Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment "Web scale" and hand-held devices (Score 1) 484

by acooks (#40332025) Attached to: Windows 8 Pre RTM Metro UI Leaked

I think the interface is simple, because it's quicker for a vm to draw, scales better to weird screen sizes and pixel densities and compresses better on a remote desktop connection. Maybe MS is betting the farm on the cloud and want the best interactive experience when the installation count of the OS peaks in 5 years time.

Comment Re:Salaries (Score 1) 886

by acooks (#40164339) Attached to: IT Positions Some of the Toughest Jobs To Fill In US

Don't the H.R. people hate "jack of all trades" people, too?

Yes, but I'm convinced that recruitment agents are even worse. If you don't fit their template, they butcher your carefully structured resume into something that basically says: "This guy has been working for x years, but we're not actually sure what he did in that time." If it's all just buzzword soup to these intermediaries, the connection between the type of problems that the candidate has experience in and the need that the prospective employer has gets lost.

Then there's also the fact that some industries, like banking, believe that their domain knowledge is so absolutely unique and special that nobody could possibly transfer valuable skills from a different sector.
Android

Submission + - Replicant dev interview: Building a truly free Android (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "While Android is open source, it won't work on a phone without software that generally isn't open source. The Replicant project is an attempt to build a version of Android that doesn't rely on binary blobs for which the source code isn't available to end users, and the software currently works on a handful of handsets. I caught up with the project's lead developer to talk about their efforts to make a completely open source version of Android."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Linux not suitable for defence systems according to Green Hills Software

Journal by acooks

I'm using QNX at work. It's an interesting OS, but why use it instead of Linux? Well, the argument is that QNX is suitable for safety critical systems, while Linux... maybe? While looking for vendors who offer certifiable Linux distributions, I came across these rants from Green Hills CEO, Dan O'Dowd. He makes a few supertroll statements, like "Windows and Solaris have achieved EAL 4. But to da

Comment Re:It may be true, however... (Score 1) 144

by acooks (#39144349) Attached to: Developer's View: Real Life Inspirations Or Abstract Ideas?

The credit card companies have designed the system in such a way that they never carry the risk for fraud. It's brilliant - they're basically printing money.

The consumer was "safe" on the old card-not-present system in the sense that the merchant has to refund the payment when the consumer cries fraud to the card company. If enough consumers cry fraud, the payment processing gateway (another middle man) may decide to stop the merchant's transaction processing.

The new MasterCard SecureCode and Visa 3-D Secure mechanism is kind of like paypal in the sense that you have to supply a "go ahead" instruction to the card company, except that the merchant still has your card details. Whether a transaction requires the extra step or not is determined by the merchant, the payment gateway and the card company. This is an attempt to move the fraud risk to the consumer, though the merchant could still leak card details.
Patents

Submission + - European Parliament to exclude free software with FRAND

Submitted by jan.van.gent
jan.van.gent writes: The European Parliament is on the verge to adopt a directive about reform of standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), an undefined term which has been a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open source software. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been very active before the European Commission proposed the text on trying to get FRAND terms inside the text.
Biotech

Submission + - Russian Scientists Revive Plant From 30,000-Year-Old Seeds (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species. The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. ... 'The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,' said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. 'It’s a natural cryobank.'
Cloud

Submission + - Is it time for NoSQL 2.0? 1

Submitted by rescrv
rescrv writes: Key-value stores (like Cassandra, Redis and DynamoDB) have been replacing traditional databases in many demanding web applications (e.g. Twitter, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and others). But for the most part, the differences between existing NoSQL systems come down to the choice of well-studied implementation techniques; in particular, they all provide a similar API that achieves high performance and scalability by limiting applications to simple operations like GET and PUT. HyperDex, a new key-value store developed at Cornell, stands out in the NoSQL spectrum with its unique design. HyperDex employs a unique multi-dimensional hash function to enable efficient search operations — that is, objects may be retrieved without using the key under which they are stored. Other systems employ indexing techniques to enable search, or enumerate all objects in the system. In contrast, HyperDex's design enables applications to retrieve search results directly from servers in the system. The results are impressive. Preliminary benchmark results on the project website show that HyperDex provides significant performance improvements over Cassandra and MongoDB. With its unique design, and impressive performance, it seems fittng to ask: Is HyperDex the start of NoSQL 2.0?

Submission + - Best language for experimental GUI demo projects 1

Submitted by
GrantRobertson
GrantRobertson writes: "I am not a professional software developer and never have any aspirations to become one. I've been through a generic university computer science degree-program and I can tolerate C++ begrudgingly. I do OK with Java and prefer it, though I still have to look up every API before I use it. Most of the code I want to write will be not much more than prototypes or proof of concept stuff for the research I will be doing, rather than full-on applications ready for distribution and use. I can learn any language out there, if need be, but these days it is more about the ecosystem than the core language. IDEs, libraries, cross-platform compatibility, user support, open source licensing.

My research/tinkering will be along two main lines:
1) Devising entirely new graphical user interface elements, mostly in 2-D, though often in a true or simulated 3-D space. I am working on ways to visualize, navigate, and manipulate very, VERY large data-sets of academic research information.
2) Computer based education software, though of a type never seen before. This will combine some of the GUI elements invented in (1) as well as displaying standard HTML or HTML5 content via a browser engine.

My requirements are:
A) A decent IDE ecosystem.
B) A decent set of libraries, but ones that don't lock me in to a particular mind-set like Swing does in Java. (Boxes in boxes in boxes, Oh My!)
C) An ability to easily draw what I want, where I want and make any surface of that 3-D object become a source for capturing events.
D) Ease of cross-platform use. (So others can easily look at my examples and run with them.)
E) No impediments to open-source licensing my code or for others to go commercial with it either (as I have seen when I looked into Qt).

So, should I just stick with Java and start looking outside the box for GUI toolkits? Or is there something else out there I should be looking at?"

Submission + - Adobe employee speaks out on bloatware (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This controversial post by Adobe's Kas Thomas asks if splash screens are just a sign of program bloat and callous disregard for users. It suggests that big programs should launch instantly (or appear to), perhaps by running against an instance in the cloud while the local instance finishes loading. Users of cell phones and tablets are accustomed to apps being instantly available. This is the new standard for performance, the author argues. Nothing short of it will do, any more.

Comment S-PVS vs IPS Pro vs PLS Panels (Score 1) 381

by acooks (#39039483) Attached to: Television Next In Line For Industry-Wide Shakeup?

"TVs are ultimately about picture quality. ... and there is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on picture quality"

First thought: Bullshit. Then I saw it's not S-PVA vs IPS Pro anymore; Samsung's doing PLS now.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/samsung-sa850_2.html

Need more detail on PLS...
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/2144217/television-next-in-line-for-industry-wide-shakeup#

Slashdot Top Deals

When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers. -- The Wall Street Journal

Close