Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Google

Submission + - Google Wave Progress Report: 'No Killer App Yet' (bnet.com)

Submitted by
Michael_Curator
Michael_Curator writes: "Google Wave may have a brilliant future, but its present is frustrating developers who've had a chance to work with it. Ben Rometsch, director of the Solid State Group, told me that the Wave user interface "yearns for super-fast Javascript performance," but doesn't get it, is very slow to debug and offers a "protracted and painful" development cycle. As he described working with Wave, which is currently in developer preview, the words "slow," "protracted" and "painful" cropped up more than once. Granted, all the developers in the world share a single instance running on one server, but frustrating developers you depend on to drive adoption of this application isn't the smartest strategy ever devised."
The Military

Submission + - US Navy Shoots Down Missle in Space (space.com)

Submitted by Raver32
Raver32 writes: The U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency (MDA) successfully shot down a short-range ballistic missile in space in a July 30 test, agency officials announced Friday. The Navy's USS Hopper and USS O'Kane destroyers detected and tracked a missile fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, Kauai in Hawaii during the test, which was latest demonstration of the U.S. military's Aegis Missile Defense system. The USS Hopper fired one Standard Missile-3 block 1A missile and destroyed the target 100 miles (160 km) above the Pacific Ocean about two minutes after launch, MDA officials said in a statement. The test marked the Aegis system's 19th successful intercept in 23 attempts, including an operational mission in 2008 that destroyed a malfunctioning satellite as it re-entered the atmosphere, MDA officials said.

Comment Missing the point (Score 5, Informative) 843

by wookaru (#28930163) Attached to: 20 Years of MS Word and Why It Should Die a Swift Death
I RTFA and its not about switching word processors. Its about moving beyond people editing files one at a time and passing them around - in printed or email form. Basically, the author just discovered the "Magical World of Wiki" and has gotten his office to adopt a wiki as their documentation system.

Why someone discovering 14 year old internet technology made the front page of /. is beyond me...

Ooooo BTW guys, have you seen that video of a dancing baby?! Its ROTFLOL!
Software

VLC 1.0.0 Released 419

Posted by Soulskill from the now-supports-kitchen-sink dept.
rift321 writes "VLC media player, which we all know for simplifying the playback of pretty much any codec out there, has finally released version 1.0.0. Here's a quick list of improvements: live recording, instant pausing and frame-by-frame support, finer speed controls, new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0), new formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS) and major improvements in many formats, new Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder, video scaling in fullscreen, RTSP Trickplay support, zipped file playback, customizable toolbars, easier encoding GUI in Qt interface, better integration in Gtk environments, MTP devices on Linux, and AirTunes streaming."
Image

Passenger Avoids Delay By Fixing Plane Himself 178

Posted by samzenpus from the flying-the-diy-skies dept.
It would be a shame if an engineer on a recent Thomas Cook Airlines flight doesn't get a complimentary first class upgrade every time he flies. The engineer was on flight TCX9641 when it was announced that the trip would be delayed eight hours, while a mechanic was flown in to fix a problem. Luckily for the other passengers, the engineer happened to work for Thomsonfly Airlines, which has a reciprocal maintenance agreement with Thomas Cook. After about 35 minutes the man fixed the problem and the flight was on its way. A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said, "When they announced there was a technical problem he came forward and said who he was. We checked his licence and verified he was who he said he was, and he was able to fix the problem to avoid the delay. We are very grateful that he was on the flight that day."
The Courts

