Comment Re:Y'know what? (Score 1) 271
Cthulumas. The most dreaded time of year.
Comment Personal Information in Facebook Games (Score 1) 251
Something I have noticed which is odd is that the games use "their" when a new posting has come up.
Like this,
"...got a big ol' reward for being such a great farmer and wants to share their success with you"
If these games have access to users' personal information you'd think they'd know enough about each user to use "his" or "her" in place of "their."
Like this,
"...got a big ol' reward for being such a great farmer and wants to share their success with you"
If these games have access to users' personal information you'd think they'd know enough about each user to use "his" or "her" in place of "their."
Are Ad Servers Bogging Down the Web? 387
blackbearnh writes "The work of making high-volume web sites perform well is an ongoing challenge, and one that continues to evolve as the nature of web content changes. According to Google Performance Guru Steve Souders, fat JavaScript libraries and rich content are creating new problems for web site tuning, but one of the biggest problems lies outside the control of web site administrators — ad servers. In an interview previewing the upcoming Velocity Online conference run by O'Reilly, Souders talks at length about the real causes of poor web performance today, and in particular, the effect that poorly performing ad servers are creating. 'We adopted a framework of inserting ads, of creating ads, that's pretty simple. And because it's pretty simple, it's not highly tuned. That's one reason why we shouldn't be too surprised that we see performance issues in third party ads. The other reason is that ad services are not focused on technology. Certainly companies like Yahoo and Google and Microsoft, we're technology companies. We focus on technology. So it's not surprising that our web developers are on the leading edge of adopting these performance best practices. And it's also not surprising that ad services might lag two, three or four years behind where these web technology companies are.'"
Google's Reach Hits Your Tivo 98
accido writes "As reported by The LA Times, Google has now decided to expand its marketing and data collection to include what you watch on your Tivo. The data collected would help Google, who sells TV ads, show who watches which commercials and who skips right over them. The article outlines how this could be bad for networks that cash in whether you watch the ad or not. Does this mean fewer commercials for viewers? Not likely, but one can hope."
Wikipedia In Your Pocket, $99 412
An anonymous reader notes the announcement by Sean Moss-Pultz (Openmoko, Inc.) of a new geek device: The $99 WikiReader. All of Wikipedia in your pocket with no Internet connection required. Works in bright sunlight. 3-button interface. You can update the information in the WikiReader either by mail (they ship a microSD card) or by downloading a 4+ GB file.
Why Users Drop Open Source Apps For Proprietary Alternatives 891
maximus1 writes "Hard as it may be to imagine, 'free' is not always the primary selling point to open source software. This article makes some interesting points about subtle ways Open Source projects might lose to the competition. Lack of features is a common answer you'd expect, but the author points out that complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off. Moreover, open source companies may not do enough to market major upgrades. If they did, they might lure back folks who tried and dumped the earlier, less polished version. This raises the question: what made you dump an open source app you were using? What could that project have done differently?"
South Korea's First Rocket Fails To Reach Set Orbit 101
Matt_dk writes "The first satellite launched by South Korea failed to reach its designated orbit pattern on Tuesday, the NY Times is reporting. The two-staged KSLV-1 rocket, built in cooperation with Russia, failed to deliver the 100-kilogram oceanic and atmospheric research satellite into its target orbit. The rocket was launched from the Naro Space Center, 300 miles south of the capital Seoul. 'The failure to push the satellite into its intended orbit was announced by Ahn Myong-man, the minister of education, science and technology, at a news conference. Mr. Ahn gave no further details. But South Korean news outlets, citing unidentified sources, said the satellite broke away from the rocket about 22 miles farther from the Earth than had been intended.'"
Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 Released 212
An anonymous reader writes with word of the release of the first alpha of Firefox 3.6, "intended for developers and testers only." "As with Firefox 3.5, there are improvements to the performance; pages render faster, and pages with JavaScript code run much faster with the new Tracemonkey engine. Although this Firefox version carries the code name 'Namoroka' Alpha 1, it is also currently referred to as Firefox.next. And like other Firefox Alphas, it does not bear the Firefox logo. This release uses the Gecko 1.9.2 engine and will likely include several interface improvements in later versions, such as new graphical tab-switching behavior, which was removed from 3.5 with Beta 2."
Update: 08/09 03:54 GMT by T : Read more at InaTux.com.
