meeve - Slashdot User

U of Michigan and Amazon To Offer 400,000 OOP Books 160

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 23, 2009 @04:25PM from the had-no-idea-so-many-people-loved-object-oriented-pumas dept.

eldavojohn writes "Four hundred thousand rare, out of print books may soon be available for purchase ranging anywhere from $10 to $45 apiece. The article lists a rare Florence Nightingale book on Nursing which normally sells for thousands due to its rarity. The [University of Michigan] librarian, Mr. Courant said, 'The agreement enables us to increase access to public domain books and other publications that have been digitised. We are very excited to be offering this service as a new way to increase access to the rich collections of the university library.' The University of Michigan has a library where Google is scanning rare books and was the aim of heavy criticism. (Some of the Google-scanned books are to be sold on Amazon.) How the authors guild and publishers react to Amazon's Surge offering softcover reprints of out of print books remains to be seen."

Comment Re:Doesn't it do this? (Score 0) 360

by meeve on Monday March 30, 2009 @12:07PM (#27389487) Attached to: Command Lines and the Future of Firefox

Firefox's keyword feature takes a single parameter (denoted %s in the search url) and replaces it with everything but the first word of your query, so it won't use Google's I'm Feeling Lucky feature unless you enter something where the first word hasn't been defined as a search keyword.

Comment Re:Grandma can't run Linux? (Score 0) 160

by meeve on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:04PM (#27337379) Attached to: Pwn2Own 2009 Winner Charlie Miller Interviewed

What AC meant is that Linux is perfect for a particular "Grandma" use case, not perfect in all ways.

Service Via Facebook Shouldn't Always "Count" 80

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 16, 2009 @09:35AM from the one-two-threeee-ah-ah-ah dept.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A New Zealand court has allowed a plaintiff to serve papers on a defendant via Facebook, following a similar ruling from an Australian court last year. But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook 'as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.' The trend could lead to abuses if courts start taking 'Facebook service' too seriously." For more of the many words written by Bennett, hop on that curiously named link right below.

Morality of Throttling a Local ISP? 640

Posted by kdawson on Sunday March 15, 2009 @08:27PM from the what-would-larry-do dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a small (400 customers) local cable ISP. For the company, the ISP is only a small side business, so my whole line of expertise lies in other areas, but since I know the most about Linux and networking I've been stuck into the role of part-time sysadmin. In examining our backbone and customer base I've found out that we are oversubscribed around 70:1 between our customers' bandwidth and our pipe. I've gone to the boss and showed him the bandwidth graphs of us sitting up against the limit for the better part of the day, and instead of purchasing more bandwidth, he has asked me to start implementing traffic shaping and packet inspection against P2P users and other types of large downloaders. Because this is in a certain limited market, the customers really only have the choice between my ISP and dial-up. I'm struggling with the desire to give the customers I'm administering the best experience, and the desire to do what my boss wants. In my situation, what would you do?"

The Realities of Selling On Apple's App Store 223

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 10, 2009 @05:16AM from the languishing-on-the-midlist dept.

Owen Goss writes "Everyone is familiar with the story of the iPhone developer who spends two weeks of spare time making a game that goes on to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reality is that with the App Store now hosting over 25,000 apps, the competition is fierce. While it's true that a few select apps are making developers rich, the reality is that most apps don't make a lot of money. In a blog post I take a hard look at the first 24 days of sales data for the first game, Dapple, from Streaming Colour Studios. The post reflects what is likely the norm for developers just getting into the iPhone development game."

Quick Boot Linux Hopes To Win Over Windows Users 440

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 09, 2009 @11:40AM from the how-about-just-never-boot dept.

Al writes "A company called Presto hopes to exploit the painful amount of time it takes for Windows computers to start up by offering a streamlined version of Linux that boots in just seconds. Presto's distro comes with Firefox, Skype and other goodies pre-installed and the company has also created an app store so that users can install only what they really need. The software was demonstrated at this year's Demo conference in Palm Desert, CA. Interestingly, the company barely mentions the name Linux on its website. Is this a clever stealth-marketing ploy for converting Windows users to Linux?"

