4minus0 - Slashdot User

Comment Re:is this news? (Score 1) 627

by celle on Thursday October 15, 2009 @01:24PM (#29759547) Attached to: Michael Dell Says Windows 7 Will Make You Love PCs

"What do you expect Michale Dell to say? That Windows 7 is crap?"

That would be different, wouldn't it? A CEO that actually cares about his customers more than profits. Of course, a good segment of the population would probably die, the ones that actually believed him anyway as the shock of an honest CEO would be just too much. Yang of Yahoo not withstanding.

Comment Re:Disappointment of the Palm Pre? (Score 2, Insightful) 213

by s.o.terica on Thursday October 15, 2009 @12:02PM (#29758439) Attached to: Hands-On Look At the BlackBerry Storm 2

Fundamentally the Pre and webOS have always been brilliant, second only to the iPhone in many ways and superior in a few (brilliant multitasking interface, brilliant unobtrusive notifications interface, gesture area below screen, keyboard, universal SMS/chat threads, TeleNav navigation included with plan, etc.). It also has a development platform with, for most developers, the shortest learning curve (using HTML/JavaScript for all the local apps).

The only things that have ever been an issue with the Pre were a few bugs (not show-stopping, mostly related to bluetooth and the like), almost all of which they've fixed by webOS 1.2; and the battery life, which seems to also have been somewhat mitigated by newer OS versions. The Pre as it stands now is a rock-solid platform, with very arguably better messaging capabilities than either the iPhone or the Storm for anyone who doesn't explicitly need Blackberry Enterprise Server compatibility (Pre works flawlessly with Exchange).

BB Storm on the other hand is glued to an antiquated OS that has had successive layers of cruft grafted onto it to modernize it (evidenced nowhere more than the fact that a touchscreen phone still essentially has an on-screen pointer, with the click action being separate from the touch action). Worse, it's much more of a bear from a developer standpoint.

Comment Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. (Score 3, Interesting) 869

by 4minus0 on Saturday January 24, 2009 @05:21PM (#26592311) Attached to: Linus Switches From KDE To Gnome

4.0 was supposedly 'just a developer preview', and I personally think they dropped the ball on 4.1. Everyone was expecting it to just be 'ready'.

Agreed. Fortunately openSUSE still includes KDE3.5.x and I'll stick with that until KDE4 improves or KDE3 support is dropped entirely.

If Linus is an advanced user, why was he pressured to upgrade from 3.5 to 4.x in the first place? Couldn't he have just kept using 3.5 if that's what he preferred, rather than the GNOME which he hated?

I've read that Linus historically uses quite n00b friendly distros. He's never even run Debian due to its (perceived or otherwise) installation complexity. He's stated that he just wants to work on the kernel and not fiddle with the distro. See this interview.

According to the Computerworld article, Linus upgraded Fedora $version and it bumped him to KDE4 without offering a choice. I think it all boils down to Linus' desire for the distribution to Just Work(tm). I'd imagine he simply doesn't have time to fight the distribution itself to shoehorn it into something resembling a usable environment.

Cheers

Submission + - Why are T1 lines still expensive?

Submitted by badfrog on Monday April 23, 2007 @04:51PM

badfrog writes: Over the last 10 years, DSL and cable modem has upped its speed (although in some instances only slightly) and dropped its price. However, the price of a T1 has stayed almost exactly the same. If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have predicted any geek that wanted to would have fiber or their own T1 line to the house by now. What is with this sad state of affairs that a 'business class' 1.544Mbit connection is hundreds of dollars more than a 6Mbit cable connection? Is it a legitimate case that a high upload rate should increase cost so significantly?

Submission + - Universal and Sony prohibit Zune Music sharing

Submitted by

Maximegalon

on Friday January 19, 2007 @11:43PM

Maximegalon writes: "The title says it all (is anyone surprised?) It appears Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that just because you've paid for a song, and even managed to find another Zune user on the planet Earth, doesn't mean you'll necessarily get to beam that JoJo track to another Zune via WiFi magics. In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artist that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail. http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/universal-and-s ony-prohibit-zune-sharing-for-certain-artists/ [engadget.com]"

Submission + - T.J Maxx Hacked

Submitted by

wildman6801

on Friday January 19, 2007 @11:42PM

wildman6801 writes: "What happens when you use your credit or debit card at a brick and mortar? Well, for T.J Maxx customers, it means checking your credit and watching your mail. On Wednesday, T.J Maxx told its customers to watch their credit and debit statements because their retail POS's were hacked! What does this mean? Well, a nightmare for many customers. The Press Republican reports about the impact on a small town in Upstate New York. http://www.pressrepublican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic le?AID=/20070119/NEWS/701190315/1027/NEWS01"

