Comment Re:How much does it weigh in space? (Score 2, Insightful) 153
About 85% of what it weighs on earth depending on altitude. You aren't weightless in space, you essentially experience continual freefall.
HP's Fury At Vista Capable Downgrade 499
More documents are coming out in court proceedings over the Vista Capable debacle. Internetnews.com has good coverage of HP's fury over Microsoft lowering the requirements for a Vista Capable sticker, at Intel's request. "Intel officials may have been pleased that Microsoft lowered standards for obtaining the company's Windows Vista Capable logo program sticker, but the same can't be said about HP's execs. 'I can't be more clear than to say you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the [device driver model] requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process,' said one e-mail from Richard Walker, the senior vice president of HP's consumer business unit, to [Microsoft executives]." PCPro.co.uk follows the trail of accusatory emails inside Microsoft from there: "HP's email prompted then Microsoft co-President, Jim Allchin, to send a furious email of his own to company CEO Steve Ballmer. Allchin's email suggests the decision to lower the requirements was made in his absence by Ballmer, following 'a call between you and Paul [Otellini, Intel CEO].' 'I am beyond being upset here,' Allchin wrote to Ballmer. 'What a mess. Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed credibility [sic], as well as my own credibility shot.' Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive, Will Poole, in a rather erratically typed reply to Allchin."
AIX On the Desktop Is Getting the Boot 366
flnca writes "Today, I was playing with the thought again to purchase an AIX workstation one day when I can afford them, and I was surprised to see that IBM is going to give its IntelliStation POWER Series workstations the boot in January '09. A black day for AIX on the desktop. I really wonder what's the problem there, warehouse costs? IBM has a history of burying its best stuff (like OS/2 for instance). Some years ago, I enjoyed hacking away on an RS/6000 workstation running AIX 4.2, and it was a pure joy. Not only the kernel, but also the admin tools, like smit and smitty. Their blade-centric solution uses Windows as a client for workstation application. This truly sounds like IBM wants AIX only for servers anymore. I'm not amused. Although, eXceed on Windows with an XDCMP server running on AIX might also be a viable solution ... whatever. But it can't beat a native POWER box sitting on your desk, that's for sure."
Comment Re:Kilocomment? (Score 0, Offtopic) 637
None.
Craigslist Agrees With State AGs To Curb "Erotic Services" Ads 402
The New York Times reports that Craigslist has reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general to tame its notoriously unruly "erotic services" listings. Clever diplomacy: according to the article, Craigslist "said that it will charge erotic services vendors a small fee for each ad — about $10, Mr. Buckmaster said — and require that they use a credit card for the payment. It will donate the money to charities that combat child exploitation and human trafficking. This, theoretically, will let the company confirm not just a phone number but also an identity." I hope they work on cleaning the weird spammers from the ordinary personal ads, too.
Comment Re:Population and cancer (Score 2, Informative) 115
Worldwide, cancer barely makes in to the to 10 causes of death. And the one type of cancer that does make it is caused primarily by smoking.
First Whole Cancer Genome Sequenced 115
dooling writes "A paper detailing the sequencing of the first human cancer genome will be published in the 6 November 2008 issue of Nature. This is not only the first cancer genome published, it is the first female genome as well. You can read the paper's abstract, DNA sequencing of a cytogenetically normal acute myeloid leukaemia genome, or the story in Science News. This issue of Nature also has articles on the sequencing of the first African and Asian genomes. The sequencing in all three articles was done using the Illumina Genome Analyzer, one of the massively parallel, next-generation genome sequencing platforms."
Comment Re:No need for sarcasm, realism suffices (Score 1) 3709
If it makes you feel nice and comfy to remain in your little bubble of cluelessness (that you so evidently proved to all of us by the nonsense you wrote about diabetes)
My cluelessness about diabetes? More like yours. Type 2, otherwise known as adult onset, is overwhelmingly caused by poor diet and lack of exercise. 80 to 90%. Changing those things is pretty much the only cure. In nearly every case, adult onset diabetes is a self-inflicted disease. I give about as much pity to someone with type 2 diabetes as to someone with lung cancer due to smoking.
Comment Re:Delusional egomania. (Score 1) 3709
Do you REALLY think that you would be where you are today if you had all of that piled on you?
4 out of 5 (thankfully the only brain damage is self inflicted.) And yes, I am where I am because I had that shit piled on me in childhood.
Also, plenty of people come to this country without a dime in their pocket, unable to speak English and make it (despite the color of their skin and the rampant bias against them). If they can do it, anyone can.
