Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
HP

Submission + - Recent HP Laptops shipped CPU-Choking WiFi Driver (superuser.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer manufacturers have recently come under fire for the continued practice of shipping machines with excessive bloatware. Software preinstalled on some recent HP laptops was worse than normal though, consuming anywhere from 25-99% CPU by making incessant WMI queries, resulting in overheating laptops and reduced battery life. Users on a computer Q&A site did some sleuthing, and revealed that HP Wireless Assistant — software which does nothing but tell the user when their WiFi adapter is turned on or off — was causing the problem. According to an HP support forum, the problem is fixed in later versions, but thousands of laptops have the software installed, and the software does not get updated automatically.
Android

Submission + - Android development - the elephant in the room (android.com) 1

Submitted by FyRE666
FyRE666 writes: An efficient IDE with good debugging tools is essential for a happy coder. Why is it then, that after 2 and a half years the Android SDK is still so bad when compared to environments for other devices? It's not like Google are lacking in-house talent, but despite acknowledging the terrible emulator performance, (including lack of OpenGL support) and clunky GUI building tools, nothing seems to be happening to address the issues. The emulator's performance is blamed on it accurately emulating a device, unlike the iPhone/iPad simulators. However, I believe most developers would like to build against a usable emulator, even if it's not 100% accurate. Let's face it, devs on other platforms devs have had no problems with this model. An emulator/debugging tool that struggles to reach 1/2 the speed of an old G1, while running on an i7 950 with 12GB RAM, is really not cutting it. The fact the emulator only uses 1 core of the CPU doesn't help, obviously.

If Microsoft had produced something like this for people to develop for WP7, there would be universal derision, so why are Google getting a free ride with this?

It would be interesting to hear the views of other Android developers, and how they fare with the current SDK.

Comment Re:I wish slashdot had... (Score 1) 789

by ratsouffle (#33213290) Attached to: I Wish My Car Had A...
I guess the problem with this, though, is that grammar rules must reflect the reality in which the language is used. You could say that "less" is used to imply "less of" or a similar construction, and just saying "less" is entirely understandable. Enough people say "less" as a synonym for "fewer" in that context that the 'grammar' of what 'looks right' to the person writing it has now been altered so that saying "less polls about cars" seems perfectly acceptable to most (except those who would prefer everybody wrote and spoke in the same way and that language would never change). Prescriptive grammar is futile.
Science

Submission + - P != NP 1

Submitted by
morsch
morsch writes: "Researcher Vinay Deolalikar from HP Labs claims proof that P != NP. The 100 page paper has apparently not been peer-reviewed yet, so feel free to dig in and find some flaws. However, the attempt seems to be genuine, and Deolalikar has published papers in the same field in the past. So this may be the real thing! Given that one million USD prize money from the Millenium Prize is involved, it will certainly get enough scrutiny. Greg Baker broke the story on his blog, including the email Deolalikar sent around."

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close