Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

Check out our all new Hall of Fame page.

OS X

+ - 197 Ask Slashdot: How to validate Sys Admin Knowledge?

Submitted by protohacker
protohacker writes "I been working as interim sysadmin / QA Tester on a small company, and i really enjoy the sysadmin part of my job, I'm looking for advice on what books, certifications to pursue in order to be a RockStar SysAdmin. Also looking for some sort of guideline as to what topics to pursue. Sort of tasks i should be required to know or prove in order to demonstrate i'm a good admin.

Thanks in advance."
Books

+ - 259 Global Christianity and the Rise of the Cellphone

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Alan Jacobs writes in the Atlantic about "Every Tribe Every Nation" (ETEN) an organization whose mission is to produce and disseminate Bibles in readable mobile-ready texts for hundreds of languages including Norsk, Potawatomie, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hawai'i Pidgin as the old missionary impulse is being turned towards some extremely difficult technical challenges. The Bible is a large, complicated text containing three quarters of a million words and the typesetting is quite complex because of the wide range of literature types found in scripture and the need for several types of note. "For all the issues that are still to be solved, ETEN is trying to do things that the world's biggest tech companies haven't cracked yet, such as rendering minority languages correctly on mobile devices," says Mark Howe. "There's a unity among Bible translators and publishers that stands in stark contrast to the fractured, fratricidal smartphone industry." But once these technical challenges are met, it won't be only Bibles only that people can get on their mobile devices: but whole textual worlds will open up for them. "So whatever your views about the Christian missionary enterprise, it's safe to say that insofar as people like Howe succeed in solving these problems, some of the world's smaller "heart languages" will stand a better chance of surviving, and maybe even thriving, in an increasingly digitized world," writes Jacobs. "And that's pretty cool.""
Books

+ - 206 The science fiction effect->

Submitted by
Harperdog
Harperdog writes "Laura Kahn has a lovely essay about the history of science fiction, and how science fiction can help explain concepts that are otherwise difficult for many...or perhaps, don't hold their interest. Interesting that Frankenstein is arguably the first time that science fiction appears. From Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, authors have been writing about "mad scientists" messing around with life. Science fiction can be a powerful tool to influence society's views of the life sciences — one scientists should take"
Link to Original Source
Books

+ - 134 Accidental Empires To See Reboot, via the Internet-> 1

Submitted by shuttah
shuttah writes "Robert X. Cringely, author of the 1992 influential book Accidental Empires, will be republishing & updating (including pictures & new chapters) the now twenty year-old book via the launch of a new blog also by the author.

Cingeley tell us — "So next month I’ll be starting a second blog with its own URL just for Accidental Empires. I, Cringely will continue right here as ever (no changes at all), but on the book blog I will over several months publish — a chapter or so at a time — the entire 100,000-word book for the world to read, free of charge."

The book was also the basis for Cringley's 1996 TV miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds" released by PBS."
Link to Original Source

+ - 228 History repeats itself: KDP Select is Amazon.com's "Payback for Playback"->

Submitted by
brennanw
brennanw writes "Anyone who was active on mp3.com during the late 90s/early 2000's will find Amazon.com's KDP Select awfully familiar: authors who make their works exclusive to Amazon compete for a pool of money. Any time someone "borrows" one of their books, they get a cut of a monthly sum (700K in January, 600K for February) based on how many of their books were checked out vs. how many other author's books were checked out. This is almost identical to the "Payback for Playback" service MP3.com provided musicians a little over a decade ago. Payback for Playback effectively destroyed the original MP3.com artist community, and I don't think KDP Select is going to be much different for the self-publishing community that is growing on Amazon."
Link to Original Source
Facebook

+ - 124 Apple patent monkeywrenches Facebook plans->

Submitted by bizwriter
bizwriter writes "A new patent awarded to Apple has the potential of locking Facebook out of an important area of growth: using credits to acquire such "media items" as songs, videos, images, e-books and podcasts. The definition of "digital asset" also raises questions of whether Zynga's virtual goods — the mainstay of its revenue — would also fall under this patent. Even payment systems like Bitcoin could run into trouble."
Link to Original Source
Censorship

