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Comment Re:Duality of Wozniak's Apple Versus Jobs' Apple (Score 1) 789

by VojakSvejk (#31804088) Attached to: Adobe Evangelist Lashes Out Over Apple's "Original Language" Policy

Well, you didn't have to use Apple's tools. I used Turbo Pascal, Lightspeed/THINK C/C++, Absoft FORTRAN, and somebody's BASIC. And you didn't have to go through Apple's store and approval process. Those innovations came much later. The SCSI port was standard, but of course, who else used that? and keyboard, mouse etc... but it did have a standard RS-232, didn't it?
Piracy

Pirate Bay Legal Action Dropped In Norway 223

Posted by Soulskill from the they-see-which-way-the-cold-wind-is-blowing dept.
superapecommando writes "Copyright holders have given up legal efforts to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to block filesharing site The Pirate Bay, one of the parties to the case said. The copyright holders, led by Norway's performing rights society TONO and by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Norway (IFPI Norge), have lost two rounds in the Norwegian court system, and have now decided against appealing the case to Norway's supreme court."
Earth

Permanent Undersea Homes Soon; Temporary Ones Now 122

Posted by timothy from the meet-our-butcher-dexter dept.
MMBK writes "Dennis Chamberland is one of the world's preeminent aquanauts. He's worked with NASA to develop living habitats and underwater plant growth labs, among other cool things. His next goal is establishing the world's first permanent underwater colony. This video gets to the heart of his project, literally and figuratively, as most is shot in his underwater habitat, Atlantica, off the coast of Key Largo, FL. The coolest part might be the moon pool, the room you swim into underwater."
Communications

Comcast Shoots For New Image, Rebranding As Xfinity 356

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what's-in-a-name dept.
artemis writes "Comcast is making efforts to repair and restore its 'former glory' by the act of transformation, rebranding itself as Xfinity. Hopefully step 2 is an actual change in quality and customer service. 'Comcast will use the Xfinity rebranding to talk up its improved customer service as well as its technical upgrades. “There’s a lot to be proud of,’’ said Steve Hackley, Comcast’s senior vice president for the Greater Boston region. “We want to take credit for it.’’ W2 Group’s Weber said such a rebranding is “a bit old-fashioned’’ and a new name is unlikely to impress consumers. “I think the public is smarter than that now,’’ he said.'"
Google

Google To Challenge Facebook Again 197

Posted by Soulskill from the clash-of-the-titans dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Google is set to make a fresh attempt to gain a foothold in the booming social networking business, seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services. USA Today reports that the search giant is upgrading Gmail to add social-media tools similar to those found on Facebook, including photo and video sharing within the Gmail application, along with a new tool for status updates. According to reports, Google is planning to give Gmail users a way to aggregate the updates of their various contacts on the service, creating a stream of notifications that would echo the similar real-time streams from Facebook and Twitter. Google's decision to exploit the heavily-used Gmail service as the basis for its latest assault on the social networking business partly reflects the failure of Google's previous stand-alone efforts to enter the social networking sector. Its Orkut networking service, though launched before Facebook, has failed to gain a mass following in most parts of the world, despite success in Brazil, and its acquisition of Twitter rival Jaiku ended in failure after it scrapped development of the service." Update: 02/09 19:32 GMT by KD : It's been announced as Google Buzz; CNET has a detailed writeup.
GUI

IDEs With VIM Text Editing Capability? 193

Posted by timothy from the one-keybinding-to-rule-them-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I am currently looking to move from text editing with vim to a full fledged IDE with gdb integration, integrated command line, etc. Extending VIM with these capabilities is a mortal sin, so I am looking for a linux based GUI IDE. I do not want to give up the efficient text editing capabilities of VIM though. How do I have my cake and eat it too?"
The Internet

