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GIT lost the version control war early on. Its focus on Linux development with little to no support for Windows and Mac made it unpopular. That's a situation that has changed (somewhat), but the stigma is still attached to it. Which is not really a problem. GIT was developed to meet the needs of the Linux Kernel Project. If it happens to meet the needs of other projects, great. If it doesn't, that's just as fine.

In any case, Mercurial ended up being the "best of breed" solution. It offered all the features of the competing version control systems, was portable across platforms, had a significant toolchain appear practically overnight, and is used by HUGE OSS companies like Sun and Mozilla. I've used it in my own projects and have found that it is much easier and more dynamic than the classic, monolithic model of CVS.

wandazulu writes "If Vista detects that your system might have a problem with SP1, it won't offer to install it through Windows Update — but it won't tell you that the patch has been blocked either. APC Magazine asked Microsoft why the service couldn't be more informative, and the answer wasn't pretty"
http://apcmag.com/microsoft_admits_some_pcs_wont_be_offered_vista_sp1.htm

What's linux?

The future.

That doesn't fix the confused deputy problem. Even if the user never makes a mistake, their system can still be compromised. You should NEVER have to trust an application to contain itself to a set of capabilities. That's what Operating Systems are supposed to do for you.

--Mike--

Microsoft partners are complaining about the difficulty of making Office 2007 work for them because of a combination of "trialware" and WGA. No relief is in sight for them.

Susan Bradley, a Microsoft Small Business Specialist partner in Fresno, Calif., said she'd be wary about installing a volume licensing version of Office on top of a trial version. "With Vista's and Office's new Genuine check stuff, leaving trial bits behind is dangerous," she said. "If you have a trial version of something that is not replaced by the proper version, I guarantee you that you will get your system into a state where one part is not seen a genuine, you will be unable to get Office Genuine offers, and you'll be flagged as a pirate."

Microsoft doesn't plan to make it possible for partners to activate Office trials with volume licensing keys. "We know that volume license keys are the biggest source of software piracy."

Better avoid "trial" software unless you are willing to wipe and reload.

An anonymous reader writes "Every 3-6 months, we see an announcement about something adding to hard disk storage. However, tape drives don't seem to be improving on anywhere near the scale of hard disks.

Why is this? Both are magnetic media, and with a tape drive, a manufacturer has far more space to put data on than the platters of a hard disk, and still leave plenty of space for error correction data. Tape drives also don't spin nearly as fast as hard disks, so tolerances involved can be less."

victorhooi writes "I recently (read: 2 days ago) lost a bike to theft, after locking it up with a $30 lock at a bike rack at my local train station.

For my next one, I thought I would canvas the collective wisdom of Slashdot =), for opinions on effective ways of securing a bike.

I've had people suggest U-locks are the best, and others that a heavy-duty chain from a hardware store with a padlock would do it better.

One person suggested somehow welding a car-alarm to the seat post, but I'm not exactly sure how this would work.

Alternatively, one idea I tossed us was using a GPS/GSM module (e.g. one from the Telit range) glued under the seat to send me the coordinates of the bike.

Finally, some people suggested sabotaging the bike somehow. Removing the seat seems to be a common option, but it is ultimately still rideable. Is there perhaps some way of making it so that it won't actually spin? (Most of the elements in the drivechain are tightened down fairly well, for obvious reasons, I can't think of anything that could easily be removed yet still be essential to the bike's operation).

Any thoughts on these ideas, or other suggestions?"

The following is from an e-mail I received from Senator Dick Durbin concerning BP and Lake Michigan...If you haven't already, please go to the link below and let your voice be heard...British Petroleum wants to dump 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of industrial solids into Lake Michigan every single day. Their plan represents a massive setback to decades of work to clean up the lake. Over 5,000 people -- including you -- have already emailed BP CEO Bob Malone to ask him to stop this terrible idea in its tracks. We know the company is hearing us because it has started running ads in Illinois newspapers to defend polluting the lake. http://ga3.org/campaign/bp_greatlakes/forward/8kud budfziwdwek?qp_source=aug1%5fbpfollowup

An anonymous reader writes "ArsTechnica is reporting how detached and manipulative the discussion about copyright is becoming: 'NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. "Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year." '"

The wait for 'catch-em-all' folks in the US is over; Pokémon Diamond and Pearl are out today. Joystiq and Kotaku have coverage of yesterday's launch party at the Nintendo Store. "There was a station set up to play the card game, manned by adults who were there to teach the game to kids. Finally there was a station where Junichi Masuda, the game director, and Shigeru Ohmori, the game design lead, signed autographs for those old enough to know who they are. It may have been meant to push Pokémon merchandise (the guys at the card station handed out thin packs of cards to every kid who came by) but it also meant there was something for everyone." 1up and Gamespot, meanwhile, are offering up reviews of the game. Both hand it the respectable score of 8.5, saying that it's still a great game experience but dinging the developers for not moving the series forward in any innovative directions.

blackbearnh writes "Why does Microsoft win the development environment war so often, when we all know it's a lifetime lock-in to Windows? Perhaps it's because the open source community offers too much choice, as this blog on the O'Reilly ONLamp site suggests. From the blog:

Microsoft offers the certainty of no choices. Choice isn't always good, and the open source community sometimes offers far too many ways to skin the same cat, choices that are born more out of pride, ego or stubbornness than a genuine need for two different paths. I won't point fingers, everyone knows examples.

"

A few friends and I are deciding on building a website dedicated to a particular topic. After some debate over rather to build it ourselves or use a content management system we decided with the CMS approach. What would slashdot recommend? Open-source or commercial? Whats the easiest to use and easy to modify?

DragonTHC writes "I just visited movielink's website for research. Their site has a nice message saying, "Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 (or higher) or Mozilla/Firefox with an IE Tab Extension (IE installation required)." While allowing the IETab firefox extension is somewhat progressive, why do companies still force people to use Internet Explorer? Surely the site should work just fine in Firefox? With steady gains in market share by firefox, you would think that webmasters would get the hint. How about any /. users who are webmasters, what are your reasons for forcing IE?"

We've discussed it before, but it's something that bears repeating: sometimes the art on game boxes just isn't very good. 1up has rounded up 15 examples of poor art direction for a smattering of games since the start of the hobby. They've taken some pains to avoid oft-repeated examples of this malady, and managed to remind me again of my favorite space shooter advertised by a man with a banjo. "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial : Interplanetary mission. (PS1) - This is not a game cover. This is what you see when you lose at Mystery Date. 'I got the Jock.' 'I got the Trust-Fund Brat.' 'I got the Elephant Man and a bouquet of alien flowers that laid eggs in my face.' The whole thing is creepy enough without actually commenting on E.T's robot stalker friend hiding in the distance. There's something to be learned here for future game-cover artists: Don't bother actually filling in your backgrounds. That way the cover can double as a superfun coloring book for the kids."

thefickler writes "A top Microsoft has executive has hinted at a change of direction for the Zune, including the release of a Zune phone. According to a study by market research firm NPD Group, Zune's market share of hard-disk-based media players fell from 10.2% in December, to 9.9% in January, to 8.7% in February."