Comment Re: The real reason (Score 1) 109
You'll note that those reasons are conjecture on the part of the article, but they do have some interesting thoughts on why IBM might be making the changes.
Comment Don't forget these (Score 4, Insightful) 42
Comment Another android choice (Score 1) 800
Yeah, the iris app is making good progress. See also the Jeannie app (which identifies itself as "Voice Actions" once installed). The feature set of Jeannie is better (e.g. "enable bluetooth"), but it doesn't have the iris/siri-like display of the chat dialog. Maybe these 2 apps should get together and combine forces.
Comment UNIX time vs TAI (Score 1) 376
Not so. UNIX time is strictly defined in POSIX, as are the arithmetic relationships between it and human time, e.g. a time_t % 60 gives you the elapsed seconds in the current minute, which would not be true if unix time included leap seconds.
What you are describing is TAI, or International Atomic Time. If you were to choose to run your system on TAI, you would need some conversion routines if you wanted your system to remain POSIX compatible (which is what modern unix/linux apps expect) -- e.g. time() and stat() would need to continue to report unix-time values, and you'd need TAI-compliant library functions to request the equivalent items with their raw TAI values.
For more details, see the Wikipedia entry on Unix time.
Submission + - Vista vs. the Gibbon 4
ricegf writes: If you had 7 computers running various versions of Windows and Linux, on which machine would you choose to do most of your work? Rupert Goodwins describes his experience thus: 'So here's the funny thing. I've used Windows since 1.0. I've lived through the bad times of Windows/386 and ME, and the good times of NT 3.51 and 2K. I know XP if not backwards, then with a degree of familiarity that only middle-aged co-dependents can afford each other. Then how come I'm so much more at home with Ubuntu than Vista?'
Submission + - Virtually non-stick gum created (bbc.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: A new polymer has been developed by Professor Terence Cosgrove that allows gum to become non-sticky. In testing the gum was removed by weather while the competitors gum was not removed 4 out of 5 times. There are tons of possible applications for this polymer beyond gum. More info and ideas are on their site @ www.revolymer.com
Submission + - NetApp hits Sun with patent-infringement lawsuit (computerworld.com)
jcatcw writes: Computerworld reports: "Network Appliance Inc. today announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sun Microsystems Inc. seeking unspecified compensatory damages and an injunction that would prohibit Sun from developing or distributing products based on its ZFS file system technology. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Lufkin, Texas, charges that the Sun ZFS technology infringes on seven NetApp patents pertaining to data processing systems and related software."
Submission + - GPL Violations On Windows Go Unnoticed?
Scott_F writes: I recently reviewed several commercial, closed-source slideshow authoring packages for Windows and came across an alarming trend. Several of the packages I installed included GPL and LGPL software without any mention of the GPL, much less source code. For example, DVD Photo Slideshow (www.dvd-photo-slideshow.com) included mkisofs, cdrdao, dvdauthor, spumux, id3lib, lame, mpeg2enc and mplex (all of which are GPL or LGPL). What's worse is that the company tried to hide this by wrapping them all in DLL's! There are other violations in other packages as well. It seems that use of GPL software in commercial Windows applications is on the rise based on my testing of other software. My question is how much are GPL violations in the Windows world being pursued? Does the FSF or EFF follow-up on these if the platform is not GPL? How aware is the community of this trend?
Submission + - "Viacom hit me for infringing my own copyright (blogspot.com) 2
Chris Knight writes: "Long story short: I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a "Star Wars" theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show "Web Junk 2.0". Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. It was great to see the commercial was being enjoyed by a far wider audience than I'd expected. I was honored that they chose to use it and thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. This morning I got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright! Talk about chutzpah! Needless to say, I would like to fight this: not for any kind of monetary compensation, but just for the right to employ my own self-created material per Fair Use."
Submission + - Rodriguez slaughters Open XML
Elektroschock writes: "Stephane Rodriguez, a reengineering specialist who became popular for his article on MS-Office 2007 binary data, slaughters Microsoft's new Open XML format. With small case studies he demonstrates the disadvantages for third party developers. His conclusion: It is 'defective by design'. Next week members of the International Standard Organisation are likely to approve the format as a second official ISO standard for office documents. However, most nations submitted comments. Rodriguez claims to be "not affiliated to any pro-MS or anti-MS party/org/ass"."
Submission + - Perfect crystals grown by cancelling out gravity (newscientisttech.com)
willatnewscientist writes: "Researchers in the Netherlands and Japan have found a way to grow perfect crystals in 'zero gravity' here on Earth. By exploiting the way a powerful magnet influences diamagnetic materials they have been able to grow protien crystals without the defects normally introduced as a result of gravity (The same trick has been used to levitate a frog before). Normally, such crystals are grown in space, aboard the International Space Station, for example."
SCO Loses 643
An anonymous reader writes "The one summary judgement that puts a stick into SCO's spokes has just come down. The judge in the epic SCO case has ruled that SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights. With that one decision, a whole bunch of other decisions will fall like dominoes. As PJ says, 'That's Aaaaall, Folks! ... All right, all you Doubting Thomases. I double dog dare you to complain about the US court system now. I told you if you would just be patient, I had confidence in the system's ability to sort this out in the end. But we must say thank you to Novell and especially to its legal team for the incredible work they have done. I know it's not technically over and there will be more to slog through, but they won what matters most, and it's been a plum pleasin' pleasure watching you work. The entire FOSS community thanks you for your skill and all the hard work and thanks go to Novell for being willing to see this through."
Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290
taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"
KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 249
dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."
Introducing the Slashdot Firehose 320
Logged in users have noticed for some time the request to drink from the Slashdot Firehose. Well now we're ready to start having everybody test it out. It's partially a collaborative news system, partially a redesigned & dynamic next-generation Slashdot index. It's got a lot of really cool features, and a lot of equally annoying new problems for us to find and fix for the next few weeks. I've attached a rough draft of the FAQ to the end of this article. A quick read of it will probably answer most questions from how it works, what all the color codes mean, to what we intend to do with it.
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