christian.einfeldt - Slashdot User

Submission + - Major League Baseball dumps Silverlight for Flash (zdnet.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @06:20PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Major League Baseball will open this week without Microsoft's Silverlight at the plate, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which handles much of the back end operations for Major League Baseball and several other leagues and sporting events. The change, which was decided last year but to be rolled out this spring, was due to technical glitches such as difficulties users experienced starting downloading Silverlight. Adobe Flash already exists on 99% of user machines, said Bowman, and Adobe is 'committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player.' MLBAM's decision to dump Silverlight is particularly problematic for Microsoft's effort to compete with Adobe, due to the fact that MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament."

Submission + - Flying rocks named after RMS, Torvalds, GNU, Linux (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Sunday March 15, 2009 @05:02PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who once referred to the GNU-Linux operating system as a 'cancer' and who might be hoping that Microsoft's recent lawsuit against TomTom might help wipe the GNU-Linux 'cancer' off the face of the Earth, will be chagrined to learn that GNU-Linux has instead been immortalized in the heavens. It turns out that Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, GNU, and the Linux kernel have all been acknowledged for their contributions to science by having asteroids named after them. The eponymous asteroids are, respectively, 9882_Stallman, 9793_Torvalds, 9965_GNU, and 9885_Linux."

Submission + - Dvorak likes Linux (pcmag.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Monday March 09, 2009 @08:48PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Like him or hate him, John C. Dvorak is an opinion-shaper who writes for mainstream publications like PCmag.com, and now Dvorak is saying he's sweet on Linux. He is planning on putting it on all of his 'ancillary machines', such as his kitchen machine, where he needs 'reliability and low price.' He found that his family was using the kitchen Windows machine in such a way as to invite malware. He says he is tired of the malware and the patches which only slow down Microsoft Windows even further. Dvorak was moved to go to Linux right now because he feels that Ubuntu 8.10 performs as well as Microsof Windows 2000, which he says some observers feel was the best version of Windows Microsoft ever released. He finds that there is a decent Linux substitute for almost any Windows program, except Adobe Photoshop, and even there he likes the GIMP. Dvorak says he uses an iMac at the office, and he will still be foreced to use Microsoft Windows because he writes about it. He recommends Linux for small businesses, and recommends testing Linux with live CDs. 'You won't regret it,' he says."

Submission + - UK Government Removing Barriers to Open Source (cio.gov.uk)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @01:00AM

christian.einfeldt writes: "On February 24, the Chief Information Officer Council of the UK issued new guidelines which changes the way that the government of the United Kingdom will acquire software. The new guidelines will require that all UK agencies 'consider open source solutions on their merits according to total lifetime cost of ownership' and seek to quantify proprietary exit costs and proprietary lock-in as factors affecting the overall costs of software. The rules also direct agencies to share their evaluations of software, so that where open source solutions are evaluated and approved by one part of the UK government, that evaluation should not be repeated, but instead shared. The new policies also show a UK preference for the Open Document Format over the 'emerging' Office Open XML format. Sun Microsystems Open Source Officer Simon Phipps thinks that the new guidelines will go a long way toward shifting the UK's software acquisition policy from a procurement-driven market model, which favors proprietary software, to an adoption-led market model, which places open source software on a more equal footing with proprietary software."

Submission + - 1 of 3 Dell Inspiron Mini netbooks sold with Linux (laptopmag.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Monday February 23, 2009 @09:21PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "According to an article in Laptop Magazine on-line, one-third of Dell Inspiron Mini 9s netbooks are sold with the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Dell senior product manager John New attributed the sales volume to the lower price point of the Ubuntu Linux machines. And the return rate of the Ubuntu Linux machines is approximately equal to that of comparable netbooks sold with Microsoft Windows XP. Dell spokesperson Jay Pinkert attriutes the low return rate to Dell's good communications with its customers, saying 'We have done a very good job explaining to folks what Linux is.'"

