pnevares - Slashdot User

Submission + - Virgin America offers free onboard Wi-Fi (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19, 2009 @11:55PM

An anonymous reader writes: For the next three months, citizens will be able to access Google services services from above Earth. Holiday travelers flying with Virgin America from Nov. 10 through Jan. 15 will get free in-flight Wi-Fi, thanks to a promotional deal with Google. Virgin's entire fleet of planes has Wi-Fi, supplied by Gogo, a company that also provides wireless Internet access to airlines including American, Delta, United, Air Canada and AirTran.

Submission + - Petition and Uproar Over No MW2 Dedicated Servers (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by squizzi on Monday October 19, 2009 @11:51PM

squizzi writes: PC gamers recently renamed Saturday, October 17th, black Saturday from the chaos that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward created when Robert Bowling, the developers community relations manager divulged in a recent Bash and Slash interview that Infinity Ward would switch to a propeitary server technology called IW.net, and due to this change would no longer include the files neccessary for gamers to create their own dedicated servers. The announcement launched the fear that the mod tools and development kits for creating custom content would also vanish with the creation and implementation of Infinity Ward's new service. Quickly, against the change, PC gamers rioted against the company's decision and created an ever growing petition to ask for a reinstatement of the feature. The petition has already reached 80,000 signitures in just under 2 days.

Submission + - SPAM: Ballmer: Sidekick outage 'not good'

Submitted by coondoggie on Monday October 19, 2009 @11:18PM

coondoggie writes: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer characterized the recent Sidekick data loss episode as “not good,” and said he believes all the data will be recovered, but added that Microsoft will have to be more forthcoming in explaining to enterprise customers why a similar situation won’t occur with Microsoft’s online services.
[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source

Submission + - CIA Buys Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets (wired.com) 2

Submitted by on Monday October 19, 2009 @10:57PM

An anonymous reader writes: America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available...

Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill.

Then Visible “scores” each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. (”Trying to determine who really matters,” as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface.

Submission + - How do you manage dev/test/production environments

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19, 2009 @08:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: I am a n00b system administrator for a small web development company that builds and hosts OSS CMS's on a few LAMP servers (mostly Drupal). I've written a few scripts that checkout dev/test/production environments from our repository so web developers can access the site they're working on from a URL (ex: site1.developer.example.com). Developers also get FTP access and MySQL access (through phpMyAdmin). Additional scripts checkin files to the repository and move files/db's through the different environments. I'm finding as our company grows (we currently host 50+ sites) it is cumbersome to manage all sites hacking away at the command prompt. I would like to find a solution with a relatively easy-to-use user interface that provisions dev/test/live environments. The Aegir project is a close fit but is only for Drupal sites and still under heavy development. Another option is to completely rewrite the scripts (or hire someone to do it for me), but I would much rather use something OSS so I can give back to the community. How have fellow slashdotters managed this process, what systems/scripts have you used, and what advice do you have?

Submission + - Are Software Developers Naturally Weird?

Submitted by jammag on Sunday October 18, 2009 @11:25AM

jammag writes: Well, c'mon, yes — let's admit it. As a veteran coder discusses as he looks at his career, software development is swelled with the offbeat, the quirky and the downright odd. As he remembers, there was the 'Software Lyrics' guy and the 'Inappropriate Phone Call' programmer, among others. Are unique types drawn to the profession or, are we 'transformed over time by our darkened working environments and exposure to computer screen radiation.'?

Submission + - Sony To Launch PlayStation With Bigger Hard Drive (komonews.com)

Submitted by

The Installer

on Sunday October 18, 2009 @11:16AM

The Installer writes: "In anticipation of the impending holiday season, PlayStation is launching it's new 250Gig unit for $300.

"To give more room for game, movie and music downloads, Sony is launching a PlayStation 3 with a larger hard drive on Nov. 3.

The $350 gaming console will have a 250 gigabyte hard drive, more than twice as big as the recently launched slimmer, lighter PlayStation 3.

That one costs $300 and has a 120 gigabyte hard drive. Other than the hard drive size, the new PS3 will look and work the same as the 120 gigabyte system.

Sony's move comes as game companies gear up for the holiday season, when they reap most of their profit for the year. ""

Submission + - Artist Admits Using AP Photo for Obama Poster

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday October 18, 2009 @10:55AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that Shepard Fairey, the artist whose “Hope” poster of Barack Obama became an iconic emblem of the presidential campaign, has admitted that he lied about which photograph from the Associated Press he used as his source, and that he then covered up evidence to substantiate his lie. AP claimed in January that Fairey owed it credit and compensation for using the photograph but in February Fairey sued AP, seeking a declaratory judgment that the poster did not infringe on the agency’s copyrights and that he was entitled to the image under the “fair use” exception of the copyright law. Now Fairey has admitted that in the initial months after the suit and countersuit, he destroyed evidence and created false documents to cover up the real source. Complicating the legal battle, the freelance photographer who took the photographs, Mannie Garcia, filed court papers in July saying he was the one who owned the copyright of the 2006 photograph. Anthony Falzone, Fairey’s lawyer and the executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University, has withdraw as Fairey's counsel and called the disclosure “a very unfortunate situation.” Falzone added that regardless of which photograph Fairey used, the copyright issues remain unchanged. “We still believe, as strongly as ever, in the underlying fair use and expression issues of this case." Larry Lessig, who said that he has been advising Fairey but is not representing him, added that the significant issue in fair use cases is whether the image has been transformed from the original. If it has been “fundamentally transformed,” he said, then it can be used under copyright law."

