Ingwenya - Slashdot User

PA Laptop Spying Inspires FSF Crowdsourcing Effort 135

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 13, 2010 @09:37AM from the inspiration-comes-from-many-places dept.

holmesfsf writes "Creeped out by the Lower Merion School District's remote monitoring of students? Check out the Free Software Foundation's response to the laptop spying scandal and help build a wiki listing of school districts that provide students with laptops, so that the FSF can campaign against mandatory, proprietary laptops."

Half-Male, Half-Female Fowl Explain Birds' Sex Determination 117

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 11, 2010 @04:48PM from the fish-nor-fowl-except-fowl dept.

Kanan excerpts from a BBC report out of Scotland: "A study of sexually scrambled chickens suggests that sex in birds is determined in a radically different way from that in mammals. Researchers studied three chickens that appeared to be literally half-male and half-female, and found that nearly every cell in their bodies — from wattle to toe — has an inherent sex identity. This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones." Kanan also supplies this link to some pictures of the mixed-cell birds.

Microsoft Demos Three Platforms Running the Same Game 196

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday March 07, 2010 @01:24PM from the pick-up-and-play dept.

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."

California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere 155

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 06, 2010 @12:00AM from the some-more-tea-dear? dept.

MichaelSmith writes "Scientists think that there might be arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, California. If it's shown to exist, such life could have evolved independently from our own, or it could have forked from ours at a very early stage."

Outlook 2010 Bug Creates Monster Email Files 126

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 17, 2010 @06:22PM from the rodents-of-unusual-size dept.

Julie188 writes with this snippet from Network World "Office 2010 is still in beta and a patch is already out. Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space. The Outlook product team has offered a bug fix for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems that fixes the problem going forward, although previous emails will remain super-sized. This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry."

Comment Re:He is correct (Score 1) 364

by Ingwenya on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @10:20PM (#30827602) Attached to: Why "Running IT As a Business" Is a Bad Idea

Those questions are relevant, even of CutePDF. If the end users are people preparing patents for the USPTO, they may well run into issues submitting PDF's generated with CutePDF. The USPTO has stringent requirements around the PDF format. Likewise, certain courts can have issues with different PDF's for e-filing. Don't get me wrong, I deployed it firm wide when the bean counters would not give budget for something else, but I only deployed it after due diligence.

Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off His Wi-Fi 428

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 12, 2010 @06:27PM from the have-you-never-wondered-why-I-drink-only-distilled-water-or-rain-water-and-only-pure-grain-alcohol dept.

Scyth3 writes "A man is suing his neighbor for not turning off his cell phone or wireless router. He claims it affects his 'electromagnetic allergies,' and has resorted to being homeless. So, why doesn't he check into a hotel? Because hotels typically have wireless internet for free. I wonder if a tinfoil hat would help his cause?"

Comment Ask them to bring it in... (Score 1) 466

by Ingwenya on Tuesday May 09, 2006 @11:39AM (#15293513) Attached to: Cutting Off an Over-Demanding End-User?

I work for a firm of professionals. Sometimes I get requests from shareholders or their family for assistance with PC issues. Whilst I am more than willing to help, I always ask that they bring it in for me to look at. There is sometimes the implication in the request is for me to go to their home. That I will not do as it sets a bad precedent. If the problem is bad enough that it cannot be fixed by the teenage nephew, then they bring it. Most of the time they find someone else.

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