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

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.
Microsoft

Google a "Wake-Up Call" For Microsoft 173

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.
Real Time Strategy (Games)

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

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.
Software

Submission + - Help the ecosystem - Support the product!

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?"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Best wireless router for congested college area

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!
Software

Submission + - Selling open source to upper management

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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