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gondwannabe writes
"Here are Five Things You Aren't Allowed to Discuss About Linux. With considerable chutzpa, an insightful Rob Enderle takes on what he considers five dogmas in the OSS community and explains why they're wrong. Examples: Linux is secure, "communes" actually work in the long haul, and that Linux is "pro-developer."
106264
submission
wilsonthecat writes:
Computer world reports that Microsoft will soon submit to an international standards organization a new photo format, HD Photo, that offers higher-quality images with better compression. HD Photo's lightweight algorithm causes less damage to photos during compression, with higher-quality images that are half the size of a JPEG.
106254
submission
oglsmm writes:
Sony Corp. plans to lower the production cost of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) game consoles by using less expensive chips, aiming to turn these operations profitable between September and March of next year, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday. Starting with the European version of the PS3 that is set to debut on March 23, the paper said Sony plans to use a chip that can handle only the graphics of predecessor PlayStation 2 instead of the current chips that can handle both the computing and graphics functions for the PS2.
Sony's game unit, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), will distribute compatibility software on the Internet so that users can play PS2 games on the PS3, it said.
Officials at SCE were not immediately available for comment.
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/189899
106252
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Rob writes:
A leaked memo has confirmed that the US Department of Transportation has placed a ban
on the deployment of Microsoft Corp's Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7
on the grounds there are good reasons to avoid an upgrade. In fact, as the memo explains,
"there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade". Those include upgrade
costs, compatibility concerns, limited funding, and
a forthcoming move to a new headquarters.
106250
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HRHsoleil writes:
Anil Desai recorded a pretty good screencast on creating and managing virtual hard disks over at TechTarget. He takes you through the basics step-by-step while you watch his screen. The intro is a little long, but once he gets going, it's pretty useful information. Like he says, it doesn't matter whether you're working with MS virtual server or VMware, the basics are the same.
Sorry if this is the wrong topic — you should add one on virtualization!
106246
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An anonymous reader writes:
Homeland Security continues to build domestic surveillance tools using data mining techniques from the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program, a program that Congress banned in 2003.
Does anyone really believe that this data is accurate enough to be used in making life effecting decisions? Data maintenance is expensive and once collected the data starts to rot immediately. In addition, the quality of information gathered from multiple data holders is impossible to verify and guarantee so this looks like another huge waste of public funds to me. What do you all think?
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070308-12432 3-4382r.htm
106230
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LWATCDR writes
"Has a great write up on combining LinuxBios a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one.
All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go."
106240
submission
jcatcw writes:
How good are products based on Draft 2.0 of 802.11n? To find out, Computerworld examined Belkin's N1, Netgear's RangeMax Next, the and Linksys Wireless-N..
'Bottom line: The routers and adapters we tested proved that this second coming of 802.11n is indeed a dramatic improvement over existing standards and also over products based on Draft 1.0. None of the products we looked at achieve the standard's originally stated 540Mbit/sec. speed. In fact, these vendors were less grandiose in their claims, claiming their products could achieve speeds in the 270Mbit/sec.-to-300Mbit/sec. range. Even at that, we found that, short of an alignment of the planets or voodoo, these trimmed-backed expectations fell into the range wishful thinking.'
106238
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Ropati writes:
I don't write code and I have no significant understanding of how libraries interact in Windows, but I did see the Windows KB article — 932590 "FIX: Windows-based applications that use the TZ environment variable may not work as expected because of changes to DST". From what I can read, any code that calls the TZ variable from MSVCRT.dll, will not realize it is Daylight Savings Time.
What I don't know is how much code might make a call to this variable. If there are applications that do a comparison between a local TZ call and a UTC call or to an API that does a UTC call, couldn't this have cause issues?
My question to the coders of Slashdot is how impactful is this issue? Or, is TZ in the MSVCRT.dll so deprecated that this is a teapot tempest similar to Y2K?