pklong - Slashdot User

Submission + - OSC threatten BBC over Microsoft tie-in (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

FireFury03

on Tuesday June 26, 2007 @08:13AM

FireFury03 writes: "After the BBC Trust approved the BBC's development of a Windows-only video-on-demand service in April, the Open Source Consortium is threatening the BBC with a complaint to the European Commission, since it gives Microsoft an unfair advantage and is not in the public interest. They have also complained to the regulator (Ofcom) and the BBC Trust comparing the situation to the BBC only making programmes that can only be watched on one particular brand of television.

As a licence fee payer, I feel that I should have the right to withhold a portion of my licence fee since the BBC obviously feels it appropriate to artificially restrict the content and therefore prevent a proportion of licence fee payers from legitimately accessing it. It is also interesting to note from the article that the BBC seems to consider supporting only Windows and Mac to be "platform agnostic", with no mention of other operating systems."

Submission + - Organism Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex

Submitted by zyl0x on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @12:55PM

zyl0x writes: The Times has an interesting article online on the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which as survived its entire lifespan without sex. From the article:

A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety. Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection. Researchers say that their study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
I'm not too sure about these bdelloid's, but I doubt any human being could last the first 100 years.

Googlebot and Document.Write 180

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 12, 2007 @01:06AM from the ajax-the-foaming-indexer dept.

With JavaScript/AJAX being used to place dynamic content in pages, I was wondering how Google indexed web page content that was placed in a page using the JavaScript "document.write" method. I created a page with six unique words in it. Two were in the plain HTML; two were in a script within the page document; and two were in a script that was externally sourced from a different server. The page appeared in the Google index late last night and I just wrote up the results.

Bookmark Eight Tips for a Faster Hard Drive (pcworld.com)

by bgrabow on Friday March 09, 2007 @11:53AM

Wikipedia May Require Proof of Credentials 317

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday March 09, 2007 @11:41AM from the yeah-good-luck-with-that dept.

narramissic writes "According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, a new policy is currently under discussion by the community of users who regularly write and maintain Wikipedia that would require contributors to the site who claim certain credentials to prove they really have them. The new policy comes after one of Wikipedia's most prolific and respected editors, who went by the pseudonym 'Essjay,' was found not to be the 'tenured professor of theology' he claimed to be but a run-of-the-mill 24 year-old from Kentucky. Said Wales, 'To discover that someone had been deceiving the community for a long time really was a bit of a blow to our trust. Wikipedia is built on the idea of trusting other people and people being honest and we find that in the most part everyone is, so it was a real disappointment.'"

Submission + - Don't Blame Vista

Submitted by Chris Speed on Friday March 09, 2007 @04:13AM

Chris Speed writes: There's been a significant amount of "buzz" circulating on the internet over an article written by a well respected computer scientist and cryptologist named Peter Gutmann, whose article, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" has gained considerable notoriety since its initial publication in late 2006. His article mainly portrays Windows Vista as the cause for DRM and paints an overall bad picture of the new OS. But is this article really an analysis of Vista? FastSilicon.com takes a second look at Dr. Gutmann's article and finds many minor flaws and flat out errors.

Submission + - Everything you need to know about IPv6

Submitted by

RJS

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @10:56AM

RJS writes: "Ars Technica is running a great article on IPv6 written for newbies like myself. From the article: "IPv4 addresses are written down by splitting them into four 8-bit values and putting periods between those, for instance, 192.0.2.31. IPv6 addresses on the other hand, are written down as eight 16-bit values with colons between them, and each 16-bit value is displayed in hexadecimal, i.e., using numbers and the letters A — F. For example, 2001:db8:31:1:20a:95ff:fef5:246e. It's not uncommon for IPv6 addresses to have a sequence of consecutive zeroes. In these cases, exactly one of those sequences can be left out. So 2001:db8:31:0:0:0:0:1 becomes 2001:db8:31::1 and the IPv6 loopback address 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 becomes ::1.""

Submission + - Is 40 to old for IT or Software Development?

Submitted by on Thursday March 08, 2007 @10:39AM

An anonymous reader writes: I have read some stuff on Dice.com's message boards where some people are claiming that after age 40 or so that jobs become very scarce in the IT profession. I was wondering how prevalent this really is, and in particular I was wondering how hard it would be to actually start a career in IT or Software Development at age 40 or even later.

I recently finished up a degree in physics, and I have done some very basic IT support as well as some programming as part of my job working in an environmental testing lab. How difficult would it be to start a computer career at age 40, and what industries and fields will have the most problem with my age and which will have the least problem with my age?

Submission + - New Creative Commons Initiative & Job Opening

Submitted by

James Boyle

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @10:06AM

James Boyle writes: "With funding from the Hewlett Foundation, Creative Commons is announcing the creation of a new division called “CC Learn,”: focused on education and learning – K through lifelong. One major focus is an attempt to make existing open educational repositories more interoperable, and thus more truly “open” – working to set up standards so that both licenses and tech allow you to combine, experiment on and reuse content from across multiple sites and countries. More generally we want to show the power and promise of open education and learning. We need an Executive Director. Experience in education necessary, F/OSS and open licensing experience a big plus. All details here. (ie please don't direct inquiries to me.) I'd be really grateful if you could pass the word."

What's It Like For a Developer To Go Into Sales? 85

Posted by Cliff on Thursday March 08, 2007 @08:55AM from the there-have-been-weirder-career-jumps-before dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I've worked for a single, very large technology company since graduating from college in '89. My degree is in Computer Science, and I've written everything from embedded machine code for big iron to applications with Smalltalk. I'm still in development, but since '99 my programming tasks have been replaced by project management, some customer-facing work (technical-ish presentations, demonstrations, training, and the like), helping our marketing people position my team's work, and other things that programmers generally don't like to do. Are you a former developer who went into sales? If so, what were your experiences like from a professional and personal perspective? What advice would you give to a developer considering a new career in sales?"

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