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Submission + - Asl Slashdot

Submitted by trialjudge
trialjudge writes: The other day "Rachel from Credit Services" called for the 81st time this week. I just happened to be practicing blowing on my whistle, and I'm afraid the sound greatly annoyed whoever I was talking to.

For those of you who don't know Rachel, see http://business.time.com/2012/...

I would never intentionally damage "Rachel from Card Services"'s equipment, but I was just idly wondering if there is something low tech I can do better than a whistle.

An M-80 would be great, but it leaves a stinky residue in the house. Slam a book on the table? Do any of you tech geniuses know anything that might persuade them to stop calling, while not hurting my cheap telephone?

Thanks!!!!

Submission + - Does Relying On an IDE Make You a Bad Programmer? (itworld.com) 2

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Writing about his career decisions, programming language choices, and regrets, Rob Conery says that as a .NET developer he became more reliant on an IDE than he would have with PHP. Blogger, and .NET developer, Matthew Mombrea picks up the thread, coming to the defense of IDEs (Visual Stuidio in particular). Mombrea argues that 'being a good developer isn’t about memorizing the language specific calls, it's about knowing the available ways to solve a problem and solving it using the best technique or tools as you can.' What's your take? Does using an IDE make you lazy with the language? Would you be better off programming with Notepad? Does the same answer hold true for a team of developers?

Submission + - Plan 9 now licensed under GPL v2 (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Hemlock Stones
Hemlock Stones writes: From The Register article:

The University of California, Berkely, last week quietly let it be known that it “has been authorised by Alcatel-Lucent to release all Plan 9 software previously governed by the Lucent Public License, Version 1.02 under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.”

Anybody interested ? If so it is available at http://akaros.cs.berkeley.edu/...

Submission + - An open letter to the management of Slashdot. 14

Submitted by onyxruby
onyxruby writes: I have been watch for some time now as Slashdot has started beta testing a new version of the website. As you are well aware the new site would constitute a complete change to the look, interface and functionality of Slashdot.org.

Change happens, and for those of us who work with technology for a living it is the only constant. Change is a process and in and of itself is not a bad thing when it offers improvement. Unfortunately the change that has been offered negatively impacts the look, interface and most importantly the functionality of Slashdot.
Many people have had trouble reverting back to the classic interface. The new interface simply does not offer the functionality of the old. Things like statistics, comments and layout are very difficult to find. You have a community that lives and breathes data and want to know their data. How is my comment ranked, how many people responded – it’s really all about the dialogue. Can I get the information that I want in a readily digestible format?

As you’re well aware the new site does not offer the very thing that people come here for. This in and of itself is not why your community has organized a boycott of Beta. The boycott was originated because the new version will be implemented whether the community wants it or not.

I want to explain why this change has gone down people’s throats about as well as Windows 8’s Metro interface. The reason has absolutely nothing to do with the interface and everything to do with the perception that the editors and management of Slashdot appear to have.

The message that has been consistently handed down is that we are “your audience”. We are not your “your audience” we are your product. People do not come to Slashdot for the news stories, there are untold other sites that provide those as well as professional and original writing about them. People come here for the community of insiders from across the industry.

Please respect the community and stop what you’re doing. You have commented that you don’t want to maintain two code bases. Your community works in the industry and understands this, which leads many to suggest you abandon the new code base entirely so that you are only maintaining once code base. Tell us what your trying to accomplish and I would imagine that a wide range of experts would be more than willing to help you meet your goals.

Submission + - How to fix Slashdot Beta? 17

Submitted by Forbo
Forbo writes: Since the migration to Slashdot Beta was announced, it seems all meaningful discussion has been completely disrupted with calls to boycott and protest. Rather than pull an Occupy, what can be done to focus and organize the action? What is the end goal: To revert entirely to the previous site, or to address the problems with the new site?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Another way to deploy printers on Windows domain without using GPO

Submitted by Fluffy the Destroyer
Fluffy the Destroyer writes: I know you can deploy printers on a Windows domain using GPO but I was wondering if they are any other method that exist. The goal is when a user logs on in our domain, the domain would give a list of printer already installed on his account when he logs on just like using the GPO. I'm asking this because i find the GPO to be unreliable at times.

Submission + - Britain's Year of Code run by a non-coder (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: British students are set to learn how to code from next school year in September, and now a new organisation is pushing for this to be our Year of Code. That group is run by Lottie Dexter, who doesn't actually know how to code herself — though she's working on it, via Year of Code's own program. "I don’t know code," she said. "But in terms of this campaign, I think that’s an asset because I’m learning as I go. Hopefully, I'll prove to everyone it is easy, it is step-by-step, and that you can pick it up." Does it matter that she can't code?

