bmeiers - Slashdot User

Submission + - Death of the cell phone charger

Submitted by

jerthebear

on Saturday March 31, 2007 @08:24PM

jerthebear writes: "How much money could you make from a technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

Link to story"

Submission + - Tweako - A New Social Site for

Submitted by

tweako

on Saturday March 31, 2007 @08:09PM

tweako writes: "Tweako is a new social news aimed at programmers that just launched a couple of hours ago. Tweako bears a certain similarity to Digg, but instead of news headlines the user submitted content is geared toward tutorials, guides, resources and services.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a Digg clone, but even if you did, a Digg clone for tutorials and the like is a good idea.

In addition to submitting links, registered users can post tutorials and the like directly on Tweako. All the submitted content can be tagged, commented on and voted for by other users.

Registering at Tweako is free and creating the account lets you set up a profile that can track your voting and submission history. There are also tools for sending private messages and initiating a chats with fellow users in you "buddy" list. In addition to a site-wide feed there are also topic and user based RSS feeds.

The site is broken into fourteen broad categories ranging from tips for Mac or Windows users to Rails tutorials. And for something that just went public there's a decent amount of content on the site.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/03/tweako_a _social.html"

Submission + - FIRST Robotics Competition in 360 Degree Video

Submitted by

PotatoPhysics

on Saturday March 31, 2007 @07:32PM

PotatoPhysics writes: "The FIRST 2007 Robotics Competition brought high school
competitors from all over Canada to compete before crowds and Discovery Channel Canada broadcast it live to the web. There was also a cool 360-degree panoramic video camera there and you can see archived video from it at http://robotics.immersivemedia.com/
The regular non-360 webcast will be available here directly
http://www.discoverychannel.ca/reports/article.asp x?aid=329"

PC Makers Say Vista Is Not a Seller 319

Posted by Zonk on Saturday March 31, 2007 @07:32PM from the please-print-more-money dept.

TekkaDon writes "According to computer and component manufacturers, Vista is not the hotcake that they were hoping for. Take Acer's president, Gianfranco Lanci, who has just said that 'PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry.' Or Samsung Electronics, who now says that DRAM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections, something that is being echoed by the industry as a whole. This seem to agree with Ars Technica article on the 20 million Vista copies sold as a 'huge success' by Microsoft, which can be accounted for by the natural growth of PC sales over the years."

Building an Energy Efficient, Always-On PC? 155

Posted by Cliff on Saturday March 31, 2007 @07:26PM from the a-softer-hit-on-the-electric-bill dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "Like many readers, I find it necessary to leave my home PC running 24/7, for things like web or FTP servers, BitTorrent, or simply to make sure I don't miss any messages on IRC or my instant messaging client. It has been about 3 years since I built my current PC, and keeping it running all the time uses a lot of juice. With my next PC, I would like to do what I can to keep the power-consumption to a minimum, without sacrificing processing power or other features. What should I look for when choosing components for my PC, and what other ways are there to keep the power consumption down?"

Submission + - Is this bad advice from an IT manager?

Submitted by e-scetic on Saturday March 31, 2007 @03:28PM

e-scetic writes: We've secured funding for building a new website to replace our current one. My direct managers, however, not being technically inclined, are seeking input from our Manager of IT. In response, he has set down a number of dictates that he wants us to follow. Here's the part that frightens me most:

4. You should avoid security issues for now and concentrate on multiple user access for maintenance and updates login issues.

5. You must not worry about performance. You need to concentrate on making a workable website first. You must keep it simple.

Some details: I wanted to create a development and production environment, with a development server using version control and pushing stable changes to the live production server. I wanted to isolate the databases to a separate database server, with each web server remote logging to the database server (using syslog-ng). As we'll be generating email newsletters to the tune of 60k emails per issue, I wanted a separate machine for that too (PostFix, most likely). And most importantly, I wanted to spend time early in the project hardening everything — mod_security, mod_evasive, firewalls, intrusion detection, chroot jails, OS lockdown, SSH, etc., the works, before we began development

But the IT Manager is saying to do this:

10. You must design everything on one server for simplicity and design it in such a way to split the application when you need to do so (when it goes on line). I mean your database, your website, and your email server can all be developed on the same simple prototype server hardware.

12. Leave purchasing the actual hardware are for close to the end of the project when it needs to go on line.

I don't believe this is good advice, given we have one year to complete the project I think my route is safest. Can the Slashdot community advise my non-technical managers as to which of us, me or the IT manager, is on the right track? Or Maybe give advice on how to deal with this IT Manager?

Submission + - What topic to use for a Computer Ethics Essay?

Submitted by

Wizard Drongo

on Saturday March 31, 2007 @10:25AM

Wizard Drongo writes: "So, as part of my degree, I've got to write an essay in the field of computer ethics. It can't be too narrow a subject, but likewise it can't be too broad either. The field is so vast that I'm stuck for choice. DRM or ID cards? Fingerprinting schoolkids or open source vs. propriety? What would you write if this was your essay?"

Getting the Most Out of a CS Curriculum? 124

Posted by Cliff on Saturday March 31, 2007 @08:20AM from the it's-not-just-about-code dept.

Henry asks: "In September I start on a CS-type degree course. I am probably a fairly typical newbie programmer, in that most of my knowledge centers around scripting and high to very high level programming. There's much to choose from: languages, concepts, mathematics, and so on. From previous stories, I know that many readers have strong opinions on the failings and weaknesses of university courses and students. Apart from all of the coding that I will do, what can I do in the coming months to maximize what I get out of this? "

Do You Get a UNIX Workstation at Work? 290

Posted by Cliff on Saturday March 31, 2007 @02:40AM from the heterogenous-workflow dept.

Fished asks: "This may be a selfish question, but so far as I can tell it hasn't been asked before. I'm currently a Solaris System Engineer in a Very Large Company. This Very Large Company has predictably standardized on Windows as their corporate desktop. However, they are also of the opinion that nobody needs anything -but- Windows on their desktop. If you're a UNIX/Linux systems engineer/administrator in a large company, do they give you a desktop for the platform you manage? Do you have any tips on justifying your need for a second, UNIX-based desktop to the powers that be?"

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