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Comment Whatever you want it to be (Score 3, Informative) 33

by caballew (#44357029) Attached to: EOMA-68 Based KDE Vivaldi Tablet Engineering Boards Ship
It exposes most of the features of the SoC (currently Allwinner A10/A20) which will allow a developer to use it for a multitude of purposes without having to design, prototype and build a board for their specific purpose. It re-purposes the PCMCIA interface and form-factor which will reduce costs. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/12/17/1429221/pcmcia-computer-project-aims-even-higher-and-cheaper-than-raspberry-pi http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

Comment Re:SiriusXM (Score 5, Informative) 113

by caballew (#42773943) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Long Do We Give an Online Service To Fix Issues?

Case in point is Sirius Satellite Radio. last year just before I paid for the next year they dropped a station that happened to be what I mostly listened to. When I called them up, they offered a reduced rate. This year when it was time to renew, I called them up and they again offered me a discounted rate. I'm still with them because I am paying what I consider is fair for the service. If they do not offer me a discount next year I will drop it.

I found that if you disable auto-renew, then when it's renewal time they don't cut you off for a few weeks while they try desperately to contact you. After a week or so, finally answer the phone and tell them their service is too expensive. Every year, they "check" with a retention supervisor and then offer me a reduced rate of ~$6/mo if I prepay for a year. That's less than 1/2 of their regular rate.

Comment Re:"could have a big problem" (Score 3, Interesting) 232

by caballew (#41774263) Attached to: Trouble For Microsoft Developers With the Windows Store
I don't see MS and/or PCs being marginalized simply because business won't adopt Win 8 RT if it means their in-house software as well as other specialized software can't be used unless MS approves it in their App store. This might affect individuals but not business clients from small business to enterprise clients. With these restrictions, development for Android will only grow while development for Win 8 RT will whither after the initial rush of early development. Sorta like how SPARC and DEC lost out in the business desktop and small server application race; poor business model equals failure. There are still way too many businesses using XP that haven't even upgraded to Win7 because of legacy and in-house software .
Space

Submission + - Small Telescopes Make Big Discoveries

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Hakeem Oluseyi, an astronomer at the Florida Institute of Technology and president of the African Astronomical Society, says his goal is to put one research telescope in every country, starting with African and Southern Hemisphere nations because there is now an amazing opportunity for small telescopes to discover and characterize new planetary systems, as well as measure the structure of the Milky Way. "Astronomers are no longer looking at high-definition pictures but at HD movies, scanning for objects that change and for transient ones," says Oluseyi. "A 4-inch telescope was used to discover the first exoplanet by the transit method, where you watch the brightness vary." Small telescopes capable to doing real science are a lot cheaper than people think. A 1-meter telescope costs $300,000 but reduce the size by 60 percent, and it falls to just $30,000. For example the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) uses hardware costing less than $75,000 to look at millions of very bright stars at once, over broad sections of sky, and at low resolution to see if the starlight dims just a little — an indication that a planet has crossed in front of the star. The KELT team has already discovered the existence of a very unusual faraway planet — KELT-1b, a super hot, super dense ball of metallic hydrogen so massive that it may better be described as a 'failed star' and located so close to its star that it whips through an entire "yearly" orbit in a little over a day."

Submission + - Japanese Carrier is in talks to acquire Sprint (thenextweb.com) 1

Submitted by caballew
caballew writes: Japanese carrier Softbank has engaged in talks to acquire two-third's of U.S. carrier Sprint. This acquisition will expand its bandwidth and LTE service domestically while also giving it a large foothold into the US market.

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