Comment Dislike (Score 1) 273
Where is the Dislike Button for this?
Officials Use Google Earth To Find Unlicensed Pools 650
Officials in Riverhead, New York are using Google Earth to root out the owners of unlicensed pools. So far they've found 250 illegal pools and collected $75,000 in fines and fees. Of course not everyone thinks that a city should be spending time looking at aerial pictures of backyards. from the article: "Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC, said Google Earth was promoted as an aid to curious travelers but has become a tool for cash-hungry local governments. 'The technology is going so far ahead of what people think is possible, and there is too little discussion about community norms,' she said."
Comment This is Simply Marketing (Score 1) 853
This is just Apple Marketing their product. Leaving a phone in a bar leads to good copy. Their lame upgrade to their own product, now has some sizzle, that adds value to the marketing of the product. Now the 4g is compelling, when before it was just an upgrade. Selling us the same product again and again, boy that sounds like M$.
Comment Re:Just like desktop linux. (Score 3, Insightful) 636
Is it really a "problem"
my honda engine does not fit in that ford chassis
Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252
Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.
Glenn Beck Loses Dispute Over Parody Domain 1172
CuteSteveJobs writes "Glenn Beck fought the law and the law won. Parody website DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com attacked Beck using the same straw man arguments Beck himself is famous for: 'We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 — in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder ... Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?'
Beck didn't see the humour and tried to have the site shut down. He sued the creator on the grounds the site 'violated his name as a trademark.' But in a sudden outbreak of common sense, WIPO rejected Beck's complaint finding the site 'can be said to be making a political statement,' which is a 'legitimate non-commercial use' of Beck's name. But after winning, the owner voluntarily handed Beck the domain anyway. Still, it's comforting to know that satire — the only weapon politicians and talking heads fear — is still safely in the hands of the public where it belongs."
Affordably Aggregating ISP Connections? 180
An anonymous reader writes "Has anyone setup a system to aggregate multiple ISP connections to form a high bandwidth site-to-site link? Load Sharing SCTP looked interesting, but it doesn't look like it has been widely adopted. Multi-Link PPP appears to be more widely supported for clients, but I can't find any good guides for setting up both sides of the connection for a site-to-site link. The hardware solutions I've found are expensive for a small business. Does anyone have experience using hardware solutions from Mushroom Networks (Virtual Leased Line, p2 of this document), Ecessa (site-to-Site Channel Bonding), or others?"
Server Failure Destroys Sidekick Users' Backup Data 304
Expanding on the T-Mobile data loss mentioned in an update to an earlier story, reader stigmato writes "T-Mobile's popular Sidekick brand of devices and their users are facing a data loss crisis. According to the T-Mobile community forums, Microsoft/Danger has suffered a catastrophic server failure that has resulted in the loss of all personal data not stored on the phones. They are advising users not to turn off their phones, reset them or let the batteries die in them for fear of losing what data remains on the devices. Microsoft/Danger has stated that they cannot recover the data but are still trying. Already people are clamoring for a lawsuit. Should we continue to trust cloud computing content providers with our personal information? Perhaps they should have used ZFS or btrfs for their servers."
FairPort Accused of Faking Network Readiness Test 144
wytcld writes "When Verizon spun off its Northern New England lines to FairPoint, FairPoint leased Verizon's computer network to manage them. This was costly, so FairPoint readied its own network. To prove its own network was ready for the switchover a demonstration was prepared for an outside auditor, Liberty. Now a whistleblower claims: '...when Liberty was watching what they thought was "flow thru" within a system and from one system to another, they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do. They were not actually in the systems at the time nor were they in the test systems. They were in a newly created small program that used screen shots from the real system to deceive the audience into believing that they were watching a real demonstration.' How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick? Whether or not the test was faked, the network has proved so unready that FairPoint is close to bankruptcy, and may have its licenses to operate revoked in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont."
Why Is Linux Notebook Battery Life Still Poor? 907
Ganty writes "I recently purchased a Lenovo W500 notebook, and after 'downgrading' to XP and creating a dual partition, I found that I had a battery life of nearly three hours using the long-life battery, at this point I was a happy camper because it means that I can watch a DVD during a flight. I then tried various Linux distributions and found the battery life under FOS to be very disappointing, with an average of 45 minutes before a warning message. After settling on Ubuntu I then spent three days trying various hardware tweaks but I only managed to increase the battery life to one and a half hours. Unwanted services have been disabled, laptop mode has been enabled, the dual core CPU reduces speed when idle and the hard drive spins down when not needed. Obviously Apple with their X86 hardware and BSD based OS have got it right because the MacBooks last for hours, and a stock install of MS Windows XP gives me three hours of life. Why is battery life on notebooks so poor when using Linux? Some have suggested disabling various hardware items such as bluetooth and running the screen at half brightness but XP doesn't require me to do this and still gives a reasonable battery life."
Comment Guardian Legend (Score 1) 1120
Easy, this game would be great with a graphics update. Don't change the music.
Comment Goo-sturbation (Score 1) 1089
This is just another thing for google to rub it's own queries.
I can't wait for facebook to release their own OS next, based on dreamcast
No actually this is cool, this is just what everyone has been expecting and hoped for.
Will chrome be the default browser? Will it be installed on the OS by default.
Do technology issues recur every 20 years?
Cell Phone OS's = 80's desktops
Google OS = Microsoft in the 90's
EOL
Comment Re:It Costs More Because... (Score 1) 260
agreed
they will have gouge themselves by purchasing their own hardware
around 0.87 cents per FLOP compared to MS and GOOG 0.05 cents per FLOP
but it will be the prettiest data center around. Glass Racks, and translucent data cables connecting everything.
Comment and on what hardware/? (Score 1) 260
seems like that would be a lot of xserves
what does apple use in the data center when they don't need to show off their flashy expensive hardware
Comment Re:Mountain Misnomer (Score 2, Insightful) 162
Appalachian are a lot older than those spry rockies mid continent. I believe they surpassed the heights of the rockies before the glacier took them out. They were mountains while the rockies were foothills.
