I_redwolf - Slashdot User

Why LEDs Don't Beat CFLs Even Though They Should 685

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @07:57PM from the light-it-up dept.

TaeKwonDood writes "LEDs don't beat CFLs in the home yet, but it's not simply because PG&E is getting rich making people feel like they are helping the environment buying CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save. It's a problem of indication versus illumination. However, some new discoveries are going to change all that."

NASA Releases Columbia Crew Survival Report 223

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @06:59PM from the sacred-cow dept.

Migraineman writes "NASA has released a 400-page Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report [16MB PDF.] If you're interested in a detailed examination and timeline of the events leading to the destruction of Columbia, this is well worth the time. The report includes a number of recommendations to increase survivability of future missions." Reader bezking points out CNN's story on the report, which says that problems with the astronauts' restraint systems were the ultimate cause of death for the seven astronauts on board.

Alan Cox Leaves Red Hat 163

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @12:11PM from the bet-wherever-he's-going-he'll-have-electricity-and-heat dept.

ruphus13 writes "Alan Cox — one of the lead Linux kernel developers at Red Hat — is leaving the company after 10 years and is heading to Intel, where he can focus on more low-level development tasks. Some are speculating whether this is indicative of a shift to a more 'application-centric' vision at Red Hat. From the article: 'Red Hat is integrating more application related, user- and enterprise-centric tools into its well-established "low-level," "core" development and support tools. It'd be more worrisome if Red Hat neglected to strike out in this direction. Cox was with Red Hat for ten years, and regardless of any suspected change of course within the company, that's a fair amount of time.'"

The Fight Over NASA's Future 288

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @10:15AM from the still-no-power-at-my-house dept.

swestcott writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about the transition to the Obama administration and NASA's transition to the new Orion."

AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code 307

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @12:27AM from the playing-nice-with-others dept.

Michael writes "AMD has just released code that will allow for open-source 3D acceleration on their ATI R600 and R700 graphics cards, including all of their newest Radeon HD 4xxx products. This code consists of a demo program that feeds the commands to the hardware, updates to their RadeonHD driver, and a Direct Rendering Manager update. With this code comes working 2D EXA acceleration support for these newer ATI graphics processors as well as basic X-Video support. AMD will be releasing sanitized documentation for these new ATI GPUs in the coming weeks. Phoronix has an article detailing what's all encompassed by today's code drop as well as the activities that led to this open-source code coming about for release."

FBI Issues Code Cracking Challenge 222

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 29, 2008 @07:23PM from the test-your-skillz dept.

coondoggie writes to tell us that the FBI has issued another cracking challenge for a new cipher on their site. Tens of thousands responded to a similar challenge last year. In addition to the challenge, the FBI is also offering a few primers on the subject. There are a number of sites offering cipher challenges, but it's funny to see the FBI encouraging such behavior.

The Best Keyboards For Every Occasion 523

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 29, 2008 @04:56PM from the right-touch dept.

ThinSkin writes "ExtremeTech has written an article on the best keyboards in every category, such as gaming keyboards (macro and hybrid), media center keyboards, keyboard gamepads, and so forth. Of course, the big companies like Microsoft and Logitech dominate these lists, while smaller companies like Razer, Ideazon, and others play an important role as well."

Campaign to Open Source IBM's Notes/Domino 255

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 29, 2008 @03:42PM from the if-you-can't-sell-it-use-it-for-free-advertising dept.

Ian Tree, an IT consultant from the Netherlands, has started a campaign to convince IBM to open source the code for Notes/Domino. Hoping for results similar to the push for Sun to open source Solaris, which finally saw success in 2005, Tree makes the simple point that it won't happen until someone asks. "By being an open source product, Tree is also hoping that Domino becomes something schools use to teach groupware and application development concepts, which is the holy grail for future market adoption. This is how various Unixes, relational databases, Linux, and a raft of other products eventually became commercialized. While the idea of open sourcing any proprietary program is appealing, in as much as it sets a program free to live beyond the commitment (or lack thereof) of its originator, it is hard to see why open Notes/Domino would have any more impact than OpenSolaris."

Apple OS X 10.5.6 Update Breaks Some MacBook Pros 313

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 27, 2008 @11:55AM from the somebody-just-got-fired dept.

