Comment WebOS (Score 4, Insightful) 115
Also sounds like the dominant paradigm in WebOS...
Comment Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score 1) 215
Maybe the answer is, not to block Germany from accessing YouTube - but withdrawl all business presence from Germany. I mean, why can YouTube be taken to court in Germany, if it's not a German company? I suppose it's some international-corporation thing, but I'm not a businessman so I don't know. But I've never understood why Germany thinks it can regulate YouTube - at least, not youtube.com (vs youtube.de). So - get rid of youtube.de, and Germans will just have to go to youtube.com instead.
If I were to open a US based site, as a US-only business (or not even as a business) and some users uploaded german-copyrighted material - could I be sued in Germany, just because Germans could reach the site? I'd think not! That would mean anyone putting up a site on the Internet could be sued in any country in the world. Of course, that's a lot of the impetus behind the SOPA and CISPA type laws. Essentially, publishing on the Internet will become like broadcasting before too long - regulated, licensed, and definitely not cheap. The "frontier" is ending.
Comment A La Carte will Cost MORE! (Score 2) 244
In the race for subscription dollars, rates for TV services across providers have risen sharply over the last decade as the number of specialty channels, each commanding its own fee, has soared.
There's the real problem right there. The cost keeps going up. So, reduce the overall cost to the consumer, and we won't care if you "bundle" other channels. Get the specialty channels to reduce their fees, or to be included in "bundles" and so long as the overall monthly cost is kept low, the other channels can ride along.
What I fear is everything becoming "specialty" - or charging like it - can you imagine paying $10/mon PER CHANNEL? e.g for SyFy - $10, Discovery - $10. Food network - $5. But that's basically what a la carte will do - eventually each channel will cost $5-$10/month, with "bigger" ones (HBO, Showtime) being $12-$15.
So, for just a FEW channels, the cost is MORE than it would be now:
SyFy $10
Discovery $10
HBO $15
Food $5
ABC $5
NBC $5
CBS $5
FOX $5
CNN $5
COMEDY $5
TBS $5
USA $5
-----
$80/month!
So, PLEASE, let's just go back to one flat rate per month for EVERYTHING - and let's keep it to say, $75/month. Any more for 'tv' makes me just want to kick the thing out on the curb and go back to playing card games, reading, etc.
Submission + - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Launched, Kepler Debuts (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "We’ve been hearing about NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture since about September 2010, when company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang first publically disclosed that Kepler would offer massive performance per watt improvements previous-gen architectures and that GPUs based on Kepler would arrive in 2011. That launch date has obviously slipped, but the first product based on Kepler has just been announced. Kepler is NVIDIA's first 28nm GPU architecture, with the current high-end chip sporting 1536 CUDA cores at a base clock of 1.06GHz, with a 256-bit memory interface at an effective 6.08GHz. The first performance reviews of the new GPU, its architecture and the new GeForce GTX 680, show it to firmly outpace AMD's latest Radeon HD 7970 series high-end card across the board. In addition, mobile variants of the chip show impressive performance and power efficiency as well with NVIDIA's Optimus dynamic power gating technology powering down the GPU when it's not required."
Submission + - Researchers May Have Discovered How Memories are Encoded in the Brain (gizmag.com) 1
Zothecula writes: While it’s generally accepted that memories are stored somewhere, somehow in our brains, the exact process has never been entirely understood. Strengthened synaptic connections between neurons definitely have something to do with it, although the synaptic membranes involved are constantly degrading and being replaced – this seems to be somewhat at odds with the fact that some memories can last for a person’s lifetime. Now, a team of scientists believe that they may have figured out what’s going on. Their findings could have huge implications for the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Submission + - An Effective Cure for Baldness May Soon Be On the Market
newmission33 writes: Male-pattern baldness may be triggered by a protein in the scalp that stops hairs from growing, according to a new study, raising the possibility that drugs that are currently being tested to block the protein might also prevent the most common cause of hair loss in men.
Submission + - Control a PC Using Hand Movements; Without a Kinect (innovationnewsdaily.com) 1
AstroPhilosopher writes: Researchers from MS and the University of Washington have developed a program that uses a computer's speakers and microphone to detect hand movements.
Submission + - How to live down making 'the worst sci-fi film ever made'. (shadowlocked.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Sliding over to 00.58.54 in this embedded podcast, 'Battlefield Earth' director Roger Christian, twice an Oscar-winner — and the visual creator of 'Star Wars' and 'Alien' — makes a rare commentary about his last 12 years as the director of 'the worst sci-fi movie ever made' — 'Battlefield Earth' (2000). He talks of Rupert Murdoch's war against the movie, his unfaltering lack of any interest in scientology, the praise the movie got from Spielberg, Tarantino and George Lucas, Spielberg's sequestering of its design for 'Minority Report', the fallacies about what it cost and what it made (and is still making)...and the success it is having on HBO, as viewers slowly discover it's 'just a sci-fi movie' and not a proselytising tract for scientology.
Comment Pinballz (Score 1) 82
Austin, TX has "Pinballz Arcade" - 13,000 sq ft of pinball machines old and new. They don't do the $10 entrance & unlimited games model - but a lot of the games are only a quarter. Oh and it's BYOB.
Comment Microsoft does it again (Score 1) 1124
Sigh. Yet another case of "Microsoft does something, so we've all got to follow suit". Seems like any time Microsoft makes a UI change, no matter whether it's liked or not, all other Windows program UIs eventually adopt it.
