Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 375
I LIKE the fact they targeted the netbook market, this is one reason that Windows 7 runs so well on older hardware. Of course, preparing it to run on more than 64 cores might have helped, as well.
Submission + - ALS sufferer used legs to contribute last patch (gnome.org) 1
krkhan writes: "This is a little old but seeing as it didn't make it to /. at the time I think it deserves a headline now. Adrian Hands was suffering from ALS and had lost motor skills when he used his legs to type in Morse code and fix a 9 year old bug in Gnome. The patch was submitted three days before he passed away."
Submission + - Making You Own Custom USB Human Interface Devices (makezine.com)
An anonymous reader writes: MAKE has a beginner's tutorial on using the Teensy microcontroller to create made-to-measure USB Human Interface Devices to control the keyboard or mouse input of your computer. In the case of the creator, he made a button to key in a random synonym for "awesome" when it was pressed to help him with his overuse of the word.
Comment Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday (Score 1) 539
The only issue that Sony might be able to capitalize on is the fact that Amazon is PLAYING the music for you on the web in the form of the Amazon Cloud Player. Another issue is that you were already able to do this in the form of their cloud service, they are specifically targeting music with this pricing and advertising effort. If they were just streaming the files, and providing a means to integrate into an existing player, they could say that they were just offering a home targeted version of their existing services, but as it is, we must wait and see.
P.S. I actually want Amazon to succeed.
P.S. I actually want Amazon to succeed.
Comment Micrsoft Store (Score 1) 898
I'm a regular listener to Windows Weekly, with Paul Thurott and Leo Laporte. He mentioned Microsoft Signature at the Microsoft store. Here is a link to the article. It is apparently a very Apple store like experience, and they clean the computers of all the crud that is on the laptops originally. They sell several different brands. Hope this helps.
Comment Microsoft Signature (Score 1) 7
I'm a regular listener to Windows Weekly, with Paul Thurott and Leo Laporte. He mentioned Microsoft Signature at the Microsoft store. Here is a link to the article.
It is apparently a very Apple store like experience, and they clean the computers of all the crud that is on the laptops originally. They sell several different brands.
Hope this helps.
Comment Re:Anything Online? (Score 1) 225
This is so true, they are supervised by backward thinking district supervisors, that deal directly with their parents that didn't finish high school. We need to allow the teachers to actually teach, not just memorization.
Comment OpenCL? (Score 1) 323
Isn't OpenCL supposed to allow a a lot of this offloading? Aren't you supposed to be able to give the gpu a kernel, then just send it data. Then aren't you able to send it to OpenGL to render on screen? I don't have access to a OpenCL capable gpu, yet, but asa soon as I do, that seems the best solution?
Let me know if I am wrong, as I hate being right to much.
Comment Re:cant believe that i took this long (Score 1) 169
There is original content all over the net, just not directly on Netflix. RiffTracks comes to mind, there was a public sponsored series that started last year about the Russians having someone live on Mars, and podcasts galore. Entertaining shows such as Leo Laporte's TWIT Network,Brian Brushwoods Scam School, and R3vision's network with howtos and others. Not to mention all the post hours of stories on Youtube, and animated shorts on the Internet.
Oh, you meant stuff spoon fed to us by some major corporate entity, as anything that is created by a person can't be as good, and we wouldn't want to stray to much out of the comfort zone, would we? Goochi-goochi-goooooooo!
Submission + - CS Profs Debate Role of Math in CS Education
theodp writes: Worried that his love-hate relationship with math might force him to give up the pursuit of computer science, CS student Dean Chen finds comfort from an unlikely source — the postings of CS professors on the SIGSE mailing list. 'I understand that discussing the role of math in CS is one of those religious war type issues,' writes Brad Vander Zanden. 'After 30 years in the field, I still fail to see how calculus and continuous math correlate with one's ability to succeed in many areas of computer science...I have seen many outstanding programmers who struggled with calculus and never really got it.' Dennis Frailey makes a distinction between CS research and applied CS: 'For too long, we have taught computer science as an academic discipline (as though all of our students will go on to get PhDs and then become CS faculty members) even though for most of us, our students are overwhelmingly seeking careers in which they apply computer science.' Frailey adds that part of the problem may be that some CS Profs — math gods that they may be — are ill-equipped to teach CS in a non-mathematical manner: 'Let's be honest about another aspect of the problem — what can the faculty teach? For a variety of reasons, a typical CS faculty consists mainly of individuals who specialize in CS as a discipline, often with strong mathematical backgrounds. How many of them could teach a good course in cloud computing or multi-core systems or software engineering or any of the many other topics that the graduates will find useful when they graduate? Are such courses always relegated to instructors or adjuncts or other non-tenure-track faculty?' So, how does this jibe with Slashdotters' experience?
Submission + - Why we should buy music in FLAC (blogspot.com)
soodoo writes: "We have plenty of HDD space and broadband internet. Why don't we demand full CD quality audio in an accessible format from online music stores?
The advantage of lossless is not only the small audio quality improvement, but better future proofing and converting capabilities. FLAC is a good, free and open format, well suited for this job."
The advantage of lossless is not only the small audio quality improvement, but better future proofing and converting capabilities. FLAC is a good, free and open format, well suited for this job."
Comment Re:The Human Factor (Score 1) 114
Ever hear tell of that newfangled thing called utf 8?
Submission + - A good way to monetize a website?
WilCompute writes: "We see ads all over the place (for those of us not using noscript) and we see a lot of content farms in search results (though Google is fixing this), but here is a novel idea. I am working on a web store powered by Amazon, but what type of added value would make this not a content farm.
In other words, at what point does it become a procurement service. I am looking at adding different videos from across the web about strange and unusual uses of the individual products, and different articles along the same vein, but what other ideas would make the site useful, rather than just another store.
Keep in mind, we should try to automate as much as possible, but I don't want to be just another clone, and maybe with ideas floating around, we can actually make the web a more useful place?"
In other words, at what point does it become a procurement service. I am looking at adding different videos from across the web about strange and unusual uses of the individual products, and different articles along the same vein, but what other ideas would make the site useful, rather than just another store.
Keep in mind, we should try to automate as much as possible, but I don't want to be just another clone, and maybe with ideas floating around, we can actually make the web a more useful place?"
Submission + - Adobe Releases Flash to HTML 5 Converter (ibtimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Adobe has released its Flash to HTML 5 conversion tool, codenamed "Wallaby." Wallaby is an application to convert Adobe Flash Professional CS5 files (.FLA) to HTML5 and its primary design goals were to get the best quality and performance on browsers within iOS devices like iPhone and iPad.
Submission + - Does Facebook Kill Authenticity? 1
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Steve Cheney writes that the problem with tying internet-wide identity to a broadcast network like Facebook is that people don’t want one normalized identity, either in real life, or virtually. "People yearn to be individuals. They want to be authentic. They have numerous different groups of real-life friends. They stylize conversations. They are emotional and have an innate need to connect on different levels with different people," writes Cheney adding that the recent decision by a number of sites, including TechCrunch, to adopt Facebook commenting highlights the problem where the integration of the formatting and fonts is so strong that when you're reading comments you actuallyfeel like you are on Facebook, not a tech focused vertical site. "Facebook’s insistence that you have one identity across the web is both short-sighted and asinine, and people I talk to are starting to realize this," concludes Cheney. "Fact is, one social network will not rule the web... People are simply way too social to allow that.""
