Heliode - Slashdot User

Comment E-strategy (Score 1) 301

by Heliode on Monday November 09, 2009 @11:07AM (#30032942) Attached to: Reporting To Executives

Aside from reporting statistics etc., what would be most useful from a business point of view would be some sort of e-strategy that is aligned with the overall strategy of the company. Executives usually spend lots of time envisioning where they want the company to be in X years. Figure out what this is, and formulate a plan for IT to facilitate this.
These days, the role of IT in all sorts of business ventures continues to increase, and can offer real strategic advantages for companies. They just have to realize this, and make the most of it. You can help with that.

Comment Re:What planet? (Score 1) 1010

by Heliode on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @06:45PM (#27579001) Attached to: Vista Post-SP2 Is the Safest OS On the Planet

Mars gets along perfectly without so much as a micro-organism. Tell me... would it be greatly improved by a copy of Windows Vista?

Comment Re:15 years or so ago (Score 1) 1127

by Heliode on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @04:34AM (#27567433) Attached to: Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In?

A bit of an old story, not sure anyone will read this, but...
I hear this kind of thing quite often; that they don't prepare you for that sort of thing. At my university, however, professors continually stress the fact that you have to try really hard to figure out what the client wants, and they teach you techniques you can use to help with this. There are multiple courses dedicated to this in my Master program (one of them Problem Analysis and Solution Requirements deals almost exclusively with this).
Then again, my Master course is a bit more business-like than hard-core CS.

Comment Re:Outliers fall on both sides of the spectrum (Score 1) 357

by Heliode on Thursday March 05, 2009 @11:50AM (#27077727) Attached to: Outliers, The Story Of Success

How to Be Totally Miserable: A Self-Hinder Book!

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Totally-Miserable-Self-Hinder/dp/1570087245

How To Make Money With Free Software 187

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 30, 2008 @05:54PM from the actual-money dept.

fons writes "Dutch Python hacker/artist Stani took part in a contest organised by the Dutch Ministry Of Finance to design a 5 euro commemorative coin. And he won, using only free software: 'The whole design was done for 100% with free software. The biggest part consists of custom software in Python, of course within the SPE editor. For the visual power I used PIL and pyCairo. From time to time also Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch helped quite a bit. All the developing and processing was done on GNU/Linux machines which were running Ubuntu/Debian. I would have loved to release the coin under the GPL, which could maybe solve the financial crisis. However for obvious reasons I was not allowed to do that.'"

Comment Re:They aren't kidding (Score 3, Informative) 592

by Heliode on Saturday October 13, 2007 @12:24PM (#20966621) Attached to: Consumer Group Demands XP for Vista Victims

Hate to reply to my own post, but the scanned ad can be found here

As an anecdote; recently, the person with the least technical skill and knowledge I know (and that says quite a lot), told me she bought a new computer with XP on it because she heard Vista "has to many flaws". I'm pretty sure that if even she knows, everyone in the country knows. I'm pretty sure we didn't have this when XP came out.

Probe Shows Jupiter Moon 'Puking' Into Space 152

Posted by Zonk on Sunday June 10, 2007 @03:51PM from the intergalactic-bodily-fluids dept.

Tablizer writes "The New Horizons probe caught the moon Io in the act of 'barfing' into space. A five-frame sequence from the New Horizons probe captured a beautiful plume of ash from Io's Tvashtar volcano. "Snapped by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter earlier this year, this first-ever "movie" of an Io plume clearly shows motion in the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface ... The appearance and motion of the plume is remarkably similar to an ornamental fountain on Earth, replicated on a gigantic scale.""

Microsoft / Adobe Competition Heating Up 219

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @03:01PM from the ding-dong-front-page-is-dead dept.

MicroAdobe writes "Microsoft has noticed that some of the coolest sites on the Web, YouTube and MySpace included, get much of their flash from Flash and other design programs sold by Adobe. But as Microsoft gets ready to ship its own line of tools for designers and Web developers, the company is finding it must also defend against Adobe on its home turf, the desktop. At the same time, the line between Internet and desktop programs is blurring, and both companies see an opportunity to capture new business." The article focuses on the competition and doesn't even mention that Adobe's CEO called Microsoft a $50 billion monopolist.

Prescription Meds For Vista Sleep Disorder 144

Posted by kdawson on Sunday March 11, 2007 @08:33AM from the you-will-sleep-now-and-when-you-wake dept.

Arnold O'Connor writes "NeoSmart Technologies has compiled a list of hotfixes and patches provided by Microsoft for Windows Vista that address a large number of issues related to waking/resuming a Vista PC (both x86 and x64) from sleep or hibernation. Sleep-related disorders have plagued Vista since its release, though they were not present in earlier betas. Most of these fixes are due to be included in Windows Vista SP1 — codenamed Fiji."

South Korea Drafting Ethical Code for Robotic Age 318

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:35PM from the think-of-the-robots dept.

goldaryn writes "The BBC is reporting that the South Korean government is working on an ethical code for human/robot relations, 'to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa'. The article describes the creation of the Robot Ethics Charter, which 'will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. [...] It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer.'"

Magnetic Storage Using Quantum Vortex Cores 135

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday November 28, 2006 @04:33PM from the next-little-thing dept.

brian0918 writes, "Researchers at the Max Planck Institute have discovered a new, easy way to manipulate the state of tiny magnetic structures, called vortex cores, quickly and without loss. From their press release: 'Up until now, very strong magnetic fields have been necessary to accomplish this, requiring highly complex technology. The new method might open up new possibilities for magnetic data storage. The directions of the small nanoscopic magnetic needles define a digital bit that is extremely stable in the face of frequently unavoidable external factors such as heat or interference from magnetic fields.'" You can read the first paragraph of the paper at Nature; subscribers can read it all.

Internet Only 1% Porn 422

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 15, 2006 @10:13AM from the and-ninety-three-percent-spam dept.

Eli Gottlieb writes "In what surely comes as a complete and utter surprise to everyone here, a new calculation shows that only one percent of web pages contain pornography. While the calculations were performed using data forced from Google's and Microsoft's search indices by the government, they will help the American Civil Liberties Union to keep enforcement of the Children's Online Protection Act of 1998 banned. A loss for business privacy has become a victory for free speech, even though netizens lose a beloved old proverb."

Nintendo Profits Up 72%, Sony's Down 94% 290

Posted by Zonk on Thursday October 26, 2006 @03:34PM from the sony's-bear-market dept.

Gamasutra is reporting on reporting, with financial information from some of the large gaming companies becoming available this week. Nintendo, who had already previously raised projections, saw their profits up 72% over last year. This dramatic increase was credited largely to the DS, with 10.9 million units sold in the first six months of this year alone. Sony, on the other hand, dropped profits by 94% over this time last year. The company attributes this largely to the battery recall and PS3 start-up costs. From the article: "The company's games division reported a ¥43.5 billion ($366.6m) loss, from a ¥8.2 million ($69,000) profit in 2005, thanks to research and development, manufacturing and marketing costs related to the launch of the PlayStation 3. Sales and operating revenue were down by 20.5 percent to ¥170.3 billion ($1.43bn). A decrease in hardware sales worldwide was attributed to a drop in price for the PlayStation 2 and PSP. Software sales also decreased overall, although individual PSP sales were up on the previous year. Combined profit from the PS2 and PSP business was described as 'relatively unchanged'."

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