+ - 176 Facebook Censoring links to free e-books

Submitted by
gr8_phk
gr8_phk writes "Today Google is celebrating Charles Dickens birthday on their main page. You can download many of his works legally from Project Gutenberg since the copyrights have expired. However, you apparently can not post a link to Gutenberg on Facebook. If you try you'll be greeted with an error message which will go away if you remove the url from your post. Today is not the first time I've tried this. Is Facebook blocking links to the competition of places like Amazon? Why can I post a link to Amazon and not Gutenberg, and why does Facebook lie to me about it?"
Books

+ - 134 KDE Publishes a Book for Beginner Developers->

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes "During a recent 5 day sprint, four KDE contributors planned and produced a handbook for beginning KDE developers. The guide is recommended for every new contributor to KDE development. It outlines technical aspects of contributing to KDE and is a valuable first point of contact for new developers. The guide offers insights into KDE from the developer's point of view, and explains how to check out existing code, modify it and submit patches. Currently the guide only focuses on the coding aspects of KDE. Contributors are welcome (encouraged) to expand the guide to cover other aspects of the KDE Community as well as enhance the existing content in the book. We are currently working on how to release subsequent versions."
Link to Original Source
Books

+ - 257 Remembering Sealab-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "“Some people remember Sealab as being a classified program, but it was trying not to be,” says Ben Hellwarth, author of the new book Sealab: America’s Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor, which aims to “bring some long overdue attention to the marine version of the space program.” In the 1960s, the media largely ignored the efforts of America’s aquanauts, who revolutionized deep-sea diving and paved the way for the underwater construction work being done today on offshore oil platforms. It didn’t help that the public didn’t understand the challenges of saturation diving; in this comical exchange a telephone operator initially refuses to connect a call between President Johnson and Aquanaut Scott Carpenter, (who sounded like a cartoon character, thanks to the helium atmosphere in his pressurized living quarters). But in spite of being remembered as a failure, the final incarnation of Sealab did provide cover for a very successful Cold War spy program."
Link to Original Source
Books

+ - 267 Book Helps You Start Contributing to Open Source->

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes "This new book "Open Advice" is the answer to "What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?". 42 prominent free and open source software contributors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project, coding of course but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. They are here to give you a head start if you are new. And if you have been contributing for a while already, they are here to give you some insight into other areas and projects."
Link to Original Source

+ - 189 Tech University Bans Notebooks and Smartphones-> 1

Submitted by J-Georg
J-Georg writes "In Estonian Tallinn University of Technology all the electronic devices like notebooks, tablets and smartphones are now banned in lectures held by institute of public administration. The restriction, which according to the institute aims to reduce factors interfering with academic work, came as a surprise to most of the university-goers. Moreover — just a day before country's Ministry of Education announced a plan that by 2020 all textbooks and other literature would be turned into e-books and in eight years students are expected to start using computers and tablets to access study materials."
Link to Original Source

+ - 134 French appeals court upholds Church of Scientology->

Submitted by nicomede
nicomede writes "The French branch of the Church of Scientology has been fined €600,000 for fraud in an appeal trial today. Three ex-members complained to having been pressured into buying courses, books and purfication packages, and having great difficulty to leave the organization. It is not recognized as a official Church in France, but is widely regarded as a sect in this country.
The legal battle is not over yet, as the Scientology intends to put the case before the Cour de Cassation — the highest relevant court in France."
Link to Original Source

+ - 181 'Eye of Tiger' composer sues Gingrich to stop camp-> 3

Submitted by Joe_Dragon
Joe_Dragon writes "The composer of the Survivor hit "Eye of the Tiger" has sued Newt Gingrich to stop the Republican presidential candidate from using the "Rocky III" anthem at campaign events.

The lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Chicago by Rude Music Inc., the Palatine-based music publishing company owned by Frank Sullivan, who, with Jim Peterik, composed the song and copyrighted it in 1982. The lawsuit states that as early as 2009, Gingrich has entered rallies and public events to the pulsing guitar riffs of the song, which was the background track to Rocky Balboa's training montages in the film and became a No. 1 hit.

The suit lists appearances by Gingrich at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and numerous stops in Iowa among events at which the candidate has used the song without Sullivan's permission, as well as Internet videos featuring Gingrich that have been posted by American Conservative Union. The Washington-based conservative group and Gingrich's campaign organization, Newt 2012, also are named as defendants.

