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Programming

Are Quirky Developers Brilliant Or Dangerous? 1134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-wait-a-minute dept.
jammag writes "Most developers have worked with a dude like Josh, who's so brilliant the management fawns over him even as he takes a dump in the lobby flowerpot. Eric Spiegel tells of one such Josh, who wears T-shirts with offensive slogans, insults female co-workers and, when asked about documentation, smirks, "What documentation?' Sure, he was whipsmart and could churn out code that saved the company millions, but can we please stop enabling these people?"

Comment Re:Peoples Republic? (Score 1) 609

by Tilzs (#26364283) Attached to: New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California
And then people complain that the cost of living is so high for low / middle income earners and they need more assistance from the Government. Environmental regulation in the long run costs everyone money. If one is for this sort of thing that requires EVERYONE to change their lifestyle. One can't just demand more money/breaks from the Nanny State because cost of living suddenly increased. Government begets more Government.
Businesses

3 Firms Confess To Fixing LCD Prices, Agree To Pay $585M Fine 417

Posted by timothy from the win-friends-and-influence-people dept.
Oldyeller89 writes "LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They fixed the prices on LCD screens used not only in their products but also in other products such as Apple's iPods. The three companies agreed to pay $585 million in fines. Perhaps this will cause the price of our TVs to drop?" The New York Times also has a story on the outcome of this case.
The Internet

Submission + - Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "According to a leaked internal memo, Time Warner Cable is testing out tiered bandwidth caps in their Beaumont, TX division as a way to fairly balance the needs of heavy users against the limited amount of shared bandwidth cable can provide. The plan is to offer various service tiers with bandwidth fees for overuse, as well as a bandwidth meter customers can use to help them stay within their allotment. If it works out, they will consider a nation-wide rollout. Interestingly, the memo also claims that 5% of subscribers use over 50% of the total network bandwidth."
Privacy

Submission + - U.S. courts consider legality of laptop inspection

Submitted by
ceide2000
ceide2000 writes: "The government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different from looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit.......Link

I think it is time we demand privacy as a fundamental right of our citizenship."
Windows

Submission + - More evidence that XP is Vista's main competitor (computerworld.com) 3

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is "considerably faster" than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista: 'Vista's biggest competition isn't Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it's Microsoft itself, it's XP, [Forrester Research analyst Benjamin Gray] said. So enamored of XP are businesses that Microsoft may feel obligated to extend the operating system's mainstream support past its current April 2009 expiration date. ... He attributed the lowered expectations to a lack of detailed information about Vista in 2006; too-high prices for PCs with 2GB of memory, which is essentially the minimum needed for Vista, according to company managers; and a larger-than-expected number of incompatible applications.'"
Security

Submission + - 15 million personal records lost 1

Submitted by bestweasel
bestweasel writes: The BBC reports that a UK Government department has lost discs with details of 15 million benefit recipients, including names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts. The head of the department involved, HM Revenue & Customs, has resigned and his resignation "was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection" so someone thinks it's not a trivial matter. The Chancellor will try to evade responsibility in the House of Commons at 3.30 GMT. A similar leak of a mere 15,000 records from the same department happened a month or so ago. At that time, they refused to say "on security grounds" whether the information was encrypted, which I interpreted as "no it wasn't but we're not going to admit to you how lax we are.
Math

Submission + - Open Source Mathematical Software

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The American Mathematical society has an opinion piece about open source software vs propietary software used in mathematics. From the article : "Increasingly, proprietary software and the algorithms used are an essential part of mathematical proofs. To quote J. Neubüser, 'with this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in mathematics are violated: In mathematics information is passed on free of charge and everything is laid open for checking.'"
Linux Business

Submission + - Microsoft Claims Patent On Embedded Linux? 1

Submitted by Preedit
Preedit writes: This InformationWeek story points out a recent deal between Microsoft and Japanese printer maker Kyocera Mita, under which Kyocera obtained from Microsoft a license to patents used in "certain Linux-based embedded technologies." The question everyone's asking is why Kyocera needs a patent license from Microsoft to develop its embedded Linux products.
Privacy

Submission + - White House ordered to preserve all e-mail (cnn.com)

Submitted by Verunks
Verunks writes: A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether e-mails have been destroyed in violation of federal law. The issue surfaced in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity

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I think there's a world market for about five computers. -- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943

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