cpfeifer - Slashdot User

Submission + - What is Apple without Steve Jobs?

Submitted by

necro81

on Friday January 12, 2007 @03:15PM

necro81 writes: "David Pauly at Bloomberg has written a piece that asks "Does Apple Inc. Have a Future Without Steve Jobs?" He writes in the context of Jobs' latest success in launching the iPhone, set against the backdrop of stock backdating troubles. In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to ouster Jobs. Even without resorting to such scenarios, it's an interesting question to ask the fanboys and detractors out there: could Apple succeed and continue to innovative without Jobs at the helm?"

Submission + - Year 2007 Problem - Daylight Saving Time Changes

Submitted by

bdognet

on Friday January 12, 2007 @02:48PM

bdognet writes: "On March 11 2007, Daylight Saving Time will start 4 weeks early. This article discusses the problem and provides links to the major vendor patches including Microsoft, Sun, RedHat, Ubuntu, Cisco, Oracle & MySQL. Many devices like PBXs and fax machines can't be patched and need manual settings. Also, don't forget your cell phone/PDA/smartphone. Windows Mobile requires a registry hack!"

Submission + - Global Warming Only a Theory, Says School Board

Submitted by

BendingSpoons

on Friday January 12, 2007 @02:42PM

BendingSpoons writes: "A Seattle school board has placed a moratorium on screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth", having found its subject matter too controversial. Echoing the language of the evolution debate, the school board found that students must be told that global warming is only a theory and presented with an opposing viewpoint. The ban was prompted by the complaints of a parent: "'Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher,' said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. 'The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD.'""

Submission + - Jobs: No third party apps for iPhone

Submitted by walt-sjc on Friday January 12, 2007 @02:22PM

walt-sjc writes: In a New York Times article Steve Jobs says: "I don't want people to think of this as a computer," "These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them." Quick — someone tell Palm, Motorola, and Samsung why their phones don't work!! But seriously, that seems like a major slap in the face to third party software developers, basically saying that they can't write reliable software. It also seems to decrease the utility / value of the most expensive smartphone (soon to be) on the market. Or does it matter?

Journal Journal: minimum wage's roots in eugenics

Journal by lpq on Friday January 12, 2007 @02:13PM

This is an eye opening piece -- in the early 20th century, progressives were the ones promoting ideas of eugenics. Their work later was drawn on by Hitler, the results of which are all too well known, but other ideas were promoted to exclude unfit workers, protect women from hazardous work, "uplift" more "deserving" workers, protect male head of households from excess competition and free women to engage in their roles as

Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio 236

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 12, 2007 @02:13PM from the no-pledge-no-problem dept.

NewsCloud writes "After the LA Times reported that the Gates Foundation often invests in companies hurting the very communities Bill and Melinda want to help, the Seattle Times reported the foundation planned 'a systematic review of its investments to determine whether it should pull its money out of companies that are doing harm to society'. Shortly after that interview, the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them and that they need to focus on their core mission: 'There are dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which are outside the foundation's areas of expertise. The issues involved are quite complex...Which social and political issues should be on the list? ... Many of the companies mentioned in the Los Angeles Times articles, such as Ford, Kraft, Fannie Mae, Nestle, and General Electric, do a lot of work that some people like, as well as work that some people do not like. Some activities might even be viewed positively by some people and negatively by others.'"

Submission + - ITunes music sharing makes for awkward neighbors

Submitted by scottyscout on Friday January 12, 2007 @02:06PM

scottyscout writes: A cool NPR story about a reporter who meets his neighbor through her iTunes library when she freeloads on his wireless network.

One night, NPR reporter David Kestenbaum was listening to music on iTunes. And he was bored with his playlist. Then he noticed something strange — a mysterious folder called "Anna's Music" had popped up his screen. He'd never seen it before.

Submission + - How many LEDs do you have on?

Submitted by olddoc on Friday January 12, 2007 @01:56PM

olddoc writes: How many LEDs do you have on in your computer room?
1-10
11-50
50-100
Can't see! Too much glare.

Journal Journal: Call it a night Cowboy 8

Journal by Marxist Hacker 42 on Friday January 12, 2007 @01:56PM

And so I'll post something interesting here that I wrote in reply to somebody saying that mortgages were a good deal:

Submission + - Small Project Lockout Code to Ensure Dev Payment

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12, 2007 @01:54PM

An anonymous reader writes: What do people use on small-scale projects (non contractual) such as web sites and data processing scripts to ensure payment? I work almost exclusively with scripting languages such as Perl and Python and wonder if there is any "standard" way to obfuscate self-destruct routines that render the software useless after a short period of time. The method needs to be simple, yet not "easily" broken by your average office IT worker by simply editing out the code or resetting a system clock. Ideally, there would be something that after so many uses would lock out the code, followed up by a MD5 sum checker that would further lock it out if any changes were made to the target script. Any ideas?

Mars Probe May Have Spotted Sojourner Rover 149

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 12, 2007 @01:29PM from the born-free-as-free-as-the-wind-blows dept.

Maggie McKee writes "NASA's eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have spotted the tiny, toaster oven-sized Sojourner rover just a few meters away from its companion, the Mars Pathfinder lander. It appears to have crawled there in an attempt to re-establish contact with the lander after the lander had already died. But the pictures aren't clear enough to definitively ID the rover, and it's possible Sojourner simply took off on its own. If it were miraculously still alive after 10 years, it could be 3 kilometers away from Pathfinder — and probably impossible to find, even with MRO."

Submission + - Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Friday January 12, 2007 @01:19PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector © 2006 MERIT. Prepared on November 20, 2006 1 Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU Final report Prepared on November 20, 2006 Lead contractor: UNU-MERIT, the Netherlands Subcontractors: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain University of Limerick, Ireland Society for Public Information Spaces, France Business Innovation Centre of Alto Adige-Südtirol, Italy Prepared by: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, MERIT Disclaimer The opinions expressed in this Study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. Contract ENTR/04/112. http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006 -11-20-flossimpact.pdf"

Feed The Real Adult Expo (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Friday January 12, 2007 @01:12PM

Sex-tech is emerging from the fringe to the middle of the main convention floor. But where are the webcams? Commentary by Regina Lynn.

Submission + - Efficient HPC using low-power components ?

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Friday January 12, 2007 @12:59PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Most High Performance Computing systems use lots of 1U or 2U racked nodes with dual processor/dual core opterons or xeons. Such systems consume large amounts of electrical power and usually require additional electricity supplies and cooling plant. Do any Slashdotters utilise more power efficient computing nodes which still have reasonable floating point/subsystem performance to build their computing clusters ?"

Journal Journal: Pentagon Abandons Active-Duty Time Limit 1

Journal by Real World Stuff on Friday January 12, 2007 @12:50PM

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ap/story.asp?AP_ID=D8MJFVUG0

By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
January 11, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

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