Comment Re:Time for a new tagline (Score 1) 278
Slashdot - news for idiots, stuff that's obvious
But that still puts Slashdot out of league of 90% of the world's internet users.
Comment Re:windows marketplace (Score 1) 289
I like windows mobile 6.5, it is actually stable and fast IMO. What I despise is the UI, they actually took a step backwards compared to 6.0. However, after killing palm, like with IE they went stagnant, and now have to deal with a dead OS overshadowed by nearly anything else. If they would have "windows 7ened" their mobile OS in time for the win7 launch their mobile OS future might not be so dim. What I like about win mobile is the wide and open (compared to apple) variety of aps, I can install whatever browser or media player I want.
Comment Re:Sci-fi not predicting far enough? (Score 1) 479
Some of the jokes surrounding the
[SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]
French character had me doubled over laughing. "Laterre" and "Magna Feeks" or whatever. Hilarious.
Liked the book a lot. The ending fell apart a little (especially the heavily foreshadowed last major plot event/action sequence that never materialized) but it was still pretty good. I think Cryptonomicon is still my favorite of his novels, but Anathem is solidly second.
However, I (finally) read A Canticle for Leibowitz just prior to reading Anathem as I'd heard that they were similar (not so much, as it turns out) and didn't want my reading of the earlier novel to be tainted by the later one, and... well, it's in a whole different class, aside from bearing only a passing resemblance in terms of story. I haven't read everything by Stephenson yet, but I doubt he's got anything that's even close to it. It's one of the few sci-fi books I've read that I could have read right after tackling one of the canonical literary classics without being jarred by the sudden drop in quality of prose and general execution of the story and themes.
Comment Re:Smokers are repulsive (Score 1) 1078
I don't repair these for a living, but I fixed my grandmother's computer, which was regularly exposed to her cigarette smoke. That dust inside you mention? Take that and mix it with tar. It winds up being a thick, sticky, messy, paste that traps heat and even more dust until things overheat and even short out. I wouldn't be surprised if that crap even caused fires. Truly, it must be seen to be believed.
Anyway, boo on Apple for this trick. Replace the unit under warranty and keep your customers happy. God knows they paid enough of a premium and can reasonably expect better service and consideration from Apple than for some $300 Dell.
Comment Re:Good for apple (Score 1) 1078
This is reason enough for me to quit. I hate the idea that I might stink.
Comment Re:Not wristwatches (Score 1) 778
Yet Apple released the iphone, because they realised that people weren't going to carry around an ipod and a phone.
Yet I still carry around an iPod and a phone. Granted, it's not an iPhone, but it plays MP3s, and has a SD card slot, so there's nothing stopping me from using just my phone. One could argue that it's because I prefer the iPod's media interface, but even if I had an iPhone, I'd STILL carry both, because the iPod has twice as much storage space as the iPhone. And that's only if I limit myself to the iPod Touch. If I were carrying a normal iPod, the iPhone can't even begin to compete with it in terms of storage space.
Watches are just jewellery nowadays.
No. People wear, and use, watches all the time. Just because you don't use a thing doesn't make it obsolete for most of the world.
Apple Patents "Enforceable" Ad Viewing On Devices 439
Rexdude writes "Apple has filed a patent that forces users to interact with an ad. FTFA: 'Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn't simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.'" We've been
following this story for awhile now but it seems to have broken into the mainstream.
Linus Calls Microsoft Hatred "a Disease" 634
Hugh Pickens writes "In the aftermath of Microsoft's recent decision to contribute 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community, Christopher Smart of Linux Magazine talked to Linus Torvalds and asked if the code was something he would be happy to include, even though it's from Microsoft. 'Oh, I'm a big believer in "technology over politics." I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing etc. issues,' says Torvalds. 'I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.' Smart asked Torvalds if Microsoft was contributing the code to benefit the Linux community or Microsoft. 'I agree that it's driven by selfish reasons, but that's how all open source code gets written! We all "scratch our own itches." It's why I started Linux, it's why I started git, and it's why I am still involved. It's the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree,' says Torvalds. 'So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That's the point of open source — the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the "your" in question happens to be.'"
Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine 389
BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."
Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs 640
snydeq writes "Major browser vendors have been unable to agree on an encoding format they will support in their products, forcing the W3C to drop audio and video codecs from HTML 5, the forthcoming W3C spec that has been viewed as a threat to Flash, Silverlight, and similar technologies. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions on the situation, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' HTML 5 editor Ian Hickson wrote to the whatwg mailing list. Apple, for its part, won't support Ogg Theora in QuickTime, expressing concerns over patents despite the fact that the codec can be used royalty-free. Opera and Mozilla oppose using H.264 due to licensing and distribution issues. Google has similar reservations, despite already using H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome. Microsoft has made no commitment to support <video>."
Ubuntu 9.04 Is As Slick As Win7, Mac OS X 871
An anonymous reader writes in with an opinion piece from ZDNet Australia. "Here's what the official press release won't tell you about Ubuntu 9.04, which formally hit the streets yesterday: its designers have polished the hell out of its user interface since the last release in October. Just like Microsoft has taken the blowtorch to Vista to produce the lightning-quick Windows 7, which so far runs well even on older hardware, Ubuntu has picked up its own game."
Maxis Launches Spore API Contest 35
Today EA Maxis announced the beginning of a development contest for their new Spore API. They're calling on players to submit useful and interesting apps and widgets, and they've provided samples to show the kinds of ideas they're looking for. The samples include an update list for creations by game buddies, a creature dueling app, a creature tournament app, and a variety of viewers.
Windows Server 2008 One Year On — Hit Or Miss? 386
magacious writes "Friday marked a year to the day since Microsoft launched Windows Server 2008, but did it have quite the impact the so-called software giant expected, or did it make more of a little squeak than a big bang? Before its arrival on 27 February 2008, it had been five long years since the release of the last major version of Windows Server. In a world that was moving on from simple client/server applications, and with server clouds on the horizon, Windows Server 2003 was looking long in the tooth. After a year of 'Vista' bashing, Microsoft needed its server project to be well received, just to relieve some pressure. After all, this time last year, the panacea of a well-received Windows 7 was still a long way off. So came the new approach: Windows Server 2008."
Miscalculation Invalidates LHC Safety Assurances 684
KentuckyFC writes "In a truly frightening study, physicists at the University of Oxford have identified a massive miscalculation that makes the LHC safety assurances more or less invalid (abstract). The focus of their work is not the safety of particle accelerators per se but the chances of any particular scientific argument being wrong. 'If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect,' say the team. That has serious implications for the LHC, which some people worry could generate black holes that will swallow the planet. Nobody at CERN has put a figure on the chances of the LHC destroying the planet. One study simply said: 'there is no risk of any significance whatsoever from such black holes.' The danger is that this thinking could be entirely flawed, but what are the chances of this? The Oxford team say that roughly one in a thousand scientific papers have to be withdrawn because of errors but generously suppose that in particle physics, the rate is one in 10,000."
Building Linux Applications With JavaScript 288
crankymonkey writes "The GNOME desktop environment could soon gain support for building and extending applications with JavaScript thanks to an experimental new project called Seed. Ars Technica has written a detailed tutorial about Seed with several code examples. The article demonstrates how to make a GTK+ application for Linux with JavaScript and explains how Seed could influence the future of GNOME development. In some ways, it's an evolution of the strategy that was pioneered long ago by GNU with embedded Scheme. Ars Technica concludes: 'The availability of a desktop-wide embeddable scripting language for application extension and plugin writing will enable users to add lots of rich new functionality to the environment. As this technology matures and it becomes more tightly integrated with other language frameworks such as Vala, it could change the way that GNOME programmers approach application development. JavaScript could be used as high-level glue for user interface manipulation and rapid prototyping while Vala or C are used for performance-sensitive tasks.'"
