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Android

Flash On Android Is 'Shockingly Bad' 657

Posted by timothy from the not-so-flash dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. 'While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,' writes Lawler. 'All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.'"
Image

Happy Towel Day Screenshot-sm 122

Posted by samzenpus from the wringing-out-the-wit dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While Douglas Adams continues his attempt to set a new record for the longest extended lunch break, geeks all over the universe pay tribute to the beloved author by celebrating the tenth edition of Towel Day. Towel Day is more alive than ever. This year Richard Dawkins, one of Adams' best friends, has tweeted a Towel Day reminder to his numerous followers. The CERN Bulletin has published an article on Towel Day. There has been TV coverage and there will be a radio interview. The Military Republic of the Deltan Imperium, a newly formed micronation, has recognized Towel Day as an official holiday. In Hungary several hundreds of hitchhiker fans want to have a picnic together in a park. And there's a concert, a free downloadable nerdrap album, a free game being released, the list goes on and on."
Image

Hollywood Stock Exchange Set To Launch In April Screenshot-sm 100

Posted by samzenpus from the put-me-down-for-$10-on-portman dept.
You can buy and sell actor or movie "stock" for virtual cash on the website Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX). Starting in April the company plans on letting you turn those movie performance predictions into real dollars. HSX filed with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for approval as an active trading site in November 2008 and has just entered the final phase of regulatory review. Richard Jaycobs, president of HSX's parent company, said, "The number of people who visit movie theaters each year and form opinions about a film's success is in the tens of millions. We believe that's the reason the public response to this product has been very positive."
Graphics

64-Bit Flash Player For Linux Finally In Alpha 172

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
Luchio writes "Finally, a little bit of respect from Adobe with this alpha release of the Adobe Flash Player 10 that was made available for all Linux 64-bit enthusiasts! As noted, 'this is a prerelease version,' so handle with care. Just remove any existing Flash player and extract the new .so file in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or /usr/lib/opera/plugins)."
Businesses

Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination 779

Posted by kdawson from the is-that-perfectly-clear dept.
touretzky writes "Two ex-employees have sued Diskeeper Corporation in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, alleging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment (complaint, PDF). Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level, publicly avowed Scientologist who has given millions to his Church. Diskeeper's surprising response to the lawsuit (PDF) appears to be that religious instruction in a place of employment is protected by the First Amendment." The blogger at RealityBasedCommunity.net believes that the legal mechanism that Diskeeper is using to advance this argument ("motion to strike") is inappropriate and will be disallowed, but that the company will eventually be permitted to present its novel legal theory.
Announcements

GNOME 2.24 Released 163

Posted by timothy from the ekiga-has-the-best-screenshots dept.
thhamm writes "The GNOME community hopes to make our users happy with many new features and improvements, as well as the huge number of bug fixes that are shipped in this latest GNOME release! Well. What else to say. I am happy." Notably, this release is also the occasion for the announcement of videoconferencing app Ekiga's 3.0 release.
Software

Submission + - Java Artificial Intelligence Sample Code Liberated

Submitted by
F452
F452 writes: "An objection I've had to many programming books and web sites is that they don't make sample code available under a free software license. This is within the rights of the author, of course, but it seems counter to the spirit of teaching and sharing knowledge to restrict the use of example code.

I was happy to exchange words recently with an author who was open and responsive to making the sample artificial intelligence code from his book available under a free license. With Saturday being Software Freedom Day, it seemed like a good time to write about our email conversation and point you to the freed code. Topics include: Control Systems, Scripted Behavior, Discrete Searching, Searching State Space, Genetic Algorithms, Thinking Logically, and Supervised and Unsupervised Neural Networks."

Feed Engadget: Sony, Sharp, and Hitachi out to cut your LCD power bill (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Sony, Sharp, and Hitachi have joined forces with the goal of developing LCD television tech that will have displays sipping less than half the current juice by 2011. A recent CNET study shows that a typical plasma television uses 328 watts of power, whereas the average LCD uses 193 watts. By researching LED backlighting -- which also helps with expanded-range color reproduction -- and other energy-saving technologies, the companies hope to keep the costs of operating an LCD down as the sizes go up. And let there be no mistake, sizes will go up.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Handhelds

Submission + - iPhone outsold all smartphones in July (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mangini
mangini writes: Apple's iPhone quickly shot to the top of the sales chart for smartphones, even though its considered a 'crossover phone' and not a smartphone. 'The device accounted for 1.8 percent of all mobile handset sales in July. This number sounds pretty paltry at first glance, but iSuppli says that the iPhone matched the popular LG Chocolate phone in sales during July. It also outsold all other smartphones during the same time period — this included all BlackBerrys, the entire Palm portfolio, and anything from Motorola, Nokia, or Samsung, to name a few.' iSuppli thinks that Apple could sell 4.5 million iPhones by year end — a figure that would surpass Apple's projections.
AMD

Submission + - AMD Linux Driver Interview Opportunity

Submitted by
Sarah Vella
Sarah Vella writes: "AMD would like to set up an interview with Slashdot.org for September 4th or 5th to discuss a major development on their open source drivers. AMD would like to share this news first with the Slashdot community.

Let me know if Slashdot is open to having an interview with Chris Schlaeger our resident Linux guru and Pat Moorhead, VP, Marketing.

Cheers,
Sarah Vella
High Road Communications
416 644-2270"

Feed The Register: Robot sailboats to race across Atlantic (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
Seagull poo on solar cells is primary tech snag

In the Irish Sea off Wales this week, a new kind of robot is taking to the waves. For once, this is not a military kill-droid, nor a securo-pork powered surveillance machine. Instead, we are seeing the debut of the fully-autonomous sailboat, which uses its own software to navigate out at sea. For now the uninhabited windjammers will stay relatively close to home but, next year, their successors will race across the Atlantic.

Feed Newsforge: Mainframe Linux at SHARE (linux.com)

From feed by nffeed
San Diego -- IBM's customer training and support group SHARE is holding a week-long seminar and conference at the Manchester Grand Hyatt here this week. SHARE dates back to 1955, and the folks gathered in San Diego include programmers, sysadmins, and IT directors who have spent decades running mainframe systems for the world's largest companies and governments. Most of the classes and labs focus on "big iron" products like the mainframe operating system MVS and the CICS transaction server, but Linux is getting strong promotion as well. IBM champions Linux for its zSeries mainframes as the industrial-strength virtualization platform, and judging by the turnout at the Linux and VM program sessions, interest is high.

Feed Engadget: Lenovo says "no thanks" to Vista for 2008 Olympics (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Poor Vista, you really can't buy a break. First you've got legions of users angrily awaiting a decent update for a whole slew of problems, then there's the CEOs taking pot-shots at you, and now, Lenovo, supplier of the 2008 Olympic Games' computer systems says it's sticking with XP. Word on the street is that all vital computing tasks for the Games will be handled on XP-enabled PCs, while some internet lounges used by athletes will be equipped with Vista systems. According to Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo, "the Olympic Games require mature, stable technologies and it's not a place to try new technologies." Yang, we're pretty sure a legion of Vista users feel similarly about their desktops. You can almost hear Microsoft's sharp intake of breath from here.

[Via Slashdot]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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