Submission + - Lessig Crowdsourcing Fairey's legal case versus AP (lessig.org)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Thursday February 19, 2009 @08:59PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Stanford law professor Larry Lessig has issued a call to the masses for help in assisting Shepard Fairey in Fairey's legal case against the Associated Press arising out of the dispute over Fairey's famous poster depicting Obama's upturned, thoughtful face, a poster that in the minds of many defined the Obama 2008 presidential campaign. Lessig, writing on behalf of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society (CIS), says that the CIS team would like help finding images similar to that of Mannie Garcia's preceding photograph of then-Senator Obama appearing with George Clooney during the campaign. Although Lessig is holding his cards close to his vest as to why similar photos are being sought, commentators on Lessig's blog seem to think that as more similar photos can be found, it becomes less likely that Fairey's poster alone had any impact on the market for the Mannie Garcia's photo; in other words, defending Fairey by spreading the "blame". But the more entertaining question might be: can the Slashdot effect alter the outcome of this case?"

Submission + - World of Goo ported to Linux (2dboy.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Friday February 13, 2009 @10:45PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Lovers of both games and Free Open Source Software will be pleased to see that the popular World of Goo has been released for Linux. Designed by a small team of two ex-Electronic Arts developers, Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel, who used their entire combined savings of $10,000.00 USD to create the gooey game aimed at guiding goo balls to salvation. The developers built their goey world with open-source technologies such as Simple DirectMedia Layer, Open Dynamics Engine for physics simulation, and TinyXML for configuration and animation files. Subversion and Mantis Bug Tracker were used for work coordination. Blogger Ken Starks points out that the release of this popular game for Linux could be a big step toward ending the chicken-and-egg problem of a dearth of good games that run natively under Linux."

Submission + - Sexism vs. Meritocracy in Open Source? (pipka.org)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Sunday February 08, 2009 @01:18AM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Pia Waugh, a recent past President of Linux Australia, comments in her blog about how the Free Open Source Software community sometimes loses the benefits of its ordinarily meritocratic nature due to sexism. Rather than a diatribe about the importance of being politically correct, Waugh's blog begins with a personal story of an immature post on her blog and points out that sexism in the FOSS community could undermine one of the greatest sources of strength of the community; namely, the ability of individuals to succeed on the merits of their individual contributions.
Try to ensure that whatever project you are in, you are doing your best to make it an open and friendly environment for anyone to get involved. It is after all meant to be a meritocracy, meant to be about freedom and personal empowerment. Let's try to minimise the impact of old world biases on our awesome community.

The FOSS community is great at discarding lousy code; occasionally it needs a reminder about discarding lousy and damaging attitudes that could result in loss of contributions from capable contributors due to the grinding toll that sexism exacts on the potential contributors."

Submission + - Microsoft hiring Open Source 'strategist' (slashdot.org)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Friday February 06, 2009 @10:21PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Microsoft has posted a job offering for an executive whose job will be to 'lead strategy ... as it relates to open source competitors'. The interesting thing about this job posting is that Microsoft has repeated identified Free Open Source Software (FOSS) as a key threat to its revenue model in official annual 10K filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and the current Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, has called Linux a cancer in the software industry. The successful job applicant will be working for the same company which set out to cut off Netscape's air supply. Netscape, of course, was the browser which was the precursor to one of Microsoft's greatest open source threats, the Firefox Internet browser, which has been steadily gaining ground against Microsoft Internet Explorer. Maybe the successful applicant will be tasked with stopping that slide."

Submission + - Hackable Obama poster in ODF format (worldlabel.com) 1

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Sunday January 18, 2009 @09:01PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Worldlabel.com is offering a free (free beer, free speech) version of the wildly popular Frank Shepard Fairey poster of Barack Obama. Available in Microsoft Word and ODF formats, this template allows users to hack the poster to their heart's content. Like him, loathe him, or somewhere in between, users of all stripes will now be able to mash up this poster of the first African-American US President to their heart's content, just in time for the historic inauguration."

