ozmanjusri - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft's Next-Gen PC Design finalists

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday February 24, 2008 @10:03PM

ozmanjusri writes: "The finalists in Microsoft's Next-Gen PC Design Showcase have been announced.
As is usual with design competitions, practicality is not high on the list of requirements.
Entries of note include;

The Backpacker's Diary, a pc for enthusiastic travelling fans, which looks to have been inspired by the OLPC.

The Cup, which appears to hold more vapour than coffee.

My personal favorite, Momenta, the PC for Life, inspired by The Running Man and Wedlock

Sadly, there's no indication whether the Momenta "enhances the users experience with Windows" by detonating a charge of C4 if WGA decides their collar hasn't been activated recently.

Although the finalists have been chosen, Public's Choice Voting is open until March 15th 2008, so interested Slashdotters can vote for their favourite future PCs. Please try not to elect Skynet."

Submission + - Apple Patents Pinching.

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday February 24, 2008 @03:28AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Wired is reporting that Apple is trying to gain control of multitouch gestures by patenting the motions used to control devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

While multitouch devices have been demonstrated by other companies, including Microsoft, Apple's gadgets are the first mainstream devices to use the technology. Apple have applied for more than 200 patents relating to the compact devices, many for the multitouch screens. They also acquired multitouch patents by taking over a company called FingerWorks.

Synaptics, supplier of most laptop touchpads, has developed a set of getstures they hope will be adopted across all multitouch devices, but if Apple's patents succeed, users may have to learn different gestures for every multitouch device.

"My guess would be that 80 to 90 percent of consumer notebooks will have these new multigestures by the end of the year,"
says Mark Vena, vice president of Synaptics' PC business unit.

There's no doubt a unified set of gestures would be the best option moving forward, but the Apple patents look like fragmenting the fledgling interface before it can be truly established."

Submission + - Asus corrects Eee PC source code issue. (blue-gnu.biz)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @02:12AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Asus has corrected the availability of source code for its Eee PC, and reaffirmed its commitment to meeting the requirements of open source licenses, including the GPL.

They also announced the upcoming release of a new SDK to assist the Open Source community development on the Eee PC."

Submission + - YouTube tricked into deleting 200 videos

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday April 15, 2007 @01:21AM

ozmanjusri writes: "A 15-year-old West Australian boy, claiming he represented the clips' copyright owners, persuaded video-sharing website YouTube to remove more than 200 clips from the site. The clips, all from the comic current affairs show "The Chaser's War on Everything", were popular with viewers; one clip featuring featuring Charles Firth accosting Hillary Clinton had been viewed more than 100,000 times before it was taken down yesterday.

According to Stuff, this is in direct contrast to the TV station's policy on content sharing. Courtney Gibson, from Australia's public broadcaster ABC TV said; "[ABC wishes] to get our content out there on as many platforms as possible, run by as many different operators as possible.""

Submission + - Alcohol more harmful than LSD or ecstacy.

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Friday March 23, 2007 @09:20PM

ozmanjusri writes: "Professor David Nutt and colleagues have used a comprehensive 9-category matrix of harm to suggest commonly used drugs such as alcohol and tobacco are more damaging than many illicit drugs such as LSD and ecstacy. According to Professor Nutt, in a press release from the Bristol University,

"Drug misuse and abuse are major health problems. Our methodology offers a systematic framework and process that could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm of current and future drugs of abuse."

While a sensible framework to assess harm from recreational drugs is helpful, I would be wary of wider adoption of such a scale, since it doesn't take into account the benefits of each drug.

If they could integrate a 9-category of positives; well I'd drink to that..."

Submission + - New iPod Teardown Hints at Apple's iTv Plans

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @08:56AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Electronic component analysis specialist iSuppli has dissected several of Apple's iPod range to estimate what they cost to produce. It appears that Apple is able to use its market share to influence supplier designs and reduce manufacturing costs.

"iSuppli estimates that Apple has reduced the Bill-Of-Materials (BOM) cost for the new $199 retail-priced 4Gbyte nano to $72.24, less than the $89.97 that was estimated for a first-generation 2Gbyte nano upon release," said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and senior analyst for iSuppli. iSuppli

iSuppli also noted that the Samsung System-on-Chip (SoC) used in the iPod range lacks video capabilities, and requires additional chips from Broadcom and Portaplayer for the hard-drive equipped video models. They speculate that Apple considers the iPod is secure in the MP3 market, and that the company will reserve video capabilities for another product, presumably the iTV.

It does make sense that Apple would not want it's portable music player cannibalizing a market it is trying to enter, but means the iPod range risks being overtaken by more capable competitors."

Submission + - Live Drive vs GDrive vs Pen Drive

Submitted by on Tuesday August 22, 2006 @01:48AM

ozmanjusri writes: At a blogger's breakfast prior to the opening of Tech.Ed in Sydney, Microsoft Australia technical specialist John Hodgson has confirmed that Microsoft will introduce its LiveDrive online storage system which can be mapped directly as a Vista drive. Zdnet Australia The service will offer 2GB of space free, with additional capacity available at a cost.

Earlier this year, rumours surfaced regarding a similar scheme from Google, the GDrive Ars Technica. There are already hacks to do this with GMail, but Google's goal with GDrive appears to be infinite storage, accessible from anywhere.

Meanwhile, the price of portable USB flash drives has been falling to the point where 2GB drives are cheap enough for every day storage purposes.

Is this the start of a new era of (nearly) free online storage, thin clients and OS independent services? Will data storage which is tightly integrated to the OS be more attractive to the average user, or will we prefer to have our information stored on a physical media we can put in our pockets?

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