ReidMaynard - Slashdot User

Submission + - Barak Obama's Iowa Campaign Office Burglarized

Submitted by vic-traill on Sunday July 08, 2007 @08:17PM

vic-traill writes: News outlets are reporting the news that Barak Obama's Iowa Campaign headquarters have been broken into. An event sure to evoke memories of Watergate and accusations and suspicions of Dirty Tricks. So, is it a random event intended to scoop two laptops, or is the Presidential race getting uglier?

Submission + - Elderly Woman Jailed for Not Watering Lawn

Submitted by i_like_spam on Sunday July 08, 2007 @03:05PM

i_like_spam writes: BBC news is running a story about Betty Perry, a 70-year-old resident of Orem, Utah. Betty was cited and sent to jail for not watering her lawn. Like many other communities around the country, Orem (aka 'Family City USA') has rules mandating that residents maintain and water their lawns. In terms of privacy, is it right for communities to enforce lawn maintenance? And, in this day and age of energy and water conservation, shouldn't well-manicured lawns be a thing of the past?

Submission + - How to read 20,000 tech articles a month (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by jeffery holmes on Sunday July 08, 2007 @02:18PM

jeffery holmes writes: An interesting and amusing article at CNet explains how it's possible to read over 20,000 technology articles a month, with analogies about using RSS readers to work like 'Magic Eye' images. Obviously, it's different for a journalist than for those with time-demanding jobs, but the article explains intricacies that the average Slashdot reader could employ to gain a much broader intellect from the technology world around them.

Submission + - Donald Michie AI pioneer dead in accident

Submitted by smcleish on Sunday July 08, 2007 @01:53AM

smcleish writes: According to the BBC TV news (it hasn't hit their website yet), Professor Donald Michie (aged 84) and his ex-wife Dame Anne McLaren were killed when the car they were travelling in left the M11 motorway between Cambridge and London in the UK. Most recently at Edinburgh University, Donald Michie's worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War on the German "Tunny" cipher and developed one of the first programs capable of learning to play Tic-Tac-Toe (noughts and crosses to us Brits) in 1960. The program was implemented using matchboxes and beads, due to the lack of computer equipment. His biography on the Smart Computing website can be read here.

Submission + - Independence Day snapshot on energy (rangefuels.com)

Submitted by

mdsolar

on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @01:26PM

mdsolar writes: "As anticipated, the 4th of July deadline for presenting comprehensive legislation on Energy Independence and Reversing Global Warming set by Speaker Pelosi has been a muddle. There are still many more details to work out and perhaps we'll see something solid by the beginning of September. So, in place of a big complex set of bills to chew over, I thought I'd post a few of results from a search for "Energy Independence" from Google's news button.

Democtratic Presidential Candidate Bill Richardson didn't miss the date. He says he'll fix things up if you elect him.

A Portuguese utility is buying a major American wind farm.

Oil sets a 10-month high.

And, Georgia approves a 100 million gallon annual production capacity cellulosic ethanol plant that works like this.

As we celebrate our political independence does this snapshot provide encouragement for energy independence?"

Submission + - Soaring Wages in India Stem Offshore Outsorcing

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @03:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal front page ($$$) reports that soaring wages for Indian software developers are changing the flow of jobs: In a "new twist on the outsourcing debate", American businesses have "soaked up the pool of high-end engineers ... belying the notion of an unlimited supply of top Indian engineering talent."

Submission + - How To Promote Your Website? (globaltics.net)

Submitted by

ReidMaynard

on Thursday June 28, 2007 @06:09PM

ReidMaynard writes: "I know their are a lot of website owners out there, and I have finally joined the ranks. Now I'm trying to get a more traffic. I've seen some software tools, but have heard some bad stories about being bumped to the bottom-of-the-search-list by doing it wrong. What methods have others used? As usual, price is an issue, but not a deal breaker."

Submission + - world's largest mobile solar shower (navitron.org.uk)

Submitted by

ivan lucas

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @08:16AM

ivan lucas writes: "Speaks for itself — Navitron Ltd have implemented the world's largest solar shower unit at Glastonbury. Will provide up to 8000litres per day of hot showers. Also to be rolled out for the Big Green Gathering in August.

Full details, pictures and press release available on the webpage (www.navitron.org.uk/glastonbury.htm)

Hope you can include it!

Thanks

Ivan"

Submission + - T-Mobile mistakenly sells cellphone with porn (blorge.com)

Submitted by

destinyland

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @04:54AM

destinyland writes: "T-Mobile sold a woman a new cellphone, but when she got home it had 60 X-rated pictures on it. T-Mobile's phone rep wrongly insisted she or her boyfriend had taken the photos, or they'd received them via email and added them to their phone's photo gallery. T-Mobile later admitted an "isolated incident," and said they were taking "appropriate measures" to correct it. Apparently the number they assigned the phone corresponded to an already-existing photo gallery.

Besides the corporate incompetence, there's privacy implications. Whose naked photos did T-Mobile just hand out at the mall? And if you have time, watch the local newscasters feigning alarm."

Submission + - FBI to restrict student freedoms (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:57AM

amigoro writes: "US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues' work, have friends outside America, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI. Feds are going around briefing top universities including MIT about "espionage indicators" aimed at identifying foreign agents and terrorists who might steal university research."

