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Portables

Dell Adamo Review — Macho Outside, Sissy Inside 144

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the playing-catch-up dept.
Odelia Lee writes with a full review of Dell's new Adamo slimtop over at Gizmodo. While it may have an sleek exterior there are definite gaps (both literal and figurative) in their engineering. "The Adamo is both a compliment and an insult to Dell engineering. It's possibly the most beautiful computer Dell has ever manufactured, but I'm not sure that Dell has caught up to competitors in either aesthetics or power. There have been lots of qualitative Adamo reviews out there, but we got the first of the units that will actually ship to customers, so it's time for real benchmarks. As it happens, performance is really what's at stake here."

Comment Re:How many years have they been working on this? (Score 5, Insightful) 247

by beejhuff (#27401327) Attached to: NASA Shows Off Mock-Up of Mars-Capable Spacecraft

I (for once) RTFA, and from what I gathered, they've developed this module and updated launcher to provide an effective round trip mechanism for Moon expeditions, where they will practice the operations that will be required when a full scale Mars mission is executed (sometime around between 2020-2030). I think the important point is that NASA is realizing that the shuttle is not an effective mission system for the next generation of Moon missions, which are a pre-req for any future Mars missions.

To me, this actually sounds like a sober assessment - and one that is long overdue.
Programming

Was Standardizing On JavaScript a Mistake? 525

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hindsight-is-twenty-twenty dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions the wisdom of standardizing on a single language in the wake of the ECMA Committee's decision to abandon ECMAScript 4 in favor of the much less ambitious ECMAScript 3.1, stunting the future of JavaScript. Had the work continued, McAllister argues, it could have ushered in an era of large-scale application development that would ensure the browser's ability to meet our evolving needs in the years ahead. 'The more I hear about the ongoing efforts to revise the leading Web standards, the less convinced I am that we're approaching Web-based applications the right way,' McAllister writes. 'If anything, the more we talk about building large-scale Web applications, the more we should recognize that a single style of programming will never suit every job.' McAllister's simple truth: JavaScript will never be good for everything — especially as the Web continues to evolve beyond its original vision. His solution? 'Rather than shoehorning more and more functionality into the browser itself, maybe it's time we separated the UI from the underlying client-side logic. Let the browser handle the View. Let the Controller exist somewhere else, independent of the presentation layer.'"

Timing Technology Behind Olympic Record Results 118

Posted by CmdrTaco from the even-clocks-are-at-least-sixteen dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We've been on the edge of our seats cheering on the athletes at the Beijing Olympic games — but so often do athletes' victories and defeats rely on accurate timing. As the athletes compete on the world stage behind the scenes technology records their results. This interview with Omega's Christophe Berthaud (video) — the company's 23rd time as official Olympic timekeeper — explores how far the technology has come since the first time it was used in 1932."

Comment Re:that example is old then (Score 1) 162

by beejhuff (#24341263) Attached to: JavaScript: The Good Parts

This may not be the end of the world, right? If your create your links as javascript function calls, then there are no standard link click actions on a global level that you have to cancel - just the javascript function call, which you can always catch, and modify the original destination if needed.

Not certain this will work for your particular application, of course, and there may be other drawbacks to using function calls instead of normal href links (Google and other search engines may not crawl your pages properly is one I think of off hand) but it's an option.

I'm also not defending Safari here :) I'm just noting that if your goal is supporting all browsers, that will inevitably limit your design options in some way. Maybe there's another algorithmic track you can pursue that will satisfy your cross browser compatibility requirement?

Feed Science Daily: Toxicity Of Industrial Water Pollution Underestimated (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
A new study suggests that a holistic approach is needed in assessing the potential environmental and health effects of toxic effluent from industry. Studies of industrial effluent toxicity usually focus on a single contaminant, such as an environmental or marine pollutant, a potential carcinogen, or a toxic heavy metal. However, toxicity tests of effluent using bacteria generally underestimate the total toxicity.

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