ImustDIE - Slashdot User

Comment TortoiseSVN (Score 4, Insightful) 268

by ImustDIE on Tuesday August 25, 2009 @07:59PM (#29194807) Attached to: Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems

I am a bit jealous of some Git features, but the place I work -- and me for my personal projects -- use SVN for one big reason: TortoiseSVN. It is a great interface to version control and not everyone (probably the majority) who needs to contribute is a programmer, or has any idea about command line interfaces, ssh, branching, merging, etc.

I am aware of TortoiseGit, but it has not reached a stable release, so it is not up for consideration in a serious environment.

There are other things to keep in mind too; SVN is much more tailored to our repo structure than Git, so that's a big plus for SVN -- at least for us.

Gene Therapy Causes Blind Woman To Grow New Fovea 86

Posted by timothy on Saturday August 15, 2009 @04:26PM from the way-beyond-lasik dept.

Al writes "A woman with a rare, inherited form of blindness is now able to read, thanks to a gene therapy that caused a new fovea — the part of the retina that is most densely populated with photoreceptors — to grow in her eye. The patient suffers from Leber congenital amaurosis, meaning an abnormal protein makes her photoreceptors have a severely impaired sensitivity to light. She received the experimental treatment twelve months ago when physicians injected a gene encoding a functional copy of the protein into a small part of one eye — about eight-to-nine millimeters in diameter. Along with two other patients receiving the same treatment, her eyesight improved after just a few weeks. Now the physicians report that this patient seems to have developed a new fovea, exactly where she received the injection. Because the woman has been effectively blind since birth, the results suggest that the brain is able to adapt to new visual stimuli remarkably quickly."

What Free IDE Do You Use? 1055

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @02:41AM from the ides-of-may dept.

postermmxvicom writes "I program only occasionally and mostly for personal interest. I went to update my favorite free IDE, Dev C++, yesterday and noticed that it had not been updated since 2005! I went looking for other free IDEs and came across Code::Blocks and Visual Studio Express. I work from a Windows machine, use C++, and make mostly console apps; but have written a few Windows apps and D3D or OpenGL apps. I wanted to know what free IDEs you use and recommend. What do you like about them? What features do they lack? What about them irritate you (and what do you do to work around these annoyances)? For instance, when I used Visual C++ 6.0 in college, there was an error in getline that had to be fixed, and the code indenting in DevC++ needed to be tweaked to suit my liking."

What Can I Do About Book Pirates? 987

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 14, 2009 @05:07PM from the see-how-you-feel-after-writing-a-book dept.

peterwayner writes "Six of the top ten links on a Google search for one of my books point to a pirate site when I type in 'wayner data compression textbook.' Others search strings actually locate pages that are selling legit copies including digital editions for the Kindle. I've started looking around for suggestions. Any thoughts from the Slashdot crowd? The free copies aren't boosting sales for my books. Do I (1) get another job, (2) sue people, or (3) invent some magic spell? Is society going to be able to support people who synthesize knowledge or will we need to rely on the Wikipedia for everything? I'm open to suggestions."

Intel Responds To X25-M Fragmentation Issue 111

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 13, 2009 @08:22PM from the problem-what-problem dept.

Vigile writes "In mid-February, news broke about a potential issue with Intel's X25-M mainstream solid state drives involving fragmentation and performance slow-downs. At that time, after having the news picked up by everyone from CNet to the Wall Street Journal, Intel stated that it had not seen any of these issues but was working with the source to replicate the problem and find a fix if at all possible. Today Intel has essentially admitted to the problem by releasing a new firmware for the X25-M line that not only fixes the flaws found in the drive initially, but also increases write performance across the board."

3-D Light System May Revolutionize Fingerprinting 71

Posted by kdawson on Saturday March 14, 2009 @02:29PM from the 256-times-10 dept.

coondoggie writes "The US Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate recently awarded almost $420,000 to a Kentucky company to further develop a contactless finger print/biometric system. The goal is a machine that can snap 10 fingerprints in high resolution in less than 10 seconds, without human intervention. This goal is beginning to look feasible. FlashScan3D is working with the University of Kentucky's Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, and has developed a technique called 'structured light illumination' (WIPO patent description), where a pattern of dots or stripes is projected onto a curved or irregular surface."

Locking Down Linux Desktops In an Enterprise? 904

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 09, 2009 @07:58PM from the just-the-policy-ma'am dept.

supermehra writes "How do you move 300 desktops, locked down with Windows ADS Group Policies (GPO), over to Ubuntu desktop? We have tried Centrify, Likewise, Gnome Gconf, and the like. Of course, we evaluated SuSe Desktop Enterprise and RedHat Desktop. Samba 4.0 promises the server side, however nothing for desktop lockdown. And while gnome gconf does offer promise, no real tools for remotely managing 300 desktops running gnome + gconf exist. All the options listed above are expensive, in fact so expensive that it's cheaper to leave M$ on! So while we've figured out the Office suite, email client, browser, VPN, drawing tools, and pretty much everything else, there seems to be no reasonable, open source alternative to locking down Linux terminals to comply with company policies. We're not looking for kiosk mode — we're looking for IT policy enforcement across the enterprise. Any ideas ladies & gentlemen?"

