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Comment Look ma I know statistics (Score 3, Insightful) 808

Not to invalidate the outcome of the report (though the hyperbole could do with some work) but this arbitrary 'percentage' assignment has me wondering. Could this not just reflect a new growth in say Rails projects or Javascript (the Ruby community is traditionally MIT/BSD, see too very common frameworks like jQuery). In the past code like this was rarely included, but this might just represent the true makeup of the community and fast LOC growth in one community doesn't mean the other community is jumping ship to a different license.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 177

Beyond the obvious "I want to tinker" motivates the XBox360 is a really nice device in a home theatre. You can do your games, but also Zune Marketplace isn't terrible but if you hate it there is still Netflix. It can play your music off a CD or an attached USB device. I haven't a model with wireless but I'm seriously considering it because thats cool to have. Finally, it advertises the capability of doing UPnP with Windows Media Centre. Unfortunately, it doesn't do UPnP with Linux (or Windows Professional AFAICT), the classic arcade games shop is atrocious AND a massively overpriced ripoff (so emulators), will only play certain digitally locked media files. This isn't much, but its the only things I feel are missing from my entertainment centre. With some work I see MythTV having a place on it.

Comment Neuromance not really about the 'net (Score 1) 334

Maybe its because I (mostly) grew up with the internet, but upon my recent re-reading Neuromancer really struck me as a story about redemption. Maybe its because like many 'post'-Depression people I worked a manual labour job and had seen "The Company Men" recently, but I think you'll see a lot of surface elements that we think are important stripped down to focus on that.

Comment Re:bad title tag (Score 4, Informative) 221

It's just a rip from the article, which is terribly written and fails to provide a lot of context. My initial opinion was this was a stitch up and the hacker was just against the war and people were stretching connections and definitions to make them sound like a security threat. This ComputerWorld article is way better at providing the details that link this worm to previous efforts by a Libyan hacker to create a politically motivated hacker group. To describe these guys as anti-US would be, I think, a simplification of the motivation of these groups. Jihadists (and here I also probably simplify) may be prepared to attack the States, but the motivation is not simply anti-US. I found this article on Eurozine to be really interesting on breaking down their attitudes.

Comment Re:Bosses earn too much (Score 1) 1018

The idea that we must retain a huge rich class of individuals in order to keep ourselves employed is too ridiculous for words. Your argument that rich consumption drives the economy fails utterly to take into account the reality that they'll only ever consume a portion of their wealth. If that wealth was distributed amongst more individuals then there would, in fact, be more consumption than if you concentrate it. If you don't believe me, consider how little savings and investment the vast majority of people have, especially in relation to the rich. It's because we're spending it all! The idea that the employers are getting paid for taking bigger risks and succeeding should have been completely demolished by the fact that the bailout has removed *any sense of risk.* Not only does your business not fail, but you still get your bonuses!

Maybe instead of trite bullshit lines of 'take tougher classes in school' implicitly indicating that you think we are all morons, you should take a look at the real world in action and not whatever bullshit they fed you in Macroeconomics 101: How to Justify the Gross Accumulation of Wealth.

Hardware Hacking

80-Year-Old Edison Recording Resurrected 133

embolalia writes "An 80-year-old recording of a live radio broadcast featuring Thomas Edison has been uncovered and reconstituted. The recording was done on an obscure technology called a pallophotophone — Greek for 'shaking light sound' — that uses optical film to reproduce sound. The archivists who uncovered the canisters tucked away on a bottom shelf in a museum in Schenectady, New York (the city where Edison's General Electric was founded), did not have any machine to replay the films. Two GE engineers — working nights and weekends for two years — were able to construct a machine to replay the old tapes, recorded only two years before Edison's death." There's a video at the link, which may or may not contain some of the resurrected recording, but we couldn't get it to play from the Times Union site.

Comment The Canada thread (Score 1) 2044

Post here if you think the entire healthcare 'debate' in the States is completely fucked. Hell, did I read right that there is no public option? What the hell is the point of this entire exercise!

Comment Re:There's more to this story (Score 1) 691

Most places in the world the system is this: you have healthcare.

But you might have to wake up at 4 in the morning and go stand in line for hours in order to actually get care. Depending on where in the world.

lol. Oh man, you have swallowed all the health insurance industry agitprop. How's it taste btw? Sometimes we have long lineups. Mostly its just because a bunch of people have a cold and instead of going to their family physician they scramble to the emerge and when emerge pre-screens them they're obviously not as high priority as the guy who has crazy low blood pressure for no discernible reason.

Oh, I'm sorry, you wanted health care where actual health issues isn't want determines priority, but how fat your wallet is? You're good then. Disregard.

Australia

Perth Game Company CEO Takes IP By Night 356

snicho99 writes "A US owned gaming company has fled Australia, leaving unpaid employees and a massive tax bill. Apparently many staff have been working unpaid for months to allow their game to ship and hopefully the company to recover. Interzone's Perth (Western Australia) office was created with the assistance of a state government grant. Last week Interzone's (American) CEO entered the building at night and removed all the servers and IP so that Interzone could continue production at a new company they have opened in Ireland. The staff caught him on camera. More background here."
Programming

How Do You Accurately Estimate Programming Time? 483

itwbennett writes "It can take a fairly stable team of programmers as long as six months to get to a point where they're estimating programming time fairly close to actuals, says Suvro Upadhyaya, a Senior Software Engineer at Oracle. Accurately estimating programming time is a process of defining limitations, he says. The programmers' experience, domain knowledge, and speed vs. quality all come into play, and it is highly dependent upon the culture of the team/organization. Upadhyaya uses Scrum to estimate programming time. How do you do it?"

Comment because the one who pays is the one who controls (Score 1) 368

Because you're employed by a business which is more interested in itself than the broader linux community. The patches you create may be of a use to the broader community, but business priorities will generally come first. Now, it is a given that some (perhaps even a significant portion) of these developers are given a long leash, but the reality is the leash is always there. The resignation of Con Kolivas is a good example of why extensive corporate interest is bad: see http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm

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