bigdady92 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Six Steps to a Better Home Theater (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

mikemuch

on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @09:31AM

mikemuch writes: "Though he's been a student of home theater technology for years, ExtremeTech's Loyd Case came back from a recent THX professional installers training course with wide eyes from all he learned. He shares the knowledge about room characteristics, speaker choice and placement, calibration, and more in this article on home theater optimization."

Submission + - Satellite Shootdown Simulation (hamptonroads.com)

Submitted by dprovine on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @09:09AM

dprovine writes: A professor at Old Dominion University using the commercial satellite tracking program Orbitron worked out a simulated trajectory for shooting down a satellite with a medium-range ballistic missile. It's wouldn't be easy or cheap for a terrorist cell to actually do it, but this suggests it wouldn't actually be very hard for a government to do it.

Submission + - Data partition as Linux PC value add?

Submitted by

g8orade

on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @08:48AM

g8orade writes: "As the

Open Document Format forces compete with Microsoft OOXML,

Applications via the internet become possible (terminal applications),

PC makers start offering Linux pre-loaded but the "distro wars" continue, and

some writers think package management is a true Linux differentiator,

wouldn't it be a good idea for the Linux PCs to come set up with a data partition separated from the OS / Applications partition? Alternately even a separate (portable) data drive / data port for your files?

It wouldn't hurt for consumers to get used to the idea of their files being separate from the programs that use them. This would also allow them to put any OS and applications on that partition over any timeframe, but leave their files alone.

Why don't PC makers do this by default, does MS not want it? Because, wouldn't this advance the cause of open document formats?"

Submission + - Adblock plus users "accused" of stealing (mozilla.org) 1

Submitted by

derrida

on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @07:56AM

derrida writes: "There is this Firefox Add-on called Adblock plus that promises (and delivers) removal of "all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page". And there is also an ongoing debate whether this is stealing or not. Quoting two different views:
"Do you have a devise that automatically blocks all commercials on television.[?] There's a difference between ignoring commercials and blocking them." and
"My a** it is [stealing]! If your going to argue I'm taking something from you by not waiting for your ads to load, I'm going to argue you are "stealing" bandwidth.".
Going one step further some web developers released scripts that blocks Adblock (watch the oxynoron!).
How is really slashdot going to react if Adblock plus is heavily used by its readers?"

Submission + - OpenOffice.org to fully support PDF editing

Submitted by Juan Rey on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @07:49AM

Juan Rey writes: According to Kai Ahrens' blog, Sun OOo Graphics development team is working in order to get a native import filter into OpenOffice.org.

Development is advanced and a prototype is on the way.

Submission + - New Mouse Replaces Scroll Wheel With Scroll Zone (cooltechzone.com)

Submitted by tackyDUCK on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @06:43AM

tackyDUCK writes: Gundeep Hora of CoolTechZone.com has reviewed the world's first slim mouse that replaces the standard scroll wheel with a scroll zone, much like the notebook's trackpad. Is it effective? He writes, "In addition, Rocketfish has kept things simple with two buttons and a scroll zone, which is an interesting addition, to say the least. Despite the unique addition of the scroll zone, it failed to impress us. The performance was a bit lackluster, since we had to apply more pressure to scroll through webpages and documents. And also, since it's not a physical button, you will definitely miss the middle click functionality of the device. It's a great effort on Rocketfish's part, but expecting users to change otherwise normal behavior is asking for a little too much.

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