Comment Eiffel (Score 1) 594
I'll stick to Eiffel.. thank you very much
Comment Anyone watch TV anymore? (Score 3, Informative) 96
I turned off the cable years ago... anything good on besides Mad Men and Game of Thrones?
Comment Nope... but I can make a fire bomb for cheap (Score 1) 2416
As my former Special Night Squad grandpa used to tell me... "talk is cheap and so is a petrol bomb". The idea being that politicians should be reminded from time to time who is really in charge.
Not that I am advocating anything today (or hopefully for a long time if ever), but this nation has a pretty darn long history of getting violent when push comes to shove. There is a reason why personal weapons and ammo sales are through the roof right now and it isn't the coming zombie apocalypse.
Comment It's OUR job (Score 1) 2416
It's OUR country and OUR job to look after OUR own interests through the democratic process. Those whackjobs we send to the legislature are OUR representatives in the process.
You want to point a finger, point it at yourself.
Comment You'll get nailed by MS Sql server on price (Score 1) 284
Microsoft SQL server is a fine product but like Oracle gets real expensive real fast...
OpenBravo POS and LemonPOS are both great open source POS solutions that have commercial support available. Also, Xymon can be used to monitor windows and/or linux service or executables, notify on downtime and restart or perform other scripted operations.
http://www.openbravo.com/product/pos/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lemonpos/
http://xymon.sourceforge.net/
Comment Windows: NOD32 from ESET (Score 2) 181
NOD32 from ESET is cheap and works without crushing your computer.
Comment Collusion plugin for Chrome/Safari (Score 1) 88
Collusion plugin for Chrome/Safari from Disconnect.me blocks all known trackers. Since using it for a while, I have noticed a disappearance of eerily targeted ads in Google searches, etc.
Comment Purdue was first in 1962... duh (Score 2) 126
Purdue was first in 1962... and no I'm not THAT old and I didn't have to RTFA. I went there.
Comment All the responsibility and none of the control (Score 1) 241
Most of the cloud (IaaS, SaaS, whatever) services out there boils down to this: you are outsourcing some or all of your infrastructure (losing control) and are still saddled with all of the responsibility to make it work.
It is yet another way to hack away at the internal IT cost center. Can "cloud" be a good idea? Sure, if you are delivering metered services (Netflix, SaaS), or are entirely office-less.
We outsourced our fax, CRM, and backup and it is "fine." Management thinks it's fantastic because it is so cheap... but I am sitting here right now waiting for a our fax system to come back online due to a cable outage in California (I'm in the midwest). That's the reality of this type of shift. I am completely responsible for this outage and I can do absolutely nothing to fix it or to prevent further outages (other than redundant services which management shot down due to cost).
Submission + - Hadoop Emerges as Application Development Platform (slashdot.org)
Nerval's Lobster writes: "As a framework for processing massive amounts of unstructured data, Hadoop has a lot of fans. But for end-users to access that data, it still needs to be transferred across networks—which can become a prohibitively expensive proposition. So rather than transfer data across a network in order for applications to make use of it, a lot of folks are beginning to think in terms of bringing applications to the data."
Submission + - Ham-fisted Music Trade Association Attacks Internet (Again) (techdirt.com)
cpu6502 writes: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) CEO Cary Sherman wants big internet service corporations to block content he says is destroying a fossilized music industry. "Intermediaries like search engines would [negotiate] voluntary marketplace best practices to prevent directing users to sites that are dedicated to violating property rights." In other words, Sherman and the RIAA want Google to delist certain websites in Orwellian memory hole fashion. Sherman made his remarks before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing which is deciding if government should allow business to put FM receivers in the next generation of smart phones.
The RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) are in the business of stigmatizing file sharing as criminal behavior despite the fact much of the content is original and is not in violation of copyright law. MegaUpload.com and HotFile.com represent a "business model that cuts out the legacy gatekeepers" and allows alternative content producers to distribute their products to consumers without the burdensome intervention of a middleman.
The RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) are in the business of stigmatizing file sharing as criminal behavior despite the fact much of the content is original and is not in violation of copyright law. MegaUpload.com and HotFile.com represent a "business model that cuts out the legacy gatekeepers" and allows alternative content producers to distribute their products to consumers without the burdensome intervention of a middleman.
Submission + - New analysis shows dinosaurs not as heavy as previously believed. (discovery.com)
Cognitive Dissident writes: Discovery.com has an article on a new study using computer modeling to estimate the actual amount of flesh needed to cover the skeletons of dinosaurs. Based on a comparison with modern animals, it indicates that these animals could have weighed dramatically less than has been previously estimated. "A huge Brachiosaur, once thought to weigh 176,370 pounds, is now believed to have weighed 50,706 pounds." That's only about two-and-a-half times the weight of a modern African elephant. If other evidence can be reconciled with this, many estimates of the ecosystems dinosaurs lived in will also have to be revised.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Enterprise-grade linux networking hardware. (slashdot.org)
An anonymous reader writes: In spite of linux's great networking capabilities, there seems to be a shortage of suitable hardware for building an enterprise-grade networking platform. I've had success on smaller projects with the Soekris offerings but they are suboptimal for large-scale deployment due to their single-board non-redundant design (eg., single power supply, lack of backup 'controller'). What is the closest thing to a modular linux-capable platform with some level of hardware redundancy and substantial bus/backplane throughput?
Submission + - Massive Open Online Courses -- and the $100 masters degree (Forbes) (forbes.com)
GCA10 writes: Forbes reports on the latest project of Google inventor Sebastian Thrun (the proponent of self-driving cars.) He's moved on to education now, believing that conventional university teaching is way too costly, inefficient and ineffective to survive for long. So he has started Udacity, which aims to deliver an online version of a master's degree for $100 per student.
Comment Thanks! (Score 1) 363
I really do thikn Win7 is nearly perfect and love abstracted storage (Libraries feature). I manage about 50 desktops at work. Laptop usage is also very good. Active Directory and application integration is huge and probably the biggest plus in the business sector.
That said, I have been watching Sogo and Samba4 for a while and they are getting close to removing that hole in the linux infrastructure.
