Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Education

Monkeys Exhibit the Same Economic Irrationality As Us 254

Posted by samzenpus from the I-wanna-spend-like-you-oo-oo dept.
grrlscientist writes "Laurie Santos is trying to find the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primates make decisions. This video documents a clever series of experiments in 'monkeynomics' and shows that some of the stupid decisions we make are made by our primate relatives too."
Image

Why You Never Ask the Designers For a Favor 238

Posted by samzenpus from the no-reward dept.
Usually there is nothing funny about a missing pet, but the tale of Missy the lost cat is hilarious. It serves as an example of just how clueless your fellow employees can be, and why you should never ask the designers to drop what they're doing, and help with a personal matter.
Image

Massive EU Program To Study Three-legged Dogs 85

Posted by samzenpus from the all-I-really-need-to-know-I-learned-from-a-three-legged-dog dept.
DMandPenfold writes "A multi-billion dollar European Union IT research fund will help study the behavior of three-legged dogs, it has been revealed. The fund will support extensive studies into how three-legged dogs move. There is a particular focus on how the dogs balance and function, given their missing limb."

Comment Re:Umm, so what? (Score 1) 377

by ploppy (#31456276) Attached to: IBM Stops Disclosing US Headcount Data

Complete twaddle. Do you really think that these jobs are going to the hundreds of thousands of Indians surviving on less than a dollar a day? They'll be going to the rich English speaking Indian middle class who could afford to go to university. You never know, but, some of those American workers may have pulled themselves out of (American levels of) poverty by getting their IT qualifications and career. It's too easy to say America rich, India poor and therefore this always justifies outsourcing American jobs.

No, I'm not American.
 

Comment Re:Users should expect to have a say if they pay (Score 1) 542

by ploppy (#28414815) Attached to: Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?

Besides someone's needless continuity breakage/stability disruption is often another's necessary innovation. Often I've been begged by some users to implement something which they badly need, but then got criticised by others for yet another incompatible version. You can't please everyone all of the time.

Innovation doesn't need to be the evil twin of stability, it unfortunately often feels that way in free software IMO due to lack of resources. I, for example, as a free software developer only have the time to support the latest (and 'greatest') version, and so all users are forced to use it whether or not they want the latest features. If I made enough money from the software to pay developers, I could support the last couple of versions or when adding features I could implement a backwards compatibility option. However, I can't do this.

Comment Users should expect to have a say if they pay (Score 1) 542

by ploppy (#28414629) Attached to: Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?

Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them.

If it is being developed in the developer's free time then this should be expected, The software is effectively a hobby which the developer enjoys and users benefit from. Innovation is enjoyable, maintenance isn't, and users if they aren't paying should expect this. If they want reliable long term maintenance (or any other "boring" issues) they should consider playing for support, like in any normal business relationship,

If I (as a spare-time software developer) gets asked to do something I'm not interested in, I may not refuse, but it gets placed at the end of a priority sorted list, and it can stay there for a long time. However, If I can see that it is of use to a large amount of users I will usually do it, but it is as a favour and it shouldn't be expected (I get annoyed when I feel this is the case).

Why should a developer be expected to do something users want, if the developer has no interest in it, and the users aren't willing to pay or at least make a donation? It's not expected in other aspects of life, and so I don't understand why it is increasingly being expected in free software.
Patents

Amazon Sneaks One-Click Past the Patent System 104

Posted by Zonk from the stealth-mode-activated dept.
theodp writes "By changing the word 'a' to 'the' and adding the phrase 'purchasable through a shopping cart model,' lawyers for Amazon.com have apparently managed to reinstate two of CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click Patent claims that were rejected a month earlier. 'Patent Owner's Rep was informed that the proposed addition to the claims appear to place the claims in condition of patentability,' writes the USPTO in its Ex Parte Reexamination Interview Summary of the 11-15 conference call that was held with five representatives of the USPTO and patent reformer Amazon."
Government

Submission + - Microsoft partner to derail Russian state Linux?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Russian government has recently announced a contest of proposals to develop a "set of Open source software for educational use", or in plain words, create a state-supported distribution of OS and educational software for schools and universities.

Maximum bid price for this project is fixed by the government to be about $2.8 mln. Five known companies and one university have replied with proposals to develop the software, and named prices from about $1.6 mln. to $2.8 mln.

However, the really interesting is the seventh proposal. It names a dumping price of just $200k for whole project. The proposing company, "KORUS Consulting", in a statement on their website says that in reality the project is going to cost them about $2.6 mln., but since they have decided to "invest heavily" in "Russian OSS market", they... will pay the remaining $2.4 mln. of these expenses out of their own pockets.

What makes this very creepy, is another page of KORUS website, describing the company as having "the highest status of partnership with Microsoft — a Gold Certified Partner, and a Certified Education Partner, and also that in 2006 the company was a part of Microsoft's Presidential Club, which only "top" 5% of Microsoft partners are allowed to join."

So, could it be, that this company (and Microsoft through it) looks to make the Russian Linux project a failure, by first winning it with offer which is ten times cheaper than everyone else's, then gathering all the rights to execute the state projects in this area, and then.. not producing anything even remotely usable, pushing all the potential users of this project's product back into the shackles of Windows and MS Office?

The project is currently in the proposals evaluation stage. Surely, will be interesting, how that turns out.

Slashdot Top Deals

Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker

Close