Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Here it comes... (Score 1) 140

I've soooo been waiting to see Google start their attack on the mobile world. This looks like it. Android as a platform, for all it's flaws, is coming along, sure. Selling products with pre-paid connections? Not part of their business model.

Getting people connected to the internet everywhere? Through Google products? FOR ONLY THE PRICE OF ADVERTISING TO YOU??

Free 3G connected Google devices are coming. Show me an mp3 that has hammered the conventional big-business music industry and I'll show you a Google phone that completely obsoleted the idea that a cell phone provider charge you ANYTHING.

Comment Re:To Paraphrase Dr. Manhattan (Score 1) 123

Ugh, no kidding. I actually felt kind of sick watching the animation. The heat and pressure happening there... Man, so small. We are sooooo small... all of humanity's trials, triumphs, defeats, accomplishments... Not even a cosmic blip.

I recall Neil Tyson making a remark to the effect of how it's difficult to consider the idea of a benevolent deity/god/whatever when the universe is trying so, so badly to kill us. We have such little business existing at all.

Well... back to watching Jackass.
Cellphones

John Carmack Not Enthused About Android Marketplace 163

An anonymous reader writes "During an in-depth and informative interview, Doom creator and id Software co-founder John Carmack opines on iOS game development, the economics of mobile development vs. console development, why mobile games lend themselves to more risk-taking and greater creativity, and finally, why he's not too keen on the Android Marketplace as a money-making machine. '...I'm honestly still a little scared of the support burden and the effort that it's going to take for our products, which are very graphics-intensive.'"
Medicine

High Fructose Corn Syrup To Get a Makeover 646

An anonymous reader writes "With its sweetener linked to obesity, some cancers and diabetes, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) doesn't want you to think 'fructose' when you see high fructose corn syrup in your soda, ketchup or pickles. Instead, the AP reports, the CRA submitted an application to the FDA, hoping to change the name of their top-selling product to 'corn sugar.'"
Image

Australian Politician Caught Viewing Porn 150

destinyland writes "An Australian Parliament member has resigned after admitting he'd used government computers to access porn and gambling sites. McLeay 'gave an uncomfortable press conference outside Parliament House,' notes one technology site, 'during which he admitted he had acted in a standard not expected of cabinet ministers.' Paul McLeay was also the Minister for Mineral and Forest Resources as well as the Minister for Ports and Waterways. In resigning, he apologized to his constituents and parliamentary colleagues, as well as to his wife and family."

Comment Mediawiki? (Score 1) 152

As you noted, ISO 9001 document management requirements are quite loose. I had been cheer leading the concept of using a wiki as a DMS in my workplace for the past few years. It never gained much traction, I expect due to a significant lack of understanding of those included in the package selection process. The limit of our corporate IT department's skills is upgrading Lotus Notes every possible time it can in the hopes that SOMEDAY the whale (dead) will actually start to swim... No, seriously, the folks that chose our new DMS wouldn't know the difference between a SQL server and a toaster.

Anyway, the bullet-proof audit trail created by Mediawiki (and any wiki, really) makes satisfying internal and external audits very straightforward. Proper ISO required access restrictions can be delegated using some of the very useful security extensions.

What is a DMS for anyway? Do we really want to be managing documents? or content and information? The "here comes everybody" philosophy has significant implications for traditional document management in the manufacturing world. The typical response of a manufacturing plant to these requirements is to assign all DM duties to too small a group and wonder why the damn thing never gets done. Documents are chronically out of date, nobody even has the soft copies anymore...

But what if the documents/articles could be updated by those who use them? What if everybody was part of the DMS? Page staging with the flagged-revs extension, watchlist email notification to keep maintainers in the loop. A DMS that spreads the load to all it's users instead of monopolizing a few? That's where classical DMS needs to go. Badly.

Yah, Mediawiki sucks for input. But for output? Can't beat it.

Oh, our company chose Intelex over ETQ for our system. I try not to take it personally.
PHP

Submission + - Open source data entry and reporting tools?

imrec writes: I'm an engineer in a manufacturing plant with a little over 200 folks locally. I've watched in horror as my company has beaten it's head against the wall trying to organize it's intellectual assets. We have the worst case of "spreadsheet syndrome" I have ever seen! So bad, that I fear for the very future of my workplace (not to mention, my sanity). Though my background is mechanical, I've managed to muddle through setting up some blogs, forums, a wiki, and a custom app or two on a WAMP in between keeping up my primary job function (process support, construction, yada, yada, yada...). It seems my consistent (and likely annoying) guerrilla marketing has started to pay off. These simple tools are becoming established as important in day-to-day operations and the wiki may be starting to snowball (finally).

While this is great for communication, it's time to address two more critical needs. Capturing the huge amount of data currently logged into endless spreadsheets clogging the inboxen of my coworkers, and a way to report it via browser. I hesitate to start this bit from scratch as it would become a full-time job (boss would catch on). I am overwhelmed by the number of packages out there, not knowing where to start! Our existing under-utilized data input and reporting suite is abysmal (which is why it's underused) but for being stored on a SQL server (thankfully).

And so, my question. What is a popular choice for data entry? Something that would provide validation checks and email notification on unusual entries? How about for generating reports? Something that could query multiple databases and generate charts and the like (the Google chart API is snazzy, but this system would need to be standalone and ideally, not too complicated).

What does you guys use for this?
Image

Best Man Rigs Newlyweds' Bed To Tweet During Sex 272

When an UK man was asked to be the best man at a friend's wedding he agreed that he would not pull any pranks before or during the ceremony. Now the groom wishes he had extended the agreement to after the blessed occasion as well. The best man snuck into the newlyweds' house while they were away on their honeymoon and placed a pressure-sensitive device under their mattress. The device now automatically tweets when the couple have sex. The updates include the length of activity and how vigorous the act was on a scale of 1-10.

Slashdot Top Deals

HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

Working...