Largest Ever Online Robbery Hits Swedish Bank 218

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @03:09PM from the put-your-bits-up dept.

ukhackster writes "A Swedish bank has fallen victim to what experts believe is the biggest online robbery ever. A Russian gang apparently used keylogging software to steal around one million dollars. It appears that most of the victims weren't running security protection. The bank is refunding everyone who lost money (even if they hadn't taken precautions) — good news for the victims, but not really an incentive to take more care in future. From the article: 'Nordea believes that 250 customers have been affected by the fraud, after falling victim to phishing emails containing the Trojan. According to McAfee, Swedish police believe Russian organised criminals are behind the attacks. Currently, 121 people are suspected of being involved. The attack started by a tailormade Trojan sent in the name of the bank to some of its clients, according to McAfee. The sender encouraged clients to download a "spam fighting" application.'"

Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista, The Rematch 709

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @02:29PM from the let's-get-it-on dept.

An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek follows up its widely read review where Mac OS X beat out Windows Vista in a head-to-head comparison, with a reader debate on which is really the superior operating system. From the article: 'Mac users love venting about Windows... Any company that calls their techs "geniuses" thrive in forums like this. They think they are "cool" and "hip," they don't care about the fact that they have to reset the permissions and turn on Appletalk every five minutes. Windows Vista all the way. If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X? Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.'"

Slow Light = Fast Computing 134

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @01:45PM from the yay-light-beams dept.

yohaas writes "The Washington Post is reporting that scientists have been able to slow the speed of light while still maintaining its ability to transmit information. The researchers have even developed a way to 'tune' the process, modulating how fast or slow the light goes within controlled circumstances. From the article: 'Scientists said yesterday that they had achieved a long-sought goal of slowing waves of light to a relatively leisurely pace and using those harnessed pulses to store an image. Physicists said the new approach to taming light could hasten the arrival of a futuristic era in which computers and other devices will process information on optical beams instead of with electricity, which for all its spark is still cumbersome compared with light.'"

Behind the Scenes at MIT's Network 118

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @01:04PM from the mighty-interesting-technology dept.

BobB writes "MIT's head of computer networks and security gives an inside look at how the techie school is fending off hackers, cranking up its network to handle voice over IP and become a fiber network operator to link to other research institutions. From the article: 'Q - How do you actually enforce security standards among MIT's departments and network users? A - Enforce is not a word you can use at MIT. We try to entice people to do the right thing. We've made a lot of progress. We've removed the financial incentive to run your own network, which used to be cheaper than having us do it. We've been a cost-recovery network since forever now though. At many universities the network is free and they just fund it out of operating costs.'"

U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines 75

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @11:37AM from the who-certifies-the-certifiers dept.

InternetVoting writes "In a clear counter to the recent criticisms of secrecy involving Ciber labs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued recommendations (pdf) to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). NIST recommends the accreditation of two labs, iBeta Quality Assurance and SysTest Labs. The recommendation, emphasizing the need for transparency, includes on-site assessment reports, lab responses, and on-site reviews for each lab. These reports shed much needed light into the process of voting machine certification. Learn more from the Q&As About NIST Evaluation of Laboratories that Test Voting Systems."

Seamonkey 1.1 Released 143

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @10:56AM from the release-the-seamonkies-of-doom dept.

stuuf writes "Version 1.1 of the Seamonkey Internet Application Suite is now available, with quite a few improvements over the 1.0 series. Some of the new features include spell checking in form text areas, a new tagging system to classify email, a better indicator for secure web sites and preview images for browser tabs. This release also includes many of the updates that have gone into the Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 branches. Check out the release notes and download page for more."

Ruby On Rails 1.2 Released 97

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday January 19, 2007 @05:15AM from the new-and-improved dept.

Scooter[AMMO] writes "David Heinemeier Hansson sent a post to the Rails 1.2. This new version adds a slew of buff and polish to the rest of the system, as well several new features like RESTful interfaces, response formats, improved multi-byte support, and more. If you haven't checked out the web application framework that aims to renew joy within its users, give it a look. You may be amazed at how easy it makes things without sacrificing power or functionality."

Where Do You Go for Worthwhile Product Reviews? 88

Posted by Cliff on Friday January 19, 2007 @02:45AM from the head-to-head dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "What's the deal with reviews and product comparisons? My boss wants independent comparative reviews of proxy and web servers to use to make/justify his decision. We all know that what the vendors write about their own (and competitive) products, so I tried searching for 3rd party reviews. I can find heaps of articles on the web telling us how great IIS is or how good Microsoft's Proxy server is, but nothing showing a back-to-back comparison of Squid vs. Sun Java Proxy vs. Microsoft Proxy, and the same for Apache and IIS. What's happening here? Where can I find an honest back-to-back product comparison?"

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