ursuspacificus - Slashdot User

Comment ...and they say Americans are bad at math (Score 1) 725

by ursuspacificus on Thursday December 18, 2008 @07:15AM (#26158091) Attached to: British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows

I detest MS and their Windows OS... but setting that aside for a moment, who was the jackass who set up this deal?!

If the RN pays like the US Navy, for 22k Pounds, they could have an extra guy on board to administer Linux or BSD boxen.

Yeesh!

Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President 601

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 16, 2008 @09:04AM from the donkey-faithful-one-hundred-percent dept.

At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."

Comment The real problem is consolidation (Score 3, Interesting) 494

by ursuspacificus on Monday December 15, 2008 @09:14AM (#26118999) Attached to: Governments Preparing To Bail Out DRAM Makers

There's a giant elephant in the room that no one wants to mention.

As companies increase their market share, they reduce competition, and increase the damage to the economy if they fail. The nation-wide, interstate banks in the US are a creature of deregulation unleashing unmitigated greed on the banking sector. If one of these banks fails, we're in deep excrement. A handful of companies control effectively ALL the DRAM manufacturing in the world. further it seems that this handful of companies behaves as a monolithic block. They collectively banked on Vista being a huge driver for more memory. Too bad, so sad.

If these outfits want government help, here's how I propose we give it to them (It's actually about the US auto industry, but can be applied to just about any heavily consolidated industry with a few tweaks).

Comment The FUD Zombies are loose! (Score 2, Funny) 1589

by ursuspacificus on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @09:14AM (#26058785) Attached to: When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education

Operating under the assumption that Karen X is a real teacher in Austin, and the events described in TFA are true, I'd like to share my own thoughts on the matter.

What I find incredible is that a teacher who "tried Linux in college" could be so terribly misinformed.

True, in an existential sense, no software is free... neither is love, compassion, or lunch... but.. come on.

This is little more than DMCA-induced anti-piracy terror topped with a generous portion of Post-9/11 paranoia. She's a FUD Zombie running amok.

...but then... it is Texas.

Feed Dell set to offer pre-loaded Ubuntu "within weeks" (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @12:52PM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Given Michael Dell's admitted fondness for Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn, specifically) and Dell's previous announcement that it was heeding the call of geeks everywhere to offer Linux pre-loaded on its consumer systems, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Ubuntu would be the company's distro of choice, but it's still nice to hear the word coming straight from the source. The company's also getting a bit more specific on when we'll finally start to see Ubuntu-based systems rolling out the door, saying that it'll begin to offer Ubuntu 7.04 as an option on "select Dell consumer models" (both desktops and laptops) in the coming weeks. Now, if only they'd be as receptive to public feedback on their choices of hardware.

[Via CRN]

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