Azarael - Slashdot User

Submission + - FTC Amputates Rambus

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05, 2007 @05:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: According to an article by "Businessweek", the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just set the maximum royalty that Rambus can charge on key DDR-SDRAM technologies. Also, the FTC states that, after 3 years, Rambus must license the disputed technologies without charging any royalty. Will Samsung get a refund on all the money that it has already paid to Rambus? Samsung lawyers want to know.

Submission + - Inkscape 0.45 - Pretty blurry release

Submitted by

Bryce

on Monday February 05, 2007 @05:31PM

Bryce writes: "Our first major new release of Inkscape since last June is up. Inkscape is a vector drawing tool along the lines of Illustrator, CorelDraw, etc. but open source and available for Linux, OSX, and Windows. The major new feature is Gaussian Blur, sponsored by Google's Summer of Code program. With this, you can do a lot of photorealistic effects, drop shadows, glows, etc. Check out the Release Notes to see what else is changed, download it, and join the mailing lists."

Submission + - Should I be forced to close source my software?

Submitted by

masonisdrunk

on Monday February 05, 2007 @05:25PM

masonisdrunk writes: "Having recently started a company providing Wireless Internet access, it was time for a cash injection and having found a investor he now wants me to close source my software (which I was just developing a homepage for) and sign a non-competiton agreement. Do I have a leg to stand on with this? I need the money to further the project, but also believe in the open source community and how that can help further develop the software bwyond what i could ever do.

Do slash dotters have any useful suggestions? or I'm i best to keep my mouth closed and do what i'm told.

Thanks in advance"

Submission + - New Beryl 0.2.0 - outshining Vista & OSX

Submitted by

luna6

on Monday February 05, 2007 @03:58PM

luna6 writes: "http://lunapark6.com/?cat=5 This article covers the upcoming Beryl 0.2.0. I got a chance to use RC2 for the past and enjoyed every moment of it. I have used Beryl in the past and at the time found it promising, but still a little too buggy and the beryl-settings-manager was confusing to use. These problems have largely been fixed in 0.2.0 and some really new features implemented (live windows thumbnails from the taskbar, application switcher via a horizontal strip or 3d rotating circle, and more refinements in the rotating 3d desktop). There are plenty of screenshots in to give readers an idea what to expect from Beryl 0.2.0."

Starting a Career in Science at Age 38? 112

Posted by Cliff on Friday February 02, 2007 @01:23PM from the never-too-old-for-research? dept.

A Science Nostalgic writes "I'm 38, have a successful career as a software developer but feel the all-too-similar enterprise apps are boring my brains out, and I'm intensely missing the world of science, which I didn't pursue in favor of programming when I got my engineering degree. Now, I'm contemplating a job in research, but fear the age and the lack of 'exercise' with math and physics would pose an understandable handicap. If I study math seriously, I can realistically shed the 'rust' in a year, maybe two, but I still fear I'll be considered too old for research. I graduated abroad so I don't have any old contacts at the local universities (there are a few in my city). I checked their job boards, and they have no positions for research, just the usual ones in software development that I could use as an entry point. Do you have any experience with such a career change? Is it feasible at all to get into science once you approach 40? I feel my brain is still alive and kicking, and years of debugging have taught me a few things about investigating causes and correlations, which are useful skills in research."

Submission + - Florida Bar complaint against Jack Thompson

Submitted by

ptomblin

on Friday February 02, 2007 @01:16PM

ptomblin writes: "The Florida Bar has filed a complaint against Jack Thompson in the Florida Supreme Court. You can be read on the Flordia Supreme Court Docket if you search for Docket No. SC07-80."

Submission + - Best language for an occasional programmer?

Submitted by

the_womble

on Thursday February 01, 2007 @04:31PM

the_womble writes: "I am never going to be a developer, but I write a little bit of code occasionally. A simple CMS written in TCL a few years ago, a few Wordpress plugins, things like that. I am now thinking of more ambitious projects.

I am most interested in websites and CMSs, but it would be useful to be able to whip up a simple GUI as well. What languages and tools should I learn. Programming only occasionally needs a language with a clear syntax and a small core language — so I do not forget it all between times. Development tools also need to be simple. Libraries need to be well documented. Finally, it should be fun to work with.

So, what should I learn? My own research has not got me further than "Ruby and Scheme look nice". What do you think?"

Submission + - The Madden monopoly is over: NFL2K is back...sorta

Submitted by

numbski

on Thursday February 01, 2007 @04:18PM

numbski writes: "On December 13, 2004, the NFL announced an exclusive license with EA Sports that essentially put the $20 NFL2k series off of the market and allowed EA's Madden series to dominate not by being better, but being the only game available for realistic professional (american) football simulation. EA went around and bought up the NFL license, the Arena Football League license, NCAA, and even some more obscure ones, to guarantee that they never had to compete in that genre again until at least 2009.

