cyberianpan - Slashdot User

Comment People Skills (Score 1) 541

by cyberianpan on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:04PM (#20391509) Attached to: Transitioning From Developer To Management?

Well number 1 is "people skills" - now I'm assuming that you have them already but you need to identify + reflect on your strengths & weaknesses in this area. I strongly recommend Emotional Intelligence + Working with Emotional Intelligence - this is 2 books in 1 - the 2nd having case studies & examples. Remember you can't be what you are not but you need to gain a little more insight into yourself in order to be on top of others.

On the intellectual side ? Move away from "perfect" solutions- begin to live with having to make optimal, even sub optimal decisions to keep things moving. Remember often having 80% of something today is more important than having 100% next week. Learn to live with being "wrong".

Oh yeah, also when your developers give you a work estimate: multiply it by 2.5 ;-)

Submission + - Man sues Gateway because he can't read EULA

Submitted by Scoopy on Thursday June 07, 2007 @12:02PM

Scoopy writes: California resident Dennis Sheehan took Gateway to small claims court after he reportedly received a defective computer and little technical support from the PC manufacturer. Gateway responded with their own lawyer and a 2-inch thick stack of legal docs, and claimed that Sheehan violated the EULA, which requires that users give up their right to sue and settle these cases in private arbitration. Sheehan responded that he never read the EULA, which pops up when the user first starts the computer, because the graphics were scrambled — precisely the problem he had complained to tech support in the first place. A judge sided with Sheehan on May 24 and the case will proceed to small claims court.

A lawyer is quoted as saying that Sheehan, a high school dropout who is arguing his own case, is in for a world of hurt: 'This poor guy now faces daunting reality of having to litigate this on appeal against Gateway...By winning, he's lost.'

Submission + - Why Doesn't Microsoft Have A Cult Religion?

Submitted by

rs232

on Saturday May 12, 2007 @01:50PM

rs232 writes: "'Apple has one. So does the Java community, Oracle, IBM, and Google. Lord knows anyone who uses Linux or free and open source software is dedicated to spreading the gospel of St. Linus Torvalds and St. Richard Stallman. But does anyone really worship the Gods of Redmond?'

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2007/05/why_doesnt_micr.html"

Submission + - Google to be our Web anti virus protector ?

Submitted by cyberianpan on Friday May 11, 2007 @12:10PM

cyberianpan writes: For some time we've noticed warning on Google searches that "this site may harm your computer" when Google has tagged the site as containing malware. Now Google is further publicising the level of infection in a paper titled: The Ghost In The Browser. Google are now promising to "identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious"- Google with its powerful crawling abilities & data centres is best positioned to do this. This is potentially a very useful service but not all URLs we visit are from Google searches, some we still type in, others as links from pages. However could we soon expect a Firefox add in that will filter all http requests through Google ? So then our new overlords will indeed know everything about our web-habits ?

Submission + - Virtual rape is traumatic but is it a crime ?

Submitted by cyberianpan on Friday May 04, 2007 @05:26AM

cyberianpan writes: Wired is carrying commentary on the story that Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape — in Second Life. For reasons of civil liberty & clarity we'd like to confine criminal law to physical offences rather than thought crimes but already threats , menace & conspiracy count as crimes. Could we see a situation where our laws extend ? What if people started signing contracts that made Second Life criminal law "real" ?

Journal Journal: Ohio University blocks P2P File sharing 425

Journal by jedijoe9 on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @04:44PM

After receiving the highest number of notices from the RIAA about P2P file sharing, Ohio University has announced a policy that restricts all file sharing on the campus network. Some file-sharing programs that could trigger action are Ares, Azureus, BitTorrent, BitLord, KaZaA, LimeWire, Shareaza and uTorrent. Claiming that this effort is "to ensure that every student,

Submission + - The SEC is getting closer to Jobs

Submitted by Strudelkugel on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @04:35PM

Strudelkugel writes: CNN is reporting that the ex-CFO of Apple warned Steve Jobs about backdating options. FTA: "Apple's former finance chief Fred Anderson blamed Apple CEO Steve Jobs for a 2001 stock option grant that was backdated, according to a statement from Anderson's lawyer released Tuesday. The statement was released by Anderson's lawyer, Jerome Roth, after Anderson settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission related to Apple's stock option plan without admitting or denying any wrongdoing." This is serious business. It is quite possible that the SEC could someday require Jobs to resign from Apple. If that happens, is Apple only as good as Jobs' creative mind, or will the company continue successfully as it has since Jobs returned? Who is capable of replacing Jobs?

Submission + - Digital Camera Or Camera Phone?

Submitted by on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @03:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: CNet.co.uk has tested camera phones alongside digital cameras to see which device takes the best quality pictures. The results are surprising, with Nokia's latest handset that features a built-in 5-megapixel camera, taking more vibrant pictures in medium light conditions than a 10-megapixel dSLR. Of course, the pictures aren't fully representative of how the images would look at full size but given that most people resize images to put on Flickr, it could be possible that we'll start to see a massive decline in dedicated digital cameras sales and an increase in camera phone sales.

