TRS-80 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Sun refuses LGPL code for Openoffice; Novell forks (gnome.org) 1

Submitted by TRS-80 on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @02:55AM

TRS-80 writes: Kohei Yoshida wrote a long post on the history of Calc Solver, an optimization solver module for the Calc component of OpenOffice.org. After three years of jumping through Sun's hoops on his own time, Sun says it will duplicate the work because Kohei doesn't want to sign over ownership of the code. Adding insult to injury, Sun then invites him join this duplication. Because of Sun's refusal to accept LPGL extensions in the upstream code, Michael Meeks (who recently talked about Sun's OO.o community failings, and ODF and OOXML) has announced ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice to be located at http://go-oo.org/. Will Sun admit it's being a control freak or continue with pointless duplication?

Submission + - Metaclass Programming in Python

Submitted by IdaAshley on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @12:23AM

IdaAshley writes: In part 3 of the Metaclass programming in Python series, Michele and David help programmer eschew cleverness that makes design more complicated, code more fragile, and the learning curves steeper in programming. In Part 1 learn how metaclasses can enhance classes with features like tracing capabilities to push object-oriented programming to the next level, then in Part 2 understand the arcana of inheritance and instance creation to solve and explain metaclass conflicts.

Submission + - SAS vs. SATA? 1

Submitted by

DJ_Double_D

on Monday July 30, 2007 @11:15AM

DJ_Double_D writes: "I was recently assigned to do some research on SAS and SATA hard drives and do a cost/benefit analysis to see what we should upgrade our servers to. I've been around SATA for a couple of years now and find the benefits of it very enjoyable as SATA hard drives are relatively fast, inexpensive, and storage capacity keeps on expanding. What about SAS though? I've never heard of it until I was assigned this project. Is SAS similar to SATA? Are we looking at 10k or above RPM's, similar storage capacities, data transfer speeds , and expandability to add more drives on in the future? For a small business would SAS even be possible?"

Submission + - French Protesters Say 'Non' To 2007

Submitted by SLi on Tuesday January 02, 2007 @01:14AM

SLi writes: According to this story in the BBC News, hundreds of protesters in the French city of Nantes were saying 'non' to 2007 in the New Year. They waved banners saying "No to 2007" and "Now is better!". The arrival of 2007 did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm: The protesters began to chant: "No to 2008!". The marchers called on governments and the UN to stop time's "mad race" and declare a moratorium on the future.

Submission + - Games On Demand Service For Mac

Submitted by

Torrey Clark

on Monday January 01, 2007 @03:32AM

Torrey Clark writes: "MyMacGames is preparing to launch a new 'games on demand' service for Mac users ($8-20 per month) in the third quarter of 2007 that will feature roughly 100 games at launch. They are currently offering a free beta."

Journal Journal: Review: Ten Reasons Why I Hate My Palm LifeDrive

Journal by LoadWB on Monday January 01, 2007 @02:01AM

[EDIT: I added the word "Review" to the title so that it might have a better chance at showing up in search engines. I really want people to see how frustrating being a Palm customer is.]

Submission + - Small Business Switches to Ubuntu

Submitted by

firenurse

on Monday January 01, 2007 @01:28AM

firenurse writes: "The Inquirer is running a story about how one small business switched to Ubuntu. The article can be found here http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36 635

YOU NEVER QUITE wrap your head around how anti-consumer Microsoft's policies are until they bite you in the bum. Add in the customer antagonistic policies of its patsies, HP in this case, and vendors like Promise, and you have quite a recipe for pain. Guess what I did today?"

Submission + - The Problem With Driver-Loaded Firmware

Submitted by

Kadin2048

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @10:59PM

Kadin2048 writes: "If you've gone to a big-box store and purchased a wireless card recently, you might have had some trouble getting it to work under Linux, or any non-Windows OS for that matter. One reason for this is that more and more manufacturers are producing hardware that are useless without proprietary firmware. While these new designs allow for lower parts counts and thus lower cost, it presents a serious problem for F/OSS software because it can sometimes guarantee no out-of-the-box compatibility. Jem Matzan has produced a detailed article, "The battle for wireless network drivers," on the subject, including interviews with manufacturers' representatives and OS developers, including Theo de Raadt. The bottom line? In general, Asian hardware manufacturers were far more responsive and liberal about firmware than U.S. manufacturers (Intel included). Look for more firmware issues in the future, as not only wireless hardware, but regular wired Ethernet cards, take the driver-loaded firmware approach."

