Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Stupidest idea ever (Score 4, Informative) 121

by Ezza (#34470822) Attached to: Australia's Outback Could Get Web Via TV Antenna

(Disclaimer, I work for a broadcaster in Australia, so take this with a grain of salt)

OK for starters the bit about "consistent speed no matter how many users there were" is complete garbage, with ANY radio based system data system.

Secondly, if you start using the TV spectrum for data in both directions, you start putting a really strong signal OUT your TV antenna, which despite being on a different frequency to the actual TV channels, it is close enough to swamp the (really weak by several orders of magnitude) TV signal on the next band with the (extremely strong in comparison) outgoing signal.

So you can forget about watching TV while you're using the internet.

The decision to sell the TV bandwidth rather than just keep it for the public use (eg. super HD TV, or super multichanneling or whatever is in the future) is completely about $$$$ and greed by the Federal Govt so they can sell the bandwidth to the highest bidder.

Grrr.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Introducing Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS and One (greatwhiteit.com)

Submitted by garry.donnelly
garry.donnelly writes: The latest release of the Ubuntu Operating System in free to download or torrent today! Code named Lucid Lynx and version number 10.04 this is a significant release for the Ubuntu community as it also holds the LTS tag. Long Term Support releases are major milestones for Ubuntu Linux which provides the assurance of community and enterprise support for the next three years on Desktops and five years for Server Editions.... ...For me, the single most impressive new feature in the Lucid Lynx release is Ubuntu One. Ubuntu One is you're own personal cloud service and it's free! Put simply it's a large chunk of disk space (2Gb for free, paid subscriptions for more) on Canonical's servers with various services running to easily integrate directly into your Operating System. Synchronize your laptop and desktop with your Ubuntu One account and access all your files, music and video on the go. Privacy setting let you share files with friends and colleagues or publish for public access with a short url. You can even log in directly to the Ubuntu One site and access many of the services from any PC...

Submission + - VirtualBox beta supports OS X as guest OS on Macs (virtualbox.org)

Submitted by milesw
milesw writes: In addition to a slew of new features, VirtualBox 3.2.0 Beta 1 offers experimental support for Mac OS X guests running on Apple hardware. Got to wonder if Ellison discussed this with Jobs beforehand, given Apple's refusal to allow virtualizing their (non-server) OS.
Security

Submission + - How To Take Care of Hackers 3

Submitted by Nemyst
Nemyst writes: One of my friends is running a relatively popular online community, but he's run into a problem. With success comes the usual load of idiots and one of them, after being banned, decided to react by DDoS'ing the site. The person has been identified; name, address, all that. The problem is, what can he do from that point onwards? The guy's a minor, so that doesn't help. Can he get in contact with certain authorities that will actually do something? The attacks are costing him money and the community as more and more people leave due to the server being down half the time. I've looked about and so has he, but so far we've come up empty-handed. Unfortunately, getting a new, more powerful server is just about out of range (the current server is already costing a pretty penny). I'm sure there are sysadmins among the Slashdot crowd who have already dealt with hackers of that kind, so what did you do about it?

Comment The results and links to the textbooks to download (Score 1) 216

by Ezza (#29074283) Attached to: Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA

http://www.clrn.org/fdti/

You can also download the complete report from there.

I've pulled down a couple, they were about 44 & 80 meg respectively. eg. CK12 Calculus is 43.8 meg and 457 pages.

It's nice to see they haven't made them hard to find for the rest of us who might want to review our rusty math (or whatever).

Comment Re:Optical zoom - bleh (Score 1) 596

by Ezza (#27218693) Attached to: What to Fight Over After Megapixels?

And there is a lot of stuff worth taking a picture of that is right in front of you but you can't get it all in the frame because the camera won't go wide enough.

Going from a 3x to a 12x is great, as long as some of that increase is in the rearward direction so you can actually get all of your family in the shot while they are at the christmas dinner table.
Games

Does a Game Have To Fail To Get a Real Ending? 178

Posted by Soulskill from the whatever-happened-to-pacman-anyway dept.
After the closure of Tabula Rasa over the weekend, the Opposable Thumbs blog asks if that's what it takes for a game to have an actual ending these days. Quoting: "It's no surprise that most games hope for a sequel, as it's the easiest way to get some of that money back while taking advantage of the staff, engine, assets, and other advantages you've banked while creating the first title. The problem? This has lead to a generation of cliff-hangers at worst, and endings that hedge their bets at best. ... As all the game's characters die, as the servers are shut down, as the data is erased or backed up and then boxed or whatever happens to MMO data once the game is done, it's hard not to be a little sad. The sights and sounds of the world of Tabula Rasa are gone, forever. All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again." Massively put together a few screenshots and videos to commemorate the ending of the game.

Comment Re:Another thing to look out for (Score 1) 225

by Ezza (#26821209) Attached to: Input Lag, Or Why Faster Isn't Always Better

Have to agree,
  I picked up a couple of second hand DELL 21" CRT's (with flat screen trinitron tubes no less), and have never looked back. Cost about $80 each from memory. Better response, natural colour, blacks than anything you can buy, and worked out cheaper too.
  They suck a lot of power though, and in summer you notice the heat they produce, but I don't care about that.
  However given that LCD's are only about 10-15% efficient at getting the backlight out to your face, it's all relative.
  And no, I don't care about the desk real estate (just get a deeper desk if it's a problem, and/or do what I did and make a stand for them so they sit above the keyboard etc.)
Announcements

Submission + - Change of Government in Australia 2

Submitted by
MorningBright
MorningBright writes: "The conservative Liberal Party has been knocked out of power for the first time in ten years. Kevin Rudd will replace John Howard as prime minister in what has been the second largest swing against a party since the end of world war 2. He has made promises to sign the Kyoto protocol, scrap controversial workplace laws, withdraw troops from Iraq, fund 'fiber to the node' internet infrastructure and increase education funding. In addition, the Greens party has gained enough seats to play a balance of power role in the government and is expected to push it's environmental agenda."

Slashdot Top Deals

Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach

Close