Submission + - Ed Foster: Spy Act of 2007 = "Vendors Can Spy

Submitted by strick1226 on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @03:09PM

strick1226 writes: Ed Foster describes the Spy Act bill (H.R. 964) as being for the prevention of spyware what the Can Spam Act was for the allowing of Spam. Unfortunately, it allows exceptions for companies to utilize spyware for any number of reasons. Most troubling is that this bill would pre-empt all state laws, including those more focused on the privacy of an individual's data. It is expected to pass soon with "strong bipartisan support."

Submission + - Next-gen, high-performance processor unveiled

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @02:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: The prototype for a new general-purpose processor, which has the potential of reaching trillions of calculations per second, has been designed and built by a team at the University of Texas at Austin. Each TRIPS chip contains two processing cores, each of which can issue 16 operations per cycle with up to 1,024 instructions in flight simultaneously. Currently, ScienceBlog.com reports, high-performance processors are typically designed to sustain a maximum execution rate of four operations per cycle.

Feed Recoll: A search engine for the Linux desktop (slashdot.org)

From feed by lcfeed on Monday April 23, 2007 @01:32PM

Desktop search engines are all the rage these days. While Beagle may be the most popular desktop search engine for Linux, there are alternatives. If you are looking for a lightweight and easy-to-use yet powerful desktop search engine, you might want...

Submission + - succinct definition of the internet?

Submitted by magnamous on Monday April 23, 2007 @12:17PM

magnamous writes: Ever since Senator Ted Stevens used the phrase "series of tubes" to describe his understanding of the Internet, I've noticed several stories and comments on Slashdot referencing how silly that is, the latest one being this one. Although I agree that that description is rather silly, each time I've found myself trying to come up with a succinct layman's definition of what the Internet is, and I come up short. Wikipedia has a gargantuan page describing the Internet, and Google's definitions offer pretty good descriptions of what the Internet is in a functional sense (with some throwing in terms that the layman wouldn't understand, or take the time to understand), but not really a good description of what it "is" in the physical sense that I think Sen. Stevens was trying to get at. What are your suggestions for a succinct layman's definition of the Internet?

I know some would say that laypeople should take the time to learn the technical, more accurate meaning of what the Internet is. The problem is that they won't. We all know laypeople. I live with two of them. When you start talking about "TCP/IP" or "DNS," or if you get far enough to start describing those terms, their eyes glaze over. That's what makes them laypeople — they don't care about the subject enough to learn about it in-depth; if they did, they'd be computer enthusiasts. So please keep in mind that, in order for this discussion to be useful, "succinct" and "layman's" are essential parts to any definition of the Internet given here. Also keep in mind that "succinct" doesn't necessarily mean one sentence; a relatively short paragraph would be fine, too — the main goal is to come up with something that physically describes the Internet which laypeople actually understand.

Feed ISP Kicks Out User Who Exposed Vulnerability; Doesn't Fix Vulnerability (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Friday April 20, 2007 @09:52AM

Over the past few years, there have been plenty of examples of companies with security vulnerabilities blaming the messenger when the vulnerabilities are pointed out, often threatening them with time in jail. The end result, of course, is that many security researchers are afraid to report vulnerabilities, as they may be blamed for them. Of course, that doesn't mean that others haven't found the same vulnerabilities and started using them for malicious purposes. The latest such case is pointed out by Broadband Reports and involves an ISP in the UK called BeThere. Apparently, a college student discovered and published a pretty major vulnerability found in the routers the company uses, allowing anyone to access the routers remotely. Rather than thank the customer for finding and highlighting a pretty serious vulnerability, the company has cut off his service and threatened him with lawsuits. Oh yeah, they also haven't bothered to fix the vulnerability -- despite it being published 7 weeks ago. The reasoning from the ISP is astounding. They claim that since they can't find any evidence that anyone ever used the vulnerability, he must have discovered it by "illegal" means. Who knew that simply probing for security vulnerabilities was illegal? And, of course, the ISP told the guy he's not allowed to talk about its legal threat to him -- which isn't actually legally binding. It's not clear if the ISP doesn't understand what it's done or simply doesn't want to fix the vulnerability -- but the fact that it seems to think it's ok to leave the vulnerability there and just cut off the guy who pointed it out should make other customers of BeThere wonder about how the ISP treats their security.

Feed UMPCs: still a gimmick despite Intel's best efforts? (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Friday April 20, 2007 @09:52AM

It's the battery life, stupid

Analysis Intel's ultra-mobility chief, Anand Chandrasekher, when questioned by Register Hardware this week, was suspiciously unwilling to say how long machines based on the firm's new Ultra Mobile Platform (UMP) will run between battery charges. How long you can use UMPCs for is as crucial to their success as the ability to run a standard operating system.

Submission + - MySpace takes on Google News and Digg

Submitted by cyberianpan on Thursday April 19, 2007 @12:44PM

cyberianpan writes: MySpace is going into the news business with a service that will scour the internet for news stories and let users vote on which ones receive the most exposure. This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence
This could be the holy grail of internet news, not merely will you be able to tap into the wisdom of the crowds but ultimately your recommended stories could be influenced/suggested by your friend's taste/choices or better still your hero's. Myspace may then become the dominant internet portal.

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