Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Very sad day (Score 5, Insightful) 63

I've been reading Slashdot on a daily basis since 1999, and so this is a very sad day for me as it's become clear that Slashot is no longer worth being a part of my regular browsing cycle.

These types of "stories" are so blatant that it's an insult to the "nerds" that have made Slashdot what it is today. Maybe they will be successful in generating a little extra revenue in the short-term, but it's being done at a cost that will eventually ruin the site.
Censorship

Cory Doctorow Draws the Line On Net Neutrality 381

Posted by kdawson from the preserving-the-next-google-from-cradle-strangulation dept.
Nerdposeur points out that Cory Doctorow has a compelling piece in The Guardian today, arguing that network neutrality is not only crucial for the future of the Internet, but is what the ISPs owe to the public. He asks, "Does anybody else feel like waving a flag after reading this?" "If the phone companies had to negotiate for every pole, every sewer, every punch-down, every junction box, every road they get to tear up, they'd go broke. All the money in the world couldn't pay for the access they get for free every day... If they don't like it, let them get into another line of work — give them 60 days to get their wires out of our dirt and then sell the franchise to provide network services to a competitor who will promise to give us a solid digital future in exchange for our generosity."

It's 2006 and Backups For Home User Still Tricky? 715

Posted by Cliff from the backup-data-density-still-lags-behind dept.
CranberryKing asks: "What is it about backups that always seems so difficult? I am trying to do a simple backup on my home XP system/s (about 30GB of files) that will write to my DVD burner. I don't want compression (most of it is MP3s, which don't compress well). I want a routine to simply write my selection to the DVD writer and spread it across however many discs are required (rather than me manually approximating and copying to each disc). I want the files on the disc readable from any system, so no proprietary backup wrapper or DAT files, please. My last attempt was using a free program that looked good called Simply Safe Backup, but it created two coasters before crashing with an unknown error. If I can just get a full backup to work smoothly, then I'll worry about scheduling, incremental, and encryption. This seems like a very common scenario for home & small offices. Is there an elegant, reliable & cheap (free) solution to this?"

The 10 Tech People Who Don't Matter 520

Posted by Hemos from the ouch-that-hurts dept.
TopShelf writes "Business 2.0 recently ran a feature on the Top 50 People Who Matter in the business world, but perhaps more interesting is their list of the 10 People Who Don't Matter. Leading off the list is a Slashdot favorite, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer..." Given, Rob's in there as well, but I'd say his company in the list is pretty decent.

AOL Tries New Tactic to Keep Customers 799

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-like-the-hotel-california dept.
Jhon writes "AOL customer Vincent Ferrari tried to cancel his account, but a phone rep wouldn't let him do it. What he got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration. Now that's customer support!"

UBC Engineers Reach Mileage Of Over 3000 MPG 625

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-exactly-your-steel-cage-suv dept.
The New Revelation writes "Physorg reports that engineers at UBC have developed a single occupancy vehicle that achieves a ridiculous 3145 MPG! From the article: 'The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle... The UBC design, which required the driver to lie down while navigating it, achieved 3,145 miles per US gallon (0.074 liters/100 km) -- equivalent of Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon (3.79 liters) of gas -- costing less than $5 at the pump.'"

John Dvorak's Eight Signs MS is Dead in the Water 711

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-we're-all-obsessed-with-google dept.
j79 writes "John Dvorak has written an opinion piece on why he believes Microsoft is dead in the water. He discusses Vista, Office 2007, MSN and MSN search, the Xbox 360, Pad-based computing, .Net, and Microsoft's obsession with Google. "

When an Algorithm Takes the Wheel 676

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the take-the-next-step-and-drive-for-me dept.
Wired has an interesting look at Jaguar's new automated driving dynamics system in their new XK convertible. From the article: "During an extreme test of the XK's handling capabilities, the car only fishtailed back and forth once after I jerked the steering wheel on a wet road around a 90 degree turn while driving at about 60 mph. The car's back wheels swung first left then right before the XK's sensors registered a difference in torque between the rear tires and, transparent to me, righted the fishtailing effect by a combination of de-acceleration, tire rotation and vehicle weight distribution control. More often than not, the sensation of flatness, as if there were a vertical force pinning the car to the road, was also felt then and when taking less extreme curves at high speeds."

Jailed Spam King Caught Conspiring to Kill Witness 290

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the spam-mafioso dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Spam king Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, is facing up to life in prison for conspiracy to tamper with a witness and up to 20 years for endeavoring to obstruct justice. The charges are based on an alleged phone call in which he threatened to have a witness or the witness' family killed to prevent them from testifying against him in an upcoming trial on drug and related charges.

Linux, to be (Like Microsoft) or Not to be? 476

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the that-is-the-question dept.
David writes "Stephen Shipman delivers a very articulate and concise view of how Linux fits in server and end user environments. He expresses his view in response to Nicolas Petreley's 'rant' in Linux Journal. He points out the subtle implications of efficiency versus consistency." From the article: "[...] efficiency (as measured by keystrokes) isn't the only metric for ease of use. Consistency must also be taken into account. Microsoft has made a lot of hay (and green) by flogging consistency".

Comment Re:Is this being totally misinterpreted? (Score 1) 798

by nakedman (#3181395) Attached to: Microsoft XP License Prohibits VNC
It is very possible.

XP Home with multiple users simply sets up a local Terminal Services session. So, when you log on you are actually logging in with Terminal Services Client. In this environment, the physical machine is more like an "application server" that sends its screen/sound/etc commands to the client. This is analagous to the original intention of X11. Most applications should run fine in this environment, even if they are run under different users at the same time.

It is possible that some applications might run into problems if they are doing weird things with waitable thread/process objects (like Mutexes, etc) and multiple logons were never taken into account during an application's design.

I'm not too sure what the intent of this licensing is. However, Terminal Services IS a very stable and reliable product that is being used by thousands of users every day. RDesktop is also simply Terminal Services repackaged for "Home" use. I'm not sure if the license is intending on specifically squashing remote access competition, however Microsoft has made available (freely) a product that is far superior to all other similar products for Windows. Because of this, I would be worried if my business relied on a remote access product as a large percentage of income.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of watching television." -- Cal Keegan

Close