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Comment Worse user experience (Score 1) 2

by alanmeyer (#27768905) Attached to: Bluetooth versus Wireless Mice

I've used bluetooth mice and keyboards at work and home. It's nice if the computer already has a bluetooth adapter as they don't require an extra port. In addition, the bluetooth has better range, so it's nice for a conference room where the computer is far from the keyboard & mouse.

However, for most applications, the negatives outweigh the positives.

Compared to the IR/RF counterparts, bluetooth devices are slow to respond. This is because of power management. The bluetooth devices consume more power, so they aggressively go into power-down modes to increase battery life. As a result, they take extra time to come out of the low-power modes and that's annoying, bordering unusable.

In addition, the fact that bluetooth requires an extra pairing process, when the device becomes unpaired it takes extra steps to restore it. Devices become unpaired when you push the connect buttons on the bottom of the device. This happens a lot when users think that the device isn't working (because it's slow to respond, see above).

These 2 issues result in a worse overall user experience.
Wireless Networking

Report Rips Government Wireless Network Effort 54

Posted by Soulskill from the effort-is-kind-of-a-strong-word-for-it dept.
coondoggie writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "Like a bunch of children in a sandbox unable and perhaps unwilling to share their toys, multiple key government agencies cannot or will not cooperate to build a collaborative wireless network. The Government Accountability Office report (PDF) issued today took aim at the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and the Treasury which had intended what's known as The Integrated Wireless Network (IWN) to be a joint radio communications system to improve communication among law enforcement agencies. However IWN, which has already cost millions of dollars, is no longer being pursued as a joint development project, the GAO said. By abandoning collaboration on a joint implementation, the departments risk duplication of effort and inefficient use of resources as they continue to invest significant resources in independent solutions. Further, these efforts will not ensure the interoperability needed to serve day-to-day law enforcement operations or a coordinated response to terrorist or other events, the GAO said."
Movies

Adobe Flaw Allows Full Movie Downloads For Free 166

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature dept.
webax writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "[An Adobe security hole] exposes online video content to the rampant piracy that plagued the music industry during the Napster era and is undermining efforts by retailers, movie studios and television networks to cash in on a huge Web audience. 'It's a fundamental flaw in the Adobe design. This was designed stupidly,' said Bruce Schneier ... The flaw rests in Adobe's Flash video servers that are connected to the company's players installed in nearly all of the world's Web-connected computers. The software doesn't encrypt online content, but only orders sent to a video player such as start and stop play. To boost download speeds, Adobe dropped a stringent security feature that protects the connection between the Adobe software and its players." webax also notes that the article suggests DRM as a potential solution to the problem.
Businesses

Nvidia Settles GPU Price-Fixing Antitrust Case 105

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the buy-your-way-out-of-trouble dept.
arcticstoat writes to report that Nvidia has offered up a settlement for the GPU price-fixing case. As a part of the settlement Nvidia would be required to pay $850,000 into a fund projected to hit $1.7 million (supposedly AMD/ATI would make up the other half). The antitrust case indicated that Nvidia and ATI worked together in order to 'fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize prices of GPUs sold in the US.'"

Good Email For Kids? 489

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the think-of-the-children dept.
mgessner writes "My kids are starting to want email accounts of their own. Even though gmail does a pretty good job of filtering spam, it's not perfect. Searching the web the other day for kid-safe email, I found a few sites that say they can do the job. What do others do for their kids' email? Pay for it? Just use a free service like gmail or yahoo? I don't pay for email accounts out of my own pocket, so I don't really see the need, but if the cost was a few bucks a month, I'd do it."

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