Comment Re:For such a vital system. (Score 1) 402
Subsidies for European tech companies?
Comment Re:I am windows free and proud (Score 1) 417
My wife runs Ubuntu on her work laptop. My kids run Debian on their netbooks. My phone runs Linux (N900). My TV runs Linux (LG). My NAS/IPv6 gateway runs Linux (Debian install over the bundled Linux D-Link firmware). I'm pretty sure my TV set-top box runs Linux. My car runs VxWorks, but the next generation of their platform runs Linux (BMW).
It's not 1997 any more. Real people with real lives use Linux.
Comment Re:Some thing needs to be done about abandonware (Score 1) 172
Mod parent up! Once the copyright owner stops commercially offering a product, it should be legal to copy it. I should be legal to circumvent restrictions that prevent copying, and possibly even legally required by the owner to provide support for this. This goes not only for software, but also for music. One of my favourite CD's was not produced for 15 years until the band finally managed to convince the record company owning the rights to sell them.
Comment Re:Is this even a real question? (Score 1) 990
It might be better to let the youngsters have Slashdot.
I bet those were CmdTaco's real leaving words.
Comment Re:Is this even a real question? (Score 4, Insightful) 990
No, it just means you're old.
Linux is twenty years old.
The IBM-compatible PC is a relic.
Modem handshake noise is no longer widely recognised.
Most people using computers have never seen a text screen.
And your UID has four digits, as does mine.
Now let's kick those darn youngsters off our Slashdot!
Linux is twenty years old.
The IBM-compatible PC is a relic.
Modem handshake noise is no longer widely recognised.
Most people using computers have never seen a text screen.
And your UID has four digits, as does mine.
Now let's kick those darn youngsters off our Slashdot!
Comment Re:This does not inspire confidence (Score 1) 104
Residential networking has been booming lately, and we're only scratching the surface compared to what's about to come.
We want to make sure that the home has all the goodness of properly configured, secure, scalable networking without any of the administration overhead. I may be my family's IT department, but I shouldn't have to be. Stuff should just work. That's what this is about.
Comment Re:Because They Sell Better and the FDA Allows It (Score 1) 354
organic products (hate all you want. it is the technical term)
"Organic" is a marketing term. The word has an entirely different meaning in the context of chemistry.
The marketing term differs from language to language and possibly country to country. Here, they're called "bio"-products, an equally incorrect term, obviously.
The best name for it is "eco-"/"eko-". Because the produce is grown in an ecologically responsible manner.
Comment Re:Awesome Geography ! (Score 1) 211
Yep. Brussels is now located in a democracy with mutual respect and understanding between regions where different languages are spoken.
Well, all that will go to hell soon now the Swiss gained Brussels as a city...
Comment Re:Brussels, Switzerland, eh? (Score 1) 211
I think you mean 'Brussels is where the occupying force of bureaucrats presently infesting many of the nations of Europe is centered.'
Yep. Like GP said, like Washington DC.
Comment Re:I live in Belgium... (Score 1) 731
Correcting other posters; "ge" and "gij" are *correct* words, not slang, not colloquialisms, and not regional variants.
They are only considered archaic by Dutch-speakers from the Netherlands who started using the "je" and "jij" words fairly recently in history.
Every Dutch dictionary recognises these words.
ISO Rejects OOXML Protest Appeals 258
snydeq writes "ISO and IEC gave OOXML the greenlight after organization leaders rejected appeals from four countries to protest the vote that approved OOXML as a standard. According to an ISO press statement, appeals by the national bodies of Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela did not garner support from two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, which is required by ISO/IEC rules to keep the appeals process alive."
Best and Worst Coding Standards? 956
An anonymous reader writes "If you've been hired by a serious software development house, chances are one of your early familiarization tasks was to read company guidelines on coding standards and practices. You've probably been given some basic guidelines, such as gotos being off limits except in specific circumstances, or that code should be indented with tabs rather than spaces, or vice versa. Perhaps you've had some more exotic or less intuitive practices as well; maybe continue or multiple return statements were off-limits. What standards have you found worked well in practice, increasing code readability and maintainability? Which only looked good on paper?"
Submission + - Shuttleworth: No negotiations with Microsoft! (markshuttleworth.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Seeking to end the various discussions about Ubuntu partnering with Microsoft, Mark Shuttleworth, with a post to his blog today, makes it clear that they have "declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements". Shuttleworth seems to share most peoples' feelings on this entire business by saying that 'Allegations of "infringement of unspecified patents" carry no weight whatsoever.'
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/127
Submission + - Cell SPU at 4Ghz and ~25% smaller (beyond3d.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Beyond3D reports that Toshiba has migrated the Stream Processing Units found on the Cell processors away from its previously custom design towards a synthesizable design that can be easily integrated into new processors. The new design created an SPU that 20-30% smaller than the SPUs found in the Cell, although it is 10% slower at the same frequency. However, the new design is capable of hitting 4Ghz, much faster than current SPUs.
