hmallett - Slashdot User

Submission + - Good note-taking software

Submitted by on Sunday May 27, 2007 @03:13AM

An anonymous reader writes: I've noticed that I do a lot of brainstorming on paper, and I wondered why I don't use my computer more. I realized that one of the things I like about writing on paper is the ability to arbitrarily position my text. Is there good software for OS X that lets me put the cursor anywhere I want and begin typing immediately? As for PCs, I think OneNote allows this — is there anything else? What about software that also lets me drag and drop entire blocks of text any way I want to organize them?

Submission + - Open Sourced Icons?

Submitted by Xailor on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @03:48PM

Xailor writes: Can one assume that graphical icons that accompany free/open software applications are also thus free/open according to their license? Is it an acceptable practice to `share' icons from one application with another? For instance, a free web site employs icons from OSS projects as its look and feel.

Is this violating the nature of OSS if those icons are available for download to the public and for use elsewhere as long as those icons (a small fraction of a software project) comply with the appropriate licensing agreements? Can an icon be part of a `library' in an LGPL case?

Submission + - The point of the status meeting

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29, 2007 @12:14AM

An anonymous reader writes: The company that I work for just finished up a phase of testing that was pretty intensive and required a lot of hours to complete on schedule. Each day we had a status meeting that consisted of twenty people sitting in a room and listening to one person talk about their progress or issues from the previous day. Most of the time the status discussed only helped about one or two people in the room while the rest of us just wasted an hour in which we could have been making progress. We ended up finishing our testing two months later than scheduled and I wonder if we didn't waste 100 man hours a week for six months on status if we would have met our goal. My question is how does your manager or company get status about an important phase in the software development cycle without sacrificing the productivity of the entire team?

Submission + - IT Rates in US compared to UK

Submitted by

da_Den_man

on Friday April 27, 2007 @03:21PM

da_Den_man writes: "I am currently a consultant in the United States. I am looking to take on an opportunity in the U.K., and was wondering what type of pay scale would be appropriate to set for myself. I currently average about $65.00 / hr with a standard 40 hour working week. In looking at just doing a straight conversion, does the pay/wage scale exist in GBP or Euro's? What is the average salary for a programmer in the U.K.? Is there a chance of medical / dental, and if so, is that amount just pulled from the wage earned? Would these services be a bargaining chip in the contract, or just taken as a given that they would be available? What type of rent scale is present in London and the surrounding area (what should I expect to pay for a 2 bdrm flat a month?) and are the utility services provided, or would I as the renter be responsible for them?"

Submission + - Adobe to Open Source Flex

Submitted by wiff on Thursday April 26, 2007 @05:14AM

wiff writes: Adobe is announcing plans to open source Flex under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). This includes not only the source to the ActionScript components from the Flex SDK, which have been available in source code form with the SDK since Flex 2 was released, but also includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript libraries from the SDK. The Flex SDK includes all of the components needed to create Flex applications that run in any browser — on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and on now on the desktop using Apollo.

Developers can use the Flex SDK to freely develop and deploy Flex applications using either Adobe Flex Builder or an IDE of their choice.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_S ource

Submission + - High-Capacity Bandwidth Testing Software

Submitted by on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @11:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: I work for an ISP which specializes in high bandwidth (100+ megabit) fiber-based delivery solutions. As with any other ISP we sometimes have to perform troubleshooting with customers whom are reporting slow throughput. We currently have a home-grown bandwidth testing server in order to point-to-point test the throughput across our own network. Unfortunately (fortunately), customers have begun purchasing amounts of bandwidth that are capable of exceeding our testing capacity. Given a multi-gigabit network infrastructure and an on-net server with a gigabit Ethernet port, what software packages are available which can reliably test throughput approaching one gigabit? Cross-browser compatibility and 'click-here-to-test' usability should be considerations.

25th Anniversary of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 310

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 23, 2007 @08:43AM from the never-even-seen-one dept.

Alioth writes "Twenty five years ago today, Sinclair Research launched Britain's most popular home computer of the 1980s — the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Costing about one third of the price of its rivals such as the Commodore 64 while having a faster CPU and a better BASIC interpreter, the machine sold well in many guises throughout the 1980s and had more than a staggering 9,000 software titles. The machine may well have done well in the US too, had Timex — the company building the machine under license in the US — not already been in financial trouble and about to fold. The machine was also extremely successful in Russia, although not for Sinclair Research — because the Russians made dozens of different clones of the machine, and did so right into the mid 1990s. The machine still has a healthy retro scene, including the development of new commercial software by Cronosoft, and new hardware such as the DivIDE, which allows a standard PC hard disc or compact flash card to be connected to the machine."

Submission + - DX 10 on XP, MacOS X, Linux: is it possible?

Submitted by

javipas

on Monday April 23, 2007 @05:06AM

javipas writes: "A young programmer leading the 'Alky Project' has reverse-engineered the Geometry Shader code on DX10, and if what he says is true, running DX10 apps and games will be possible on plattforms different from Windows Vista. Microsoft made clear that DX 10 would only be available through Vista and compatible hardware, so being able to run DX10 on Windows XP, MacOS X or even Linux could be really interesting. The current preview allows to run several examples of the DirecX SDK on Windows XP. Promising."

Submission + - 25th Anniversary of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Submitted by

Alioth

on Monday April 23, 2007 @04:05AM

Alioth writes: "Twenty five years ago today, Sinclair Research launched Britain's most popular home computer of the 1980s — the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Costing about one third of the price of its rivals such as the Commodore 64 while having a faster CPU and a better BASIC interpreter, the machine sold well in many guises throughout the 1980s and had more than a staggering 9,000 software titles. The machine may well have done well in the US too, had Timex — the company building the machine under license in the US — wasn't already in financial trouble and about to fold. The machine was also extremely successful in Russia, although not for Sinclair Research — because the Russians made dozens of different clones of the machine, and did so right into the mid 1990s. The machine still has a healthy retro scene, including the development of new commerical software by Cronosoft, and new hardware such as the DivIDE, which allows a standard PC hard disc or compact flash card to be connected to the machine."

Feed German boffins make sperm cells from bone marrow (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Friday April 13, 2007 @07:12AM

But urge caution

Scientists in Germany have managed to coax stem cells drawn from bone marrow to grow into immature sperm cells. The team says if these so-called spermatagonial cells can be matured, the work would have massive implications for fertility treatments.

Submission + - Where are the Women?

Submitted by TechEGrl on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @09:31AM

TechEGrl writes: A recent article in CIO Insight says there's a decline in the number of women going into technology careers. But it stops short of actually answering the question why. A similar article on Forbes.com shows that fewer women are reaching the boardroom — and says that nominating committees "need to be more imaginative and flexible about recruiting women."

Any thoughts on the reason for this decline?

Slashdot Top Deals