Submission + - Jessica Watson sets sail (jessicawatson.com.au)

Submitted by DarkOx on Sunday October 18, 2009 @10:06AM

DarkOx writes: Jessica Watson has begun her round the world voyage, if successful she will be the youngest person, age 16, to circumnavigate the globe by sail unassisted and non-stop.

She will 23,000 nautical miles (about 38,000 kilometres), departing and returning to Sydney as required to set the record. This will be a journey lasting around 240 days, during which she may not acquire any outside supplies or receive any assistance with repairs.

She will have internet access, e-mail, and her position will be continuously tracked and monitored. This is a pretty high tech undertaking both in the electronics sense and as in sailing kit. Her yacht is a S&S (Sparkman and Stephens) 34 a boat that has successfully been used in other solo circumnavigation bids.

Much more information can be found at her website: http://www.jessicawatson.com.au/

Submission + - Best Christmas Tech Gifts For All The Family?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 18, 2009 @07:22AM

An anonymous reader writes: Christmas is creeping up on me and I want to start buying people presents but not sure where to start. Most of the family are into tech and age-wise range from small kids to grandparents. I'm thinking about getting them all something, but I can't afford to get them all iPhones, so don't suggest that! Any suggestions welcome, keep them interesting as certain members of the family already own the usual gadgets.

Submission + - Mozilla blocks WPF & .NET Framework Add-Ins (mozilla.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 18, 2009 @02:55AM

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has blocked the Microsoft WPF Plug-In & .NET Framework add-in. Firefox users on Windows will start seeing these blocked completely by the browser as of Saturday.

Submission + - Sidekick data loss: Sabotage or dogfooding? (visualstudiomagazine.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday October 18, 2009 @12:52AM

" rel="nofollow">ozmanjusri writes: "Questions are being asked about a dramatic disconnect between Microsoft's management and engineering teams.

A somewhat inflammatory article by Appleinsider points makes claims that longstanding management issues and a culture of "dogfooding" could have been to blame for Microsoft's recent catastrophic client data loss. Interestingly, they also claim that there may be evidence that could suggest the failure was the result of a deliberate act of sabotage.

According to the article, an un-named source has stated that a pre-existing project group called "Pink" was operating independently inside Microsoft designing a Zune-phone. The Pink team took over the Danger acquisition, with disastrous results.

"When Danger was acquired, Pink was already a going concern but had no engineering staff. Microsoft discovered that Danger had unbreakable contractual obligations that meant they couldn't turn us into warm bodies working on Pink, so they staffed up internally," the source reported. "By the time Danger engineering became available to work on Pink a year later, innumerable bad decisions had already been made by clueless idiots."

The source also claims the Pink project was failing because of a management decision to include UMTS and CDMA phones in the same form factor, a technical nightmare."

Submission + - IMMDb Turns 19 (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by emeraldd on Saturday October 17, 2009 @11:28PM

emeraldd writes: I'd say this is a birthday worth remembering:
"If you load up the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) today, you'll see a new logo commemorating its 19th birthday. Yes, that's really old for the Internet. Google, by comparison, is 11. Meanwhile, Yahoo is 14. IMDb is so old in fact, that is pre-dates the first web browsers."

Freeing the Good Stuff From University Labs 87

Posted by kdawson on Thursday February 01, 2007 @01:54PM from the window-into-research dept.

netbuzz writes "University research labs are not supposed to be like Vegas: What happens in them is not supposed to stay there. A nonprofit from the Kauffman Innovation Network launching yesterday at DEMO 07 aims to free the fruits of academic research that would otherwise sit trapped on university shelves. Bonus: the site translates academic-speak into English.

Overcoming Challenges To Game 30

Posted by Zonk on Thursday February 01, 2007 @12:26PM from the dedicated-fraggers dept.

1up has another feature up worth investigating, this one detailing the challenges faced by gamers with disabilities who just want to enjoy their hobby. The article discusses gals and guys who may be physically different than the average gamer, but who seek that Mortal Kombat fatality or enjoy the story of Half-Life 2 just as much as anyone else. They also touch on the unique peripherals available to players who may not be able to utilize standard controllers, and the palliative effect that games can have on folks in stressful circumstances (as we've seen via Child's Play in the past). It's just another instance where the usual gaming labels break down in the face of reality: "In the media's rush to blame school shootings on violent videogames, sometimes stories about gaming's role in communication and positive tenacity get left behind. While some parents worry about their children submerging themselves in the fantasy worlds of videogames and losing themselves to the real world, that same 'escape' often proves soothing to gamers who, for various reasons, are cut off to the world around them."

Slashdot Top Deals