Vulva R. Thompson, P - Slashdot User

Comment Re:OSM State of the Map, Google Our Maps and more (Score 1) 61

by Vulva R. Thompson, P on Monday December 31, 2007 @02:24PM (#21868074) Attached to: Online Collaboration Creates 'Map-Making For the Masses'

Regarding the map update links, is there any reason to bother submitting new/updated street data? The only benefit is to Nokia and Tom-tom, both large publicly traded companies. Their proprietary datasets costs tens of thousands of dollars to license and you're saving them money in physical mapping costs while getting nothing in return.

It's not like the updates benefit a publicly accessible database like Tiger or Openstreetmap.

Journal Journal: SP1 Won't Stop IT Execs From Closing Door on Vista. 4

Journal by twitter on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:55PM

Computer World interviewed several CIOs to to find out why big companies are not moving to Vista. Despite wild sales claims, M$ won't say how many people are actually using Vista. Previous studdies show IT has not bought in. The news is that SP1 does not impress them and why.

Submission + - Free Pascal 2.2 has been released (freepascal.org)

Submitted by

Daniel Mantione

on Monday September 10, 2007 @03:24PM

Daniel Mantione writes: "Free Pascal 2.2 has been released. Several new platforms are supported, like the Mac OS X on Intel platform, the Game Boy Advance, Windows CE and 64-Windows. Free Pascal is now the first and only free software compiler that target 64-bit Windows. These advancements were made possible by Free Pascal's internal assembler and linker allowing support for platforms not supported by the GNU binutils. The advancement in internal assembling and linking also allow faster compilation times and smaller executables, increasing the programmer comfort. Other new features are stabs debug support, many new code optimizations, resourcestring smartlinking and more.

Further, Free Pascal has become extremely powerfull in developing portable software over the last years. The release article explains why."

Submission + - Brain Differences In Democrats and Republicans

Submitted by i_like_spam on Monday September 10, 2007 @12:24PM

i_like_spam writes: Scientists from NYU and UCLA report in Nature Neuroscience that the brains of Democrats and Republicans process information differently. This new study finds that the differences are apparent even when the brain processes common information, not just political topics. From the study, liberals were more likely to be accurate and showed more brain activity in the region associated with analyzing conflicts. A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.' Moreover, 'the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry ... as a flip-flopper.

Submission + - Toshiba boosts hard drive density by 50%

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08, 2007 @10:20AM

An anonymous reader writes: Toshiba has unveiled a ground breaking technology that boosts recording density on an 80GB 1.8-inch single platter drive by 50%. Using the Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology Toshiba was able to pack 120GB storage on a single 1.8-inch platter. The new development will hugely benefit media player, UMPC, and ultra-portable laptop segment where 1.8" drive with maximum possible capacity are in great demand.

Feed Engadget: Nepal Airlines sacrifices two goats to fix a 757 (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Saturday September 08, 2007 @04:52AM

Filed under: Transportation

We've definitely done some crazy things to fix our gear -- we swear our Sawtooth Power Mac G4 actually ran faster after we dumped a can of Diet Coke into it -- but we've never gone as Nepal Airlines recently did. Faced with intractable mechanical problems on one of the fleet's two 757 jets, authorities at the state-run airline apparently sacrificed two goats to the Hindu god Akash Bhairab (pictured in the airline's logo, to the right) in front of the plane, which promptly took the skies again problem-free. That's pretty much all the information anyone has, but Nepal Airlines has confirmed that "the snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights." We're not going to comment on anyone's religious beliefs here, but that had to have been the weirdest pilots' announcement of all time.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - Best programming practices for Web developers 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08, 2007 @12:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: Web pages have become a major functional component of the daily lives of millions of people; you, the Web developer, are in a position to make that part of everyone's lives better. Why not try using traditional computer programming and best practices of software engineering.

Viacom Says User Infringed His Own Copyright 404

Posted by kdawson on Thursday August 30, 2007 @08:46AM from the catch-44 dept.