Google Blames Gmail Troubles On Maintenance Goof 109

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @06:43PM from the well-that's-reassuring dept.

Slatterz writes "Google has apologised for the two-and-a-half-hour Gmail outage on Tuesday morning, and admitted that the cause was down to data center maintenance. 'Lots of people around the world who rely on Gmail were disrupted during their waking and working hours, and we are very sorry. We did everything we could to restore access as soon as possible, and the issue is now resolved,' said Gmail site reliability manager Acacio Cruz in a blog post. Google had been testing new code designed to keep data geographically closer to its owner, which brought about disruption when maintenance in one data center caused another facility to be overloaded. This had a cascade effect, according to Google, and it took the company an hour to get it back under control."

Comment Re:Wishlist (Score 4, Informative) 137

by ImustDIE on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @12:38AM (#26427929) Attached to: Call For Grant Proposals In Perl Development

1) Better tools... improve EPIC. Perl lacks a good IDE.

Activestate's Komodo is a pretty decent IDE.

If Programming Languages Were Religions 844

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 17, 2008 @09:47AM from the worship-his-noodliness dept.

bshell writes "With Christmas around the corner I know we are all thinking about religion, or at least maybe wondering why this one religion dominates the rest for these few weeks. A fellow named Rodrigo Braz Monteiro (amz) posted this list comparing each programming language to a religion. Guaranteed to make you chuckle and generate a good long thread here on slashdot. Great way to pass the time as work winds down this week and we relate to our own programming faiths during this very special time of year. Merry PHPmas." Fortunately Pastafarianism is referenced.

Comment Re:Dual monitors & XP (Score 2, Informative) 360

by ImustDIE on Tuesday October 14, 2008 @09:01AM (#25367459) Attached to: On my current computer, I'm using ...

I can't remember the exact name/url, but there is a program that adds a bunch of nifty features for multiple displays on windows, including multiple task bars. However, iirc, it was not free (~$30).

Run Mac OS X On Non-Apple Hardware, With a Dongle 536

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 25, 2008 @03:30PM from the not-actually-an-imperative-statement dept.

An anonymous reader points out Gizmodo's review of a USB dongle, made by a company called Efix, which allows for an effort-free transformation of a non-Apple computer into one that runs Mac OS X. According to the reviewer, the transformation is perfect (aside from a few quirks he describes as "trivial"); the included screenshots sure make it seem that way, too. The dongle costs $155, and works only on a subset of PC hardware. Non-Apple machines running OS X will no doubt make Apple unhappy, though, so, the reviewer concludes, "it's understandable if you wanna approach this with caution."

Keeping Older Drivers Behind the Wheel 260

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 20, 2008 @06:50PM from the my-dad-should-just-not-drive-ever dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "A new study shows the key role technology can play in extending the age at which people can drive safely and highlights the important psychological role that driving plays in older people's lives in contributing to feelings of independence and freedom and maintaining their quality of life. The study identified ideas for in-car information systems to help compensate for the reduction in reaction time that affects many older drivers. Specific recommendations included a head-up display on the windshield that displays road sign information based on GPS position so the driver doesn't have to keep watching the road side for information and a system to provide the driver with audible feedback on their current speed so the driver doesn't have to look at the dashboard so often. 'Our research highlights issues that have been overlooked by car designers and those advising older people on lifestyles,' says Dr Charles Musselwhite, who led the study. 'The current emphasis on developing technologies which take over part of the driving task may actually end up deterring older drivers. By contrast, better in-car information systems could help them drive safely and ensure they want to keep driving.'"

Successful Moonlighting For Geeks? 448

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 14, 2008 @07:33PM from the oh-and-it's-gotta-be-legal dept.

Lawksamussy writes "Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down, I'm now trying to find a way to pay to fix it up. I have a great job in software development that pays the bills, but I'm looking to earn some extra cash in my spare time. Whatever I end up doing has to be reasonably lucrative (or at least have the potential to be so), not require any specific time commitment, and be doable equally well from home or from a hotel room. I'm also keen that it should be sufficiently different to my day job to keep my interest up, so the most obvious things like bidding for programming projects on Rentacoder.com, or fixing up neighbors' PCs, aren't really on. Above all, it should appeal to my inner geek, otherwise my low boredom threshold will doom it to failure before I even start! So, I wonder if any of my fellow Slashdotters run little part-time ventures that they find more of an inspiration than a chore... and if they are willing to share what they do and perhaps even how much money they make doing it?"

GCC 4.3.0 Exposes a Kernel Bug 256

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @12:25AM from the my-flag-boy-told-your-flag-boy dept.

ohxten sends news from earlier this month that GCC 4.3.0's new behavior of not clearing the direction flag before a string operation on x86 systems poses problems with kernels — such as Linux and BSD — that do not clear the direction flag before a signal handler is called, despite the ABI specification.

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