Submission + - The Catcher's Sequel Goes Awry

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "US District Court Judge Deborah Batts issued a preliminary injunction this week barring the US publication and sale of a parody of J. D. Salinger's famous 1951 coming of age novel "Catcher in the Rye" called "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" by Swedish author Frederik Colting. Colting's lawyer had argued at a hearing that, like a previous parody of "Gone with the Wind" called "The Wind Done Gone" his client's work was covered by fair use provisions because it is a critical parody of Salinger's iconic novel and was therefore tranformative, rather than derivative of the original work by the reclusive author. During the hearing Judge Batts expressed skepticism toward that argument and while acknowledging that Colting's book is mildly tranformative of the original work--mainly because it includes Salinger himself as a character bent on killing off the septuagenarian Holden Caulfield. But Caulfield may have bigger problems than the insults of irreverent parodists. While still a staple of the high school curriculum, beloved by many teachers who read and reread it in their own youth, teachers say young readers today don't like Holden as much as they used to and what once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many of them as "weird," "whiny" and "immature." In the meantime Colting's attorney said he plans to seek an expedited appeal of the ruling with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit so the book, already published in the UK can be published in the United States.. "Members of the public are deprived of the chance to read the book and decide for themselves whether it adds to their understanding of Salinger and his work.""
Medicine

HIV/AIDS Vaccine To Begin Phase I Human Trials 329

Posted by timothy from the soon-enough-mandatory-like-gardasil dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An HIV/AIDS vaccine developed in Ontario has applied for Phase 1 human trials. Safety and immunogenicity studies of the vaccine, dubbed SAV001-H, have already been completed on animals. Phase 1 human trials will check the safety of the vaccine on HIV positive volunteers. Phase 2 will then test immunogenicity."
Announcements

Submission + - New iTunes-style website for casual gaming (gambolio.com)

Submitted by
Alex Kearns
Alex Kearns writes: "Gambolio.com — iTunes for online games
Innovative iTunes-style casual gaming web app launches in public beta

2 July 2009

London-based software developer Webalon (www.webalon.com) is planning to take on the big online casual gaming portals with the public beta launch of an innovative Ajax-powered casual gaming web app — www.gambolio.com. Described by Webalon founder Alex Kearns as "iTunes for online games", Gambolio allows users to create and play their own library of online games in the same way as iTunes helps people oversee their music collecion. "We want to give users the same sense of ownership of the games that people have with the songs in their iTunes library," said Kearns.

Users can choose from a catalogue of more than 8,000 free games to add to their library. Games can be filed in different categories, shared with friends and family, rated, commented on — all within a beautiful Ajax interface designed from the ground up to greatly improve the user experience of playing online games.

"While most gaming portals bombard you with flashing icons and animated ads, force you to play the games at a fraction of the size of your browser window and make searching through their catalogues a painfully slow experience, Gambolio has taken a completely different approach," said Kearns.

The application's rich, desktop-style interface and interactivity allows users to browse and search through thousands of games in a matter of seconds, play games in a unique full-window mode bereft of the in-your-face adds ubiquitous on most portals and load your friends' game libraries simply by clicking a button.

Gambolio.com's Ajax technology allows users to smoothly switch between playing games, managing their library, commenting on games... without the need for a single page reload. "It is really like a desktop application — with all the fun interactivity and responsiveness — but working in your browser. We believe gambolio.com could change the way people play online games for the better," said Kearns.

Key features:
* Play games in gambolio.com's unique full-window mode
* View games as an iTunes-style list or as thumbnails
* Search/browse 8000 games on a single page using our unique search technology
* Create your own custom playlists
* Share your game library with friends

Future plans include:
* Realtime information about what games are being played by other members and your friends
* Integration with MochiAds's MochiCoins technology
* Adobe Air downloadable version of the application
* Facebook/Bebo/Myspace apps to allow users to embed their games in their social network

Technology information
* Gambolio.com was made using open source technologies, including: Ajax, javascript (jQuery), MySQL and PHP.
* The games are sourced from several partners, including Mochi Media (www.mochimedia.com/)

Further information:
For further information about Gambolio, contact founder Alex Kearns at alex.kearns@webalon.com. You can also follow Gambolio on twitter at www.twitter.com/gambolio"
Biotech

Japanese Creating "Super Tuna" 280

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the delicious-engineering dept.
motherpusbucket writes "The Telegraph reports that Japanese scientists hope to be breeding a so-called 'Super Tuna' within the next decade or so. They have about 60% of the genome mapped and expect to finish it in the next couple months. The new breed will grow faster, taste good, have resistance to disease and will totally kick your ass if you cross them."

Slashdot Top Deals

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

Close