Chris Knight writes "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. I 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. I just 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!"

Submission + - HSI to reconsider its vote on OOXML (noooxml.org)

Submitted by

ens0niq

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @06:39AM

ens0niq writes: "Mr János Kóka, Minister of Economy and Transport, has sent a mail to György Pónyai, General Director of Hungarian Standards Institution (HSI), about its the Hungarian vote on OOXML issue. In this mail the minister informed the director, that the IBM Magyarországi Kft (the Hungarian subsidiary of IBM) signed concerns about the way how the Hungarian vote was decided on the OOXML issue (draft of ISO/IEC DIS 25900 standard) on the meeting of the Committee on 25th June 2007. As known, the meeting was organized breaking the internal rules of HSI on decisive meetings. The invitations for the meeting were not sent to the parties in time, then the voting rules were changed by the secretary of the Committee so that only the 50% of the votes is enough for a decision instead of the 2/3 lied down in the original rules. Because of these circumstances, the counterinterested parties were not able to vote on the meeting, therefore the official Hungarian opinion on the issue is "yes" for OOXML as ISO standard. However because of these anomalies, the minister has ordered HSI to restore the juridical situation, and repeat the vote on 31th August 2007. Since then, new members have been inaugurated to the committee of the HSI, where the only requirement of membership is a fee of 100-200 euros. Many of the new members seem to have tight relationships with Microsoft."

Submission + - GPL Violations On Windows Go Unnoticed?

Submitted by Scott_F on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @03:36PM

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?

Journal Journal: BioShock for the PC - Installation Limit 2

Journal by Pyrix on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @06:47PM

Kotaku are reporting that the PC version of BioShock, the new FPS from 2k Games, can only be installted twice - ever. The game uses SecuROM technology, which verifies the installation of the game remotely, and once the game has been installed twice, it cannot be installed, on any PC, again. So if you get a new PC, and reinstall BioShock, thats it, if you eve

Journal Journal: Presidential Candidates' Tech Records

Journal by anaesthetica on Monday August 20, 2007 @07:14PM

Technology Daily features an overview of each major U.S. Presidential candidate's record on technology issues. The information was "compiled from the Congressional Record, speeches and statements on campaign Web sites." Third party candidates are ignored, but eight Democrats and eight Republicans are covered. This information is an i

Submission + - DMCA means you cannot delete files on your own PC (wired.com)

Submitted by

DragonHawk

on Monday August 20, 2007 @05:03PM

DragonHawk writes: "According to Wired, John Stottlemire found a way to print duplicate coupons from Coupons.com by deleting some files and registry entires on his PC. Now he's being sued for a DMCA violation. He says, "All I did was erase files or registry keys." Says a lawyer: "It may cover this. I think it does give companies a lot of leverage and a lot of power." So now the copyright cartels are saying that not only can we not copy things on our computers, but we cannot delete things on our computers. Time to buy stock in Seagate."

Submission + - AMD Backs openSUSE with Huge New Infrastructure (opensuse.org)

Submitted by

apokryphos

on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:56PM

apokryphos writes: "AMD has helped sponsor the progress of openSUSE with leading-edge hardware and development expertise. "AMD is helping to ensure that the openSUSE Build Service continues to be an important collaboration and development platform for developers of all distributions," said Terri Hall, AMD vice president of Commercial Systems Marketing. "AMD recognizes the value of the open source development model, and by providing hardware for the openSUSE Build Service, we are able to actively participate in the continued innovation for which the open source community is known."

Are these continued announcements of huge support from large OEMs an indication of a new era?"

Submission + - How to bring down Internet Explorer in six words (commandline.org.uk) 1

Submitted by

Marcion

on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @02:34PM

Marcion writes: "Some handy Japanese guy called Hamachiya discovered a bug in Internet Explorer. Under certain conditions, an asterisk when used as a wildcard can crash IE as soon as the user attempts to go to another webpage. Feel free to add the code to your stylesheet too!"

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