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Comment Re:Jim Butcher (Score 3, Informative) 647

by Coldeagle (#38444008) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Like To Read?
I heartily agree...Come to the Dresden Side because:

a) Harry Dresden has an....adverse affect on technology as he says, "I can take out a Xerox copier at 50 paces"
b) Harry Dresden follows the tao of Peter Parker
c) Dresden gets messed up worse than John McClain on his very worse day
d) Lines like this:

“Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.” - Harry Dresden

or

Murphy: “I've been fighting this computer all day long. I swear, if you blow out my hard drive again, I'm taking it out of your ass.”
Harry: “Why would your hard drive be in my ass?” -Harry

So as I said..come to the Dresden side you'll laugh your ass off :)
Media

Nightingale Media Player Preview Released 79

Posted by samzenpus from the free-video dept.
First time accepted submitter ilikenwf writes "You may or may not remember the Mozilla-based Songbird media player, which dropped official Linux support in April, 2010. Since then, the Nightingale community fork has waxed and waned in terms of membership and progress, but thanks to having a completely new dev team has today produced a preview build based on Songbird 1.8.1. The team promises a release of a Songbird trunk based build later this year, with fixes and an upgrade to Gecko 6. Plans to support Linux, Windows, and Mac are in the works, with the preview builds being available only for Linux and Windows at the moment. Aside from trying to pull in refugees from the Songbird community, Nightingale wants more developers to aid in fixing dropped and broken features from Songbird — and to add new ones."
Nintendo

Submission + - Nintendo Announces New Console: Wii U (reuters.com)

Submitted by _xeno_
_xeno_ writes: Nintendo has announced the official name for what had been known as "Project Cafe:" the Wii U. It is an HD console, it remains backwards compatibility with the Wii (it's unclear if this includes GameCube software), and the controller does, in fact, have a touch screen on it. Nintendo demoed moving a game off the TV and play it solely on the Wii U controller.
IOS

Steve Jobs: 'We Don't Track Anyone' 373

Posted by Soulskill from the truth-is-in-the-iphone-of-the-beholder dept.
fysdt writes "There has obviously been a lot of discussion about last week's disclosure that iOS devices are maintaining an easily-accessible database tracking the movements of users dating back to the introduction of iOS 4 a year ago. The issue has garnered the attention of US elected officials and has played fairly heavily in the mainstream press. One MacRumors reader emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for clarification on the issue while hinting about a switch to Android if adequate explanations are not forthcoming. Jobs reportedly responded, turning the tables by claiming both that Apple does not track users and that Android does, while referring to the information about iOS shared in the media as 'false.'" Apple has now been hit with a class-action lawsuit over the location-tracking issue.
News

Submission + - Tech stories we’re sick of (tumblr.com)

Submitted by Coldeagle
Coldeagle writes: CNN has an interesting list of tech stories that have become a bit repetitive:
"Like Ned Ryerson, there are some irksome stories out there that keep coming back and coming back and coming back and just need to be put out of their misery. Or, like Needlenose Ned, punched in the face."

Maybe /. should think about such list!
Earth

Submission + - NASA finds family of habitable planets (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA's star-gazing space telescope continues to find amazing proof that there are tons of habitable planets in space and we have only scratched the surface of what's out there. The space agency said today its Kepler space telescope spotted what it called its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in what it considers to be the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.
Graphics

Submission + - AMD's Fastest Mobile GPU Yet, Radeon HD 6970M (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD recently launched their fastest mobile graphics chip yet. Previously code-named Blackcomb, the Radeon HD 6970M is the mobile counterpart to AMD's flagship desktop GPU code-named Cayman. This chip is currently AMD's fastest GPU for mobile applications and it's meant for use in high performance gaming and workstation laptops. Radeon HD 6970M graphics modules have 960 shaders, 2GB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit memory bus. Performance-wise, the chip takes on NVIDIA's fastest mobile chip (GeForce GTX 470M) handily, but word is a faster GeForce GTX 485M is right around the corner of course.
Robotics

Submission + - Texas Student Attends School as a Robot (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Freshman Lyndon Baty’s immune system is so fragile he can’t risk being surrounded by people his own age, yet he attends classes at his high school in Knox City, Texas every day. All thanks to a robot. The Vgo telepresence platform is a four foot tall bot on wheels with a small screen, camera, speakers and microphone at the top. Baty logs into the robot remotely from his home, using his PC and a webcam to teleconference into his classes. Baty can drive Vgo around his school, switching between classes just like regular students. For a boy that has spent much of his life sick and isolated from his peers, Vgo not only represents a chance at a better education, it’s also an opportunity for freedom and comradery.
Intel

