Iffy Bonzoolie - Slashdot User

Richest 2% own half the world

Submitted by

kop

on Tuesday December 05 2006, @07:44PM

kop writes "The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute.
The survey is based on data for the year 2000. The authors say a more recent year would have involved more gaps in the data. As it is, many figures — especially for developing countries — have had to be estimated.

Nonetheless, the authors say it is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm"

Why UI Design is Important in Enterprise Apps

Submitted by

boyko.at.netqos

on Tuesday December 05 2006, @05:47PM

boyko.at.netqos writes "Network Performance Daily has a article by Russell Wilson on designing UI for business applications: "Having a well-thought out interface can save time, save frustration, and create emotional links to the product and draw the user back to it. Especially with enterprise apps, where vendors are tasked with reducing costs calculated by employee time on-task, the more that you can shorten the time it takes employees to do certain tasks by making them more intuitive and more efficient, the more you can save organizations in their total cost of ownership... A big piece of TCO is training time and the need for support — a useful, simple, unified user interface can reduce both. So then, why do many enterprise programs have poor user interfaces?""

Warner CEO Admits His Kids Stole Music

Submitted by

IAmTheDave

on Tuesday December 05 2006, @01:39PM

IAmTheDave writes "Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman admitted that he was fairly certain that one or more of his children had downloaded music illegally, but despite this direct admission of guilt, and without surprise, no lawsuits are pending. Bronfman insists that, with a fairly certain stern talking-to, his children have suffered the full consequences of their actions. "I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that." I wonder if all of the people currently being sued/extorted can now just admit that they "no longer do that.""

NASA Wants Permanent Moonbase by 2024

Submitted by quanticle on Monday December 04 2006, @10:35PM

quanticle writes "According to CNN, NASA wants to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by 2024. While NASA has stated intentions to establish such a base beforehand, this is the first proposed timetable I've heard so far.

NASA Associate Administrator Scott Horowitz said the goal is to conduct the first manned missions to the moon by 2020, starting with short stays by four-person crews that would establish the outpost.

He estimated that perhaps by 2024 there might be a continual presence on the surface, with crews rotating in and out, as is done with the international space station.

"

Verisign Retains .com Control Until 2012 92

Posted by kdawson on Monday December 04 2006, @03:39PM
from the same-as-the-old-boss dept.

Several readers wrote to note that the U.S. Department of Commerce, in a controversial deal, has extended Verisign's control of the .com domain. Verisign got the right to raise prices in four of the six years of the contract, by up to 7% each time. From the article: "Verisign has control of .com and .net locked up for the next several years, but there will still be a modicum of oversight. [Commerce] retains final approval over any price hikes, and has said that any subsequent renewal of the contract will occur 'only if it concludes that the approval will serve the public interest in the continued security and stability of the Internet domain name system... and the provision of registry services at reasonable prices, terms and conditions.'"

Linux Overclocking Software

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2006, @01:52PM

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has posted an article that covers the basics of GPU and CPU overclocking utilities available for GNU/Linux. From the article: "In 2005 we had featured several articles on the state of NVIDIA graphics card overclocking under Linux. In early 2005 the only option for Linux users was NVClock. The open-source NVClock was started by Roderick Colenbrander in 2001 and since then has been evolving. However, coming out in June of 2005 from the NVIDIA camp was CoolBits support for their alternative operating system drivers.""

Is XP-64 really worth it?

Submitted by chip_whisperer on Monday December 04 2006, @01:46PM

chip_whisperer writes "I used to be a big time custom desktop builder, making many working boxes per year, but I've been off the bandwagon for about four years now and am trying to get back into it now that Ars Technica has just released their recommendations. The standard seems to be heading towards 64 bit processors, but I'm wondering if you can/is it worth it to run a box on simply Windows XP or should I get XP-64? I've heard that driver support for 64 can be a hassle. Also, for you fellow Linux geeks, how are current distros doing in supporting 64 bit processors? (e.g. Suse, Ubuntu, etc.) Thanks for all your help!"

Displaying game system on VGA monitor?

Submitted by on Monday December 04 2006, @11:51AM

An anonymous reader writes "I'm in the process of building up a MythTv system, and am trying to use this system to replace the TV in my house with a monitor. My only challenge at this point is the game consoles. How can I display those on a VGA monitor? There a huge range of products out there to do this translation, ranging from a few bucks to a few hundred...but very little info about which ones of these work with Linux, or work at all (the cheaper ones, especially, probably use CPU emulation, which I'm leery of).

Has anyone out in greater Slashdot-land tried this and gotten it to work? General thoughts on what you'd use to get the consoles in your house to use your monitor instead of a TV?"

Open Source Spying

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday December 04 2006, @11:13AM

eldavojohn writes "The New York Times is running a very lengthy but amazingly interesting article on the short history of open source software and information on the inside of the intelligence community. The article discusses the transformation of the intelligence community from fighting the Cold War with traditional information exchange to fighting terrorism today utilizing things like wikis & blogs. From the end of the article,
Today's spies exist in an age of constant information exchange, in which everyday citizens swap news, dial up satellite pictures of their houses and collaborate on distant Web sites with strangers. As John Arquilla told me, if the spies do not join the rest of the world, they risk growing to resemble the rigid, unchanging bureaucracy that they once confronted during the cold war. "Fifteen years ago we were fighting the Soviet Union," he said. "Who knew it would be replicated today in the intelligence community?"
You may recall that the CIA now has their own classified Wiki. I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that."

ASUS Integrates VOIP and PSTN Into Motherboards 101

Posted by kdawson on Monday December 04 2006, @08:54AM
from the talk-long-pay-little dept.

yahyamf writes "ASUS recently announced that their TeleSky telecom adapter will now be included in two of their motherboards. The TeleSky converts an ordinary house phone into a multi-functional Skype phone. With one jack connected to the house phone and the other to the ground telephone line, the TeleSky can switch the house phone connection between the PSTN and VoIP networks. While it sounds interesting, how would this compare to the dedicated VOIP adapters available from SIPURA and others?"