Shmooze - Slashdot User

RMS Says "Software As a Service" Is Non-free 715

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 27, 2009 @11:00AM from the ok-thats-a-bit-inflammatory dept.

BillyG noted an RMS interview where he says "'Software as a service' means that you think of a particular server as doing your computing for you. If that's what the server does, you must not use it! If you do your computing on someone else's server, you hand over control of your computing to whoever controls the server. It is like running binary-only software, only worse: it's even harder for you to patch the program that's running on someone else's server than it is to patch a binary copy of a program running on your own computer. Just like non-free software, 'software as a service' is incompatible with your freedom."

Comment Re:Only useful if... (Score 1) 330

by Shmooze on Thursday January 04, 2007 @05:52PM (#17465338) Attached to: Google's Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm

Although since your manager usually sees your application (at least, they have wherever I've worked at!) they might notice if you put down something that's untrue, even if it takes a while.

I don't know about Google, but I know of quite a few companies that don't like that kind of thing, although it could make them more attractive if they've tweaked the results slightly, true (since I guess that might be quite hard)

I can't see that it allows candidates to be any less truthful than they normally would be to be honest

Wikipedia Blocks Qatar [Updated] 204

Posted by Hemos on Monday January 01, 2007 @10:30AM from the the-law-of-unintended-consequenceas dept.

GrumpySimon writes "Wikipedia has blocked the entire country of Qatar from editing pages. Whilst the ban is due to spam-abuse coming from the IP address in question, the fact that this belongs to the country's sole high-speed internet provider has the unintended consequence of stopping Qataris from editing the wiki. The ban has raised concerns about impartiality — the majority of Al Jazeera journalists operate out of Qatar, for example. This raises a number of issues about internet connectivity in small countries — what other internet bottlenecks like this exist?" Update: 01/02 13:32 GMT by Z : Jim Wales wrote in the comments that the story is 'completely false'. Either way, the ban has been lifted and anonymous editing is once again possible from Qatar.

Top Gadget of 2006 — The HurriQuake Nail 279

Posted by Zonk on Sunday November 26, 2006 @04:20PM from the keeping-the-roof-on dept.

eldavojohn writes "Popular Science is naming its Best of What's New of 2006 and the one at the top doesn't have much to do with circuitry or computers. Instead, it's a nail. Not your average nail though, the HurriQuake nail [flash] spent six years in development." From the article: "As the Bostitch team tweaked the head-to-shank ratio, Sutt and metallurgist Tom Stall worked on optimizing high-carbon alloys, trying to find the highest-strength trade-off between stiffness and pliability — the key to preventing snapped nails. 'Meanwhile,' Sutt says, 'we were focusing on how to keep the nail from pulling out.' The team machined a series of barbed rings that extend up the nail's shaft from its point, experimenting with the size and placement of the barbs. 'You want the rings to have maximum holding power,' he says, 'but if they go up too high, it creates a more brittle shank that shears more easily.'"

Comment Interlaced Vs Progressive (Score 1) 349

by Phatboy on Wednesday September 20, 2006 @08:47AM (#16145152) Attached to: Xbox 360 adds 1080p Support

If it is 1080p/30, I don't want it. 1080i with 60 fields per second will be superior.

Both have the same amount of detail, as they have the same resolution. But the interlaced version will feel smoother, because it's updating the screen twice as often.

So, is this just a vacuous PR stunt to try to get more attention back onto the 360? Surely not.

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