress.
Media (Apple)

Submission + - A Cheaper iPhone?

Submitted by mattnyc99
mattnyc99 writes: Now that it's been a full 48 hours since the iPhone announcement, some of the "wow" factor is transitioning into the cold reality of how expensive the thing is. The result? A ton of chatter about cheaper alternatives (or at least Apple's coming competition), from the open-sourced Moko to Samsung's secret weapon to an LG model that the masses are claiming Steve Jobs ripped off. Would you settle for anything less than the iPhone cometh?
Networking

Submission + - Firms Introduce BitTorrent Optimized CPU, or.. BPU

Submitted by
oxide7
oxide7 writes: "According to IBT: "Trading movies and other large data files online through the popular BitTorrent delivery platform may soon happen on simple consumer devices, thanks to a pair of companies that are creating specifically designed processors that can handle what PCs can do today. Iadea Corp., a Taiwan-based licensee of BitTorrent technology, and Star Semiconductor Corp., an affiliate of the semiconductor giant UMC Group, jointly announced the world's first BitTorrent-optimized microprocessor chip on Thursday.""
User Journal

Journal Journal: Debian PPC quarrels force users to move elsewhere 8

Journal by JanStedehouder
I am keeping up with the Debian PPC mailing list for some months now and apart from bug reports there is only one main theme: some nasty infighting between key Debian PPC developers. Today, January 11, Mathew Binkley send the following message to the mailing list:

Greetings. I am the senior system administrator at Vanderbilt University's supercomputing center. We operate a 1500 processor cluster for researchers at Vanderbilt.

The Internet

Wikileaks — Anonymous Whistle-Blowing 162

Posted by kdawson from the weapons-of-mass-conscience dept.
too_old_to_be_irate writes to tell us about a site that word got out on before they were ready. Wikileaks aims to be an anonymous and uncensorable repository of leaked documents, posted for commentary by interested parties. It's expected to go live in a month or two. From the site: "Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. We have received over 1.1 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources."
Movies

Submission + - Pr0n vs. Sony, Round 2: First Betamax, now Blu-Ray

Submitted by Ozymand E. Us
Ozymand E. Us writes: :This just in, from the Las Vegas bureau:

http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/11/ces2007_hddvd_bl u_ray/

Apparently, the porn industry is coming down on the side of Toshiba's HD-DVD over Sony's Blu-Ray. Why? for reasons including: ease of manufacture, lower costs, and-oh, the millions of HD-DVD players sold- in the form of XBOX 360s. For those who remember the format wars of the 80s, things are not looking good for the Blu-Ray camp.

Bet they wish they hadn't delayed the PS3, huh?

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