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Where Are the Cheap Thin Clients? 349

Posted by kdawson from the can't-be-too-rich-either dept.
Darren Ginter writes "I find many aspects of desktop virtualization compelling, with one exception: the cost of the thin clients, which typically exceeds that of a traditional box. I understand all of the benefits of desktop virtualization (and the downsides, thanks) but I'm very hung up on spending more for less. While there are some sub-$200 products out there, they all seem to cut corners (give me non-vaporware that will drive a 22" LCD at full resolution). I can PXE boot a homebrew Atom-based thin client for $130, but I'd prefer to be able to buy something assembled. Am I missing something here?"
Mozilla

Firefox Mobile Threatens Mobile App Stores, Says Mozilla 278

Posted by timothy from the race-to-the-bottom-price dept.
Barence writes "Mozilla claims that its new Firefox Mobile browser could be the beginning of the end for the hugely popular app stores created by Apple and its ilk. Mozilla claims Firefox Mobile will have the fastest Javascript engine of any mobile browser, and that will allow developers to write apps once for the web, instead of multiple versions for the different mobile platforms. 'As developers get more frustrated with quality assurance, the amount of handsets they have to buy, whether their security updates will get past the iPhone approval process ... I think they'll move to the web,' Mozilla's mobile VP, Jay Sullivan, told PC Pro. 'In the interim period, apps will be very successful. Over time, the web will win because it always does.'"
Microsoft

Microsoft Steals Code From Microblogging Startup 315

Posted by kdawson from the did-they-think-nobody-would-notice dept.
Readers davidlougheed and TSHTF both let us know that microblogging service Plurk reported today that Microsoft China not only copied look and feel from its interface, but also copied raw code from Plurk's service, when it released its own microblogging service called MSN Juku (or Mclub). In instances of the code released on the Plurk blog, the layout, code structure, and variable names were very similar or in some cases 100% identical. The story has been covered in multiple media sources. The software theft is hypocritical, given Microsoft's past threats against Chinese software piracy."
Censorship

Australia Could Finally Get R18+ Games 143

Posted by Soulskill from the they're-all-grown-up dept.
angry tapir writes "Australia may finally get an adults only, R18+ classification for computer games, with the federal government releasing a discussion paper summarizing the key arguments for and against an R18+ classification. Submissions are currently being sought from the community on whether the Australian National Classification Scheme should include an R18+ category for computer and video games. In the past the board responsible for classifying games and movies has banned some titles outright because of the lack of an adults only classification — Aliens Vs. Predator is just the most recent in a long line. The Attorney-General's report on the issue is available online."
Patents

Eolas Sues World + Dog For AJAX Patent 647

Posted by kdawson from the to-fix-patent-system-replace-judges-in-tyler-texas dept.
helfrich9000 writes "Eolas has filed suit against 23 companies (guess where), including Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, JPMorgan, and Playboy. At issue are a pair of patents (US 7,599,985 and US 5,838,906), one of which (the '906) was successfully used in litigation against Microsoft Corp for a $565 million judgement. Says Dr. Michael D. Doyle, chairman of Eolas, 'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair.'"
Government

White House Plans Open Access For Research 74

Posted by Soulskill from the nipping-climategate-part-two-in-the-bud dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. Now the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President is launching a 'Public Access Policy Forum' to determine whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented. 'The NIH model has a variety of features that can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public enhanced access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications,' OSTP says in the request for information. 'The best models may [be] influenced by agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research funding mechanisms.' The OSTP will conduct an interactive, online discussion that will focus on three major questions: Should this policy be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve information? What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance? 'It's very encouraging to see the Obama Administration focus on ensuring public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research [reg. required] as a key way to maximize our collective investment in science,' says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition."
Privacy

Subverting Fingerprinting 169

Posted by kdawson from the on-a-stalk dept.
squizzar writes in with news of a 27 year old Chinese woman who was discovered to have had her fingerprints surgically swapped between hands in order to fool Japanese immigration. "It is Japan's first case of alleged biometric fraud, but police believe the practice may be widespread. ... The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable — not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic." Time for some biometric escalation. Could iris scans be subverted as easily?

