Comment Re:Who's had sucess? (Score 1) 286
NX used to be really great and a number of people I know used it. But I don't know any one that still does.
So what are they using now that is better than NX?
Drunk Driver Mugshots Featured On Facebook 321
An anonymous reader writes "Get yourself a DUI and your mugshot may get some exposure on Facebook. That is, if you get caught in New Jersey by Evesham Township's police, which have begun posting mugshots of arrested people, convicted or not, on its Facebook page. Now, we know that if you get arrested, your privacy is pretty much limited to the brand of your underpants, but the local police department has started a controversy and may find itself in hot water. How much value does a public mugshot on Facebook have to the public? What privacy rights do you have if you get arrested?"
Comment Re:Error in article: 10.60, not 10.6 (Score 3, Interesting) 301
How would the users know it's that site that is broken, and not the browser?
Comment Seems fair (Score 3, Insightful) 276
As nice as it is with cheap stuff, I cannot come up with a good argument why internet sales should be except from tax while in-store sales still pay. Internet stores can compete just fine on actual efficiency improvements over physical stores.
Comment Re:It's time to deliver a space tug to the station (Score 2, Interesting) 224
Also, the radiation higher up than LEO is a bitch.
Comment Re:Please, don't do it . . . (Score 4, Insightful) 704
Calm down already, it's a 14-year-old. Give him a chance to try it at least.
Comment Re:Noscript (Score 1) 362
Couldn't this be done with Meta-Refresh?
Comment Re:Remarkable (Score 1) 109
Forgot to mention that the ISS has been continually powered by solar panels since 1998.
The propulsion is not solar powered. On GOCE of the other hand, it is. It is only 270 km (170 mi) up where the atmosphere is relatively thick and it will stay up for 20 months.
MPEG-LA Considering Patent Pool For VP8/WebM 399
An anonymous reader writes "Well, that didn't take long. Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG-LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, says the group is looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM, Google's new open source, royalty-free HTML5 video format... So much for a Web video standard unencumbered by patent issues." We talked about VP8/WebM a couple of days ago when Google open sourced it. Reader Stoobalou points out another late-night email from Steve Jobs, who was asked to comment on VP8 vs. H.264. Jobs laconically sent a pointer to the technical analysis we linked before, where the poster says "VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free."
Comment Re:I want my VERTICAL resolution back (Score 1) 952
It isn't for pandering to movie watchers. It is because a 21 inch screen in 16:9 format has a smaller area than a 21 inch 4:3 screen, and is thus cheaper to make.
In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride" 449
An anonymous reader passes along a Financial Times piece that covers a push by EU telecoms to get Google to pay them directly — years after US ISPs began rattling that sword, to little effect thus far. "Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service. Telefónica, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.... Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content. Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington ... said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world." Note that FT.com operates on a "first few per month free" paywall basis.
Submission + - Google funds Theora codec for ARM (arstechnica.com)
Tor Klingberg writes: Google has provided funding to TheorARM, a project that produces an ARM-optimized implementation of the free Ogg Theora video codec. TheorARM has now been released under a BSD license, allowing makers of mobile devices to freely integrate Theora support. While it is unlikely that H.264 will be defeated, widespread Theora support will hopefully give web publishers the choice of which codec to use.
Science and the Shortcomings of Statistics 429
Kilrah_il writes "The linked article provides a short summary of the problems scientists have with statistics. As an intern, I see it many times: Doctors do lots of research but don't have a clue when it comes to statistics — and in the social science area, it's even worse. From the article: 'Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.'"
Comment IE engine with a new GUI (Score 4, Interesting) 246
Many of these are the IE rendering engine wrapped in a new user interface. They appeared in the days when IE development was dead and provided useful things like tabs and popup blocking, while staying compatible with the IE6-only websites that used to be everywhere.
Maxthon for one is very popular in China because it supports ActiveX which many Chinese banking websites rely on (bleh), and it is much nicer to use than IE6. I am not sure how it compares to IE8 though.
Comment Re:Let's wait and see (Score 1) 391
It means there will be competition between the browsers, so you can choose the fastest one. Mplayer and VLC use far less CPU for the same video file, so if Firefox uses libraries form other open source products we can expect much faster playback.
Most of all, I am looking forward to having video played by the browser itself, rather than a plugin. That way keyboard shortcuts and other UI features will not not stop working when watching a video.
