bsharma - Slashdot User

Comment Jack Gorrie passed away in 2003 due to cancer (Score 1) 888

by bsharma on Thursday December 10, 2009 @07:40PM (#30396512) Attached to: Best Way To Clear Your Name Online?

Jack Gorrie The University of Toronto mourns the recent passing of Jack Gorrie, the university Provost's Adviser on Information Technology, and more recently, a member of ORANOs Board of Directors. Gorrie, 55, passed away on Aug. 30 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. This is a major loss to ORANO and our university community, said ORANOs Board Chair, Dr. Ross Paul, President of the University of Windsor. His years of experience brought an important perspective to our work at ORANO. He will be missed, he said. An obituary notice was published in the Globe and Mail. The University of Toronto also issued an announcement.

Submission + - Mobile Wi-Fi Hot Spot

Submitted by bsharma on Saturday May 09, 2009 @12:09AM

bsharma writes: What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It's a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. The MiFi gets its Internet signal the same way those cellular modems do — in this case, from Verizon's excellent 3G (high-speed) cellular data network. If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don't travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270. In essence, the MiFi converts that cellular Internet signal into an umbrella of Wi-Fi coverage that up to five people can share. (The speed suffers if all five are doing heavy downloads at once, but that's a rarity.)... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/technology/personaltech/07pogue.html?_r=2&em

Submission + - SCO to fight motion to liquidate it

Submitted by bsharma on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @06:10PM

bsharma writes: SCO, the dying Utah UNIX vendor, could finally be headed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation. The US Trustee representing the Justice Department in SCO's bankruptcy proceedings has filed a motion to dissolve the company, asserting that its repeated attempts at reorganization have failed and that it has practically no hope of recovering. CEO Darl McBride says that SCO intends to fight the motion. SCO achieved infamy by attempting to sue users of the open source Linux operating system, alleging that Linux misappropriated intellectual property from UNIX. In 2007, a judge ruled that Novell is the rightful owner of the original SVRX UNIX copyrights and not SCO. Without standing to bring a lawsuit over SVRX copyright infringement, SCO could not proceed with its litigation against Linux users. During the case, evidence emerged which unambiguously indicated that SCO's own internal audits of Linux source code showed no evidence of infringement. Further, the court found that SCO's sale of broad SVRX licenses was a violation of its contract with Novell and ordered SCO to pay millions of dollars to the Linux company. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/05/sco-to-fight-us-bankruptcy-trustees-motion-to-liquidate-it.ars

Submission + - Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Is Announced

Submitted by bsharma on Thursday April 30, 2009 @02:00PM

bsharma writes: DETROIT — Chrysler, the third-largest American auto company, will seek bankruptcy protection and enter an alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat, the White House announced Thursday. The bankruptcy case, which officials envisioned as a swift, "surgical" process, was filed in United States Bankruptcy Court in New York, with the first hearing scheduled for Friday morning. It marks the first time a major American car company has tried to restructure under bankruptcy protection since Studebaker in 1933. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/business/01auto.html?_r=1&hp

Submission + - G.E.'s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc

Submitted by bsharma on Monday April 27, 2009 @12:32AM

bsharma writes: General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs. The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices. But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets. "This could be the next generation of low-cost storage," said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm. The promising work by the G.E. researchers is in the field of holographic storage. Holography is an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1's and 0's of digital data as well... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/business-computing/27disk.html?hpw

Comment Re:In a word... (Score 1) 1385

by bsharma on Friday April 17, 2009 @12:03PM (#27614725) Attached to: Obama Proposes High-Speed Rail System For the US

We need this to succeed to prevent more wars in the middle east. Just the cost of one Iraq war will pay for this many times over.

Comment Re:perspective (Score 1) 615

by bsharma on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @01:43PM (#27332313) Attached to: Red Hat CEO Questions Relevance of Desktop Linux

I still remember the shock when I found my desktop running nonstop for more than 3 weeks in 1998 when I loaded it with Slackware! This is when I was booting Win95 atleast once a day (on the same machine) for "stability" problems. So, yes, Linux has been a great desktop OS for atleast 11 years.