Contributors Leaving Wikipedia In Record Numbers 632

Posted by CmdrTaco from the three-phases-of-web-sites dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "CNET reports that the volunteers who create Wikipedia's pages, check facts and adapt the site are abandoning Wikipedia in unprecedented numbers, with tens of thousands of editors going 'dead' — no longer actively contributing and updating the site — a trend many experts believe could threaten Wikipedia's future. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language version of Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 contributors, compared with a loss of about 4,900 during the same period in 2008. 'If you don't have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly,' says Felipe Ortega at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, who created a computer system to analyze the editing history of more than three million active Wikipedia contributors in ten different languages. 'We're not in that situation yet. But eventually, if the negative trends follow, we could be in that situation.' Contributors are becoming disenchanted with the process of adding to the site, which is becoming increasingly difficult says Andrew Dalby, author of The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing Reality and a regular editor of the site. 'There is an increase of bureaucracy and rules. Wikipedia grew because of the lack of rules. That has been forgotten. The rules are regarded as irritating and useless by many contributors.' Arguments over various articles have also taken their toll. 'Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again,' adds Ortega."
Biotech

Scientists Build a Smarter Rat 302

Posted by timothy from the politicians-still-mostly-in-the-lead dept.
destinyland writes "Scientists have engineered a more intelligent rat, with three times the memory length of today's smartest rats. Reseachers bred transgenic over-expression of the NR2B gene, which increased communication between the rat's memory synapses. Activating a crucial brain receptor for just a fraction of a second longer produces a dramatic effect on memory, as proven by the rat's longer memories of the path through a maze."
The Internet

Cisco, Motorola, and Other Companies Take Aim At Net Neutrality Rules 239

Posted by timothy from the perhaps-things-are-more-complicated-than-they-appear dept.
angry tapir writes "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced last month that he would seek to develop formal rules prohibiting Internet service providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content and applications. However, 44 companies — including Cisco Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, Corning, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia — have sent a letter to the FCC saying new regulations could hinder the development of the Internet. A group of 18 Republican US senators have also sent a letter to Genachowski raising concerns about net neutrality regulations."
The Internet

Company Offers Customizable Web Spidering 46

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the my-legs-are-longer-than-yours dept.
TechReviewAl writes "A company called 80legs has come up with an interesting new web business model: customized, on-demand web spidering. The company sells access to its spidering system, charging $2 for every million pages crawled, plus a fee of three cents per hour of processing used. The idea is to offer Web startups a way to build their own web indexes without requiring huge server farms. 'Many startups struggle to find the funding needed to build large data centers, but that's not the approach 80legs took to construct its Web crawling infrastructure. The company instead runs its software on a distributed network of personal computers, much like the ones used for projects such as SETI@home. The distributed computing network is put together by Plura Processing, which rents it to 80legs. Plura gets computer users to supply unused processing power in exchange for access to games, donations to charities, and other rewards.'"
Education

AU Government To Build "Unhackable" Netbooks 501

Posted by kdawson from the smells-like-a-challenge dept.
bennyboy64 writes "In what may be one of the largest roll-outs yet of Microsoft's new Windows 7 Operating System, Australia's Federal Government decided to give 240,000 Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbooks to Year 9-12 students. Officials are calling them 'unhackable.' iTnews reports that the laptops come armed with an enterprise version of the Windows 7 OS, Microsoft Office, the Adobe CS4 creative suite, Apple iTunes, and content geared specifically to students. New South Wales Department of Education CIO Stephen Wilson said that schools were 'the most hostile environment you can roll computers into.' While the netbooks are loaded with many hundreds of dollars worth of software, 2GB of RAM, and a 6-hour battery, the cost to the NSW Department of Education is under $435 (US) a unit. Wilson praised Windows' new OS: 'There was no way we could do any of this on XP,' he said. 'Windows 7 nailed it for us.' At the physical layer, each netbook is password-protected and embedded with tracking software that is embedded at the BIOS level of the machine. If a netbook were to be stolen or sold, the Department of Education is able to remotely disable the device over the network. Each netbook is also fitted with a passive RFID chip which will enable the netbooks to be identified 'even if they were dropped in a bathtub.' The Department of Education also uses the AppLocker functionality within Windows 7 to dictate which applications can be installed."

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