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Comment Re:Regardless of longevity. (Score 1) 112

by mbenzi (#44911087) Attached to: How Long Can the ISS Last?

In regard to the Space Shuttle, I have said the same thing since they decided to retire the fleet. It seems the greatest cost of having things in space has always been getting them off the ground. There was no reason to bring the shuttles back once we knew they weren't going to be used again. I remember that, besides the Smithsonian, many institutions complained about how expensive it would be just for annual maintenance to keep a shuttle on display.

So, as you suggested, they should have moved it to a higher orbit and abandoned it. High above all the space junk it would not be a hazard to any satellites.

Comment Re:Public domain? (Score 1) 125

by mbenzi (#40167451) Attached to: Programmer Admits Stealing US Gov't Accounting Software Source Code

Yes, from the discussion of this I don't see how this is a copyright case.

Works of the United States government are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law, sometimes referred to as "noncopyright."

relevant discussion of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government

Comment Re:Gunna hate this BUT (Score 2) 254

by mbenzi (#36366778) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Software To Organise a Heterogeneous Mix of Files?

I am also a Sharepoint server admin and I would never recommend it to anyone.

As has been said already, it has a lot of really good ideas, all executed terribly. Search is so important, yet Sharepoint is very bad it. Yes you can drag and drop a whole hierarchy of files to add them to sharepoint, but woe to you if one of those files has a name that Sharepoint does not like http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/06/27/file-name-length-size-and-invalid-character-restrictions-and-recommendations.aspx
Cloud

Submission + - When Will HP Become An ARM Licensee? (itproportal.com)

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: It's only a matter of time before HP cosies up with ARM and uses it, amongst other things, in servers.

Leo Apotheker, its CEO, has made it clear that it want to make HP as cool as Apple is and, we believe that the acquisition of WebOS last year was only the first step to that, giving to HP a proven platform good enough to take on iOS on mobile and desktops.
The other move that HP will take in order to have more control on its destiny would be to get a license from ARM to produce its own processors like Apple. Unlike the Cupertino-based company, HP has a very long history in designing and building top quality microprocessors (yes, including Itanium).
Science

Submission + - Combo-Cracking Robot Makes (popsci.com)

Submitted by
TheRavenKing
TheRavenKing writes: "Cracking combination locks has never been so easy. A group of engineering students at Olin College of Engineering have built a robot that will solve any MasterLock combination in a under two hours by running through all the possible combinations. Just set it and forget it."
Cellphones

Submission + - Most New Phones in Europe Will Charge with USB

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Dvice reports that as of next year, almost every new cellphone in Europe will have to be able to charge via micro-USB as the result of a voluntary plan agreed to by a whole host of cellphone manufacturers back in 2009, including most of the big names like Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm, RIM, LG, Motorola, and Samsung making more than 90% of the smartphones sold in the European Union. "Charger standardization is great for consumers, because we won't have to keep buying new chargers at ridiculous markups, and it's great for the environment, because we won't have to keep throwing those same chargers away whenever we get a new phone," writes Evan Ackerman. It's also worth noting that one of the first companies to agree to this standard was Apple, who has a history of making everything as proprietary as possible so maybe there will be a micro-USB on the iPhone 5."
Programming

Submission + - Sexism: Open Source Software's Dirty Little Secret (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "The number of women involved with free and open source software (FOSS) is appallingly low, notes Linux pundit Bruce Byfield — "over seventeen times lower than it is in proprietary software development," he posits. The reason: a casually accepted sexism about which the heavily male-centric FOSS culture is in deep denial. The constant trolls on the mailing lists for female developers, the horror stories told by female coders, the lack of management figures — it ain't pretty. Since FOSS is so idealistic in other ways, Byfield wonders, why is it so profoundly backward in this central issue?"
Biotech

Submission + - Cheap solar panel uses human hair, not silicon (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: An 18-year-old boy has designed a solar panel that replaces expensive silicon with cheap and plentiful human hair: "By using hair as a replacement, Karki says that solar panels can be produced for around £23, a price tag that could be halved if they were mass-produced."

Intriguingly, it seems that a pound of hair can be bought for 25 cents in Nepal.
Announcements

Submission + - TomTom anounces an open source GPS technology 1

Submitted by TuringTest
TuringTest writes: (Found via OStatic). European company TomTom (which recently settled a patent agreement with Microsoft) has announced a new open source format OpenLR for sharing routing data (relevant points, traffic information...) in digital maps of different vendors, to be used in GPS devices. The LR stands for Location Referencing. They aim is to push it as an open standard to build a cooperative information base, presumably in a similar way than its current TomTom Map Share technology in which end users provide map corrections on the fly. The technology to support the format will be released as GPLv2. Does it make OpenLR a GPL GPS?

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