Submission + - No Beer for You, Courtesy of the FAA (avweb.com)

Submitted by Bucc5062
Bucc5062 writes:

A Minnesota brewery's airborne solution to the preventable yet apparently prevalent problem of running out of beer while ice fishing has been shot down by the FAA.

It seems the FAA frowns on beer runs by drowns for lake fishermen in Minnesota. While there were some minor logistical issues, the FAA threw cold water on the project. They frowned on the notion of a beer distributor using autonomous flying objects (AFO's) from performing the deliveries. It seems the activity

runs afoul of the agency's current ban on the commercial use of unmanned aircraft and it didn't take long for the operation to be grounded.

Ice fishermen got a little frosty when they discovered that, instead of having a case of Lakemaid brew dropped down next to the shack, thus saving a trip, they now had to miss some prime fishing time and go get some cold ones from the shore store. This is the marketing video that got them into trouble.

Submission + - Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary

Submitted by disconj
disconj writes: With the 40th anniversary of the release of Dungeons & Dragons coming up this weekend, the Internet is ablaze with reflections on its legacy. Dave Ewalt gives an intro for the uninitiated. Ethan Gilsdorf explains how "all I need to know about life I learned from 'Dungeons & Dragons.'" Jon Peterson presents a video show-and-tell of rare artifacts from D&D's development. How did D&D change your life, and what will you be doing to celebrate this Sunday?

Submission + - Insider Tips On Hiring Great Developers

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers an inside look at the hiring practices of top startups and dev shops when competing against the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter in the escalating war for developer talent. 'One of the worst things in the world you can do is build your first 10 employees with B-level people,' says Steve Newcomb, founder and CEO of Famo.us. 'You will end up with 100 C-level people. That's why we hire very slowly.' Meanwhile, Box SVP of Engineering Sam Schillace has a single word he uses when recruiting candidates who are considering a competing offer from Google: 'That word is "Microsoft." I think Google has had a pretty good run, but it's gotten so massive that it's difficult to be nimble any more.'

Submission + - Linksys Resurrects WRT54G in a New Router

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A year after purchasing the Linksys home networking division from Cisco, Belkin today brought back the design of what it called 'the best-selling router of all time' but with the latest wireless technology. We are talking about the classic WRT54G, the router in blue/black livery, first released in December 2002. Back in July 2003, a Slashdot post noted that Linksys had 'caved to community pressure' after speculation that it was violating the GPL free software license, and it released open source code for the WRT54G. The router received a cult following and today the model number of the refreshed model will be WRT1900AC. The radio is updated to support 802.11ac (with four antennas), the CPU is a more powerful 1.2GHz dual core, and there are ports for eSATA and USB mass storage devices. Linksys is also providing early hardware along with SDKs and APIs to the developers of OpenWRT, with plans to have support available when the router becomes commercially available. The WRT1900AC is also the first Linksys router to include a Network Map feature designed to provide a simpler way of managing settings of each device connected to the network. Announced at Consumer Electronics Show, the device is planned to be available this spring for an MSRP of $299.99.

Submission + - Programming Language 'Clinical Trials'?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: High school junior Charles Dawson's New Year resolution is to write a new program in different language each week. It's an ambitious project for someone of any age, and while it won't give him an in-depth appreciation of programming language differences, it'll certainly give him greater insight into the strengths of certain languages than would perusing the Hello World Wikipedia article. Lots of claims are made about the comparative productivity of programming languages, but have there been any landmark studies that measure the efficacy of a programming language's productivity claims in a 'clinical trial' of sorts? Would head-to-head tests against other languages be a better way of sorting out Popularity vs Productivity vs Performance claims, or is relying on more nebulous claims of superiority (e.g., "It's not a single aspect of Go that makes it a compelling choice, but rather the careful organization of well-crafted small pieces.") the best we can do?

Submission + - OpenSSL.org site defaced - subverted hypervisor suspected

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Sunday morning (GMT) www.openssl.org was defaced. The current theory is that the hosting provider's hypervisor was subverted and not that the OpenSSL team had misconfigured their own system. The OpenSSL software itself appears to remain unaffected and the team is still investigating the incident.

Submission + - Criminal breaks prison because of toothache (goweirdfacts.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Will you break the prison when the sentence will complete in one month? A 51-year-old Swedish prisoner escaped from prison because of unbearable toothache. The man was only sentenced to one month in prison before, but he got a serious toothache when he was serving his sentence in prison, he reported to prison officers but did not get any response, so he decided to escape from prison and went to see a dentist. After he finished, he phoned the police and turned him back into prison. Finally, prison only warned him and extended his sentence one day for the escape.

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