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Comment: Re:It's like deja vu all over again (Score 1) 786

by keith_nt4 (#43647871) Attached to: Microsoft's "New Coke" Moment?

I don't see what the big deal is with the ribbon. It seems like they just took vertical menus that mainly consisted of words and flipped them 90 degrees horizontal (and put more emphasis on pictorals) so it had more of tabbed look. It's really not that. Lots of web sites etc. use that tabbed way of navigation and it seems fine.

Also, for the record, there is way to complete turn off the ribbon and bring back the old vertical menus.

Windows

Some Windows XP Users Can't Afford To Upgrade 953

Posted by samzenpus
from the high-cost-of-upgrading dept.
colinneagle writes "During a recent trip to an eye doctor, I noticed that she was still using Windows XP. After I suggested that she might need to upgrade soon, she said she couldn't because she couldn't afford the $10,000 fee involved with the specialty medical software that has been upgraded for Windows 7. Software written for medical professionals is not like mass market software. They have a limited market and can't make back their money in volume because there isn't the volume for an eye doctor's database product like there is for Office or Quicken. With many expecting Microsoft's upcoming end-of-support for XP to cause a security nightmare of unsupported Windows devices in the wild, it seems a good time to ask how many users may fall into the category of wanting an upgrade, but being priced out by expensive but necessary third-party software. More importantly, can anything be done about it?"

Comment: Re:This idea is getting worse every day... (Score 1) 329

by keith_nt4 (#42914539) Attached to: Han Solo To Reportedly Return For <em>Star Wars VII</em>

I disagree with the idea that the prequels could only be a fill-in-the blank affair: the same could have been said for the LotRs trilogy but it still managed to be turned into something enjoyable with near-universal appeal (Pippen and Merry seem to have their own following, for instance) even though whether you read the book(s) or not the ending seemed like a fore-gone conclusion.

Comment: Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score 1) 564

by keith_nt4 (#42867087) Attached to: On the end of USPS 1st Class Saturday delivery:

I think everybody should make at least $25 an hour. Anything less and they're not making enough to support themselves in American society, and the rest of us -- government -- are going to have to make up the difference between what their employer is paying them and what they need to survive.

Wow, $25 would be nice. I have disagree with you though on the supporting yourself on anything less: For a whole year I was working at $15/hour in california where it's not exactly cheap. In fact I had a 100 mile round trip so my weekly gas costs was around ~$350 (an old car getting around 25MPG). I was also paying ~$300/month for my own health insurance, paying for car insurance, California's income tax... Actually a smart phone too so that was another $75/month.

Not only was I able to live on that wage I was actually making money. Just have to decide what's important and what isn't. Prioritize. At $25/hour I'd feel like I was living like one of those UAE princes I hear about. But I for one look forward to this proposed socialist utopia.

Businesses

Dell Going Private In $24.4 Billion Agreement 217

Posted by timothy
from the next-month-back-in-the-old-dorm-room dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Dell is going private again, as the result of a $24.4 billion deal involving private-equity investors and Microsoft. The deal will close before the end of the second quarter of Dell's fiscal 2014, according to Reuters. Dell founder and namesake Michael Dell, who owns roughly 14 percent of the company's common shares, will continue to lead the newly privatized venture as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He will contribute his existing shares to the new company, on top of a 'substantial' additional cash investment. As with other hardware manufacturers in the space, Dell faces the specter of a softening PC market. And while Dell has made significant efforts to penetrate other markets—including the launch of a private cloud architecture based on the open-source OpenStack—that weakness has affected its bottom line: for its fiscal 2013 third quarter, the company reported an 11 percent decrease in revenue from the previous year; while it enjoyed an increase in revenue from its servers and services businesses, revenue from its Consumer division dipped 23 percent. Its Large Enterprise, Small and Medium Business, and Public revenue also declined." Another take at the New York Times.

Comment: Re:Split it. (Score 1) 451

by keith_nt4 (#42110187) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Troubling Trend For Open Source Company

I can think of at least two examples of this: Untangle and Asterisk. Asterisk seems to have the right idea with free versus supported models.Maybe one of those two could be a model? There's also Redhat with their...would clone be the right word?... unofficial community version, CentOS. I've heard stories of customers with mixed RHEL/CentOS environments getting indirect support from redhat with a CentOS issue.

