ruphus13 writes "Now that Gates has 'retired' from Microsoft, ZDNet is speculating that Microsoft will become much more Open Source friendly. From the article, 'We already see quite a different approach to dealing with OSS and OSS companies from Sam Ramji's group [which is] doing a great job in establishing dialog,' said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange and a former marketing exec at SUSE Linux. 'With Gates' departure, the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer. With him away in a near future, Microsoft will definitely open up. They have to.'" Microsoft could become the world's largest open source company; they've certainly made some concessions to it lately.

zedguy writes "Ask someone what 'project management' is and you're liable to get a few blank stares — it's one of those fields people have heard of, but probably have problems pinning down a definition. So that is what the first section of the book does: provides a definition that can be summed up as applying tools and skills to complete a project. That then leads to what exactly is a "project": a set of tasks with a time-frame and goal of somehow adding value. So yes, the introduction does involve a fair bit of terminology that isn't going to be familiar to many readers coming from a coder's background, but there's a helpful appendix that lays out many of the terms. Just as important, the introduction explains what project management is not, some of the misconceptions and why it's good to know." Keep reading for the rest of Zoltan's review.

jsuda writes "At least a half-dozen times in the book 'Foundations of Mac OS X Leopard Security' the authors state that there is a misconception that the Macintosh computer is immune from security problems. That allegation may explain why there are very few books published (and nearly none in recent years) about security for the Mac. This book is meant to change all that. The authors acknowledge that the Mac OS X software has had little of the security problem experience of Windows (and other operating systems, to a lesser extent) but they spend 455 pages detailing exactly where and how the Macintosh platform is (or may be) vulnerable." Read below for the rest of Jsuda's review.

Aeonite writes "Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing is the followup to Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, and the second book written by members of the Game Writers' Special Interest Group of the 14,000 member strong IGDA. The book covers much of the same terrain as its predecessor, but offers a tighter focus on some specific points, covering more technical (as in technique) details rather than broader narrative theory; if the first book was a Google Map, this one would be the Street View." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

litui writes "Michael Geist assesses the problems with new copyright legislation presented today. In short, it looks like unless it's heavily contested, Canadians are in for a worse piece of law than the DMCA." CBC News' story quotes one critic, Scott Brison, who warns that enforcing the anti-circumvention clauses of this legislation would turn Canada into a police state — which, considering the pervasive eavesdropping it would take to make sure that people aren't enjoying their rights to fair use (or "fair dealing") of hardware or media, seems like a fair prediction.

An anonymous reader writes "I'm a fairly new physics professor at a well-ranked undergraduate university. When I arrived, I was surprised to discover there were no computer programming requirements for our majors. This has led to a series of fairly animated faculty curriculum conversations, driven by the question: to what extent should computer programming be a part of an undergraduate science education (in particular, physics)? This is a surprising line of questioning to me because in my career (dominated by research), I've never seriously even questioned the need. If you are a physics major, you learn to program. The exact language isn't so important as is flow control, file handling, basic methods/technique, basic resource management, and troubleshooting. The methods learned in any language can then be ported over to just about any numerical or scientific computational problem. Read on for the rest of the reader's questions and his experiences dealing with faculty who have their own ideas.

HikingStick writes "I've been in the tech field for over 15 years. After more than nine years with the same company, I've been asked to step in and establish an IT department for a regional manufacturing firm. I approached my company early, providing four weeks notice (including a week of pre-scheduled [and pre-approved] vacation time). I have a number of projects to complete, and had planned to document some of the obscure bits of knowledge I've gleaned over the past nine years for the benefit of my peers, so I figured that would give me plenty of time. That was on a Friday. The following Monday, word came down from above that all of my privileged access was to be removed — immediately. So, here I sit, stripped of power with weeks ahead of me. From discussions with my peers in other companies, I know that cutting off high-privilege users is common, but usually in conjunction with a severance offer (to keep their hands off the network during those final weeks, especially if there is any ill-will). Should I argue for restored access, highlight the fact that I am currently a human paperweight, request a severance package, or simply become the most prolific Slashdot poster over the next few weeks? Does your company have a policy/process for dealing with high-privilege users who give notice? What is it, and do you make exceptions?"

