Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Was Sandy good for New York and the people? 4

Submitted by maroberts
maroberts writes: Whilst sadly more than 40 people have died as a result of Storm Sandy, my colleagues and I are debating whether the storm is actually beneficial in terms of employment and mortality rate. For instance, we argue that deaths from murders and traffic incidents will be way down, as will injuries from the same.

Similarly all the renovation work will be a source of jobs for less skilled manual workers, and we will genuinely witness income flowing from rich to poor. Insurance companies will pay out, reducing their dividends.

So overall, should the US be wishing for more or less bad weather?

Comment Re:Not much else to say. (Score 1) 838

by mapnjd (#36442520) Attached to: Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide

To mooingyak - thank you. I am fairly thin skinned, so I tend to take criticism badly. Except from geekoid who didn't even read my post properly (his "out of habit" vs. my "convert" statement). I shan't follow him into ad hominem territory.

I posted it this time as a sign of solidarity - a show of strength from those of us who normally remain silent on forums where we're in a minority, against a rather aggressive and vocal majority.

Being a Catholic on /. is like extolling the virtues of Linux in a Microsoft shop. You know you're right but you can't keep hitting your head against that wall.

Submission + - Europe embraces Open Document format (ffii.org)

Submitted by Elektroschock
Elektroschock writes: The European legislature has decided to support the open document format as to advance electronic business. It asks the European Commission take concrete steps to support the adoption of ODF 1.2 and its spread. Open Document is an open standard implemented in the latest incarnations of Microsoft Office, Open Office, Google Docs, Abiword and many other products.

Comment "Gas" prices in the UK. (Score 1) 762

by mapnjd (#33197232) Attached to: Just One Out of 16 Hybrids Pays Back In Gas Savings

In the UK the average petrol price is £1.16.6p/litre (according to http://www.petrolprices.com/ ).

Google tells me that 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litres and 1 British pound = 1.5943 U.S. dollars

So gas (petrol) is $7.04 per US gallon over here.

For 100000km at mfr's figures my Prius would cost approx. $7250 (More like $8-10k)

For a typical car of that ilk, look at $14k+ for fuel. So saving $7k in fuel cost alone by the figures (or $4-6k or perhaps more, in real life).

Comment Netbeans just isn't there (Score 3, Insightful) 151

by mapnjd (#30038036) Attached to: Oracle Outlines Plans for Sun Products, Casts Doubt on NetBeans

Unfortunately for Netbeans zealots, it has never caught up with Eclipse. It may have surpassed it temporarily for certain apps (think Grails support - but look at STS 2.2.0). It's also not as good as IntelliJ IDEA (previously, always non-free).

Yes, both Netbeans and Eclipse are also RCP platforms, but how many real Netbeans platform apps are there? (The Nokia one on the web site is vapourware - yes it shows a real customer RAN - without their permission, I should add! - but it's never been a product delivered to customers). Real Eclipse RCP apps do exist (XMind, Lotus Smartsuite...). Realistically, they both over good RCP platforms (one pure Java, one SWT) but Oracle won't really care about that.

As for JDeveloper - well it's a typical Oracle product - if you're in an Oracle house, it's pretty good, but no, it's not got a large userbase or community supporting it.

Oracle should let Netbeans drift off into open source land. Perhaps it'll thrive? I don't know. JDeveloper's functionality should be ported to Eclipse (along with SQL Developer, while we're at it).

Oracle are great at giving you tools once you've signed up for the ride, and why not rebase your products on the best? Which in my opinion is Eclipse.
Image

Churches Use Twitter To Reach a Wider Audience Screenshot-sm 169

Posted by samzenpus from the go-tell-it-on-the-internet dept.
In an attempt to reverse declining attendance figures, many American churches are starting to ask WWJD in 140 or fewer characters. Pastors at Westwinds Community Church in Michigan spent two weeks teaching their 900-member congregation how to use Twitter. 150 of them are now tweeting. Seattle's Mars Hill Church encourages its members to Twitter messages during services. The tweets appear on the church's official Twitter page. Kyle Firstenberg, the church's administrator, said,"It's a good way for them to tell their friends what church is about without their friends even coming in the building."
Data Storage

Btrfs Is Not Yet the Performance King 117

Posted by timothy from the happy-churning dept.
Ashmash writes "Benchmarks of the Btrfs filesystem have been published by Phoronix that compare it to the XFS, EXT3, and EXT4 file-systems. In the end they conclude that this next-generation Linux filesystem is not yet the performance king. In a great number of the tests, the EXT4 filesystem that was designed to be an interim step to Btrfs actually performs much better than the unstable Btrfs, albeit Btrfs still has more advanced features. Fedora 11 even took longer to boot when using Btrfs than EXT3 or EXT4."
Google

Google App Engine Adds Java Support, Groovy Meta-Programming 168

Posted by Soulskill from the engines-firing-on-more-cylinders dept.
Zarf writes "Yesterday Google announced that the Google App Engine now supports Java development, and fast on the heels of the Java announcement is an announcement for Groovy support! Groovy is a dynamic programming language for the JVM that is a near super-set of Java. Much Java syntax is valid Groovy syntax, however, Groovy adds powerful meta-programming features, and the new functionality will bring these meta-programming features to App Engine development. Groovy got special attention from the SpringSource Groovy team and the Google App Engine Java team, and it was this collaboration that helped create the changes that were the big secret in the recent Groovy release of 1.6.1."

Comment Re:Both will stay relevant (Score 1) 455

by mapnjd (#27386963) Attached to: Attempting To Reframe "KDE Vs. GNOME"

Can you elucidate on what is "Less Powerful" about GNOME? It may be less-configurable, but less powerful? No.

Having spent years piddling around, tweaking TWM, FVWM 1, WindowMaker, GNOME 1.x, I'm glad I have a desktop that "Just works". It's not fugly, has a consistent L&F (GNOME has a HIG) and does what it should out of the box.

Incremental improvements have worked in GNOME's case. OK, so the GNOME 3.0 project (check famous wiki page) has gone nowhere, because it basically is "Start Again" (again), but we're the better for not doing it. We have stability and usability.

Try Ubuntu 8.10, Fedora 10 or OpenSUSE 11.x live discs for a reality check. (And live Alpha disks with GNOME 2.26 are even better).

nic

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close