slashTera - Slashdot User

Submission + - Netflix offers new bandwidth options (netflix.com)

Submitted by BagOBones on Monday March 28, 2011 @11:03PM

BagOBones writes: Due to low bandwidth caps, Netflix is now offering a third lower bandwidth option to users in Canada, in addition to the original two options which were Full quality and SD only mode.. Netflix lists the three settings as follows:

"Good" — The default setting with good picture quality and lowest data use per hour (about 0.3 GBytes/hour)
"Better" — Better picture quality and medium data use per hour (about 0.7 GBytes/hour)
"Best" — Best picture quality and highest date use per hour (generally about 1.0 GBytes/hour — or up to 2.3 GBytes/hour when streaming HD content)

Submission + - Why tessellation in games is overhyped (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @02:58AM

An anonymous reader writes: Tessellation is a graphical technique that has been given a lot of love by game developers over recent times, including in the new Dragon Age 2 . This is due to the fact that the Fermi architecture underpinning the current generation of NVIDIA cards packs a lot of tessellation grunt, moreso than the competing cards from AMD. This has led to tessellation becoming almost a warcry for NVIDIA, who can't pass up any opportunity to run a tessellation heavy benchmark and point out how impressive the hardware is at it. This article provides a fascinating insight into what tessellation actually is, what it looks like (including some extreme examples), and why the marketing spin is misleading.

Submission + - 4Chan is 'Misunderstood' says Christopher Poole

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Monday March 14, 2011 @04:35AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Guardian reports that 4Chan, the influential internet subculture which spawned Anonymous, Rickrolling and Rage Guy, is "misunderstood" as "the dark heart of the internet", says founder Christopher Poole. Outlining his case for online anonymity before a packed audience in the Austin Convention Center at SXSW 2011, Poole argued that 4Chan's chaotic messageboard is a fertile breeding ground for creativity. "It's riffing on a massive scale. 4Chan is misunderstood – people like to think that /b/ [4Chan's infamously random subforum] is the dark heart of the internet. It isn't just that," says Poole. "One of the things that 4Chan does that's really special is the way people come together to collaborate en masse. It's the process at which you arrive at the product that is fascinating." Poole took a swipe at Mark Zuckerberg who has described anonymous internet posting as showing a lack of integrity. "Zuckerberg's totally wrong on anonymity being total cowardice. Anonymity is authenticity. It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, raw way.""

Submission + - The Larger Security Lessons of Pwn2Own (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @07:14PM

Trailrunner7 writes: When the Pwn2Own contest began in 2007, it was dismissed by some in the industry as nothing more than a publicity stunt meant to inflate the egos of researchers while embarrassing software vendors. But as the fifth edition of the hacker challenge gets underway at the CanSecWest conference here this week, it has evolved into a display of some of the few things that are actually good and right with the security community.
So what's great about a bunch of guys in a windowless room hammering away at MacBooks and iPhones? The really impressive thing in all of this is the sheer brain power on display. Think about what Dai Zovi and Macaulay did for a minute: With a few hours of work, they pulled apart the security model that the developers of Java, QuickTime and OS X had spent years putting together. Unless you're one of those developers, that's a pretty impressive feat. Pwn2Own represents the best researchers pushing the best developers and security teams to do better, and vice versa.

Submission + - Oldest known wild bird raises chick at 60 (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @06:34AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The oldest known wild bird in the United States — a Laysan albatross estimated to be at least 60 years old — is a new mother, officials said. She was first banded by U.S. Geological Survey in 1956, when she was estimated to be about five years old. Since then, the albatross has flown at least 2 to 3 million miles, the equivalent of four to six round trips from the Earth to the Moon and back again."

