Durf - Slashdot User

Comment: Re:Is this for real? (Score 1) 258

by Durf on Tuesday September 02 2008, @11:30PM (#24854567) Attached to: China Practically Unreachable By Western SMS?

SMS isn't so common here in Japan, and just about ever phone comes with its own @docomo.ne.jp (or other carrier domain) email address. This is what most people use to text each other, and it lets them do the same to addresses on computers as well.

SMS does exist on the handsets, I suppose, but I don't know a single person who uses it.

Anyway, so long as SMS itself can handle Unicode text it can carry Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, Thai, you name it. Beyond that it's just a matter of developing an input system that lets you use the 12-key pad to get the characters on your screen.

2007 Tax Season Sets e-Filing Records

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday May 15 2007, @10:45PM

Anonymous Coward writes "http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/05/re cordsetting_2.html

The IRS announced today (IR-2007-100) that the 2007 tax filing season set a number of electronic filign records, including (1) most e-filed returns (76.7 million), (2) most e-refunds (59.2 million), and (3) most visits to IRS web site (140.2 million)."

Colbert Report violates CC license

Submitted by Baron on Tuesday May 15 2007, @10:25PM

Baron writes "During The Colbert Report's author interview for a book about nuclear proliferation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Implosion_Nucle ar_weapon.png was used uncredited as a backdrop. The episode aired Monday, May 14th, 2007 in North America on Comedy Central. The license summary for the image states:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.
"

Flickr Censors A Photographer's Plea

Submitted by Bananatree3 on Tuesday May 15 2007, @10:02PM

Bananatree3 writes "Popular Iclandic photographer and art-student Rebekka Guoleifsdottir has been targeted by Flickr for posting a plea for help in a theft case involving an online retailer selling copycat art. She requested that people send the retailer letters concerning the issue, and in response her original post was promptly deleted. It is still ironically available on Yahoo cache. In the end it appears that the retailer had been duped by a rogue art dealer under the title "Wild Aspects and Panoramics LTD". However, Flickr seems to have overstepped its bounds in deleting this post."

Fortune's 20 Great Employers For New Grads

Submitted by

MCTFB

on Tuesday May 15 2007, @09:28PM

MCTFB writes "Fortune Magazine has just released its "20 Great Employers For New Grads list. Notable technology companies among the list are Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Intel, and Qualcomm. The criteria for making the top 20 list as well as the name of the company who compiled the list is mentioned HERE.

Even more notable than the list itself was Fortune's claim about what they believe to be true about new college grads:

But Gen Y grads tend to be more finicky about the employers they want to work for than previous classes were. Rather than just seek a solid paycheck and a good chance at a promotion down the road, they hope to join a deep-pocketed company, where they can work for a hip boss in an office that has free food, flexible hours, and video game consoles. Hey, who wouldn't?

Obviously, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Intel are deep-pocketed companies, however, some might question whether a company such as Microsoft has "hip bosses" or a company such as Electronic Arts has "flexible hours". Even more disconcerting is the assertion that Generation Y doesn't care about a "solid paycheck" or "a good chance at promotion", but instead they just want to be babied with cool (undemanding) bosses, free food, flexible hours, and video games.

So is Fortune magazine correct in proclaiming that Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Intel are the best tech companies a freshly minted college grad can hope to work for and are Generation Y'ers really as lackadaisical as Fortune Magazine seems to portray them?"

Vista passed OS X in 15 weeks, Gates claims

Submitted by

SlinkySausage

on Tuesday May 15 2007, @09:18PM

SlinkySausage writes "Speaking to 3000 delegates of Microsoft's annual WinHEC conference, Bill Gates says sales of Vista overtook sales of Mac OS X in just 15 weeks. "We set a bar for ease of use and security," Gates told the audience. "As of last week we have had nearly 40 million copies (of Vista) sold, and that's happened twice as fast as Windows XP."

Independent Human Interface Guidelines 245

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 15 2007, @09:08PM
from the because-somebody-has-to dept.

An anonymous reader alerts us to the IndieHIG Wiki, which is an independent effort to pick up the ball that Apple has dropped on human interface guidelines (can you spell FTFF?). From the wiki: "The IndieHIG project is an initiative created out of the necessity to document the new look and feel aspects of the Mac OS X experience, outside of the supervision of Apple itself. The project is not intended to replace, but rather to supplement the somewhat dated Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). There are many instances of Apple using new and experimental interface styles, spurring developers to emulate these styles in their own applications. Unfortunately, because Apple provides neither guidelines nor code for developers to work with, the implementation of these interface styles and features by third parties can be lopsided and directionless. The IndieHIG intends to change this by providing a comprehensive set of guidelines governing the use and appearance of new, undocumented interface elements so that their implementation by third party developers adheres to the unwritten standards that Apple has set."