Government

South Carolina Department of Revenue Hacked, 3.6 Million SSNs Taken 112

Posted by Soulskill
from the boy-are-their-faces-red dept.
New submitter Escape From NY writes "3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers were stolen from the SC Department of Revenue. Most of the credit and debit card numbers were encrypted — all but about 16,000. There were several different attacks, all of which originated outside the country. The first they're aware of happened on August 27, and four more happened in September. Officials first learned of the breach on October 10, and the security holes were closed on October 20. This is still a developing story, but anyone who filed a SC state tax return since 1998 my be at risk. Governor Nikki Haley today signed an executive order (PDF) to beef up the state's IT security."

Comment: Picard? (Score 1) 618

by keith_nt4 (#41758181) Attached to: Best Trek Captain?

Hard to believe Picard is winning this one. I assume because fewer and fewer slashdotters bother to go back and watch TOS (damn kids). And it is rather dated.

I just happened to recently finish watching DS9 on Netflix a few days ago (had never seen it straight through before). I'm not sure I would say Sisko was a bad captain, the show was just written so differently it was hard to express in what way he was really leading...or commanding. I don't think they ever got the chewing-out scenes perfected for example.

TNG on the other hand had Picard who could stare down and out-curse any number of Klingons towering over him. With Sisko it just seemed like stuff happened around him and he was along for the ride. Or maybe that was just my perception.

On a semi-related note, I think DS9 is way under-rated as a series. Try to watch it all the way through while not drawing comparisons to TNG or Babylon 5...you might like it...

Windows

Windows 7 Not Getting A Second Service Pack 441

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the mark-shuttleworth-becomes-filthy-rich dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Windows 7 was expected to have Service Pack 2 issued roughly 3 years from its introduction (late 2009). People, including myself, have been asking 'Where is it?' and the answer apparently is, 'It isn't, and will never be' which lends itself to the giant pain of installing Windows 7, then Service Pack 1, and hundreds of smaller hotfix patches. Why Microsoft? No go to Service Pack 2 for Windows 7!"
Mars

Craig Venter Wants To Rebuild Martian Life In Earth Lab 142

Posted by timothy
from the stacking-up-the-if-thens dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Karen Kaplan reports in the LA Times that Craig Venter is making plans to send a DNA sequencer to Mars. Assuming there is DNA to be found on the Red Planet – a big assumption, to be sure – the sequencer will decode its DNA, beam it back to Earth, put those genetic instructions into a cell and then boot up a Martian life form in a biosecure lab. Venter's 'biological teleporter' (as he dubbed it) would dig under the surface for samples to sequence. If they find anything, 'it would take only 4.3 minutes to get the Martians back to Earth,' says Venter, founder of Celera Genomics and the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). 'Now we can rebuild the Martians in a P4 spacesuit lab.' It may sound far-fetched, but the notion of equipping a future Mars rover to sequence the DNA isn't so crazy, and Venter isn't the only one looking for Martian DNA. MIT research scientist Christopher Carr is part of a group that's 'building a a miniature RNA/DNA sequencer to search for life beyond Earth,' according to the MIT website 'The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes.' SETG will test the hypothesis that life on Mars, if it exists, shares a common ancestor with life on Earth. Carr told Tech Review that one of the biggest challenges is shrinking Ion Torrent's 30-kilogram machine down to a mere 3 kg – light enough to fit on a Mars rover."

Comment: Re:That's like applying to be Canadian... (Score 1) 385

by keith_nt4 (#41456689) Attached to: Woz Applying For Australian Citizenship Because of the NBN

Since not a single republican voted for the ACA I don't think the republicans got "what they wanted".

Also, Obama doesn't want what Canada has: In Canada's system everybody, from the PM down to the normal citizens, use the same system. That would never happen in US. As Obama said when he was trying to pass it he is perfectly happy with his own health care. Healthcare isn't his problem, it's "the problem of uninsured". He and everybody else in power would continue going to their private doctors. Only the rest of us would deal with the the health care system.

And lastly I think he's happy with what was passed. My personal theory on the ACA is that it was about creating a new union, public or other wise, out of the country's doctors/medical providers thus creating a permanent voting block for his party long after he is gone from office (or at least revenue stream via union dues). Obviously a ridiculous notion.

Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. -- Carl Sandburg

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