Submission + - Fedora Legacy Shutting Down

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, 2006 @02:05AM

An anonymous reader writes: From the fedora-legacy maillist: "In case any of you are not aware, the Fedora Legacy project is in the process of shutting down. The current model for supporting maintenance distributions is being re-examined. In the meantime, we are unable to extend support to older Fedora Core releases as we had planned. As of now, Fedora Core 4 and earlier distributions are no longer being maintained. Discussions last night on the #Fedora-Legacy channel have brought to light the fact that certain Fedora Legacy properties (servers) may be going away soon, such as the repository at and the build server. "

Submission + - Ryan Lortie's Stance Open Letter to the FSF

Submitted by

endersshadow7

on Saturday December 30, 2006 @10:47PM

endersshadow7 writes: "Gnome developer Ryan Lortie wrote an open letter to the FSF today dealing with the FSF's recommendation of gNewSense and Ututo as beginners' Linux distributions. He raises some big points dealing with the goals of the FSF and how to accomplish them."

Submission + - Printers that don't use toner level chips?

Submitted by

xymog

on Saturday December 30, 2006 @03:56PM

xymog writes: "I'm increasingly seeing people with printers that stop working and provide a "toner out" message, even though the end user swears they are using a new cartridge. Though they are not using Lexmark printers, I am pretty sure they are using a printer and cartridge combination that uses so-called toner level chips. These are discussed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Stat ic_Control_Components. The chips allow manufacturers to lock users into using their cartridges, rather than using OEM or toner refill programs. Good for the manufacturer, bad for consumers and consumer choice. In my bumbling way I've tried locating more information, or even a list, of personal or small workgroup printers that use these manufacturer lock-in techniques, but wasn't able to find such a list. Any Slashdot readers have anecdotal suggestions or even a pretty-darn-sure list I could refer to?"

Submission + - DoD bans Outlook-on-the-Web and HTML email

Submitted by

oDDmON oUT

on Saturday December 30, 2006 @07:45AM

oDDmON oUT writes: ""The Defense Department has banned the use of Outlook Web Access email and is blocking all HTML email, as it raises network security conditions from the normal Information Condition (Infocon) 5 to Infocon 4, indicating heightened vigilance in preparation for operations or exercises or increased monitoring of networks due to increased risk of attack, Federal Computer Week reports." MalwareHelp.org

Authorities concede that "the ban "will significantly impact the way we presently conduct business,"" ZDNet

We're one step closer to killing Incredimail."

Submission + - Melting US Coins Now Illegal

Submitted by superbrose on Saturday December 23, 2006 @01:44PM

superbrose writes: In addition to Iran's recent decision to drop the US dollar in favour of the euro, it looks like there's another good reason to get paranoid. The Funny Money Report writes that

The United States Mint has implemented regulations to limit the exportation, melting, or treatment of one-cent (penny) and 5-cent (nickel) United States coins, to safeguard against a potential shortage of these coins in circulation. The United States Mint is soliciting public comment on the interim rule, which is being published in the Federal Register.

Currently the face value of these coins is lower than the value of their metal content.

Submission + - Which software RAID level?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 23, 2006 @01:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: It is now incredibly easy to setup a software raid on GNU/Linux. Distributions shipping with recent kernels offer many RAID level options: 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 with many per level options. Even though the installers makes it easy to setup the RAID, it is not so easy to decide what level to pick. Especially with 5, 6 and 10, there doesn't seem to be a clear winner. How do slashdotters decide which level to choose? Do you run benchmarks on each level? Is there a set of "official" benchmarks? How about disaster recovery?

Submission + - Apple Quicktime virus on MySpace

Submitted by Spiked_Three on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @09:03AM

Spiked_Three writes: In the "other vendors have viruses too" dept;

CNet is reporting that an Apple QuickTime flaw is being exploited to attack MySpace users. The attack works for users of Internet Explorer and Firefox, although it has already been disabled for Internet Explorer user. FireFox users are still at risk until Apple fixes QuickTime.

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