mustrum_ridcully - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Is it 1988 again? (Score 1) 715

by mustrum_ridcully on Wednesday December 17, 2008 @10:40AM (#26144961) Attached to: Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing

VW does have a trade union, IG Metall, it has over 2 million members and is considered to be Germany's most powerful union.

Just last month strikes organised by IG Metall hit the factories of Audi, Mercedes, Daimler, MAN and Bosch.

I'm sorry but I doubt that the unions are solely to blame for the troubles at Ford, GM and Chrysler.

Submission + - SPAM: Linux has better Windows compatibility than Vista

Submitted by

twickline

on Friday February 01, 2008 @07:31AM

twickline writes: "I have been using Vista for well over a year now (since Beta 1). Of course Vista is slow, its bloated (over 10x the size of XP), aero kills system perfotmance (even though this should be done on the video card), networking is pathetically slow, etc etc. We all know Vista sucks.

But recently my blood has been set to a rolling boil by the fact that most of my games just don't work in Vista. At all. Its so bad that out of spite I have decided to make a list of games that work better in Linux under Wine than in Vista. These are games that were originally written to run in Windows XP, are broken in Vista, but magically work in Linux.

You are probably wondering what Wine is, so from the authors: ...an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix.

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris.

Which means basically Wine is a program that lets you run Windows programs outside of Windows (on a Mac or Linux, for example). There is also a version of Wine called WineX / Cedega, which is written for playing games. Specifically, WineX supports DirectX. Unlike Wine, Cedega actually costs money, but its still cheap when you compare the cost of it to an actual Vista install. How could a handful of programmers working in their spare time beat thousands of full-time Microsoft employees at their own game (hey Vista only took 5+ years)? A couple of things: 1. the Wine guys are good at what they do. 2. Vista is a full scale train wreck.

All tests were run on the same dual-boot machine. My version of Vista is completely patched, and so are my video card drivers, in case you were wondering. For Linux, I am running Mepis 7.0. The hardware in my machine is: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1.5 GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 5 FX Series.

Enough introductions, onto the results."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: FTC wants contempt charges on MySpace pagejackers

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday January 31, 2008 @12:14PM

coondoggie writes: "The Federal Trade Commission today U.S. district court to hold three Internet pagejackers in contempt and order them to give up any ill-gotten profits for violating a previous order barring their unfair and deceptive practices. According to papers filed by the FTC with the court, Walter Rines, his company, Online Turbo Merchant, and his business partner, Sanford Wallace, diverted users of MySpace.com to different Web sites and barraged them with ads to earn advertising commissions. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - UK Inland Revenue lose discs with 15m bank records (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

clickclickdrone

on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @10:52AM

clickclickdrone writes: "The UK Inland Revenue have apparantly lost disks containing 15m bank records. The Chairman has already resigned and parliament are to be told the details at 3PM. It is unknown at this point if the data was encrypted or exactly what details were included."

Submission + - AMD HD 3800 Series Ushers New Life for Radeon (pcper.com) 2

Submitted by

SizeWise

on Friday November 16, 2007 @01:49AM

SizeWise writes: "Last month we learned of the NVIDIA G92 8800 GT graphics card that turned in $400 performance for $250. AMD wasn't going to miss the boat either and their new RV670 GPU is being released in both the Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 cards targeting similar performance levels but lower prices. PC Perspective has tested both cards in games like Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Bioshock and several others and found that the lower priced HD 3850 is the real winner, performing nearly twice as good as similarly priced NVIDIA parts. The HD 3870 doesn't do quite as well but still turns out to be a reasonable GPU for the money that uses much less power than the previous AMD R600 cards."

Submission + - flyMonarch.com joins forces with PayPal (peanuts.aero)

Submitted by pulseblue on Monday October 29, 2007 @03:42AM

pulseblue writes: flyMonarch.com has joined forces with PayPal to be the first European airline to offer its customers the ability to pay for flights using their PayPal account. flyMonarch.com has introduced the service ensuring that in addition to debit and credit card transactions, customers can also now benefit from making payments via PayPal. http://peanuts.aero/low_cost_airline_news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5366&Itemid=59

Submission + - EA wants single open platform for game consoles.

Submitted by Deag on Friday October 19, 2007 @10:28AM

Deag writes: According to the BBC, EA have said they want to see a single open platform that all console games would run on.
This would allow easier development for game companies. Is this the solution or is this reverting back to a boiled down PC with all the hassles of different strength hardware?

Submission + - AllOfMp3.com acquitted. RIAA demands pricefixing?