In a lengthy section of the five-page complaint, Rude's attorneys point out that Gingrich is well aware of copyright laws, noting he is listed as author or co-author of more than 40 published works and has earned between $500,000 to $1 million from Gingrich Productions, a company that sells his written work, documentaries and audio books.

It also notes Gingrich's criticism of the "Stop Online Piracy Act" during a recent debate in South Carolina, where Gingrich suggested the law was unnecessary because "We have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue."

The suit asks for an injunction to prevent Gingrich from using the song, as well as damages and attorneys' fees to be determined by the court.

The Tribune was unable to reach attorneys for Rude or the Gingrich campaign late Monday."
Link to Original Source

+ - 152 ST:TNG Cast Reuniting After 25 Years & SciFanT

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes "A quarter of a century after beaming onto the airwaves in 1987, the entire cast* of Star Trek: The Next Generation will make a rare public appearance at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo April 27-29. 'I can safely say it will be the first time we have all been gathered together at a convention,' said LeVar Burton, who played Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, in an interview with The Canadian Press. Personalities from other SciFi shows will be there too. If you're a SciFan on the way to Calgary, don't forget to make the pilgrimage out to Vulcan, and maybe try to get a viewing of the Gibson Collection of Speculative Fiction at the UofC too. * Sigh, by 'entire cast' the journalists are not implying that everyone who ever appeared on ST:TNG will be there... just saying..."
Microsoft

+ - 101 Is This Patent Full Of Crap?->

Submitted by
lseltzer
lseltzer writes "People in tech like to rant on patents specifically and generally and how stupid they are, but usually don't consider the actual rules followed by patent attorneys and the US PTO. An interview in BYTE with Andrew Schulman, a software patent litigation consultant, gives an intro on the reasoning employed by them. You may remember Schulman as the author of Undocumented DOS and other books which exposed undocumented APIs in Microsoft's products and their use of those APIs. He got a law degree and changed careers."
Link to Original Source

+ - 166 The ZX81 Lives On->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The ZX81 Museum was set-up to preserve and showcase a private collection of original Sinclair branded ZX81 hardware, software and literature. The museum has since expanded to include ZX81 software from other publishers of the time and a variety of other ZX81 peripherals and reference books. The collection dates from 1981 to 1983 and features the complete Sinclair-branded software series.

The activities of the museum are regularly reported via Twitter, along with updates from the ever growing ZX81 fanbase. There is even a YouTube channel for the diehard 8-bit fans out there, of which there seems to be many!

http://www.zx81museum.net/"
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

+ - 108 Stack Rank This! Memoirs of a Microsoft Couple->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "We are two ex-Microsoft employees that decided to write about our experiences at Microsoft. We were tired of seeing books written by happy executives and decided to write a short memoir representing the average joe. We are indy authors hoping to get people interested in our book that tells a story about what it's really like to work for Microsoft."
Link to Original Source

+ - 201 Ask Slashdot: Available 2D to Stereo 3D Conversion

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Dear Slashdotters, I'm interested in converting 2D video to Stereoscopic 3D video, the Red/Cyan Anaglyph type in particular (to ensure compatibility with cardboard Anaglyph glasses). Here's my questions: Which software(s) or algorithms can currently do this, and do it well? Also, are there any 3D TVs on the market that have a high quality 2D-to-3D realtime conversion function in them? And finally, if I were to try and roll my own 2D-to-3D conversion algorithm, where should I start? Which books, websites, blogs or papers should I look at?"
Books

+ - 182 Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads in 3 Days->

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes "On Jan. 19, Apple introduced iBooks 2, its digital solution to the physical textbook. In the first three days of release, users have downloaded more than 350,000 e-textbooks from the new platform, and more than 90,000 users have downloaded the authoring tool to make those e-textbooks, called iBooks Author. It makes sense that Apple's iBooks 2 platform is taking off in such a short period of time; there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity, searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly. It's incredible that nobody had attempted to digitize textbooks before; they're inefficient in almost every way."
Link to Original Source
Networking

+ - 101 Journal: Age-related mental degradation 6

Journal by mcgrew

I've been digitizing all my analog data, and I have so much it will probably take the rest of my life to complete. I still have a crate full of unsampled LPs, a grocery bag and seven full cassete holders full of cassettes that haven't been sampled, plus books and books of film photos that I haven't scanned. And a whole bookshelf of VCR tapes. After half a century of collecting you wind up with a LOT of data.

Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good news soon.