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Comment Re:By the time you read it ... (Score 2, Insightful) 420

by unityofsaints (#29908611) Attached to: Decline In US Newspaper Readership Accelerates

... which is one of the strengths of newspaper journalism! CNN, Fox etc. (both t.v. & online) have this mad obsession with serving up "up-to-date, latest developments" that half of what they report gets contradicted half an hour later anyway. They throw out semi-speculation in the hope they'll "get it right" ahead of other stations but in the end it's just noise. Newspapers can have this problem too, because they're coming up to a deadline, but usually they err on the side of caution and only include what's known to be true. The other good side effect of the deadline is that a certain amount of reflection can be included. You get a sense that it's the "bigger picture". T.V. and the internet just trips over itself with minute-by-minute updates.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes you need to be in the known, like the Olympics 2016 voting (I followed the BBC blog for that) but more often than not I enjoy the distance papers put between the news item and the reader.

Another underrated advantage of the newspaper is the medium itself. Sure, it's awkward flicking through the pages of a broadsheet on a bus but there's big, high-quality photographs and an eye-friendly column size. Too often websites make columns too wide, resulting in eye-strain no matter what way you resize your browser. And please don't tell me a news photograph on your TFT looks as good as in print- if it does you must be a graphic designer with a 2,000$ screen. Besides, we spend most of our lives in front of screens anyway, do I really have to get my news off one?

Comment Re:I'm tired of subscription-based service (Score 1) 368

by unityofsaints (#26865819) Attached to: Internet Killed the Satellite Radio Star

You North Americans don't know how lucky you have it.
When I was in the U.S. on holidays I was amazed by the huge number of satellite stations the rental car had on offer. It was playoff time in the NBA and I spent many a 5+ hour car trip continuously listening to live basketball in excellent quality, no need to worry about tuning when getting out of range like with AM/FM etc.

There's just nothing like that here in Ireland! Then again, we have close to no live basketball here at all - the t.v. official rights holder decides to show one game A WEEK. Having FTA triple headers in HD at playoff time like you do is the stuff of dreams here :(

I have a suspicion that for you it will be like the old saying- you don't know what you have until you lose it!
Music

Submission + - Which media player?

Submitted by
unityofsaints
unityofsaints writes: "I'm looking for a media player and I think \. might be the last place to turn in my frustration. My previous media player was Winamp, an application that does everything I need and has easily memorisable keyboard shortcuts. Now that I've got two fully linux machines and one dual-booting I'm looking for either a decent linux-only or (preferably) cross-platform solution.
So far I've been bitterly disappointed. Exaile, Banshee, Amarok, Listen, Rhythmbox, Songbird and XMMS all didn't pass the initial messing around phase. Maybe I didn't give them enough of a chance but here's a list of features I absolutely CANNOT do without:
1) good FLAC support
2) Decent performance on large / networked libraries (mine is ~18,000 songs)
3) A proper shuffle like Winamp's (too many have either a play queue option or a search from libary way of doing things but no quick, shuffleable playlist)
4) Ability to export library to some useful file format (I used to do this in Winamp with the import/export plugin)
5) Sane automatic podcast download support and internet radio (too many only support one way of doing each of these)

Here are some things that would be good to have but I'm not sure are possible: 1) Integration with Squeezecenter (playcounts, ratings etc. update both media player — slim server and vice versa)
2) Integration with my iAudio for playcounts etc. using custom firmware(probably never going to happen)

So guys, do you think there is any hope for me?"

Comment Re:Oh No! (Score 1) 338

by unityofsaints (#26201167) Attached to: Are Newspapers Doomed?

I care about my newspapers a lot and would really hate it if they went away. I think they definitely bring something else to the table in terms of news and certain papers are consistently of higher standard than ALL web news outlets because of their indepth reporting, (relatively) unbiased opinion and greater, more sensible appreciation of the bigger picture.

Please inform us about the names of these newspapers that have this high standard that you are referring to (or non-U.S.). I assume they are local papers since none of the nationally known newspapers in the U.S. fit this criteria.

Ok, I will admit U.S. papers tend to be fairly awful. Here's an (incomplete) list of good papers available in my neck of the woods (Ireland) that meet these criteria:

Die Welt
International Herald Tribune
Financial Times (U.K. weekend edition)
Die Zeit
Tokyo Times (international edition)
Frankfurter Rundschau
Suedeutsche Zeitung

I'm sure there's more, unfortunately I'm only fluent in English & German so that restricts my selection a bit. Hope that helps ;)

Comment Re:Oh No! (Score 3, Insightful) 338

by unityofsaints (#26192131) Attached to: Are Newspapers Doomed?

I care about my newspapers a lot and would really hate it if they went away. I think they definitely bring something else to the table in terms of news and certain papers are consistently of higher standard than ALL web news outlets because of their indepth reporting, (relatively) unbiased opinion and greater, more sensible appreciation of the bigger picture.

However I don't care about winning over any of you /.ers with this argument- life's too short for that. There is one angle that I can take on this which everyone here will understand: Even if newspapers were just what you get online in paper form, I'd still buy them any day over reading the same stuff online.