Windows 7 Kill Switch For IE Confirmed — For More Apps, Too 208

Posted by timothy on Friday March 06, 2009 @05:03PM from the for-just-a-few-dollars-more dept.

CWmike writes "Microsoft has confirmed that users will be able to remove its IE8 browser, as well as several other integrated applications, from Windows 7. Jack Mayo, a group program manager on the Windows team, listed in a blog post the applications that can be switched off. They include Internet Explorer 8, Fax and Scan, handwriting recognition, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Gadget Platform, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and XPS Viewer and Services. He explained that the files associated with those applications and features are not actually deleted from the hard drive. The public beta of Windows 7 does not include the ability to 'kill' said apps. But a pirated copy of Windows 7 Build 7048 includes the new removal options, and has been leaked on the Internet." (We mentioned the reported ability to turn off IE8 yesterday as well.)

Comment Facts can't be copyrighted. (Score 0) 378

by meeve on Friday March 06, 2009 @03:13AM (#27088241) Attached to: Timetable App Developer Gets Nastygram From Transit Sydney

Sorry, RailCorp, facts aren't copyrightable. As long as the developer of Transit Sydney uses a presentation or layout that differs from that used by Rail Corporation, their claim is not valid.
IANAL.

State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe 530

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 05, 2009 @05:43PM from the sheeps'-bladders-may-be-used-to-prevent-earthquakes dept.

linuxkrn writes "The State of Colorado's Office of Technology (OIT) has set up a work skills website. The problem is that the site says 'DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk.' (Original emphasis from site.) If the leading IT agency for the State is making these uneducated claims, should the people worry about their other decisions?"

Cuba Launches Own Linux Variation 494

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 12, 2009 @12:25AM from the the-people's-OS dept.

willclem writes "According to Reuters, it seems that Cuba has launched its own variation of Linux in order to fulfill its government's desire to replace Microsoft operating systems. 'Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue,' said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba's migration to free software."

February 13th, UNIX Time Will Reach 1234567890 376

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 08, 2009 @05:26PM from the less-often-than-a-stopped-clock-is-right dept.

mikesd81 writes "Over at Linux Magazine Online, Jon maddog Hall writes that on Friday the 13th, 2009 at 11:31:30pm UTC UNIX time will reach 1,234,567,890. This will be Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST. Matias Palomec has a perl script you an use to see what time that will be for you: perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";' Now, while this is not the UNIX epoch, Alan Cox does assure us that Linux is now working on 64-bit time, and the UNIX epoch 'roll-over' would happen about the time that the sun burnt out."

UK Can't Read Its Own ID Cards 205

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 05, 2009 @05:11AM from the forest-for-the-trees dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Despite the introduction of ID cards last November, it has emerged that Britain has no readers that are able to read the cards' microchips, which contain the person's fingerprints and other biometric information. With cops and border guards unable to use the cards to check a person's identity, critics are calling the £4.7bn scheme 'farcical' and a 'waste of time.'"

Users' Admin Logins Make Most Windows Malware Worse 420

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 05, 2009 @02:09AM from the protect-yourself-at-all-times dept.

nandemoari writes "A new analysis claims that over 90% of the Windows security vulnerabilities reported last year were made worse by users logged in with administrative privileges — an issue Microsoft has been hotly debating recently. According to BeyondTrust Corp., the result of the analysis of the 154 critical Microsoft vulnerabilities indicated that a full 92% could have been prevented if users were not logged into their systems with administrator status. BTC believes that restricting the number of users who can log in with these privileges will 'close the window of opportunity' for attackers. This is particularly true for users of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office."

Scientists Create Compound With a Single Element 163

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 04, 2009 @10:12PM from the a-bit-of-a-hermit dept.

rocketman768 writes "An international team of researchers including scientists at the Carnegie Institution has discovered a new chemical compound that consists of a single element: boron. Chemical compounds are conventionally defined as substances consist of two or more elements, but the researchers found that at high pressure and temperature pure boron can assume two distinct forms that bond together to create a novel 'compound' called boron boride."

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