Mockingbird99 - Slashdot User

Comment: Re:Examples... (Score 1) 394

by TheRaven64 on Sunday January 17 2010, @12:00PM (#30798798) Attached to: Programming With Proportional Fonts?

Fixed width Monaco 10pt, which comes out too small and kind of blurry to me.

That one is really stupid. They are using antialiasing, but Monaco is specifically designed to render well at point size 10 without antialising. The curves line up with the pixels cleanly and you can read it very easily. Turn on antialiasing and you get something blurry. Monaco really shouldn't be antialiased below about 12-14pt.

Comment: Re:"How cool would that be?" (Score 2, Informative) 404

by Bacon Bits on Sunday January 17 2010, @10:15AM (#30798038) Attached to: James Cameron On How <em>Avatar</em> Technology Could Keep Actors Young

Yeah, if it's one thing that George Lucas has proven, it's that good special effects don't make a good movie.

Just like amazing graphics don't make a good game.

Comment: Re:RedHat for the people (Score 4, Informative) 199

by Mockingbird99 on Saturday March 28 2009, @12:05AM (#27367629) Attached to: Red Hat — Stand Alone Or Get Bought?

Citigroup does not want to buy red hat and will not buy them. The citigroup analyst is speculating that now is a good time for some one else (Oracle, IBM, Sun) to buy them.

What happens at your job if you're hit by a bus? 0

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Thursday July 12 2007, @05:29PM

Esther Schindler writes ""Business continuity" sounds like a corporate buzzword until it's your own job on the line. One IT executive learned the lesson the hard way when his car was slammed by a drunk driver traveling the wrong way. In Smash-Up: How a Violent Car Crash Provided Lessons in Business Continuity and Succession Planning, Alan Boehme, CIO of Juniper Networks, talks about his two month battle to recover and what he learned about business continuity while his IT lieutenants discuss what went right—and what went wrong—during his absence.

What happens when a key player in a company goes down? Who takes over? What effect will replacing an individual have on operations? While most businesses have org charts that map out what to do after disruptions—whether they're caused by resignation, firing, retirement, sickness, injury or death—these are often crude in format and live in dusty filing cabinets in HR.

This article is written from the top manager's point of view, but you don't have to be a key decision maker for this to be relevant. What would happen to your job, your team, your project, if you were hit by a truck?"

Top IT skills list - programming is hot again-> 0

Submitted by

Ian Lamont

on Thursday July 12 2007, @04:14PM

Ian Lamont writes "Are you a solid project manager? Or are you an ace at wireless networking? How about network convergence? If you answered yes to any of these, then you can breath easy about your career prospects, or says Computerworld, which just released a list of "12 IT skills that employers can't say no to." Many of the named skills are obvious assets, but a few of them are more obscure, such as business intelligence systems, and 'Digital home technology integration.' The article also notes that programming — which is often downplayed as a skill set, thanks to the emergence of low-cost outsourced programming work in lower-wage countries — is once again a major asset. From the article:

"Everything I see in Silicon Valley is completely contrary to the assumption that programmers are a dying breed and being offshored," says Kevin Scott, senior engineering manager at Google Inc. and a founding member of the professions and education boards at the Association for Computing Machinery. "From big companies to start-ups, companies are hiring as aggressively as possible."
A total of three items on the list directly address programming — mobilizing applications, open-source programming, and '.Net, C #, C ++, Java — with an edge.'"
Link to Original Source

Google proposes changes to radio spectrum auction

Submitted by necro81 on Tuesday May 22 2007, @02:07PM

necro81 writes "Google has added its two cents to the public comments the FCC is gathering in preparation for setting the rules for February, 2009's U.S. radio spectrum auction. Google is advocating allowing companies to who purchase the spectrum to auction it off to others (ISPs or wireless companies, for instance) in a real-time fashion, making it a more fluid commodity. The FCC will accept public comments for docket 06-150 through May 23."

John McCain's MySpace Page "Pranked"

Submitted by

(EB)nickm

on Tuesday March 27 2007, @05:41PM

(EB)nickm writes "Looks as though a staffer didn't read the fine print of the "credit" clause when selecting a template for presidential hopeful John McCain's MySpace page. In retaliation, the template author and CEO of Newsvine, Mike Davidson, changed the template's main image to contain the following message:

Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage...particularly marriage between two passionate females.
Original story and screen capture at TechCrunch."

Mass media control with Sanjaya

Submitted by

krypt2nite

on Tuesday March 27 2007, @01:55PM

krypt2nite writes "In this day and age of monsters the likes American Idol, it brings the hopes and dreams alive for nerds everywhere that something so huge and seemingly important as the Idol show could be 'controlled'. Sites like www.sanjaya-idol.com are spreading, and it's interesting to see how people like Howard Stern are pushing for Sanjaya to actually become the next American Idol. As far as Sterns media reach stretches, some believe that it may take internet sites like www.sanjaya-idol.com to really create the frenzy needed to push Sanjaya over the top. It would be interesting to see what others think about a mass rigging of the pop culture phenomena."

Amazon... we have a (password) problem...

Submitted by

poodlehat

on Tuesday March 06 2007, @06:55PM

poodlehat writes "I was on Amazon.com earlier today to check on an order I placed. I went to log in, and accidentally appended some extra characters to the end of my password. Me, being a lazy typist, decided to hit enter and re-enter my password on the inevitable login rejection screen. Well, imagine my surprise when the site let me straight into my account! I logged back out and intentionally typed something completely wrong in the password field and got rejected, so it it definitely only checking up to the number of characters in the stored password. This seems totally unacceptable to me — the two "keywords" should have to match exactly, right? Or is this behavior considered acceptable in the security world? I tried to find a technical contact at Amazon.com, the customer service page just doesn't feel like it would cut it on this one... anyone have a contact?"

A justification for better IT

Submitted by

Thede

on Monday February 26 2007, @06:12PM

Thede writes "Computerworld has an article about productivity research by Marshall Van Allstyne, Sinan Aral, and Erik Brynjolfssonto that ought to be a boon IT. From the article: "In the past decade, studies have shown that IT leads to increased corporate productivity, but until recently, no one had measured how it affects work at the individual desktop level." (Until now)

They actually measured the flow of email from individuals then analyzed each person's activity relative to the network. "Among the surprises, IT didn't necessarily make projects faster but it did dramatically increase productivity by facilitating multitasking. They also found that IT-supported social networks predicted productivity better than experience. Now you can tell your boss the project's late but your productivity is up, and beers with the buddies really matter!"

The data (including 125,000 email messages) was collected over 5 years in several professional services firms.

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command =viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=14&articleId=281734&i ntsrc=hm_topic

The original papers are online:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=887406
http://ssrn.com/abstract=942310"