Comment Re:This is, of course, nonsense (Score 1) 3709
Okay. Luck caused me to work hard. Luck caused me to be poor for a decade. Luck told me to eat cheap hot dogs and potatoes. Luck worked a shit, demeaning job 40 hours a week in addition to a full class schedule. Luck advised me that while my profession was honorable (a decade in life sciences) if I wanted to advance my lot in life, I needed to take initiative. Luck told me to save for a rainy day, even if it was only a few dollars a week - in fact - Luck advised me not to go to the movies or buy a playsation. Luck told me not to over extend myself. It's all Luck. Just last week, Luck also advised me not to upgrade my 7 year old computer even though I could easily afford it.
No. Luck, if anything, has not made me sick. I'll give you that. But very few people are truly sick to the point where they cannot work. You whine about health care? Most people run to the doctor for sniffles. Why do you need to go if you have a cold or the flu? I can't count the number of people I know that are on multiple prescriptions for bullshit ailments. Type 2 diabetes? Change your fucking diet. Fat? Stop shoving Big Macs in your snack hole and get some exercise. Got the flu or a cold? Suck it up, it'll be over in a few days. Seriously. Sore throat? Yeah, you really need $300 dollars worth of medical care to tell you that it will be gone in two days. Oh, by the way, here's some advil @ 3$ a tab. Health care is expensive for that reason. Take charge of your life.
Yeah Luck has spared me of cancer so far. Thanks.
Comment A picture is worth a thousand log entries? (Score 3, Insightful) 45
I think not. Unless it is a picture of those log entries.
Comment Here is me (Score 2, Interesting) 3709
The last eight years have been the most prosperous of my life. My parents kicked me to the curb when I was 18. I made my way through life by working hard and getting educated. Now I own a house in one of the most expensive cities in the US. I have 10 years of living expenses in the bank. Other than a $180K mortgage, I have no debt. No one handed it to me. I earned it.
Should things get worse for me in the future, I will not blame Obama. I never attributed my success to Bush, I never blamed Clinton when my net worth tanked with the dot com bubble. My house is my house. It was worth $600K two years ago, now maybe $450. So what? I don't have an ARM. It doesn't take too many IQ points to understand that when interest rates wwere at historic lows trying to shave 1 or 2% off your rate at the risk of higher rates in the future was a fool's errand. I have been poor. But I never had a credit card balance or any other debt I couldn't pay. Why? Because I will go without before running up debt.
If you blame the politicians for your lot in life, maybe you should reexamine. Your life is what you make of it. In the end, the leadership of this country has very little to do with it.
Take a break from your hand wringing about how you are being oppressed by the RIAA or patents and examine your life. It's not all about free music, movies and linux. It's about what you do personally to make your life better. Don't blame the government if your life sucks. The blame lies with you.
Reuse Code Or Code It Yourself? 429
eldavojohn writes "I began coding for a project that had simple requirements for my employer — Web services and a test application for them. But requirements have been creeping, as they always do. Initially I had decided to use the Spring Framework with Hibernate. And I re-used a lot of libraries that made things simple and quick for me. The new requests coming in involve capabilities beyond those of the frameworks. Now, I used to be told that good programmers write code and great programmers reuse code. It's starting to look like I would have saved myself a whole lot of time if I had written the database transaction using JDBC instead of Hibernate — now that I'm married to this object model framework, some of this stuff doesn't look doable. So what is better for the majority of software projects out there: reuse code, or code from scratch? What elements or characteristics of a problem point to one option over the other?"
Practical Reasons To Choose Git Or Subversion? 667
markmcb writes "I develop Rails applications and recently followed my lemming herd and made the switch to Git after learning some of the practical advantages Git offers over Subversion. As I'm sure there are many die-hard Subversion fans in the Slashdot audience, I'm curious what your key reasons are for sticking with Subversion. If possible, I'd like reasons that apply to 'most of the time' as opposed to arguments based on obscure features that may get used only a few times ever."
Mandriva Linux 2009 Released 106
Adam Williamson writes "Mandriva has today released Mandriva Linux 2009, the new major release of the popular distribution. 2009 is a bold release which brings the new KDE 4 as the default desktop, along with a re-designed installer and Mandriva Control Center and many other new features. Other significant updates include GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, Mozilla Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.27. Key features include new graphical in-line upgrade capability, netbook compatibility, class-leading hardware support, and further improved support for working with mobile devices. For more details, see the Release Tour and the Release Notes. Get it at the download page, or go straight to the torrent list."