Why? Simple- I spend too much time already (in my job) staring at a screen, paper's a refreshing and healthy way of getting the news when you're sick of the TFT.


Full disclosure: I'm 21, so don't give me the he's-stuck-in-his-old-ways argument ;)
Security

Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier 229

Posted by samzenpus from the all-the-better-to-snoop-with dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An unnamed U.S. wireless carrier maintains an unfiltered, unmonitored DS-3 line from its internal network to a facility in Quantico, Virginia, according to Babak Pasdar, a computer security consultant who did work for the company in 2003. Customer voice calls, billing records, location information and data traffic are all allegedly exposed. A similar claim was leveled against Verizon Wireless in a 2006 lawsuit."
Software

AOL Opens Up the AIM Instant Messaging Network 209

Posted by Zonk from the horse-of-a-different-color dept.
AVIDJockey writes "In a pleasantly surprising move, AOL has changed its tune when it comes to third-party access to the company's chat network. America Online has recently launched a service called OpenAIM 2.0, which provides open, uninhibited access to services like Meebo, or all-in-one IM clients like Pidgin, allowing them to freely and easily use the AIM instant messaging network. 'At the moment, multi-platform IM desktop clients like Pidgin or Adium (the popular Mac client) generally rely on hacking and reverse engineering access to chat networks run by AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and others. Not only is that bad for developers since it means more work, it also means that such clients often can't use all the features of a particular network.'"
Software

Acid3 Test Released 309

Posted by Zonk from the new-is-better-than-old dept.
An anonymous reader writes ""The Web Standards Project has announced the release of Acid3, the latest test designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards in browsers. 'By making sure their software adheres to the test, the creators of these products can be more confident that their software will display and function with Web pages correctly both now and with Web pages of the future. The Acid3 Test is designed to test specifications for Web 2.0, and exposes potential flaws in implementations of the public ECMAScript 262 and W3C Document Object Model 2 standards.' Screenshots at the Drunken Fist site show the success of Safari 3 (which originally scored 31, but is now Scoring 87/100) IE6, and IE7 (massive fail, of course)'." There are additional discussions of the new test happening around the web.
Networking

Where's Our Terabit Ethernet? 218

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-already-made-a-bandwidth-pr0n-joke-today dept.
carusoj writes "Five years ago, we were talking about using Terabit Ethernet in 2008. Those plans have been pushed back a bit, but Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe this week is starting to throw around a new date for Terabit Ethernet: 2015. He's also suggesting that this be done in a non-standard way, at least at first, saying it's an opportunity to "break loose from the stranglehold of standards and move into some fun new technologies.""
Networking

Researchers Transmit Optical Data at 16.4 Tbps 2550km 126

Posted by CmdrTaco from the someone-compute-the-porntential dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "The goal of 100 Gbps Ethernet transmission is closer to reality with the announcement Wednesday that Alcatel-Lucent researchers have recorded an optical transmission record along with three photonic integrated circuits. Carried out by researchers in Bell Labs in Villarceaux, France, the successful transmission of 16.4 Tbps of optical data over 2,550 km was assisted by Alcatel's Thales' III-V Lab and Kylia, an optical solution company. The researchers utilized 164 wavelength-division multiplexed channels modulated at 100-Gbps in the effort."
Microsoft

Microsoft Pulls Vista SP1 Update 268

Posted by CmdrTaco from the undo-undo-undo dept.
1shooter writes "news.com reports that Microsoft is withdrawing SP1 for Vista. Nick White, Microsoft product manager blogged 'We've heard a few reports about problems customers may be experiencing as a result of KB937287,' wrote White. 'Immediately after receiving reports of this error, we made the decision to temporarily suspend automatic distribution of the update to avoid further customer impact while we investigate possible causes.'"
Media

How to Convert Your HD-DVD Discs to Blu-Ray 275

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the but-what-about-how-to-do-it-on-linux dept.
eldavojohn writes "Are you one of the few who boarded the HD-DVD Titanic ship headed to the bottom of ocean to join BetaMax? Fret no longer, friend, simply convert those and pretend like you never invested in the wrong technology! All you need is a Windows machine with a fast processor, an HD-DVD drive, a Blu-Ray burner, 30GB of free disk space, at least, though 40GB or more is recommended and an internet connection to download the software! Or you can sit and be the crazy guy who continues to argue that HD-DVD is the superior technology whether it's true or not."
Google

Google Funds Work for Photoshop on Linux 678

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the good-friends-to-have dept.
S point 2 writes "Google has announced that they have hired Codeweavers, maker of the popular Wine software to make Photoshop run better on Linux. 'Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now...We look forward to further improvements in this area.' It is unknown whether or not the entire Creative Suite will be funded for support, but for the time being it seems Photoshop-on-Linux development is getting a new priority under Google."
Communications

Multitasking Makes You Stupid and Slow 551

Posted by kdawson from the knew-it-all-along dept.
Reverse Gear recommends a long and interesting article over at The Atlantic in which Walter Kirn talks about the scientific results that support his claim and his own experiences with multitasking: that it destroys our ability to focus. "Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires — the constant switching and pivoting — energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we're supposed to be concentrating on... studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy."

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