Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:KODAK moment (Score 2) 54

It *USED* to mean a visually stunning situation you wanted to capture for memory.

I lived/worked in Rochester NY for a bit early 80s, though not for Kodak.

They were *THE* company in town; the local paper ran ads every spring from stores wanting people to spend their "Kodak bonuses" with them. Multi-generational hiring (second and third generation workers), major philanthropy.

Then came digital and the company utterly failed to pivot; there were a couple of half-hearted attempts to get into the point-n-shoot market, but when Hollywood went digital to enable more action scenes and same-day "dailies" of their shoots, then the theater chains to show the results, they were doomed.

They still do digital printing and chemical/pharma production but the film market is essentially a niche for them. Sad case of missing the market.

Comment some schools are checking... (Score 1) 98

my wife is a HS teacher at a private school, and gets to deal with students' plagiarism and/or AI offences ; she also teaches multiple AP courses and has seen way too many cases of AI hallucinations in submitted work, as well as copy/paste from questionable online sources (and yes Wikipedia is one since it's trivial to change content).

The cheating is hardly new, but the methods have become more & more automated. It's become an arms race between the students and the schools' toolsets to stay ahead. The schools are trying to teach critical thinking and are seeing more & more parroting of whatever online source the kids are finding first online.

Comment Re:The problem with fixed amounts (Score 1) 134

>> if its that low why doesn't the government just subsidize the plan like in the past?

They *ARE* subsidizing it as part of the infrastructure legislation; AT&T is saying they don't want to play regardless. They'd rather have people piggybacking at the local fast-food or coffee shop to get 'Net access than allow for a cheap, usage-capped option *they're already getting gummint bucks for*.

Comment Re:The problem with fixed amounts (Score 1) 134

I think that 90/10 split you're suggesting is generous; the likelihood is more like 1%, and you can't tell me that the Deathstar can't absorb those costs given how much they're taking in from their other customers.

Agreed that COVID-generated inflation has been a serious PITA, but given the other carriers like VZN & T-Mo appear willing to support the program (which is basically a cellular hotspot parked in your home), this appears more like performative outrage than financial hardship.

Comment Re:No it isn't (Score 1) 67

Whatever incentive hardware makers had for producing ARM-based laptops/desktops evaporated after MS burned them all by competing directly with their ARM Surface.

Whatever incentive software makers had for writing for/porting to ARM from x86/x64 dried up when the hardware companies backed away from it.

The 'long tail' of x86/x64 Windows apps keeps them in business. Users, especially business users, don't want any potential issues with running in emulation.

ARM works for Chromebooks where it's basically acting as a thin client to web-based "stuff" running elsewhere, and that's a valid market for a LOT of use cases, but most users want general-purpose laptops whether they really need them or not, and that means x64 CPUs.

ARM in the server room works fine because you're generally using platform-agnostic code such as Java or Python and could care less about the CPU. You get lots of cores and low power which makes the datacenter/cloud people happy.

Comment Re:sooo... (Score 1) 77

My office has L2 chargers in the parking lot and gives us 4 hours/day of free charging. The fast chargers are going in mainly along the interstates and major roads for drivers taking longer trips. Some of the big-box stores are getting into the game on the assumption you're spending 20-25 minutes shopping and want to 'top up' while you're there. The mall just down the road has an eight-stall charging station, half of them DCFC.

If you go by the assumption that most EV owners are charging at home, then the need for 'outside' charging drops tremendously; road trips and 'top-ups' at common stops in the area. .

Comment Re:Proxmox still some way to go to be upto what VS (Score 1) 76

Given the old 80/20 rule, what features are lacking in Proxmox vs. VSphere **THAT ARE ACTUALLY BEING USED**? Lather/rinse/repeat for Nutanix, Openshift, ...

I expect the AT&T admins are diligently checking into the size of those lists and talking to the respective vendors as a precursor to picking whichever one is the closest fit and most likely to fill in the missing spaces in the least time.

Comment Re:Zero alternatives are possible? (Score 1) 76

There's Proxmox and Nutanix as said before, who are working furiously to pick up as many of the abandoned VMware customers as they can. A gig like this would probably prompt them to upgrade their support offerings to be able to claim this big a win over Broadcom/VMware.

If the concern is "enterprise-level' support, some combination of Red Hat's Openshift (which can now drag 'n drop full VMs via KubeVirt) with some generous amount of IBM/RH consultancy to migrate might be the answer. Again a case where the replacement vendor would love to have that as a reference case for corp's looking how to get clear of Broadcom's new licen$$ing strategy.

Comment Large company/hybrid work - RTO ?why? (Score 1) 78

I'm in a megacorp with locations in many large US metros; the higher-ups, after trying a 100% RTO, and finding themselves unable to fill slots, settled on a 3/5 days in-office schedule. My immediate boss is at my location, *his* boss is in the NYC metro and *his* boss is mid-South. My team has people across multiple US timezones and an offshore contingent in India.

I think the main push for RTO is to justify the leases on office space these companies are already locked into; my corp is going more & more to "open seating" (i.e. "rent-a-desk") to crunch down their space requirements on the assumption about one-third of the bodies aren't in on any given day. Once their leases expire I'm betting a lot less space will be used and the property management companies will be in the deep waste.

The pandemic showed productivity wasn't seriously impacted by remote work, but the mindset of lookit-our-fancy-office-tower has remained in the C-suites. The collateral damage, unfortunately, will be all the mom-n-pop shops that supported downtown workers; grab n go eateries, small shops to check out over lunches or on the way home etc. This is already being seen in some of the major cities and it's unclear what if any solution exists.

Comment Re:Do the absolute minimum (Score 2) 88

>> The Cox Communications case aside, it's still not an ISP's job to protect Hollywood's meager profits

The legal requirement to create such a law with any teeth should be for the studios to *COMPLETELY* open their books for a third-party review to see what they're actually making and determine what the potential loss from piracy is. No "Hollywood accounting" where money disappears between a swarm of subcontractors or losses from movie X are dumped onto prior release Y etc etc. Suspect this idea would send them into a collective stroke.

Comment Re:Hey Boss (Score 5, Insightful) 164

My standing comment about these shitshows is that the (guaranteed) settlement to the family involved should come from the PD pension fund rather than $CITY's general funds.

Hit these cops in their collective wallet and see how fast the "thin blue line" shreds and they actually start discipling their own.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!" -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_

Working...