Submitted by DataBroker on Thursday August 16, 2007 @08:44AM

DataBroker writes: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/08/15/russia. site.reut/index.html

A Russian court found the former boss of music download Web site www.allofmp3.com not guilty of breaching copyright on Wednesday in a case considered a crucial test of Russia's commitment to fighting piracy.

Denis Kvasov, head of MediaServices which owned the site, always said he was within the law because the site paid part of its income to ROMS, a Russian organisation which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders. The court has agreed, stating "Everybody who uses soundtracks has to pay a certain amount of their income to the rights holders and this company has done that," she said. "MediaServices has paid a certain amount of money to ROMS."

In short, the court says "a certain amount of their income" is proper and legal. By the prosecution appealing, are they really complaining that AllOfMp3 isn't cooperating with the monopolistic price-fixing? The guise of "protecting intellectual property rights" is looking thin when the court is agreeing with the defense.

Submission + - Climate change not due to a change in solar output

Submitted by

Pentagram

on Wednesday July 11, 2007 @03:56AM

Pentagram writes: "Skeptics of the scientific consensus that human activity is the primary cause of climate change have frequently pointed to variation in solar activity as an alternative cause. However, new research published by Mike Lockwood and Claus Froehlich in Proceedings of the Royal Society A shows that the Sun's output has actually declined since 1985, apparently ruling this argument out as a cause of climate change over the last 20 years. As lead author Lockwood states, "The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that people are talking about. They changed direction in 1985, the climate did not ... [the temperature] increase should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up.""

Submission + - Would swap your cell phone for 2m dollars?

Submitted by on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:33AM

An anonymous reader writes: According to a CNet article, an incredible one in three people aged 16 to 24 in the UK would not give up their mobile phone for a million pounds. "The phone-centric survey, called Mobile Life, was carried out across the UK and questioned 1,256 people aged 16 to 64 on a variety of topics, including whether or not they would sacrifice being able to own or use a mobile phone ever again for a whopping £1m."

Submission + - Tim Berners-Lee awarded the British Order of Merit (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

MarsBar

on Thursday June 14, 2007 @04:48AM

MarsBar writes: "The BBC is reporting that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded The Order of Merit, a royal award granted directly by the Queen. Previous recipients have included Florence Nightingale, Sir Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Sir Edward Elgar, Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher"

Submission + - Jack Thompson threatens Bill Gates and MS

Submitted by

smitty_srs

on Wednesday May 23, 2007 @11:36AM

smitty_srs writes: "Looks like old Jackie hasn't learned his lesson yet. Now he's threatening Bill Gates over Halo 3. [gamealmimghty.com]
From the letter: 'Here's the deal, Mr. Gates: Either Microsoft undertakes dramatic, real steps, through its marketing, wholesale, and retail operations to assure that Halo 3 is not sold, via the Internet and in stores, directly to anyone under 17, or I shall proceed to make sure that Microsoft is held to that standard by appropriate legal means. I have done that before successfully as to Best Buy, and I shall do so again as to Microsoft and all retailers of Halo 3.'
So, the question is: Why go after Microsoft and not retailers as he's done 'successfully' before?"

Submission + - Hacked DX10 for Windows appears

Submitted by Oddscurity on Monday April 23, 2007 @06:45AM

Oddscurity writes: According to The Inquirer someone managed to write a wrapper allowing DirectX 10 applications to run on platforms other than Vista. The Alky Project claims to have reverse-engineered Geometry Shader code, allowing Windows games to run on Windows XP, MacOSX and Linux. The Inquirer is understandably cautious about these claims, urging readers to investigate the releases themselves to assertain whether or not it's a hoax.

Submission + - Dell puts XP back in play

Submitted by illeism on Friday April 20, 2007 @09:34AM

illeism writes: Dell has begun putting XP back on new machines.

Dell changed the policy in response to pleas posted on its Ideastorm website which invites customers to post suggestions about how the PC maker can meet their needs. The suggestion saying "Don't eliminate XP just yet" got almost 11,000 votes. In response Dell said it would offer the operating system on four models of Inspiron notebooks and two Dimension desktop PCs.
However, Microsoft will always pipe up on things like this saying:

Dell was responding to a "small minority" of customers who had a very "specific" request.

Submission + - The Most-Wanted Linux Software

Submitted by Susie on Friday April 20, 2007 @06:43AM

Susie writes: Photoshop, AutoCAD and iTunes are three of the most-demanded programs for the Linux desktop, but what else does the community want? Linux Format is running Make it with Mono, a voting system to determine what type of programs the Linux world needs. Get voting — the number-one entry on May 2nd will be written in Mono and released as open source!

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