As of yesterday however, Visual Concepts, the maker of the 2K Sports series of games,announced All Pro Football 2K8. Details are few and far between at this point, but we do know that it is coming this summer, and that it will be VERY customizable. There's an inteview with Visual Concepts Presiden Mark Thomas over at Gamespot regarding the announcement."

Submission + - Peugeot adopts linux in the desktop

Submitted by SAN1701 on Thursday February 01, 2007 @04:09PM

SAN1701 writes: French car manufacturer Peugeot Citroen will adopt Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop as the OS for more than 20,000 machines. This was announced in the same day Microsoft commercially launched Vista. This seems to be one of the biggest linux desktop deployment ever in a multinational company.

Submission + - Google's Bosworth: Why AJAX Failed, Then Succeeded

Submitted by

on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @03:39PM

An anonymous reader writes: eWEEK has a story on a talk from former-Microsoft developer Adam Bosworth (now VP for Google) entitled "Physics, Speed and Psychology: What Works and What Doesn't in Software, and Why." Bosworth depicts issues with processing, broadband, natural language, human behavior, and dishes on Microsoft. From the article:
"'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications.'...
Drawing on the lessons he learned from the initial failure of AJAX, Bosworth admonished developers to think about user activity. 'Ask what the frequency is,' he said. 'Unless an app is used over and over each day, make it simple, even if more clicks [or] pages are required.' Also, 'Ask how long it takes to execute a requested task,' he said. 'If it takes more than 2 seconds, consider not providing the task or splitting it up into small, user-controlled tasks.' Moreover, 'sites where people don't go a lot don't need AJAX-style UIs [user interfaces],' Bosworth said. 'If we started building AJAX for AJAX's sake we wouldn't be doing our customers any favors.'"

Submission + - Hotmail to start charging for use

Submitted by

KindredHyperion

on Monday January 29, 2007 @01:47PM

KindredHyperion writes: "The BBC has an article on Microsoft's apparent intent to start charging it's users for the use of the service. From the article: " Microsoft's UK managing director told the Independent on Sunday that fees could be introduced within 12 months. Any move by MSN to start fee-charging would pave the way for its competitors yahoo.com and aol.com to follow suit.""

Submission + - New Duke Nukem Forever screenshot (really!)

Submitted by wiggles on Friday January 26, 2007 @06:07PM

wiggles writes: George Broussard randomly posted a thumbnail-sized screen shot from the game on the Shacknews message boards. Georgey says it's in-game, but they've also said the game will be released some day, so take it with the appropriate grain of salt. The screenshot can be seen here on 1up.

Submission + - Daylight Savings time change in 2007

Submitted by goDzi7la on Friday January 26, 2007 @04:04PM

goDzi7la writes: In the United States & Canada the start and end of daylight savings times are being changed in 2007. Daylight savings time will now start on March 11, 2007 (rather than early April) and will end on November 4, 2007 (rather than late October). I've begun going through all my machines to apply the patches, but I want to make sure I don't miss anything. So besides OS patches or fixes, what other sofware needs updating? I've seen that some versions of Java SDK & JRE need to be updated. Whadda bout stuff like PHP? Perl? Oracle? MySQL? Anybody have a good list of what things need to be updated? What about the ramifications of not updating certain things?

Submission + - DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE KEY COPIED FROM PHOTO

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday January 25, 2007 @04:24PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "In another stunning blow to the security and integrity of Diebold's electronic voting machines, someone has made a copy of the key which opens ALL Diebold e-voting machines from a picture on the company's own website. The working keys were confirmed by Princeton scientists, the same people who discovered that a simple virus hack on the Diebold machines could steal an election. Absolutely incredible and another example of how Diebold's e-voting machines pose a great threat to the electoral process. http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4066#more-4066"

Canada's Music Lobby Buys Government Access 158

Posted by Zonk on Thursday January 25, 2007 @12:54PM from the they-know-who-you've-been-seeing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Copyfighting law professor Michael Geist, who previously uncovered financial links between recording industry lobbyists and Canada's Minister of Canadian Heritage Bev Oda (who is responsible for copyright policy), has now identified what big cash donations will get you. He reports that Oda met with the President of the Canadian Recording Industry Association on a monthly basis last year just as the government was preparing copyright reform legislation and Canadian artists were calling for an end to P2P lawsuits. Is it any wonder that Canadians seem likely to lose their fair use rights?"

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