Submission + - Syndrome Asperger - How to fight it? (syndromeasperger.com)

Submitted by

whynotdoitnow

on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @06:29AM

whynotdoitnow writes: "Syndrome Asperger

Syndrome Asperger has been around for some time but, it was not medically diagnosed until 1944 by an European pediatrician named, Hans Asperger. He discovered that with this disorder syndrome, children had problems in interacting and they had obsessive behaviors as well as repetitive actions. Syndrome Asperger is a disorder syndrome that is very hard to identify because it has variations in manifestation od illness and no two people with this disorder syndrome act the same. It is identical to mild autism whenseen along with the numerous types of autism. When it is identified in the beginning, Syndrome Asperger treatment shows more promise. A lot of symptoms can be soothe easily when they don't turn into bad habits. To comprehend and see if your child has Syndrome Asperger is not an easy task. Whatever, there are some indications you can try to observe. Syndrome Asperger medical care is only possible by managing the symptoms and because the symptoms are varied, every child with Aspergers can be cured according to their own symptoms.There are numerous tests to be able to diagnose Aspergers Syndrome. When these tests are finished and a diagnosis is reached, it is very essential to let the child know about the disorder syndrome."

Submission + - Republicans Want To Keep Students Out Of Voting (washingtonpost.com) 2

Submitted by siliconbits on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @06:06AM

siliconbits writes: New Hampshire's new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They're "foolish," Speaker William O'Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group.
"Voting as a liberal. That's what kids do," he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack "life experience," and "they just vote their feelings."

Submission + - Trumpet Winsock creator made little money (ycombinator.com) 1

Submitted by omast on Tuesday March 08, 2011 @08:53PM

omast writes: It appears that Peter Tattam, creator of Trumpet Winsock, got very little for this piece of software. For those of you who do not remember — or did not need it because were already outside the MS Windows world — Trumpet Winsock was a shareware program that provided TCP/IP functionality to Windows machines back in 1994-1995. It allowed millions to connect to the Internet back then; I was one of them.
According to the article, Tattam made very little money from the program as it was widely distributed but rarely paid for.

Submission + - Anon demands US give clothes back to Manning (forbes.com)

Submitted by hajus on Tuesday March 08, 2011 @12:33PM

hajus writes: Anonymous has given the US one week to restore certain rights for Bradley Manning in his time in prison awaiting his trial including clothes, any religious texts, a ball, blankets, and bedsheets or they will begin to 'dox' Department of Defense Press Secretary Geoff Morell and chief warrant officer Denise Barnes. 'Dox'. "Dox" will involve digging up personal information on the two officials and mass harassment or public embarrassment. “Targets established,” reads the document, before naming Morell and Barnes. “We’re in the ruining business. And business is good.” The operation has been termed "Operation Bradical" by Anonymous.

Submission + - Adobe Helps Turn Flash Into HTML5 (technologizer.com)

Submitted by bi$hop on Tuesday March 08, 2011 @02:46AM

bi$hop writes: Flash vs. HTML5. HTML5 vs. Flash. Whatever your take on the respective merits of the two high-profile technologies for creating splashy Web content, you can't deny that the rivalry between Adobe's venerable Flash and the assortment of evolving open-source standards collectively known as HTML5 is intense.

But what if Flash could become HTML5?

Starting now--in certain limited instances--t can.

Comment The racket (Score 1) 3

by slashTera on Monday March 07, 2011 @08:25PM (#35413722) Attached to: Facebook may bust up the SMS profit cartel

Just today, I told a potential client that SMS isn't free and that to build a web application that uses SMS for notification requires a startup cost, a monthly and a per message charge.

Submission + - Facebook may bust up the SMS profit cartel (cnn.com) 3

Submitted by

AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Monday March 07, 2011 @02:36PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: " Fortune has a very interesting article today about wireless providers and their exorbitant profit margins for SMS handling, especially when looking at modern data plans.

'Under the cell phone industry's peculiar pricing system, downloading data to your smartphone is amazingly cheap — unless the data in question happens to be a text message. In that case the price of a download jumps roughly 50,000-fold, from just a few pennies per megabyte of data to a whopping $1000 or so per megabyte.'

A young little application called Beluga caught the attention of Facebook, which purchased the company yesterday.

The app aims to bring messaging under the umbrella of data plans, and features group messaging, picture and video messaging, and integration with other apps.

The author argues that, if successful, Beluga (or whatever Facebook ends up calling it) could potentially be the Skype/Vonage or Netflix-type competitor to the old-school cellular carriers and their steep pricing plans."

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