Comment Re:what happened to bill joy as a possible choice? (Score 1) 284

by bsharma on Monday January 19, 2009 @02:00PM (#26517973) Attached to: US CTO Choice Down To a Two-Horse Race

Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Irwin Jacobs, Steve Jobs (if healthy enough) would also be good choices.

Submission + - Circuit City to shut down 1

Submitted by

bsharma

on Friday January 16, 2009 @01:22PM

bsharma writes: "Bankrupt electronics retailer Circuit City Inc. said Friday it has asked for court approval to close its remaining 567 U.S. stores and sell all its merchandise. The company said it has 30,000 employees. "We are extremely disappointed by this outcome," James Marcum, acting CEO for Circuit City, said in a statement. "We were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company." http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/16/news/companies/circuit_city/"

Comment downgraded cable package (Score 5, Insightful) 589

by bsharma on Thursday January 08, 2009 @07:04PM (#26379073) Attached to: Obama Recommends Delay In Digital TV Switch

Another one here. After finding cable signals are worse than OTA, I downgraded cable package (I get discounted rate for bundling with Internet service any way). OTA digital has many interesting channels not on cable.

Submission + - Light Weight Operating Systems for Web Browsing

Submitted by

bsharma

on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:09PM

bsharma writes: "If I have a bunch of X86 PCs with older technology (Pentium .. P3, 64MB .. 256MB DRAM, 4GB .. 20GB HDD, Some with Floppy, Some with CD) what would be some lightweight OSes if the primary task is Web Browsing. Say, accessing Google, Yahoo, CNN, NYT, Amazon, eBay. Stuff like Youtube are not a must. I looked at MenuetOS, KolibriOS, Syllable. Has anyone used these to browse the web?"

Submission + - Flying (Lawn) Chair (cnn.com)

Submitted by bsharma on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @05:39PM

bsharma writes: To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. — Thomas Edison BEND, Oregon (AP) — Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons. Destination: Idaho. Balloons suspend Kent Couch in a lawn chair as he floats in the skies near Bend, Oregon, on Saturday. With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise — Couch headed into the Oregon sky. Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home. "When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch told the Bend Bulletin. "When you're laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them," he said. "This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It's just like that." Couch is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters — who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules. It was Couch's second flight. In September, he got off the ground for six hours. Like Walters, he used a BB gun to pop the balloons, but he went into a rapid descent and eventually parachuted to safety. This time, he was better prepared. The balloons had a new configuration, so it was easier to reach up and release a bit of helium instead of simply cutting off a balloon. He took off at 6:06 a.m. Saturday after kissing his wife, Susan, goodbye and petting his Chihuahua, Isabella. As he made about 25 miles an hour, a three-car caravan filled with friends, family and the dog followed him from below. Couch said he could hear cattle and children and even passed through clouds. "It was beautiful — beautiful," he told KTVZ-TV. He described the flight as mostly peaceful and serene, with occasional turbulence, like a hot-air balloon ride sitting down. Couch decided to stop when he was down to a gallon of water and just eight pounds of ballast. Concerned about the rugged terrain outside La Grande, including Hells Canyon, he decided it was time to land. He popped enough balloons to set the craft down, although he suffered rope burns. But after he jumped out, the wind grabbed his chair, with his video recorder, and the remaining balloons and swept them away. He's hoping to get them back some day. Brandon Wilcox, owner of Professional Air, which charters and maintains planes at the Bend airport, said Couch definitely did it. Wilcox said he flew a plane nearby while Couch traveled and took photos of the flying lawn chair. Whether Couch will take a third trip is up to his wife, and Susan Couch said she's thinking about saying no. But she said she was willing to go along with last weekend's trip. "I know he'd be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind," she said. "This way, at least he's fulfilled his dream." E-mail to a friend Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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