instar - Slashdot User

Comment Re:The iPad is not that bad (Score 4, Interesting) 780

by instar on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @09:32AM (#33043706) Attached to: iPad Owners Are 'Selfish Elites'

I own one, as do two of my close friends. We all fit the late 20s, middle-class, lower/middle management, computer geek stereotype - we love gadgets and are early-adopters.

I understand full well that the iPad is only a fraction of what it could be if it had been produced by a company other than Apple and ran Android instead of iOS. But I happened to be in the market for an e-reader anyway, and the iPad happens to excel at that (iBooks is overrated, but there are now apps for just about every major e-book store), and also lets me read news feeds, check email, look up video game stragegies online, etc. It's also a great airport time-waster. Apart from the price difference there was just no reason to NOT buy an iPad rather than a Nook or Kindle or whatever.

Anyway, I don't think you're particularly wrong.. there's just another class of us out there who bought the iPad because it filled a niche that no other product currently fills. There are a lot of Android tablets slated for this holiday season, though :)

Comment Re:Washer and dryer (Score 1) 422

by instar on Saturday February 27, 2010 @11:12AM (#31296744) Attached to: What Has Your Phone Survived?

My iphone went through the washer not that long ago, and of course appeared dead when I found it. This was the day before I left for a business trip, so I stuck the SIM in an old phone and went on my way. A week later I get home and plug the iphone in for shits and giggles, and it powered on and continues to work fine.

This was about 3 weeks after I dropped it 3+ feet onto the driveway while getting out of my truck.

I guess I'm just lucky :)

Submission + - Electronic Wallpaper 'Grows' From Your Photos

Submitted by instar on Saturday September 08, 2007 @08:39AM

instar writes: A Swedish scientist has developed what he calls "Autonomous Wallpaper." Using a bluetooth cell phone, you can upload pictures to the wall, where they will be transformed into one of 6 predefined flower shapes. From Discovery News: "A prototype software program converts pixels from cell phone images into unique flower shapes and then uploads them to a wall. Once on the wall, the flowers become autonomous agents, grow and interact with other flowers, and then eventually die." I'm not one for flowery wallpaper, but it's a neat concept.

Submission + - Perform a Windows Vista Suicide by Pressing Just 2 (pctipsbox.com)

Submitted by

pcripsbox

on Friday July 20, 2007 @08:51AM

pcripsbox writes: "Vista can be completely killed by pressing a simple combination of just two keys. All you need to crush Microsoft's latest operating system and put the much-applauded Wow at an end is two fingers. This issue has been reported independently of Microsoft, and the Redmond company has failed to issue any official comment at the time of this article. The immediate question which comes to mind is if the problem is a security vulnerability or a simple bug. http://www.pctipsbox.com/perform-a-windows-vista-s uicide-by-pressing-just-2-keys/"

Submission + - Hands on with the Sony Vaio RM1N quad-core PC 1

Submitted by on Friday July 20, 2007 @08:10AM

An anonymous reader writes: CNet has a hands-on article with pictures of the almighty Sony Vaio RM1N quad-core desktop PC. "It's one of the first consumer desktop PCs to use an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU clocked at 2.4GHz. In other words, it's fast — very fast. It offers 2GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card and 1TB of hard disk space. The most bizarre thing about the RM1N, however, is that it comes in so many different bits. There's the main base unit, a separate Access Unit housing the hard and optical drives (separate Blu-ray drive and DVD rewriters) as well as the mouse, keyboard and speakers, and a separate jog controller for cycling through video."

Checkers Solved, Unbeatable Database Created 359

Posted by Zonk on Thursday July 19, 2007 @04:41PM from the does-that-mean-we-don't-need-to-play-anymore dept.

tgeller writes "My story on the Nature site announced that a team of computer scientists at the University of Alberta has solved checkers. From the game's 500 billion billion positions (5 * 10^20), 'Chinook' has determined which 100,000 billion (10^14) are needed for their proof, and run through all relevant decision trees. They've set up a site where you can see the proof, traverse the logic, and play their unbeatable automaton. '[Jonathan] Schaeffer notes that his research has implications beyond the checkers board. The same algorithms his team writes to solve games could be helpful in searching other databases, such as vast lists of biological information because, as he says, "At the core, they both reduce to the same fundamental problem: large, compressed data sets that have to be accessed quickly."'"

