fdisk-o - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft Sees Stronger XP Sales in FY08 (pcworld.com) 1

Submitted by Rude Awakening on Friday July 20, 2007 @11:32PM

Rude Awakening writes: Microsoft Corp. Thursday said that it expects Windows XP, the operating system supposedly made moot by Windows Vista, to make up a significantly larger part of sales in the coming year.

I thought this was a misprint and they really meant Vista sales would be stronger in '08 instead of XP, but it is no misprint. Is Vista bad enough to breathe new life into XP sales, or is this part of an insidious plot by Microsoft to sell two OS licenses for each new PC shipped?

Submission + - Bringing Back Geography to the U.S.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20, 2007 @10:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: Here is are 2 articles on history of geography and the state of geography education in the U.S. From the article: "Soon after World War II, however, geography was purged in the United States, and the impact continues today. From 1948 to 1988, the discipline was expunged at the University of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford, Yale, and other esteemed American universities, oddly even during periods when universities were expanding faster than at any other time before or since. In truth, nobody knows why geography was targeted on such a broad scale." See also related stories below.

http://sworldwatch.blogspot.com/2007/07/where-did- geography-go.html
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring07articles/ bring-back-geography-1of2.html

Submission + - White House Says Hill Can't Pursue Contempt Cases (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by rook2pawn on Friday July 20, 2007 @04:36PM

rook2pawn writes: Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege. The Moderate Voice asks "what is Congress remedy? Increasingly, Bush administration actions appear to be actually provocative aimed at throwing the matter into court. Could it be because George Bush now has more friends on the Supreme Court who believe in a stronger executive and will back him in the end? If they back him, the United States traditional definition of checks and balances may have to be heavily revised."

Submission + - One Laptop Per Child to add filtering?

Submitted by

notdanielp

on Friday July 20, 2007 @04:30PM

notdanielp writes: "According to a Reuters blurb One Laptop Per Child is considering adding filters to their laptops Nigerian complaints of students accessing pornography on their free laptops. "Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," NAN said. A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters.Is content filtering counter to the egalitarian spirit of the OLPC initiative? Is there a place for a proxy server in a streamlined design like the OLPC appliance?"

Submission + - Infinity does not = Infinity 1

Submitted by

David Greenspan

on Friday July 20, 2007 @03:27PM

David Greenspan writes: "Scientific American has a story on infinity coming in different sizes(aka Cantor's Paradox). It's an article that would make my old philosophy teacher happy. Read On"

Submission + - The BBC iPlayer Controversy Explained (informit.com)

Submitted by nitsudima on Friday July 20, 2007 @03:12PM

nitsudima writes: The BBC will soon launch their TV download service, iPlayer. Somewhat paradoxically, they have chosen to use Microsoft's DRM in this service, raising complaints — and a lawsuit — from the Open Source community. David Chisnall explains why using Microsoft DRM is a bad idea for the BBC on several levels.

Submission + - University of Kansas strict copyright infringement 1

Submitted by

NewmanKU

on Friday July 20, 2007 @03:12PM

NewmanKU writes: "Eric Bangeman at Ars Technica writes that the University of Kansas has adopted a new strict copyright infringement policy for the students on the residential network that are sharing copyrighted files. The university's ResNet website states that, "Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus." According to a KU spokesperson, KU has recieved 345 notices in the past year from organizations and businesses regarding complaints about copyrighted material downloading."

Submission + - AT&T now supports open access for 700Mhz band (rcrnews.com)

Submitted by RalphBNumbers on Friday July 20, 2007 @02:48PM

RalphBNumbers writes: AT&T has reversed it's previous stance, and broken ranks with the other major cellular providers, by endorsing FCC chairman Kevin Martin's plan to require open access to 22Mhz of the 60Mhz to be auctioned by the FCC in the 700Mhz band. This statement prompted Verizon to reiterate their opposition to any open access requirements, and Google to state their wish that the entire 60Mhz be auctioned with open access requirements.
Open access rules would require the auction winner to allow any compatible device to connect to their networks on the effected spectrum.

Comment Waiting for SP1? (Score 5, Interesting) 287

by fdisk-o on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:57AM (#19754913) Attached to: Dell Warns of Vista Upgrade Challenges

From TFA: "he denied that there is a widespread feeling that it is better to wait for Service Pack 1"

I'm not sure who might be saying that they are not waiting for a service pack before Vista deployment for their business. It's certainly none of the people I've been speaking with. Due to the number of problems with application compatibility, the problems with Vista itself, and the nearly non-existant benefit to my business that Vista would provide, I will be waiting for SP1. At the time that SP1 is released, more time will have passed so that our application vendors will have re-written or updated their code to match Vista's changes. We'll also have less of an expenditure for new equipment to meet Vista's hungry requirements since we're constantly retiring older computers and purchasing nearly top-level systems to replace them. We will _not_ be transitioning to gain access to any new "features" that Vista provides, rather, we will transition because we can no longer buy computers with XP installed. Even though Vista provides some positive enhancements to application/OS separation, we have found that user education is vastly superior to feel-good allow/deny prompts that an uneducated user will botch every time. It's more work, sure, and would be a significant effort with a company larger than our 90+users, but the savings come in time. The "trusted computing" and DRM features within Vista allow _much_ greater control of the computer to be given to the software vendor than any reasonable sysadmin would be comfortable with. Due to these concerns and others, my company has been exploring a move for all users to Linux and MacOS. I know of several other 100+ employee local companies that are doing the same.