Submission + - Generating a CAPTCHA of your email address (jgc.org)

Submitted by

JohnGrahamCumming

on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @08:26AM

JohnGrahamCumming writes: "Web crawlers that search for email addresses on web sites are a big problem. My simple and free email image generator service generates a randomized image containing your email adddress. Simply copy and paste the relevant HTML to your web site to get a human-readable image that contains your email address but hides it from web crawlers."

Submission + - MBA as a Fresher - What can I learn?

Submitted by on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @08:16AM

An anonymous reader writes: I am an CS Engineer with no work experience. I have taken admission to the MBA course run by a prestigious national institute in India. Is there anybody else who had done this and would like to share their experience? Is there anything in particular that I should try to learn, outside of what is taught as curriculum? What, in your opinion, are the most important skills required to run a business successfully? Is there anything you did/didn't do that you regret or are particularly happy you did??

Submission + - Ubuntu Linux = Genuine Windows? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

bobbocanfly

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @05:16PM

bobbocanfly writes: "Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few years you will have heard about the problems with the Windows Genuine Advantage system. Well here is another one. A user at UbuntuForums.org managed to validate their Ubuntu installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows and get to the download page of Windows Defender, using IE4Linux and Wine. This along with the advancement of LiveCD technology could mean the end of Microsoft's control over who gets their updates."

Submission + - Tuning your MySQL server for LAMP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @02:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: Allocating memory to the right places and giving mysqld an idea of what type of load to expect is one of the best things you can do to pump-up your performance. This article covers MySQL tuning, which is largely about understanding how things work, determining if they're working properly, making adjustments, and re-evaluating. Each component — Linux, Apache, PHP, or MySQL — has various needs. Understanding them individually helps eliminate the bottlenecks that can slow your application.

Submission + - A book full of real-world applications of CSS (nateklaiber.com)

Submitted by

nateklaiber

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @01:37PM

nateklaiber writes: "The Art and Science of CSS was a quick read (208 pages) and packed full of valuable code examples. Unlike other CSS books that teach you the specifics of CSS with vague examples (not vague in a bad way), this book teaches you specific examples and gives you extra resources. This book is somewhat of a cookbook of commonly used CSS methods. Each author brings their unique writing style to the table, and each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of design and its CSS and styling methods.

Chapter 1 starts with Headings. The author of this chapter gives a brief introduction to hierarchy and branding, and how you can achieve more control with your look and typography. As typography is discussed, he moves on to talk about image replacement and the many techniques available to us today. There is no perfect solution when it comes to image replacement, but the author does a great job of showing current methods, their advantages, and their disadvantages (including an in-depth section on sIFR).

Chapter 2 is all about Images. The author starts by showing you how to create a basic but aesthetically pleasing image gallery. The task at hand is to create the enlarged version, the thumbnail page, and the galleries page while keeping the markup lean and semantic. Each of these are put together very nicely with flair not usually seen in off the shelf image galleries. The author also discusses how to create images (in context) with captions, including a nice use of transparent PNGs. The authors creative use of captions give you options outside of the box (both semantically and philosophically) of normal captions that are seen all around the web.

Chapter 3 shows us that backgrounds dont have to be boring. This is a very simple chapter that discusses backgrounds of the past (repeating pictures, large pictures, etc), and then looks forward to the present in getting creative with your backgrounds. He uses a case study as an example, and it shows specifics of positioning and layering.

Chapter 4 jumps into Navigation. Different types of navigations are discussed (vertical, horizontal, tabbed, variable width, etc) and shown with specific examples. The author shows how to take from each of those to create advanced navigation systems using images and your semantic markup. I think that from this chapter a user could create an advanced navigation simply because the foundation is set pretty solid before he gets to the advanced section. This chapter goes hand-in-hand with chapter 1 when talking about image replacement.

Chapter 5 discusses the dreaded (sometimes feared) Forms. Forms come in all shapes and sizes and it is up to us to build them accordingly with the user in mind. The styling in this chapter spruces up what is a rather mundane form while giving you great flexibility and hooks to extend yourself. The author discusses the several different layout types (top aligned label, left aligned label, right aligned label) and shows how to enhance each. If you work with forms often, this chapter will help you whip up a clean interface for the task.

Chapter 6 is everybodys favorite chapter Rounded Corners. The author gives you an arsenal of tools (and knowledge) to attack the task of adding rounded corners. He discusses the different methods (horizontal stretching, vertical stretching, and full flexibility) and shows you how to achieve each keeping in mind the task of keeping the markup minimal and meaningful. We also get a brief glimpse into what CSS3 will have to offer us with multiple backgrounds per element.

Chapter 7 closes out the book with Tables. Tables still have a strong place in web development and the author shows you how to use tables properly (with semantic markup) and then how to give them a little visual jump-start and interaction. The markup presented here helps you give clear meaning to your tables as well as building with accessibility in mind (which is always important with tables, specifically). We round off the chapter looking at some interaction enhancements via Javascript that we can use with our tables (sorting, striping, and hovering).

Overall I found this book to be an excellent read. It was short and to the point, and gives the reader a great starting point (as well as inspiration). The book itself is well designed. My only qualms with the book is that the code examples are listed in full in many places, which gives less room for content related to the chapters. As I said in the beginning, this was a fairly quick read but well worth it. I would say that this is for an intermediate CSS developer, as specific CSS is not discussed in great detail but given to you as a way to achieve a specific design task. If you are familiar with CSS and need a quick way to achieve the tasks listed above, then this book is perfect for you."

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