A Brazilian tour company is in hot water, after it was revealed that it was offering tours of Rio de Janeiro slums, including photos with the local drug gang members. For $55 you get a 4 hour tour of Rocinha, the city's largest slum, including a visit to the "bocas de fumo" where traffickers sell drugs to Rio residents. If you don't want to pay for the flight to Brazil, I will drive you into the slums of Detroit for the same price. Pictures with gang members are at their discretion.

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like my parents may end up stuck having to use dialup to access the Internet from their cottage inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. Neither Comcast nor Verizon want to bother upgrading the hardware required to get them faster service. They could put a satellite dish on their roof, but it's a 300-year-old house and they feel a dish would be as prohibitively ugly as running dedicated lines would be prohibitively expensive. I've suggested they get familiar with a text-only email client; I also suggested they talk with their senators and local political reps. , Are there other ways they can increase the functionality despite the pitiful bandwidth? Any other good ideas? Any success stories you can share where people have finally got the bandwidth they crave?"

Ian Lamont writes "MySpace is preparing to boost its advertising systems, by launching a targeted ad platform called HyperTargeting and creating a Web-based system that lets vendors purchase ads without dealing with human sales teams. HyperTargeting will 'look at a person's interests listed on their public profile and then classify the user into particular interest-specific categories.' MySpace claims that early tests resulted in a 300 percent increase in the number of ad click-throughs. The company apparently learned a lot from Facebook's earlier experiences with Beacon — MySpace members will be able to opt out of HyperTargeting, according to the company."

cgh4be writes "I have been working in the IT industry for about 12 years and have had various jobs as a consultant and systems engineer. Over that time I've had the chance to do a little bit of everything: programming, networking, SAN, Linux/AIX/UNIX, Windows, sales, support, and on and on. However, over the last couple of months I have become a little disillusioned with the IT industry as a whole. Occasionally, I will get interested in some new technology, but for the most part I'm starting to find it all very tedious, repetitive, and boring and I'm no longer really interested in the hands-on aspect of the business. I suppose going the management route is one option, but I would still be dealing with a lot of the same frustrating technology issues. The other route I had in mind was a complete career change; take something I really enjoy doing outside of work now and try to make a career out of it. The only problem is that I have a wife and kid to support and my current job pays very well. Have any of you been through this kind of career 'mid-life crisis?' What did you do to get out of the rut? Is making a complete career change at this point a bad idea?"

jammag writes "'"You are an idiot." That was how I was greeted on an already gloomy, rainy Monday morning.' Eric Spiegel offer his a first-hand account of dealing with a tech world geek-gone-bad and presents some ideas for coping. 'These bullies are quick to aggressively divert blame for any problem back to someone else, because they couldn't possibly be responsible. Some are passive aggressive, where they will subtly lay blame behind your back. Others enjoy getting in your face and being as confrontational as possible.'" What experiences have others had that defied all logic and possibly made you want to start looking for rifles and bell towers?

simoniker writes "Over at Dr. Dobb's, C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup has given an in-depth interview dealing with, among other things, the upcoming C++0x programming standard, as well as his views on the past and future of C++. He comments in particular on some of the difficulties in educating people on C++: 'In the early days of C++, I worried a lot about "not being able to teach teachers fast enough." I had reason to worry because much of the obvious poor use of C++ can be traced to fundamental misunderstandings among educators. I obviously failed to articulate my ideals and principles sufficiently.' Stroustrup also notes, 'Given that the problems are not restricted to C++, I'm not alone in that. As far as I can see, every large programming community suffers, so the problem is one of scale.' We've discussed Stroustrup's views on C++ in the past."

Here are the answers to your questions for Major General William T. Lord, who runs the just-getting-off-the ground Air Force Cyber Command. Before you ask: yes, his answers were checked by both PR and security people. Also, please note that this interview is a "first," in that Generals don't typically take questions from random people on forums like Slashdot, and that it is being watched all the way up the chain of command into the Pentagon. Many big-wigs will read what you post here -- and a lot of them are interested in what you say and may even use your suggestions to help set future recruiting and operational policies. A special "thank you" goes to Maj. Gen. Lord for participating in this experiment, along with kudos to the (necessarily anonymous) people who helped us arrange this interview.

