martynd - Slashdot User

Submission + - NASA Seeks Help of Amateur Radio Community (nasa.gov)

Submitted by clm1970 on Thursday January 20, 2011 @04:29PM

clm1970 writes: In another conventional use for an arguably unconventional hobby given the technology of 2011 NASA is requesting the help of Amateur Radio or "ham operators" to help listen to a beacon signal of a nano-satellite. Many say the hobby is dying but for every "death knell" it seems another application brings it back to life to prove its usefulness.

Submission + - Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn 6

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @05:03PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The LA Times reports that Orange County officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for replacing the grass on their lawn with wood chips and drought-tolerant plants reducing their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009. The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their frontyard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water — and hundreds of dollars — each year. "We've got a newborn, so we want to start worrying about her future," said Quan Ha, an information technology manager for Kelley Blue Book. But city officials told the Has they were violating several city laws that require that 40% of residential yards be landscaped predominantly with live plants. Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery — lavender, rosemary, horsetail and pittosporum, among others but according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards. At the end of January, the Has received a letter saying they had been charged with a misdemeanor violation and must appear in court. The couple could face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for their grass-free, eco-friendly landscaping scheme. "It's just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money," says Quan Ha."

Comment VIRUS DETECTED! (Score 1) 951

by martynd on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @02:40AM (#31327096) Attached to: How Do You Get Users To Read Error Messages?

Clearly you just need to make it a popup resembling My Computer stating in massive bold capitals VIRUS DETECTED ON YOUR COMPUTER! TO REMOVE IT DO THE FOLLOWING:

Followed by your error message. Clearly this works for the malware industry, why shouldnt it work for legitimate folks like us?

Submission + - Game company abandons employees, takes IP. (tsumea.com)

Submitted by snicho99 on Friday February 19, 2010 @07:16PM

snicho99 writes: A US owned gaming company has fled Australia, leaving unpaid employees and a massive tax bill. Apparently many staff have been working unpaid for months to allow their game to ship and hopefully the company to recover. Interzone's Perth (Western Australia) office was created with the assistance of a state government grant.

Last week Interzone's (American) CEO entered the building at night and removed all the servers and IP so that Interzone could continue production at a new company they have opened in Ireland. The staff cought him on camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYyr_lX98Bw .

More background here:
http://kranzky.rockethands.com/2010/02/13/interzone-the-downward-spiral/

Submission + - Is Internet Explorer 6/7 support actually required (frozenrails.eu) 3

Submitted by k33l0r on Tuesday February 09, 2010 @02:49PM

k33l0r writes: Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, has me wondering whether we (web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and 7?

Especially when creating web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade?

Recently I (and my colleagues) had to decide whether it was worth our time to try and support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separately set up page explaining that the site is not accessible with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For us this was easy once we saw from our analytics that under 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all.

Have you had to make choices like this and, if so, what was your reasoning behind the decision?

Comment This week we all died a little (Score 1) 1

by martynd on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:36PM (#31026546) Attached to: Oracle Disappears Community MySQL

I noticed the exact same thing yesterday. To start with i thought i was just going crazy, then i noticed the Oracle logo in the bottom right along with the site changes, and decided now would be a good time to jump off a bridge. Downloads were still linked from the dev.mysql.com site, but unless you already knew that, theres no way to get there from the main mysql site anymore Also the nice list of downloads has been changed. It assumes i could only want mysql for the machine im currently working on. Im pretty sure most mysql devs are installing it on remote machines, not their current one, but hey, what to do i know?

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