dair - Slashdot User

Submission + - Samsug announces look-alike iphone killer

Submitted by goombah99 on Sunday February 11, 2007 @12:27AM

goombah99 writes: Samsung unveiled a prototype of their touchscreen phone. It's look, single button front, full-face touchscreen are the essentially identical to the iphone. The screen resolution is sufficiently worse that video viewing will be less of a pleasure, it's thicker, and it lacks Wi-Fi. But it has a slide-out full thumb-board, a 5 mega pixel camera, supports 3G (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access). Web connectivity however lacks the elegant full screen approach with a gestural interface of the iphone. Price, battery life and availability are not known. Read Here and here for first impressions. My impression is that hardware wise it's at the same level as the iphone so, as always, it's the apple polish of the interface that will be the deciding factor. Simultaneously, Microsoft revealed a workmanlike update of it's mobile version.

Submission + - New eBay scam, without violating ebay policy

Submitted by

Bert64

on Saturday February 10, 2007 @08:15PM

Bert64 writes: "It seems that eBay allows you to say one thing about the location of an item in the auction description, but then if the item turns out to be defective to supply a completely different address, in another country, where the item can be returned at buyer's expense. No mention of this was in the original auction listing, in the hope of fooling those who would normally not buy from a foreign seller. Details on http://www.ev4.org/ of how i was stung by this, and how it can so easily be abused by anyone to profit by ripping off unsuspecting buyers while ebay sits back and does nothing about it. So anyone can ship defective items, and then make the returns process expensive enough that people won't bother."

An Overview of Parallelism 197

Posted by kdawson on Saturday February 10, 2007 @07:55PM from the cores-galore dept.

Mortimer.CA writes with a recently released report from Berkeley entitled "The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View from Berkeley: "Generally they conclude that the 'evolutionary approach to parallel hardware and software may work from 2- or 8-processor systems, but is likely to face diminishing returns as 16 and 32 processor systems are realized, just as returns fell with greater instruction-level parallelism.' This assumes things stay 'evolutionary' and that programming stays more or less how it has done in previous years (though languages like Erlang can probably help to change this)." Read on for Mortimer.CA's summary from the paper of some "conventional wisdoms" and their replacements.

Submission + - Tiger users to be charged for Boot Camp Final?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21, 2007 @06:38AM

An anonymous reader writes: According to a report MacScoop has obtained, Apple will charge current users of Mac OS X Tiger for the final version of Boot Camp that will be released at the same time as Mac OS X Leopard, this Spring.

Submission + - Can we find a man with just a photo and a name?

Submitted by

MikeJ

on Sunday January 21, 2007 @05:14AM

MikeJ writes: "Mind Candy, the makers of Perplex City, are testing the power of the Internet by asking that very question; they have recruited one of Earth's 6 billion residents — a man named Satoshi — to participate in this experiment.

It has been suggested that we are each only five to seven people away from any target in the world. Someone, somewhere, knows Satoshi — so we must track these people, and thus Satoshi, down using word-of-mouth communication. People from over 80 countries are already participating in the hunt, with more joining every day. Can you help find Satoshi?"

Submission + - Google developing new 'iBook'

Submitted by nettamere on Sunday January 21, 2007 @01:13AM

nettamere writes: According to ITWire.com Google is plotting to do for books what the iPod has done for music: make them purchasable by download to a portable access device. Could civilisation as we know it be under threat?

The UK's Times newspaper reported that "Google is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry."

It quoted Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, speaking at 'Unbound', an invitation-only conference at the New York Public Library, saying: "We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online." Redmer said that the project was likely to come to fruition "sooner rather than later".

The Times said the initiative would be part of Google's Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which makes books searchable online. Readers are then linked to sites such as Amazon where they can buy a physical copy of the book.

The news immediately lead Sunday Times commentator, Bryan Appleyard to bemoan the fact that: "We are, it seems, about to lose physical contact with books, the primary experience and foundation of civilisation for the last 500 years." [Full Story]

Submission + - Whatever happened to Aerogel?

Submitted by

BK117

on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:15AM

BK117 writes: "When I first saw the news releases for this amazing material (in the early 1990's) they said it would revolutionize refrigerators, hot water heaters and many other devices needing lightweight insulation. Well, I have yet to see any consumer-level appliances using aerogels. Why not?"

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