Is IE Usage Share Collapsing? 575
je ne sais quoi writes "Net Applications normally releases its statistics for browser and operating system usage share on the first of every month. This month, however, the data has not shown up — only a cryptic message stating they are reviewing the data for inexplicable statistical variations and that it will be available soon. Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a blog post that might explain what is happening: Statcounter has released some data that shows a precipitous drop in IE browser use in North America, to the benefit of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. At the end of May, StatCounter shows IE usage share (for versions 6, 7, and 8 combined) at around 64%; at the beginning of June it is now about 56% — an astounding 8% drop in one month. We should keep in mind the difficulties in estimating browser usage share: this could very well be a change in how browsers report themselves, or some other statistical anomaly. So it will probably be healthy to remain skeptical until trend this is confirmed by other organizations. Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"
Mozilla Jetpack, an API For Standards-Based Add-Ons 42
revealingheart writes "Mozilla Labs have released a prototype extension called Jetpack: An API for allowing you to write Firefox add-ons using existing web technologies to enhance the browser (e.g. HTML, CSS and Javascript), with the goal of allowing anyone who can build a Web site to participate in making the Web a better place to work, communicate and play. Example add-ons are included on the Jetpack website. While currently only a prototype, this could lead to a simpler and easier to develop add-on system, which all browsers could potentially implement."
Champions Online Delayed Until September 12
Erik J writes "Cryptic Studios has announced that their upcoming superhero MMORPG, Champions Online, has suffered a delay. The title, originally slated to arrive for PC and Xbox 360 on July 14th, has been pushed back to September 1st of this year. The studio claims the postponement stems from the need to make the game as polished as possible. 'It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch,' said executive producer Bill Roper. 'Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time.'"
Roper also spoke recently about the lessons he's taken from his years in the MMO industry, commenting on why big-budget games are such a gamble, and why it's ridiculous to measure success by comparing a new game to World of Warcraft.
Windows Security and On-line Training Courses? 189
eggegick writes "My wife has taken a number of college courses over the last three years and many of the classes used on-line materials rather than books. The problem was these required IE along with Java, Active X and/or various plug-ins (the names of which escapes me), and occasionally I'd have to tweak our firewall to allow these apps to run. I don't think any of these training apps would work with Firefox. All of this made me cringe from a security point of view.
Myself, I use Firefox, No-Script, our external firewall and common sense when using the web. I have a very old Windows 2000 machine that I keep up to date. To my knowledge, I've never had a virus or malware problem.
Her computer is a relatively new XP machine, and at this point she feels her computer has something wrong. But now she prefers to use my old machine instead of hers since it seems to be more responsive. We plan to run the recovery disk on hers.
Assuming the college course work applications were part of the cause, what recommendations do any of you have for running this kind of software? Is there a VMware solution that would work — that is, have a Windows image that is used temporarily for the course work and then discarded at the end of the semester (and how do you create such an image, and what does it cost?)."
Canon Tries To Shut Down "Fake" Canon Blog 125
Thomas Hawk writes "An interesting twist over at the Fake Chuck Westfall Blog. Fake Chuck (like Fake Steve before him) has a blog out parodying Canon's real Technical Information Advisor Chuck Westfall. It seems that Canon and their lawyers over at Loeb & Loeb are none too fond of all the fun that Fake Chuck and DSLR geeks everywhere have been having at their expense and have sent Fake Chuck's blog hosting company, WordPress, a notice to take the blog down. Canon's lawyers cite that Fake Chuck's blog is 'calculated to mislead recipients,' even though the blog has 'fake' in the title, 'fake' in the URL and 'fake' just about everywhere else in the blog. What in the heck is wrong with Canon? Do they really think that trying to shut down a parody blog is going to make their new 5D Mark II ship any faster?" After Fake Chuck removed the Canon logo from his site, WordPress is standing behind him and has rebuffed Canon's demand.
Methane On Mars May Indicate Living Planet 200
Riding with Robots writes "NASA is announcing today that the definitive detection of methane in the Martian atmosphere means the planet is still alive, at least geologically, and perhaps even biologically. 'Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,' said one agency scientist. The gas was detected with observations made over over several Martian years with NASA telescopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Both biological and geological processes could explain the methane."
Is a 'Katrina-Like' Space Storm Brewing? 356
pilsner.urquell writes "A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to large infrastructure damage from solar storms.
According to the report, the world has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it's risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services disruptions."
