Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment The people running the site ARE NOT IT Admins (Score 5, Informative) 780

So they had no real backup strategy....but what happened to them REALLY REALLY sucks. It really irks me seeing so many comments saying these "retards" had it coming to them.

Listen folks....we're talking about a couple of guys who spent their free time creating a website. They're not making any real money out of this (in fact, they all have regular day jobs).

They've been advertising for a Tech Manager (non-paid) for quite a quite so time now. They did get one recently...but it turns out the guy harvested the emails from the systems and sent out a bunch of spam. He has since been fired.Even though the avsim folks aren't saying it was him who hacked and destroyed their site, it's quite hard not to think it was him.

It's been quite a blow to the flightsim community and I have noticed a lot of IT folks are offering help.....I just haven't seen a single one on this thread.
Programming

Submission + - Multi threaded programming without the pain

holden karau writes: "Gigahertz are out and cores are in. Now more than ever, programmers must begin to develop applications that takes advantage of increasing number of cores present in computers today. However, up until now, multi-threaded development has not been easy. Researcher Stefanus Du Toit discusses and demonstrates a software system (RapidMind) he co-authored that takes the pain away from multi-threaded programming in C++. For his demo, he created a program on the PlayStation 3, consisting of thousands of chickens, each independently processed by a single processing core. The talk itself is interesting, but the demo is golden."
AMD

AMD A Ripe Target For Buyout? 108

SpiceMonkey writes "AMD stock was up 6.74% on Monday on rumors that AMD is a prime buyout target. After their purchase of ATI, they've been pressed to maintain their aggressive policy of chip production increases. As a result, the AMD message board on Yahoo! is full of speculation on who has their eyes on the company. Many folks there think that IBM is the right buyer for the company. There's no firm word that AMD is even being considered for purchase, but it's certainly and interesting prospect."
Communications

Newton's Ghost Haunts Apple's iPhone 381

PetManimal writes "David Haskin has looked back at why the Newton failed in the early PDA market, and warns that Apple may be setting itself up for a similar failure with the iPhone. The iPhone shares with the Newton a hefty starting price, and Joe Public may not be so keen on the cost, as recent survey data suggests. Moreover, the iPhone will have to deal with two additional factors that were not issues for the Newton: Competition, and wireless service providers: 'Besides overcharging for iPhone, Apple faces significant competition, something it didn't face in 1993 when it launched Newton. And you can bet that competition from the likes of Samsung and LG will both be good (although probably not as good as iPhone) and most assuredly cheaper... I'm more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular. If Apple doesn't respond quickly by lowering the price and making nice to AT&T..., iPhone may well become Apple's next Newton.'"
Windows

Submission + - Windows Vista worse for user efficiency than XP

erikvlie writes: "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse in those areas than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarised the most important findings."
User Journal

Journal Journal: I want to personally thank

Lib. for her kindness in giving me an employment reference. I had to refresh her memory but she was a professional of the utmost. As a reciprocated thank you, my husband and I bought extra life insurance from that respected company even though I disliked the way they now outsource their customer service calls. In an imperfect world, we can only try to do our best. It is sad when intentional sub-mediocrity is rewarded and the law is violated. Thank God for our veterans and police and firefig
Unix

Submission + - Getting out of tech support

An anonymous reader writes: For the last year or so I've been working in 1st line tech support at a small call centre that's part of a much larger outsourcing company and to be honest it's sucking the life out of me, I want change but I don't know what direction to take in order to get out and I really need some advice from others who have made the jump.

I'm in my mid-twenties and I've taken a number of college-level courses, a couple of those being computer engineering courses, some math and a few others that I found interesting, in the process I also managed to procure a fairly large amount of debt in the form of student loans, nothing I can't handle but I don't really want more debt although going back to get a degree is one possibility. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do except that I want to do something a bit more "real", to actually fix problems instead of just talking to customer after customer and then submitting tickets for someone else to fix the problem. From what I've understood from older acquaintances moving from tech support to other positions was actually a good way to go back when a lot of companies handled their own tech support, but for me there isn't much of a career path at this company as we only handle 1st line support, 2nd line and all above is done by the client companies themselves.

I'd really like to get more into sysadmin type work, or at least something where you spend more time solving problems and managing systems than you do arguing with irrate customers over how they have to call customer service for billing questions as technical support can't handle those problems. I suppose what I'd like to know is what kind of jobs one should be looking for coming from technical support with decent knowledge of UNIX, networking, scripting and "light coding". Is there any hope for me or will I have to go back to school in order to even have employers look at my resume?
IBM

IBM Refuses To Certify Oracle Linux 124

Andrew writes "IBM has thrown a spanner in the Oracle Linux works by refusing to certify that IBM's software portfolio will run and be supported on Oracle Unbreakable Linux. If IBM applications turn out to be incompatible with Oracle Linux, then it will be up to Oracle to resolve any issues. This conservative stance of IBM's is unlikely to help Oracle sell Linux subscriptions to businesses that use any of IBM's large software portfolio."
The Courts

Bloggers Immune From Suits Against Commenters 142

An anonymous reader writes "Suppose a commenter posts a libelous comment here at Slashdot. Can Slashdot and its owners be sued for defamation? A federal appeals court just held that no, they cannot. The court noted that a federal law was designed to ensure that 'within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,' adding that, were the law otherwise, it would have an 'obvious chilling effect' on blogger speech."

Slashdot Top Deals

"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

Working...