Submission + - Who wrote - and paid for - 2.6.20

Submitted by

Corbet

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:09AM

Corbet writes: "LWN.net did some data mining through the kernel source repository and put together an analysis of where the patches came from. It turns out that most kernel code is contributed by people paid to do the work — but the list of companies sponsoring kernel development has a surprise or two."

Google a "Wake-Up Call" For Microsoft 173

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 01, 2007 @10:13AM from the don't-count-them-out dept.

wooha points out coverage of a talk Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, gave at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas. Ozzie said that watching Google rake in advertising revenue was a wake-up call within Microsoft. He said Microsoft plans to do more than simply follow Google's lead by creating Web-based versions of desktop programs or duplicating its search and advertising model. (Despite Microsoft's massive investment in promoting and improving Web-based search, the company still has less than 10% of search engine market share, compared to Google's ~50% and growing.) Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

Submission + - Web of Life - A innovative GPL strategy game.

Submitted by

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @10:10AM

An anonymous reader writes: Hi,
I've just seen this site, about a strategy game with some really interesting concepts. It's been developed by a guy in his first couple of years in college, in Brazil.
Here's a brief:

"An isometric game with C++ and SDL.
Your beings should survive fighting with other beings, reproducting to make a massive attack and eating.
But sometimes you will have to eat some of your own live beings so that others could stay alive, well it's life.
First game done with the Ecosystem Engine ALIVE. (For more info about this Engine see the projects page). In this game the player control some animals and plants, and he/she should make them survive competing with the computer."

Here's a link for the project's page on SourceForge. Help is needed for devoloping a muliplayer protocol, more chars and compiling it for other plataforms than Windows XP and Linux.

Submission + - Help the ecosystem - Support the product!

Submitted by

TheViciousOverWind

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @10:04AM

TheViciousOverWind writes: "Under the term "Greenware" transfz.com just launched their new search application. The program itself is free, but you can donate or subscribe on the website. Half of the money is for putting bread on the programmers table, the other half will be used to plant trees (one tree per $1 through the ReLeaf Project). — The program itself is very extendable, and, in under a minute, you can write a plugin to do your own searches using your own searchengine.

The author explains on the website why he came up with the term "Greenware": "After having spend 6 months programming Transfz, as well as writing bad HTML/CSS and help files, I re-remembered that the development of the information technology we use daily has only come to see the light due to a functional biosphere. Even more importantly; unless the biosphere stays functional we can't even keep using the technology we have developed."

Will we see more of this kind of "Supporting the ecosystem" software in the future?"

Submission + - Best wireless router for congested college area

Submitted by on Thursday March 01, 2007 @09:54AM

An anonymous reader writes: I have been living close to campus at UW Madison for the past six months or so and have come across a problem. We, along with everyone else in the area, have a wireless router, both a belkin 54g and a linksys wrt54g. We have charter 3 mbit down .25 mbit up cable and 6 guys in our apartment. Just on our block about 15-20 people have routers, and when I look at available networks there is around that many. We are constantly plagued with problems connecting to the wireless, staying connected, getting connected after rebooting, hibernating, etc. We have to reset either or both the cable modem and router many times a day to get everything rolling again. I am thinking that the router is the problem, because my dad always told me that's why they have twenty dollar routers up to thirty thousand dollar routers. My question to slashdot is...what router can I purchase that will help my situation and work well in a congested college area that is already filled with wireless networks, and will still be good for use with 6-8 laptops, some land connections, two xbox 360's, and a ps3. Thanks in advance!

Submission + - Selling open source to upper management

Submitted by on Thursday March 01, 2007 @09:40AM

An anonymous reader writes: I am the single member of the IT department at a small nonprofit. We were looking to replace our commercial content management system with a custom combination of open source solutions (Lucene, Jackrabbit, etc.) However, since I was the sole developer, progress was slow and we have little resources to recruit potential volunteers.

Recently, we had a closed source, commercial vendor demo their version of a content management system, and immediately upper management was willing to go along with their proposal, even at the expense of project requirements.

Although I understand and accept the decision (and am quite relieved I am not expected to deliver as the sole developer), I am interested to know if there are resources for promoting open source software in a manner like closed source, commercial software. If not, is this a challenge within the OS community? It seems that OS solutions are primarily promoted to technical implementors rather than upper management. Of course, many technical implementors do not have the marketing skills to promote open source, but are there resources to help us do so?

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