motherjoe - Slashdot User

Comment Re:This Just In (Score 1) 767

by motherjoe on Monday September 22, 2008 @08:32AM (#25102335) Attached to: Palin Email Hacker Found

My rant for the morning!

At the company I work for we have to annually review and sign a, "Business Conduct Guide lines", package that specifically states how we are to use the information and technology used to transport and store that information.

I would honestly like to see that apply to all state and federal employees at all levels. It would read something like:

"Any email correspondence on any non approved, non standard, and unsecured system voids any validity of the content of that email for any intended official use. In other words, if it is outside approved channels it isn't valid and will not be considered for action and or response. Failure to do so will result in disciplinary action possibly leading up to or including dismissal"

Why is that so hard. If I were a STATE employee and I was receiving emails from someone named PALIN from YAHOO. You can get your government paycheck I wouldn't consider it legit and sure as hell would not honor it.

My .02

Metallica Guitar Hero Release Has Higher Quality Than CDs 102

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 19, 2008 @08:58PM from the facepalm dept.

Last week Metallica released a new album, Death Magnetic, on traditional CDs as well as downloadable content for Guitar Hero III. Fans quickly noticed that the sound quality on the CD version was noticeably below-par, thanks to the recording studio's decision to sacrifice range for loudness. However, the tracks released for Guitar Hero III made no such sacrifice, as proved by Mastering Engineer Ian Shepherd. NME found an audio clip comparing the two tracks. This comes alongside statements from Activision claiming that Aerosmith's recent venture into Guitar Hero is generating more success for the band than their actual albums.

Revamped WebKit JavaScript Engine Doubles In Speed 270

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 19, 2008 @07:56PM from the upgrades dept.

Shin-LaC writes "In a post on their official blog, WebKit developers introduced the 'next generation' of their JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme, claimed to be twice as fast as its predecessor. The post lists several changes contributing to the performance improvements, including 'bytecode optimization,' a 'polymorphic inline cache' (which sounds similar to V8's 'hidden class transitions'), and a 'context threaded JIT' compiler which generates native code (currently only for x86 processors), and is also applied to regular expressions. The new JavaScript engine is already available in the latest WebKit nightly builds. According to comparative benchmarks, the new engine is around 35% faster than the V8 engine recently introduced in Google Chrome, and 55% faster than Mozilla's TraceMonkey."

Canonical Offers Sale of Proprietary Codecs for Ubuntu 427

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 19, 2008 @02:46PM from the just-trying-to-help-the-users dept.

ruphus13 writes "Playing DVDs on Linux that required proprietary codecs has been a source of much pain. Ubuntu (or anyone else, for that matter) is not legally allowed to redistribute these codecs. So, users were left with sub-optimal choices. Convert the multimedia to an open format, acquire new media, or use a codec 'found' on the web, which may be illegal. In its continued effort to have a seamless and slick user experience, Canonical made the hard choice to offer the sale and support for proprietary codecs that users had to actually purchase for Ubuntu. This is not a fight Canonical can fight alone, and they are sure to get some grief for the decision."

Slashdot's Disagree Mail 251

Posted by samzenpus on Friday September 19, 2008 @01:26PM from the sell-outs dept.

There is no shortage of comments about us selling out or running advertisements as stories. As you might expect there is no shortage of mail with the same theme. What I enjoy most about them is all the different corporate entities and sometimes political parties, that we are supposedly working for. If even half of them were true, I would have a stack of W-2s as long as my arm every year for the tax man. The truth of the matter is, nobody here sits in their Microsoft smart chair, talking on their minion iPhone, while playing in the Google money pool. (If someone knows how to get into the Google money pool, please send me a mail.) Conspiracy theories have been around as long as man, so I guess it should come as no surprise that Slashdot has a few of it's own. Read below to find out who is pulling our strings.

SGI Releases OpenGL As Free Software 167

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 19, 2008 @12:01PM from the let-my-graphics-go dept.

StoneLion writes "Since its release, the OpenGL code that is responsible for 3-D acceleration on GNU/Linux has been running on licenses that were accepted by neither the Free Software Foundation (FSF) nor the Open Source Initiative. Today, however, the FSF has announced that the licenses in question have been rewritten, the problems resolved, and the code freed. Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF, says, 'This represents a huge gift to the free software community.'"

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