Sortova writes "For many years now I've been maintaining OpenNMS, a free and open source network management framework published under the GPL. A couple of years ago it came to our attention that a company called Cittio was using OpenNMS as part of their proprietary and commercial network management application. I talked with Jamie Lerner, the Cittio founder, and he assured me that Cittio was abiding by the GPL. However, we were recently contacted by a potential client who was also considering Cittio's Watchtower, and it appears that they are not disclosing that they are using GPL'd code or at least not in the clear and concise fashion required by the GPL, including the offer of source code for all of the code they are including and any changes being made to that code. Since the copyright for OpenNMS is held by a number of commercial companies, the Software Freedom Law Center is not able to help us defend or even investigate a potential violation. I was curious if anyone here on Slashdot had experienced anything similar or has any advice?"

David Martinjak writes "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation is authored by Jon Erickson and published by No Starch Press. It is the anticipated second edition of Erickson's earlier publication of the same title. I can't think of a way to summarize it without being over-dramatic, so it will just be said: I really liked it. The book, which will be referred to as simply Hacking, starts by introducing the author's description of hacking. Erickson takes a great approach by admitting that the common perception of hacking is rather negative, and unfortunately accurate in some cases. However, he smoothly counters this antagonistic misunderstanding by presenting a simple arithmetic problem. A bit of creativity is needed to arrive at the correct solution, but creativity and problem-solving are two integral aspects of hacking, at least to Erickson. The introduction chapter sets an acceptable tone and proper frame of mind for proceeding with the technical material." Below you'll find the rest of David's review.

Jabbrwokk writes "Michael Geist reports legislation to create a Canadian version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been delayed again, possibly because of massive public outcry, and possibly even because of opposition from the industry itself. Canada's biggest ISPs have banded together to oppose the proposed new legislation and suggest their own solution, which include allowances for expanded fair dealing, private copying, no liability for ISPs and legislation that concentrates its wrath on commercial pirates instead of penny-ante downloaders and seeders.'"

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton sends in his latest, which begins like this and continues behind the link. "When Google's VP of Engineering announced their proposed Knol project, where users can submit articles on different subjects and share in the AdSense revenue from the article pages, he didn't mention "Wikipedia," but practically everyone else did who blogged about it. Here's what I think will happen, if Knol is implemented according to the plan: Even though it won't technically be a "Wikipedia fork," it will quickly become equivalent to one, with a "gold rush" of users copying content from Wikipedia to Knol articles hoping for a piece of the AdSense dollars. But I submit this will be a good thing, especially if bona fide experts in different fields join the gold rush as well and start signing their names to articles that they've vetted."

stoolpigeon writes "It has been well documented that the reception for Microsoft's Windows Vista has not been all that warm. Yet, visiting the web site of many PC manufacturers or visiting a retail outlet selling computers will show that most new hardware is being offered with Vista as the primary if not only option. O'Reilly's newest in their Annoyances series, "Windows Vista Annoyances", by David A. Karp, seeks to alleviate some of the pain for new Vista users. For the Vista owner who is able to put the book's suggestion into place, the edge should be taken off. For the individual considering a purchase of Vista and wondering if it can really be that bad, this book seems to indicate that yes, it is that bad." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

jollyreaper writes "I have a nice new IT job with a non-profit. They are a growing organization and management has realized that they need to bring their way of doing business up to a professional level. Several years back, their IT department was still operated like it was in a home office — fine when you're dealing with three people, not so good when there's over a hundred users. IT got its act together and is now running professionally and efficiently. The rest of the organization is a bit more chaotic and management wants to change that. One of the worst problems is a lack of process documentation. All knowledge is passed down via an oral tradition. Someone gets hit by a bus and that knowledge is lost forevermore. Now I know what I've seen in the past. There's the big-binder-of-crap-no-one-reads method, usually used in conjunction with nobody-updates-this-crap-so-it's-useless-anyway approach. I've been hearing good things about company wikis, and mixed reviews about Sharepoint and its intranet capabilities. And yes, I know that this is all a waste of time if there's no follow-through from management. But assuming that the required support is there, how do you guys do process documentation?"