Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Software

Submission + - Who thinks Firehose software is working right? 6

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "I find the Firehose software to be infuriating. It seems to have no 'stickiness' but constantly reverts to other views and searches than what I was looking at. I'm about ready to give up on it unless they tell me they recognize it's dumb and are doing something to make it work right. Am I the only one who feels this way?"
The Courts

Journal SPAM: California City Sues Man for Canceling Trash Collection 4

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Eddie House claims to have reduced his waste to nearly nothing out of concern for the environment. He now faces a lawsuit from San Carlos for canceling his garbage-collection service. The suit seeks a permanent injunction forcing House to maintain garbage service. City officials are also seeking to recoup from House the costs of the lawsuit. The city claims that House broke the municipal code requi
Software

Submission + - Whatever Happened to Eric Raymond? (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Once the the unofficial voice of open source, Eric Raymond has been pretty silent for the last few years. I asked him why, and for his thoughts on open source past, present and future. As well as telling me about the reasons for stealth mode, his biggest surprise in the ten years since the publication of Cathedral and the Bazaar, and why World Domination would be a "damned near-run thing either way", he also explained how the open source way can solve climate change, sea acidification, water shortages and resource depletion. Time for ESR to un-stealth?"
Links

Submission + - SCALE Announces 2008 Speaker Line Up (socallinuxexpo.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: SCALE has announced its speaker line up for 2008. Speakers will include Don Marti, Josh Berkus (Postgres), Bdale Garbee (HP), Jono Bacon, and others. In addition to the recently announced speaker line up, registration is now open and available online. SCALE will be held Feb 8 -10, 2008 at the Los Angeles Airport Westin in Los Angeles California.
Programming

Submission + - Perl is 20!

Submitted by
ChurchyardTX
ChurchyardTX writes: "According to Wikipedia:

Larry Wall began work on Perl in 1987, while working as a programmer at Unisys, and released version 1.0 to the comp.sources.misc newsgroup on December 18, 1987.


Happy Birthday, old friend..."
Software

Submission + - A short history of Microsoft's OOXML ISO campaign (fanaticattack.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "Russell Ossendryver is the open format advocate whose open letter to the GNOME Foundation touched off a widespread debate about whether and to what extent GNOME is supporting Microsoft's drive for ISO status for its OOXML office productivity data format. Now, Ossendryver has published the first in a concise three-part series aimed at examining Microsoft's strategy in opposing ODF's rapid growth as an open international data standard. It is not news that Microsoft has vigorously lobbied to have its OOXML standard supplant ODF, the current international office productivity data format standard, such as its recent efforts to halt the adoption of ODF by the Dutch Parliament. But Ossendryver's summary gives a bird's eye overview of that history, based on his extensive involvement in those debates as a long-time member of the OpenDocument Fellowship."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Watson is 16% Black (independent.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: James Watson, a Nobel-prize winning scientist who has been in hot water lately over racist remarks and one of the few people whose genome has been sequenced, has just found out that his own DNA is 16% African. Dr. Watson said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospects for Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really".
Operating Systems

Submission + - SCALE 6X Announces Registration and Speakers (socallinuxexpo.org)

Submitted by
irabinovitch
irabinovitch writes: "Registration for SCALE 6X, the 2008 Southern California Linux Expo, opened on Monday night. The community run linux and open-source conference will hold its 6th annual event on Feb 8 — 10, 2008 in Los Angeles, CA. In addition to registration, the first set of speakers and exhibitors was announced. Exhibits will include demos from groups such as IBM, Novell, Plain Black, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Gentoo, and others. Those interested in speaking still have time to submit an abstract to the call for papers which will close on November 30th. With a strong speaker and exhibitor line up as well as an expanded selection of mini-conferences, SCALE 6X should be the best year yet!"
Biotech

Submission + - Gel changing color in a second

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "MIT researchers have developed gels which can change colors almost instantaneously when they're exposed to a variety of stimuli, such as temperature, pressure or humidity. These gels could be used to design inexpensive sensors. For example, these gel-based sensors could be useful in a food processing plant to 'indicate whether food that must remain dry has been overly exposed to humidity.' Now the researchers are working on a gel which would change color in response of electricity. Read more for additional references and a picture of these colorful polymers."
User Journal

Journal SPAM: SoCal Burned for Iraq 3

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

U.S. needs to keep fire tanker funding
Oakland Tribune, Nov 27, 2005

WHILE trying to slash billions of dollars from the federal budget to help cover the costs of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration wants to cut funding, a move that would ground much of the federal fire-fighting tanker fleet.

This would be a bad idea.
Music

Submission + - Slashdot Reverses Facts about Radiohead 1

Submitted by Apro+im
Apro+im writes: The popular news aggregation website, Slashdot today reported that the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows was pirated more than it was procured via legitimate means, setting off a flurry of speculation on their online discussion board as to the implications of this "fact". Strangely overlooked in much of the discussion, however, was the fact that the article they linked contained the exact opposite information, stating:

"The file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day — adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads. That's less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com"
Questions about what this implies about Slashdot's editorial practices and readership remain unanswered.
Music

Submission + - RIAA loses counterclaim lawsuit (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is the case in which the Court had sustained 5 of the 6 counterclaims interposed by Ms. Del Cid.

The court sustained defendant's counterclaims for

-trespass to defendant's personal property based on the RIAA's having accessed files on Ms. Del Cid's computer without her permission,
-violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act based on the RIAA's unauthorized intrusion into defendant's computer,
-violation of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act,
-a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, and
-conspiracy to commit extortion, since defendant sufficiently alleged "a peculiar power of coercion possessed by Plaintiffs [by] virtue of their combination, which an individual alone would not possess".

Slashdot Top Deals

If all else fails, lower your standards.

Close