Comment Re:The priniple [sic] difference... (Score 1) 392

by drdrgivemethenews (#30286474) Attached to: Recipient of First Software Patent Defends Them
> I am yet to see a single software patent that I feel is really a new invention that requires protection....

The one example I am aware of is the write-anywhere feature of WAFL -- the NetApp filesystem. This unique and brilliantly conceived feature enabled cheap snapshots, which in turn enabled the development of a suite of data protection products that made building a billion-dollar company from scratch possible.

I'm not sure whether patent protection had anything to do with NetApp's success though. There are clones of this technology out there now--and lawsuits to go with them--well before the patents are set to expire (ca. 2015?). But the cloning didn't happen until NetApp's revenue got big enough to generate envy. That kind of analysis would seem to indicate that the original motivation for patents--to protect small inventors--is essentially not operative anymore.

Comment 128kb (Score 1) 426

by uncledrax (#29287881) Attached to: Major ISPs Seek To Lower Broadband Definition

I think for CALEA ('lawful intercept', aka warrant-backed-spying of your traffic, at least in the US), calls broadband anything > 128kbps broadband (or there abouts.. it reminded me of something like shotgunned ISDN lines). The difference being anything less then that they can just get a run-of-the-mill telephone wire tap from the local Bell.

I'm sorta wondering how any definition the FCC passes will get abused in the future. This should be fun to watch.

Comment Keep it fast (Score 1) 556

by Colonel Korn (#29287877) Attached to: Firefox 4.0 Goes Chrome, New UI In Q4 2010

I got frustrated with FF 3.5.2's occasional pauses while i was trying to smoothly and rapidly scroll through a long page of images and links (ve3d) to embedded videos yesterday. The main Slashdot page showed some of the same behavior. I'd grab the scroll bar, pull down, and the framerate of the scroll would stutter and occasionally lag to the extent that it skipped a whole screen in catching up. I decided that I'd do a qualitative benchmark on those two pages on all the major browsers, then find a way to get good adblocking on whichever I picked. This was in Windows 7 with a c2d at 2.6 ghz, 4 gigs of ram, and a 4870.

First I tried IE8, since it was already installed. Surprisingly, it wasn't worse than FF. It wasn't noticeably faster either. A tie goes to the status quo, so I waved goodbye to Trident and moved on. Then I tried Chrome, expecting to encounter my winner. Instead, the problems were vastly worse. Javescript benchmarks showed me much higher scores with Webkit, as expected, but in terms of HTML rendering it was much, much slower. The scroll bar itself noticeably lagged behind my cursor, sometimes to the extent that my cursor exited the bar until I slowed down to let it catch up. The pauses and hickups on the screen during scrolling went from being annoying to agonizing. I probably saw 2-5 fewer frames while scrolling than in FF or IE. Amazing, but true. I hoped that Google simply had a bad Webkit implementation, but sadly, Safari showed the same performance. I removed Chrome (easily) and Safari (less easily, since it installed two or three other Apple things that didn't go away during my Safari uninstall) and moved to my last option.

I installed Opera and ran the same test. I was blown away by how smooth the scrolling was. Loading those pages from cache also matched FF and went a little faster than Chrome/Safari (I didn't check IE). I hadn't expected much from Opera, but the new version (10) is, for me, the fastest browser in Windows. In the grand scheme of things, FF and IE are pretty fast, too, but even when I turned adblocking back on in FF it was still slower than Opera. I never really liked Opera in the past, but I'm going to use it as my main browser for awhile to see how it goes.

Speaking of which, is there an auto-updating adblocker plugin for Opera?

Comment Re:The Incestuous Cesspool (Score 1) 564

by Blakey Rat (#29056667) Attached to: Wikipedia Approaches Its Limits

Unfortunately, I have a job. Which makes it like playing World of Warcraft-- no matter how good I was at it, no matter how knowledgeable, skilled, determined-- I'd never be able to beat out the 14-year-olds living in their parents' basement.

Besides, I honestly believe Wikipedia is beyond repair at this point. Just need someone to come up with the new great idea in Wikis to replace it.

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