avidday - Slashdot User

Music While Programming? 1019

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 12, 2009 @06:09AM from the perl-jam dept.

BubbaDoom writes "In our cubicle-ville, we have programmers intermixed with accounting, customer support and marketing. As programmers, it is our habit to put on our headphones and listen to our portable music players to drown out all of the noise from everyone else. The boss recently sent an email just to the programmers demanding that we do not use our music players at work because he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes. Of course, we've explained to him that prattle from the other people is much, much more distracting, but he insists his policy is the right one. What is the Slashdot community's experience with music at work for programmers?"

Google-Microsoft Crossfire Will Hit Consumers 336

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 29, 2009 @11:47AM from the why-i-wear-kevlar-when-searching dept.

theodp writes "Newsweek's Dan Lyons doesn't know who will be the winner in Google and Microsoft's search battle, but that's not stopping him from picking a loser — consumers. As we head towards a world where some devices may be free or really cheap, consumers should prepare to be bombarded by ads or pay a premium to escape them. 'The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet. Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business. At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.'"

Modded UX490 UMPC Shows Off Years of Community Development 75

Posted by timothy on Monday November 23, 2009 @02:27AM from the soldered-on-a-new-warranty-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The community at www.MicroPCTalk.com have spent the last few years devising all sorts of mods and tweaks for the Sony VAIO UX-series UMPC. Now they've thrown nearly all of their major breakthroughs into one machine. Using the latest UX model (UX490) as the base, the original SSD has been swapped for a speedy 128GB SSD, the CPU has been unsoldered from the mobo and replaced with a Core 2 Duo U7700 (making this probably the smallest computer to use said CPU). The original EDGE module has been removed, and carefully put in its place is an E169 Huawei terminal which provides up to 7.2mbps 3G (HSDPA), voice and texting. On top of this, the unit quad-boots Mac OS X, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP (and the Huawei terminal works under Mac OS X as well)."

Fedora 12 Package Installation Policy Tightened 172

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @09:52AM from the tougher-by-default dept.

AdamWill writes "After the controversy over Fedora 12's controversial package installation authentication policy, including our discussion this week, the package maintainers have agreed that the controversial policy will be tightened to require root authentication for trusted package installation. Please see the official announcement and the development mailing list post for more details."

NASA's Kepler Telescope Launched Successfully 82

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday March 07, 2009 @03:15AM from the take-that-gravity dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "At precisely 10:49 p.m. EST, NASA's 'Kepler' telescope was successfully kicked off into space, embarking on a mission that the agency says 'may fundamentally change humanity's view of itself.' The telescope will search the nearby region of our galaxy for the first time looking for Earth-size planets, which orbit stars at distances where temperatures permit liquid water to endure on their surface — a region often referred to as the 'habitable' zone."

Computer Error Caused Qantas Jet Mishap 389

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @02:33AM from the gimme-back-my-stick dept.

highways sends word that preliminary investigations into a Qantas Airbus A330 mishap where 51 passengers were injured has concluded that it was due to the Air Data Inertial Reference System feeding incorrect information into the flight control system — not interference from passenger electronics, as Qantas had initially claimed. Quoting from the ABC report: "Authorities have blamed a faulty onboard computer system for last week's mid-flight incident on a Qantas flight to Perth. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said incorrect information from the faulty computer triggered a series of alarms and then prompted the Airbus A330's flight control computers to put the jet into a 197-meter nosedive ... The plane was cruising at 37,000 feet when a fault in the air data inertial reference system caused the autopilot to disconnect. But even with the autopilot off, the plane's flight control computers still command key controls in order to protect the jet from dangerous conditions, such as stalling, the ATSB said."

Comment Re:Nope. It's 105 billion pounds. (Score 1) 779

by Tarquin Sidebottom on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @05:30PM (#19747565) Attached to: Massachusetts Makes Health Insurance Mandatory

Exchange rates are probably a poor method for comparison, not really reflecting the relative burden to the people who actually pay it. It might be a more accurate reflection to quote the figures relative to local prices for a basic item.

Venus Probe Set to Reach Target 141

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 11, 2006 @05:26AM from the venus-or-bust dept.

Accommodate Students writes "The BBC is reporting on the first space mission to Venus in a decade, which is about to reach its target. From the article: 'On Tuesday morning, a European robotic craft will perform a 50-minute-long engine burn to slow its speed enough to be captured by Venus' gravity. Venus Express will orbit our nearest planetary neighbour for about 500 Earth days to study its atmosphere, which has undergone runaway greenhouse warming.' If all goes well, it could shed important light on climate change here on Earth."

Comment Re:Lets define something (Score 1) 728

by avidday on Monday February 13, 2006 @04:25AM (#14704297) Attached to: The Great HDCP Fiasco

HDCP is digital encryption of the signal carried by the DVI/HDMI cable between the PC video card and the display device. The idea is to plug a perceived hole in the signal path, whereby high quality digital video could be theoretically ripped from the DVI/HDMI output and re-encoded for distribution at the original resolution and bitrate.

Obviously the content maf^H^H^H owners/distributors aren't too thrilled about the idea of full bit-rate, 1080 line content being transmitted unencrypted, even if it is only between the video card and display. To appease them, Intel and Silicon image came up with a bolt-on encryption system for the DVI/HDMI standard which could be built into DVI transmitter chips to close the hole.

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