Submission + - Vietnam using more OpenOffice, Mozilla, Linux (vietnamnet.vn)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @08:29PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications has issued an administrative ruling increasing the use of Free Open Source Software products at state agencies, increasing the software's use both in the back office and on the desktop. According to the new rule, 100% of government servers must run Linux by June 30, 2009, and 70% of agencies must use OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, and Mozilla Thunderbird by the end of 2009. The regulation also sets benchmarks for training and proficiency in the software. Vietnam has a population of 86 million, 4 million larger than that of Germany, and is one of the world's fastest-growing economies."

Submission + - 1,000 Russian schools using Linux (www.osor.eu)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Wednesday December 31, 2008 @07:42PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Linux has been installed in over one thousand schools in Russia, and is part of a much larger over-all deployment of Linux in the Russian military and other government institutions, according to one IBM official speaking at the Latvian Open Technology Conference in Riga on 12 November:
'The Russian military has been working on its own version of GNU/Linux, parts of which have recently been declassified by the All-Russian Scientific and Research Institute of Control Automation in the Non-Industrial Sphere (Vniins). According to Guriev, many specialised version of GNU/Linux distributions are produced, often in response to requests by local governments. In three Russian regions, most of the PCs in use in about a thousand schools have been switched over to GNU/Linux.'
"

Submission + - Year of Linux on the Desktop - in one small town? (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Tuesday July 01, 2008 @09:25PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Linux advocates have been touting the year of Linux on the desktop every year for several years running. But now a group of GNU and Linux enthusiasts are holding a publicity stunt to move one small town, Felton, California, to Linux on the desktop, according to this story in the San Jose Mercury News. According to the group's website, the group will start holding town meetings on July 13 to convince just this one small town of 1,051 people near Silicon Valley to experiment with conducting their daily business using only Free Open Source Software on the desktop, for one week starting Monday, July 28, 2008, and running through Sunday, August 3, 2008. The group is calling themselves "Lindependence 2008", in a play of words on the US Independence Day holiday weekend, which commences on July fourth."

Submission + - Canada's Libraries favor ODF, Net Neutrality (www.cla.ca)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Wednesday June 11, 2008 @02:59PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "A consortium of Canada's public and university libraries, called the Canadian Library Association/Association canadienne des bibliothèques )(CLA/ACB), has passed a formal resolution in favor of ODF over OOXML, and a second resolution in favor of Internet Neutrality, in a vote of the group's 63rd Annual meeting on May 24, 2008, in Vancouver. The Net Neutrality resolution urges the Canadian government to:

're-examine the Telecommunications Act in order to clearly legislate in favour of a neutral Internet, requiring ISPs to comply with common carriage provisions and conduct business in a manner that is open, transparent, and accountable'
The open format resoltuion states that ODF is more well-suited to allowing libraries to 'fulfill their role of preserving and providing access to information', in contrast to OOXML, which the CLA/ACB find is 'not sufficiently open, interoperable, or vendor-neutral' to assist libraries in their role of disseminating information."

Submission + - The End of Music "Ownership"by consumers? (mp3tunes.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Tuesday April 22, 2008 @11:09PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3tunes, has posted a thread to his MP3tunes.com forum accusing major record label EMI of engaging in scorched-earth litigation tatics as part of its drive to force music consumers to re-rent the same music titles over and over again. Robertson says that the RIAA has acknowledged that copying by individuals for their own access is legal, which is what Robertson claims MP3tunes is doing. Robertson says that he believes EMI is trying to do with its suit against MP3tunes is scuttle consumer expectation of ownership of digital content:

'If you don't have the right to store your own music online then you won't have the right to store ebooks, videos and other digital products as well. The notion of ownership in the 21st century will evaporate.'
A skeptic would say that Robertson is just trying to save his own skin; but on the other hand, this is one point where Robertson and Richard Stallman agree."

Slashdot Top Deals