Comment Re:FUCK THIS BRING BACK WIDE SLASHDOT! (Score 1) 133
He/she may or may not be referring to the slashdot beta page (which I for one don't like).
Obamacare Could Help Fuel a Tech Start-Up Boom 671
dcblogs writes "The arrival of Obamacare may make it easier for some employees to quit their full-time jobs to launch tech start-ups, work as a freelance consultant, or pursue some other solo career path. Most tech start-up founders are older and need health insurance. 'The average age of people who create a tech start-up is 39, and not 20-something,' said Bruce Bachenheimer, who heads Pace University's Entrepreneurship Lab. Entrepreneurs are willing to take on risks, but health care is not a manageable risk, he said. 'There is a big difference between mortgaging your house on something you can control, and risking going bankrupt by an illness because of something you can't control,' said Bachenheimer. Donna Harris, the co-founder of the 1776 incubation platform in Washington, believes the healthcare law will encourage more start-ups. 'You have to know that there are millions of Americans who might be fantastic and highly successful entrepreneurs who are not pursuing that path because of how healthcare is structured,' said Harris"
Comment Re:It's like deja vu all over again (Score 1) 786
I don't see what the big deal is with the ribbon. It seems like they just took vertical menus that mainly consisted of words and flipped them 90 degrees horizontal (and put more emphasis on pictorals) so it had more of tabbed look. It's really not that. Lots of web sites etc. use that tabbed way of navigation and it seems fine.
Also, for the record, there is way to complete turn off the ribbon and bring back the old vertical menus.
Comment Jurassic Park (Score 1) 203
It occurred to me one to my science classes in high school had us read Jurassic Park. Seems like old Michael Crichton knew how to include interesting details in that book and it's no a bad book to boot.
Some Windows XP Users Can't Afford To Upgrade 953
colinneagle writes "During a recent trip to an eye doctor, I noticed that she was still using Windows XP. After I suggested that she might need to upgrade soon, she said she couldn't because she couldn't afford the $10,000 fee involved with the specialty medical software that has been upgraded for Windows 7. Software written for medical professionals is not like mass market software. They have a limited market and can't make back their money in volume because there isn't the volume for an eye doctor's database product like there is for Office or Quicken. With many expecting Microsoft's upcoming end-of-support for XP to cause a security nightmare of unsupported Windows devices in the wild, it seems a good time to ask how many users may fall into the category of wanting an upgrade, but being priced out by expensive but necessary third-party software. More importantly, can anything be done about it?"
Comment I get it! (Score 1) 71
How long before all our water is alcohol?
Or is this a reference to something else?
Comment Re:This idea is getting worse every day... (Score 1) 329
I disagree with the idea that the prequels could only be a fill-in-the blank affair: the same could have been said for the LotRs trilogy but it still managed to be turned into something enjoyable with near-universal appeal (Pippen and Merry seem to have their own following, for instance) even though whether you read the book(s) or not the ending seemed like a fore-gone conclusion.
Comment Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score 1) 564
I think everybody should make at least $25 an hour. Anything less and they're not making enough to support themselves in American society, and the rest of us -- government -- are going to have to make up the difference between what their employer is paying them and what they need to survive.
Wow, $25 would be nice. I have disagree with you though on the supporting yourself on anything less: For a whole year I was working at $15/hour in california where it's not exactly cheap. In fact I had a 100 mile round trip so my weekly gas costs was around ~$350 (an old car getting around 25MPG). I was also paying ~$300/month for my own health insurance, paying for car insurance, California's income tax... Actually a smart phone too so that was another $75/month.
Not only was I able to live on that wage I was actually making money. Just have to decide what's important and what isn't. Prioritize. At $25/hour I'd feel like I was living like one of those UAE princes I hear about. But I for one look forward to this proposed socialist utopia.
Dell Going Private In $24.4 Billion Agreement 217
Nerval's Lobster writes "Dell is going private again, as the result of a $24.4 billion deal involving private-equity investors and Microsoft. The deal will close before the end of the second quarter of Dell's fiscal 2014, according to Reuters. Dell founder and namesake Michael Dell, who owns roughly 14 percent of the company's common shares, will continue to lead the newly privatized venture as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He will contribute his existing shares to the new company, on top of a 'substantial' additional cash investment. As with other hardware manufacturers in the space, Dell faces the specter of a softening PC market. And while Dell has made significant efforts to penetrate other markets—including the launch of a private cloud architecture based on the open-source OpenStack—that weakness has affected its bottom line: for its fiscal 2013 third quarter, the company reported an 11 percent decrease in revenue from the previous year; while it enjoyed an increase in revenue from its servers and services businesses, revenue from its Consumer division dipped 23 percent. Its Large Enterprise, Small and Medium Business, and Public revenue also declined." Another take at the New York Times.
Comment Re:I don't.. (Score 1) 453
VBScript still works, even in HTML5-based applications. Just sayin.
Comment Re:Split it. (Score 1) 451
I can think of at least two examples of this: Untangle and Asterisk. Asterisk seems to have the right idea with free versus supported models.Maybe one of those two could be a model? There's also Redhat with their...would clone be the right word?... unofficial community version, CentOS. I've heard stories of customers with mixed RHEL/CentOS environments getting indirect support from redhat with a CentOS issue.
South Carolina Department of Revenue Hacked, 3.6 Million SSNs Taken 112
New submitter Escape From NY writes "3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers were stolen from the SC Department of Revenue. Most of the credit and debit card numbers were encrypted — all but about 16,000. There were several different attacks, all of which originated outside the country. The first they're aware of happened on August 27, and four more happened in September. Officials first learned of the breach on October 10, and the security holes were closed on October 20. This is still a developing story, but anyone who filed a SC state tax return since 1998 my be at risk. Governor Nikki Haley today signed an executive order (PDF) to beef up the state's IT security."
Comment Re:Underrating DS9: Plot and Character (Score 1) 618
If I could rate this up I would. I think this is a very well-written post.
Never did quite get used to Esri Dax...
Comment Picard? (Score 1) 618
Hard to believe Picard is winning this one. I assume because fewer and fewer slashdotters bother to go back and watch TOS (damn kids). And it is rather dated.
I just happened to recently finish watching DS9 on Netflix a few days ago (had never seen it straight through before). I'm not sure I would say Sisko was a bad captain, the show was just written so differently it was hard to express in what way he was really leading...or commanding. I don't think they ever got the chewing-out scenes perfected for example.
TNG on the other hand had Picard who could stare down and out-curse any number of Klingons towering over him. With Sisko it just seemed like stuff happened around him and he was along for the ride. Or maybe that was just my perception.
On a semi-related note, I think DS9 is way under-rated as a series. Try to watch it all the way through while not drawing comparisons to TNG or Babylon 5...you might like it...
Windows 7 Not Getting A Second Service Pack 441
An anonymous reader writes "Windows 7 was expected to have Service Pack 2 issued roughly 3 years from its introduction (late 2009). People, including myself, have been asking 'Where is it?' and the answer apparently is, 'It isn't, and will never be' which lends itself to the giant pain of installing Windows 7, then Service Pack 1, and hundreds of smaller hotfix patches. Why Microsoft? No go to Service Pack 2 for Windows 7!"
