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Windows

Submission + - Ask Slashdot : Windows 7 deployment, 32 or 64 bit?

Submitted by chagol
chagol writes: I'm leading a team in charge of creating unified system image for Windows 7. We are just getting started and one of the questions was whether to go with 32 bit or 64 bit? We did a basic assesment of applications that will be running and most of them are in 32 bit. You know usual office suite, browsers, media players etc. Other than Windows seeing full 4gb of memory (although not all f it is utilized), what are some other reasons you *might* want to go for a 64bit system? We don't have many things compelling to go with a 64 bit but if you have some, please share. Thank you.
Microsoft

Submission + - Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 arrive (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As expected, Microsoft today announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. To celebrate, the company is hosting a launch consisting of more than 150 developer-focused events around the world. In time for the release, Microsoft made sure that developers have access to popular partner extensions earlier than before; approximately 50 partners already announced availability of products and solutions built on the two technologies.

Comment Apocalyptic speculation? Post it here! (Score 1) 2

by jwietelmann (#31820286) Attached to: MIT Researchers Harness Viruses to Split Water
Scenario 1: Virus escapes, proliferates, gradually takes over, and splits all the water molecules on the planet.
Scenario 2: Virus escapes, proliferates, infects humans, splits all the water molecules in the host's body.

Ten or more people were going to post this sooner or later, so I thought it would be nice to just go ahead and get it out of the way right here.

Comment No, nicotine is not the problem. (Score 1) 13

by jwietelmann (#31820154) Attached to: Proposed Ban For Electronic Cigarettes
Sure, nicotine isn't GREAT for you, and it's a poison in very high doses. But smoking is mostly bad because you are inhaling smoke. You are lighting organic material on fire and breathing its combusted fumes. THAT's the really bad part. E-cigarettes eliminate this, and we really shouldn't be discouraging anything that gets people to stop inhaling smoke.

Comment FTFA: "Kill the 24-hour return policy" (Score 1) 3

by jwietelmann (#31819980) Attached to: What Google Needs To Do To Fix Its Android Store

Makers of novelty applications or simple games are going to shy away from Android because they'll lose impulse purchases.

Honestly, I think this is a good thing for the Android platform. Google and a few devs won't make as much money, but this seems like a good barrier-to-entry to keep out the crApps. If your application isn't worth keeping for more than a day, then it's probably a worthless application, and its presence only serves to take people's money and give them little to no value in return. I think that Google should not only keep this return policy, but openly brag about it.
Iphone

Submission + - Apple Blocks Open Source Syncing (Again)

Submitted by
marcansoft
marcansoft writes: "Since 2007, Apple has been locking their users into iTunes, which isn't available under Linux, by adding secret hashes to their iPod/iPhone databases. After this hash was reverse engineered, Apple developed a new one and tried and failed to use legal threats to stifle the reverse engineering effort. Last year, the hash was finally cracked and as of today iPhone and iPod Touch users can sync music using open source tools exclusively. This is about to change, though, as Apple have once again changed their hash algorithm for the iPad and will likely use this new version for their upcoming 4.0 iPhone OS release.

If you want to keep your ability to sync music using open source, you should not update. As part of their lock-in strategy, Apple are preventing newer devices from being downgraded by requiring any firmware updates to "phone home" for approval. The iPad already includes a version of the 3.2 OS with the new hash, and does not work out of the box."
Oracle

Submission + - Creator of Java programming language leaves Oracle

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: James Gosling, creator of the Java computer language and one of the most prominent employees in Oracle Corp's newly acquired Sun Microsystems, has resigned from Oracle. "As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good," he said.
Google

Submission + - Google accused of YouTube 'free ride' (ft.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google accused of YouTube 'free ride'. Telefonica, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.
Google

Submission + - What Google Needs To Do To Fix Its Android Store (businessinsider.com) 3

Submitted by sammyF70
sammyF70 writes: Businessinsider has a list of 10 things that Google needs to change to make the Android Market more competitive for developers. This range from the weirdly inaccurate ( 'providing links to the android market'? That's already possible using "market://") to the insightful (device fragmentation, consistent currency and killing off the 24 hour return policy)

As an ex-Android developer who has been fighting with Google for a year now, I can only agree that the Android Market Store is pretty much a turn-off for developers (except for Google apparently)
Science

Submission + - Rampant Cheating Hurts China's Research Ambitions

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Gilliam Wong writes for AP that ghostwriting, plagiarizing or faking results is so rampant in Chinese academia that some experts worry it could hinder China's efforts to become a leader in science. China's state-run media recently rejoiced over reports that China publishes more papers in international journals than any other country except the US but not all the research stands up to scrutiny. In December, the British journal "Structure Reports" retracted 70 papers from a Chinese university, all by the same two lead scientists, saying the work had been fabricated and expressing amazement that a fake crystal structure would be submitted for publication. "Academic fraud, misconduct and ethical violations are very common in China," said professor Rao Yi, dean of the life sciences school at Peking University. "It is a big problem." Last month the Education Ministry released guidelines for forming a 35-member watchdog committee and has asked universities to get tough but Rao remains skeptical. Government ministries are happy to fund research but not to police it, Rao says. "The authorities don't want to be the bad guy.""
Science

Submission + - MIT Researchers Harness Viruses to Split Water (inhabitat.com) 2

Submitted by ByronScott
ByronScott writes: A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. The team engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus to assemble the components needed to crack apart a molecule of water, yielding a fourfold boost in efficiency over similar processes.

Submission + - Proposed Ban For Electronic Cigarettes (usnews.com) 13

Submitted by Anarki2004
Anarki2004 writes: There is yet another ban that nobody asked for being proposed in several states currently. From the article: There is debate about whether or not the FDA has jurisdiction over e-cigarettes. There's a bill currently in Congress that would further complicate that debate. The Family Smoking Prevention And Tobacco Control Act was passed by the House on April 2nd, and is now in the Senate. One of its provisions would allow the FDA "to review and consider the evidence for additional indications for nicotine replacement products." That could be interpreted to allow e-cigarettes to fall under the FDA's jurisdiction.

As a former smoker and an extremely satisfied user of electronic personal vaporizers, this ban would force me and thousands of others to either switch back to analog cigarettes, or give up nicotine all together (which as any smoker/former smoker knows is not an easy task). The only people who will benefit from this law are pharmaceutical companies peddling smoking cessation products, and the tobacco industry. This proposed ban does absolutely nothing to benefit the citizens.

Comment Bandwidth: A Real Estate Analogy (Score 5, Insightful) 738

by jwietelmann (#31779782) Attached to: Verizon CEO Says "We Will Hunt Heavy Users Down"
  1. I rent a vacation home from Verizon.
  2. I decide that I like the vacation home so much that I move in full-time. Verizon happily continues to accept my rent.
  3. Memorial Day weekend comes. 20 families show up with their kids.
  4. It turns out that Verizon rented the same house to 20 other people.
  5. Verizon slaps me with a surcharge for "over-using" the house that I rented.

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