Submission + - Asus, Gigabyte to replace all Sandy Bridge boards (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: In the wake of Intel's announcement that all existing Sandy Bridge chipsets have a bug that causes degraded Serial ATA performance, top-tier motherboard makers Asus and Gigabyte have made public statements regarding their return policy for affected boards. Asus is promising 'hassle-free return and/or replacement', while Gigabyte says owners of affected boards are entitled to a full refund or replacement—and it recommends that users seek refunds. Both companies are advising users to contact the original place of purchase to proceed. On a related note, Gigabyte has announced that new Sandy Bridge motherboards with bug-free chipsets will be available in volume in April.
Idle

Submission + - 19 Year Old Teen Makes Homemade Solar Death Ray (inhabitat.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Concentrated solar power has the potential to generate immense amounts of energy — but it can also be amazingly destructive. American student Eric Jacqmain has assembled over 5,800 mirrors into his own parabolic ‘solar Death Ray’, which can reportedly melt through metal and concrete.
Android

Submission + - A Deeper Look Into Android 3.0

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Google is getting ready to show off Android 3.0 aka Honeycomb later today and it's definitely going to give iOS a run for its money. Google's new OS carries a completely overhauled user interface. Not only does the interface have deeper, darker colors to increase battery life but also the home screen now provides the ability to view multiple widget as well as the functionality of stacking items within a widget like pictures or videos. Along with the UI, Google has also improved the multitasking functionality. The existing method of accessing running or recently opened applications has been grown to display in-app screens instead of just the name of the app and an icon. One of the biggest differences between Honeycomb and other operating systems running on tablets is that, Honeycomb along with the apps running on it are optimzed for dual core processing. Natively, Android will run the garbage collector on one core and an app on another. However, the tools are there to utilize both cores for your app, and to benefit from the performance gains that will occur. To take a shot at Blackberry's market, Google has ensured that the tablet carries business features like password expiration and encrypted storage tools. Finally the OS adds support for legacy Bluetooth devices which is not available on most of the other tablets in the market today.

Comment Stupid! (Score 0) 494

by Coldeagle (#34795408) Attached to: California County Bans SmartMeter Installations
This is the most moronic thing I have ever heard:

''the SmartMeters program ... could well actually increase total electricity consumption and therefore the carbon footprint'

Honestly, this is just ridiculous! Since I've had my smart meter installed I've reduced my electrical usage by half! All it takes is a person with the want to decrease their electrical usage and google power meter and boom you can evaluate your energy usage and decrease it, thus reducing consumption!
Google

Submission + - 5 new Android devices that stand out from the rest (infoworld.com)

Submitted by GMGruman
GMGruman writes: About 100 Android tablets and smartphones have been shown at the CES 2011 show this week in Las Vegas. But most — like PCs — are clones of each other. But five devices announced at the consumer show stand out for innovation and could propel the Android platform even further in its competition with Apple's iPhone and iPad: Motorola's Atrix and Xoom, Samsung's Infuse 4G, Asus' Eee Pad Slider, and Vizio's Via Phone. The Atrix also represents a step to the post-PC future. CES this year served as the coming-out pary for 4G networks, though as Galen Gruman blogs, don't expect widespread 4G availability for years yet.
Security

Submission + - SA thieves hit traffic lights for SIM cards (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by arisvega
arisvega writes: Some 400 high-tech South African traffic lights are out of action after thieves in Johannesburg stole the mobile phone SIM cards they contain. JRA (Johannesburg Road Agency) said it is investigating the possibility of an "inside job" after only the SIM card-fitted traffic lights were targeted.

The cards were fitted to notify JRA when the traffic lights were faulty.

JRA believes a syndicate "with links on the inside" is behind the thefts.

"We have 2,000 major intersections in Johannesburg and only 600 of those were fitted with the cards," the agency's spokesperson Thulani Makhubela told the BBC.

"No-one apart from JAR and our supplier knows which intersections have that system."

The thieves ran up bills amounting to thousands of dollars by using the stolen cards to make calls.

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