Submission + - The Pyramid Project: web game/simulation/study

Submitted by

Jon Wire

on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:19PM

Jon Wire writes: "The newly created Pyramid Project is a mock pyramid scheme aimed at creating a friendly web-based competition while attempting to demonstrate the evilness of pyramid schemes. Small prizes from thepointless.com store will be given to top referrers as incentive to join. Participation and competitiveness are strongly encouraged to make it fun (and realistic)."

Submission + - Nintendo dominates hardware and software sales for

Submitted by

dolphin558

on Friday May 18, 2007 @03:04PM

dolphin558 writes: "Article

Excerpt:
The latest NPD sales figures show continuing dominance for Nintendo as the GBA outsells Sony's PS3 — but its predecessor, PlayStation 2, is still doing better than Xbox 360. NPD data for April reveals that at the Nintendo DS is at the top of the pile with 471,000 units sold. The supply-constrained Wii shifted 360,000 units. Nearer the bottom of the hardware market is Sony's recently released PlayStation 3 which has sold 82,000 units in the past month, while the ageing Game Boy Advance outsold the next-gen console by 2000 units. However, Sony's PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable continue to perform well in the market, with sales of 194,000 units and 183,000 respectively."

Submission + - PS3 sales to be lower than the lowest expectation

Submitted by Shadowfoxmi on Friday May 18, 2007 @01:21PM

Shadowfoxmi writes: http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=316 Sony had already lowered their expected systems sold, and word was out that sales were going to be lower than expected. The NPD and VGChartz.com predicted somewhere around 100-120k systems sold over the course of month in the US. Now word is out that even those totals were too high: the actual total is around 88,000 systems sold

Submission + - Eugeneology: An Interview with Eugene Jarvis

Submitted by on Friday May 18, 2007 @12:57PM

An anonymous reader writes: Robotron and Defender creator Eugene Jarvis needs little introduction, as one of video gaming's arcade pioneers — and in this in-depth Gamasutra interview, he discusses his work at Raw Thrills, controversy over Target: Terror, and the XBLA legacy of his twitch game trailblazing.

Submission + - GOP Chairman Trying to Bar Ron Paul

Submitted by

Hubbell

on Thursday May 17, 2007 @02:41PM

Hubbell writes: "Saul Anuzis, Chairman of GOP in Michigan is starting a petition to bar Ron Paul from future GOP debates "because of remarks the Texas congressman made that suggested the Sept. 11 attacks were the fault of U.S. foreign policy.""

Submission + - A Cure for Baldness

Submitted by weinrich on Thursday May 17, 2007 @02:34PM

weinrich writes: Scientists have discovered a justifiable reason to do Stem Cell research: A cure for baldness. From the article: "Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists described how they had shown that adult mammals are able to grow new hair follicles." Will all the balding stem cell nay-sayers be changing thier opinions in exchange for a full head of hair?

Submission + - Cracked before it's even out the door

Submitted by Lord_Ukko on Thursday May 17, 2007 @02:09PM

Lord_Ukko writes: The boys and girls have done it again. The new keys for AACS have already been cracked and the discs aren't even on store shelves yet. You can find the story on Ars Technica. Here is the link.

Submission + - Inside AMD's Barcelona CPU

Submitted by on Thursday May 17, 2007 @02:04PM

An anonymous reader writes: Real World Technologies has put together a comprehensive article that brings together everything which has been disclosed about AMD's upcoming Barcelona processor. The author goes through every stage of the CPU pipeline and makes a direct comparison with the rival Core 2 from Intel, and the previous generation K8. This piece also adds new information on many of the tricks used by AMD architects to wring out higher performance, especially previously undisclosed circuit level techniques used. The article ends with general predictions for the performance and economic impact of Barcelona.

Link: http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RW T051607033728

Submission + - Intel Spills Beans On Santa Rosa Notebook Platform

Submitted by

Steve Kerrison

on Monday April 16, 2007 @03:36PM

Steve Kerrison writes: "From the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing comes news of the successor to the Napa notebook platform. Santa Rosa, which will head up Intel's notebook technology line-up until 2H 2008, beefs up almost everything seen in Napa, from graphics to WiFi.

Santa Rosa carries Robson Technology, now known as Intel Turbo Memory, the flash-based disc-caching system that speeds up loading times of frequently-used data. Santa Rosa is an obvious continuation of the Centrino series. There will also be another Santa Rosa Centrino variant — Pro — that covers the business features found on Intel's Q-series chipsets, namely vPro.
Intel's Core2 mobile processors remain a key part of the platform, as you'd expect, with 45nm 'Penryn' CPUs making their way into the Santa Rosa refresh in 2008."

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