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Submission + - Geek franchises that changed everything (pcauthority.com.au) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With Avatar taking more than $2.7 billion in box office receipts, science fiction is one of the entertainment industry's biggest money earners. But it wasn't always that way. Since the 1982 release of Tron which was the first game that made more in auxiliary sales than in the film itself, entertainment franchises have become big business. This list of the top ten geek entertainment franchises includes some of the most groundbreaking and enduring, from movies (2001) to games (Halo, Warcraft) and TV (Red Dwarf). Amidst all of them, the influence of Star Trek is undeniable. The show broke many boundaries in TV, it was ground-breaking in its themes, and then followed up by some excellent spin-offs such as Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. It basically underwrote the slash fiction, created a language, Klingon, and has had eleven films based on the franchise.

Comment Re:Scribd in HTML5 (Score 1) 177

by swinefc (#32124548) Attached to: Scribd Switches To HTML5

When IE starts to actually conform to a standard I usually start to worry.

Don't worry. IE has its own way of doing @font-face. To be fair, IE has supported font-face the longest. Just with its own file format.

Comment Working Perfectly (Score 1) 246

by swinefc (#31482744) Attached to: The Seven Hidden Browsers In the Windows Ballot

I think this setup is working. It is creating real competition. Sure, the seven browsers offered right now are crap, but before MS was forced to offer choices, these browsers would have zero exposure. There was little incentive to try to update any browser that wasn't backed by someone with deep pockets. So, no one tried. Most of these are simple pet projects. Now, developers might be interested. Investors have a way to inexpensively get software in front of millions of users. These choices will only get better. The barrier to entry has been lowered. Microsoft has been forced to compete with the little guy. Right now, the little guy is loosing, but these seven have nowhere to go, but up.

Score one for the EU. They had the balls to make change instead of just fining M$ millions of their billions.
Linux

Submission + - Linux 2.6.33 released

Submitted by diegocg
diegocg writes: The version 2.6.33 of the Linux kernel has been released. This version includes the Nouveau driver, Nintendo Wii and Gamecube support, DRDB, TCP "cookie transactions", a syscall for batching recvmsg() calls, several new perf subcommands (perf probe, perf bench, perf kmem, perf diff), experimental support for cache compression through swap, Xen PV-on-HVM support, drivers for virtual network and graphic cards from VMWare and other improvements. See the full changelog here.

Comment Re:Choice to Make (Score 2, Insightful) 254

by swinefc (#30688016) Attached to: Cellphone Radiation May Protect Brain From Alzheimers

Until now, I believed as you do... "Cell phones are not actually known to cause any health problems". Low level RF is already in our natural habitat.

Unfortunately, this article is worrisome, because the study showed a positive effect. The problem is that it had any affect at all. If cell phone radiation can affect Alzheimer's, then cell phone radiation has an affect, positive or negative is just a modifier.

Comment Re:What about making other things more secure firs (Score 1) 582

by swinefc (#30585784) Attached to: Bruce Schneier On Airport Security

Quick Google search shows that 300,000 people are killed by obesity each year. Time to ban cheeseburgers.

Please let the madness of trying to ban / legislate away all the things that can hurt us.

The question becomes how far is too far? I think as long as I wake up each morning without fearing for my life, then a reasonable level of safety has been achieved.

I like to talk on the phone while driving. BTW, I find the radio much more distracting.
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates Remembers 1979

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Last week Gizmodo had a special celebration of 1979, the last year before a digital tsunami hit, that put Bill Gates put him in a nostalgic mood so this week Bill chimed in with his own memories of that seminal year when everything changed. "In 1979, Microsoft had 13 employees, most of whom appear in that famous picture that provides indisputable proof that your average computer geek from the late 1970s was not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion," wrote Gates. "By the end of the year we'd doubled in size to 28 employees. Even though we were doing pretty well, I was still kind of terrified by the rapid pace of hiring and worried that the bottom could fall out at any time." What made Gates feel a little more confident was that he began to sense that BASIC was on the verge of becoming the standard language for microcomputers. "By the middle of 1979, BASIC was running on more than 200,000 Z-80 and 8080 machines and we were just releasing a new version for the 8086 16-bit microprocessor. As the numbers grew, we were starting to think beyond programming languages, too, and about the possibility of creating applications that would have real mass appeal to consumers." Gates remembers that in 1979 there were only 100 different software products that had more than $100 M in annual sales and all of them were for mainframes. "In April, the 8080 version of BASIC became the first software product built to run on microprocessors to win an ICP Million Dollar Award. Today, I would be surprised if the number of million-dollar applications isn't in the millions itself" writes Gates. "More important, of course, is the fact that more than a billion people around the world use computers and digital technology as an integral part of their day-to-day lives. That's something that really started to take shape in 1979.""
Government

Submission + - Recovery.gov Asks for IT Recommendations (thenationaldialogue.org)

Submitted by Statecraftsman
Statecraftsman writes: Recovery.gov, the United States website on stimulus spending, is asking for recommendations on TheNationalDialogue.org to answer the question "What ideas, tools, and approaches can make Recovery.gov a place where all citizens can transparently monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds?" Many vendors and concerned citizens have chimed in with their ideas but the comment period closes soon on May 3rd. One interesting idea is to Grow a Development & Data Analysis Community using free software tools and technologies.
Businesses

Submission + - How Much Do You Charge for Web Projects

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: (Posting AC to avoid astroturfing.) I am a freelancer and small business owner who's lucky enough to have a steady stream of web related projects, ranging from simple websites, to graphics-intensive design, to custom LAMP applications. One issue that frequently comes up is how much I should price my (or rather, my company's) work. The prices I found online from other companies vary a great deal, so are customers' expectations. I ask you, the collective wisdom of Slashdot: based on your real-world experience, how much do you charge for web projects? Please be specific if possible, since obviously a 5-page cookie-cutter site is different from one that has a 30 second Flash intro clip. (Flash?! I know, but you don't argue with customers.) P.S. Thought I should mention that my customers and myself are based in the U.S.

Comment Re:Paying your dues (Score 1) 372

by swinefc (#26411167) Attached to: How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs?

I wrote a quick app to test this a while back. This is called the Martingale system.

Needless to say it doesn't work. Millions of iterations showed that most of the time, you hit the table limit long before a winning bet during a loosing streak (which happens very frequently). You end up betting millions to gain $10.

The casinos love it when you try this, btw.

In a coin flip, past performance is not an indicator of future events.
Security

Windows Update Can Hurt Security 220

Posted by kdawson from the manufacturing-exploits-on-internet-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that given a buggy program with an unknown vulnerability, and a patch, it is possible automatically to create an exploit for unpatched systems. They demonstrate this by showing automatic patch-based exploit generation for several Windows vulnerabilities and patches can be achieved within a few minutes of when a patch is first released. From the article: 'One important security implication is that current patch distribution schemes which stagger patch distribution over long time periods, such as Windows Update... can detract from overall security, and should be redesigned.' The full paper is available as PDF, and will appear at the IEEE Security and Privacy Symposium in May."
Software

Submission + - Mercurial, Subversion and Git: Pros and Cons

Submitted by
talexb
talexb writes: "I'm curious about Mercurial, a replacement for my current version control system, Subversion, and wonder what other SlashDot readers think about those two and about Git, the version control used for the Linux kernel. I've read several blog posts and articles and what I get from all that is, Git: very complex, very fast, but slows down without manual repacking; Subversion: simple, fast, doesn't branch well, efficient; Mercurial: not so simple, very fast, branches well, very efficient. Which one of these do you use, and why? What do you like and dislike about it?"

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