kiran_n - Slashdot User

Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @05:53PM from the vlc-generally-rocks dept.

plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."

Submission + - Broadband Rights & The Killer App of 1900 (publicola.net)

Submitted by newscloud on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:18AM

newscloud writes: Tech writer Glenn Fleishman compares the arguments against affordable, high speed, broadband Internet access in each home to arguments made against providing for common access to electricity in 1900 e.g. "...electric light is not a necessity for every member of the community. It Is not the business of any one to see that I use electricity, or gas, or oil in my house, or even that I use any form of artificial light at all." Says Fleishman, "Electricity should go to people who had money, not hooked up willy-nilly to everyone...Like electricity, the notion of whether broadband is an inherent right and necessity of every citizen is up for grabs in the US. Sweden and Finland have already answered the question: It’s a birthright" In the meantime, DIY: cut your cable bill.

Bookmark Cringely and Databases (pbs.org)

by kiran_n on Friday October 03, 2008 @07:17PM

Feed Thumb-Print Banking Takes India (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Friday January 19, 2007 @03:12AM

A pilot program developed to help illiterate farmers use cash machines could revolutionize personal banking. If it takes off, a billion Indians will need only a thumb print to withdraw cash. Scott Carney reports from Chennai, India.

Submission + - British "secure" passports code cracked

Submitted by hard-to-get-a-nickna on Friday November 17, 2006 @01:54AM

hard-to-get-a-nickna writes: The Guardian has cracked the so-trumpeted secure British passports after 48 hours of work : "Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes?"

Choosing Your Next Programming Job — Perl Or .NET? 426

Posted by Cliff on Thursday November 09, 2006 @07:25AM from the which-is-the-better-choice-for-a-developer's-career dept.

Trebonius asks: "I have just received two job offers in the same day. The first was for a job coding in Perl on Linux/UNIX platforms, for a small but very cool company around 120 miles from where I live. They play Half-Life together in the off-hours and the people I've talked to there seem very happy with the job and work environment there. I'd be making smallish web systems, and I'd basically have total control over the projects on which I work. They offered me 20% more than I make now. The second offer I received is for a huge nationwide company opening an IT office a couple blocks from where I currently work. They're an all-Microsoft shop — VB, C#, .NET, SQL200*, etc. I'd be a very small cog in a very large machine. They offered me 66% more than I'm making now. Benefits are essentially identical between the companies, so that's not a big factor. I'll also give the Perl company a chance to make me another offer, but what should the threshold be? How do you folks balance the desire for a fun job with the need to pay off debt?"

Submission + - Charity shuns open source code

Submitted by

brown-eyed slug

on Thursday November 09, 2006 @07:20AM

brown-eyed slug writes: "The BBC has an article explaining Christian Aid's decision to use Microsoft software in preference to Linux. It re-opens the classic debate about the total cost of ownership, highlighting the wider availability of Microsoft skills, as well as the beneficial pricing policy of the Seattle giant.

From the article
"...one of the things that we find is that Microsoft is viewed as the big, bad organisation — but they've actually got some good corporate social responsibility. If you're a charity or an educational institution, you pay pence in the pound for the licence, compared to what a major bank might pay."
"

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