Newscloud writes "As PC Mag reported last week, Apple OS X 10.5.6 can break some MacBook Pros leaving some users (like me) with a dead backlit black screen after the Apple logo appears. While I initially thought I had a hardware failure, it turns out that there is a fix as long as you have an external display, keyboard and mouse. The problem only appears on the second restart, so if you sleep your MacBook a lot as I do, you might not realize the problem is related to the OS update you did the week before. The problem was related to older, incompatible firmware that Software Update wasn't flagging before the upgrade. This definitely gives weight to the argument for waiting a bit to run software upgrades."

Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview 250

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 26, 2008 @11:23PM from the excellent-work,-patent-office dept.

ClaraBow writes with this excerpt from MacWorld: "A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened. ... Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for 'a reasonable royalty' as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said. ... Cygnus applied for its patent (#7346850) in 2001. It covers a 'System and method for iconic software environment management' and was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of this year."

Psystar Claims Apple Forgot To Copyright Mac OS 648

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @12:13AM from the that-would-be-an-oopsie dept.

Preedit writes "Mac cloner Psystar is claiming in new court papers that Apple's copyright suit against it should be dismissed, because Apple has never filed for copyright protection on Mac OS X 10.5 with the US Copyright Office. Infoweek is reporting that the claim, if it holds up, could open the door for third-parties to enter the Mac market without fear of legal action from Apple. In its latest set of allegations, Psystar is also accusing Apple of bricking Macs that don't run on genuine Apple hardware." We've been following the Psystar-Apple imbroglio since the beginning.

Comment Re:Blaming Linux... (Score 1) 178

by I_redwolf on Thursday December 18, 2008 @01:39PM (#26162029) Attached to: Scaling Facebook To 140 Million Users

Part of the problem is that it's not better at handle higher loads reliably. Much of what they are doing is basic stuff to improve performance. They could improve performance even more if they stored required data in Varnish instead of memcache and use the remaining mem for other more important things. Of course it sounds like they are now learning about parallel programming so it'll be a while before they get there.

How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs 331

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 18, 2008 @09:44AM from the on-a-mountain-of-money dept.

ThousandStars writes "The Wall Street Journal asks How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs: 'Speculation about the continued reign of Mr. Jobs — which has popped up from time to time since his 2004 treatment for cancer — underscore how closely Apple's fashion-setting products are identified with its co-founder.'"

Comment Re:Why is Cobol still alive? (Score 1) 288

by I_redwolf on Thursday October 23, 2008 @06:29PM (#25489851) Attached to: Cobol Job Market Heating Up

I've written Cobol code; it is neither easy to develop for or succinct; in any manner. Neither is anything seamless. I'm not sure which COBOL you were using but if you could point it out for me I'll and correct me that would be great.

Comment Re:Anonymous Coward (Score 4, Interesting) 716

by xcomputer_man on Thursday June 19, 2008 @01:49PM (#23860995) Attached to: Most Hated Computer Component

One day I made the fateful decision of buying an ATI X800GTO graphics card from Newegg.com. Cursed be that day, may it burn in hell forever. That card has been the bane of my existence ever since. My stubborn self, ever determined to find solutions to problems at whatever cost, toiled for hours, days, weeks and months trying to get it to work right.

It never did. When I finally managed to get ATI's Beelzebub driver (aka fglrx) to do DRI, it would make this continual high pitched demonic whir, flicker horribly and report frame rates of 4800fps. Serpentine piece of evil. And it burned like hell too -- the fan would spin so hard, and it would get so hot, I became genuinely worried about a spontaneous conflagration. I had no better luck with the open source driver, but at least it didn't threaten to send me into bankruptcy over electric bills.

At one time I went back to Newegg and bought an NVIDIA card, from their bargain basement. That one worked OK from the get go (NVIDIA's drivers are lovely), but it had this annoying habit of freezing up hard about 20 minutes after I started playing a video game. For some reason (a temporary bout of stupidity, perhaps?) I never made the connection -- until one day it died for good.

I eventually bought a new NVIDIA card. Not from Newegg, this time. So far it has treated me well. But it will never convince me otherwise: Video cards are the evil spawn of darkness. Especially ATI cards. I hate them with all of my being.

My rant ends here.

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