Comment Re:Anonymous Cow (Score 2, Informative) 305
Try NewsRob. It syncs with Google Reader and is just a pleasure to use.
Comment Re:lowest account number? (Score 1) 443
I know you were trying to be funny, but GT3 RS with a sound system? Seriously?! It's like setting emacs with vi key bindings. Or setting bash as the default shell in NetBSD. It's travesty!
You pay $40,000 more than the normal GT3 for Porsche to rip out everything from the car to make it light, including the engine noise filters, GPS, adjustable seats, and the sound system. The engine and the chassis aren't that different between a normal GT3 and a GT3 RS. It's mostly the weight.
I assure you, that after you look at your bank balance and realise that it's $40,000 short cause you wanted to get rid of every last extra gram on your car, you will not be adding any weight to it. In fact, you'll soon be joining your local gym when you notice that you are not getting the claimed 0-60 times.
Oh well, I guess after 100,000 posts I still don't know that I shouldn't talk about cars here.
You pay $40,000 more than the normal GT3 for Porsche to rip out everything from the car to make it light, including the engine noise filters, GPS, adjustable seats, and the sound system. The engine and the chassis aren't that different between a normal GT3 and a GT3 RS. It's mostly the weight.
I assure you, that after you look at your bank balance and realise that it's $40,000 short cause you wanted to get rid of every last extra gram on your car, you will not be adding any weight to it. In fact, you'll soon be joining your local gym when you notice that you are not getting the claimed 0-60 times.
Oh well, I guess after 100,000 posts I still don't know that I shouldn't talk about cars here.
Submission + - Optus Dropping ball on Android (apcmag.com)
Phroghollow writes: Optus have traditionally been terrible with their support of Android, they were first to market with an Android Phone in Australia with the HTC Dream, however support since then has flown downhill rapidly, 3 months behind T-Mobile in releasing the 1.5 Cupcake update to their customers, they have still not released the 1.6 Donut release and have advised customers of a release date "Sometime in December" nearly 2 months after Vodafone/3 Customers received the 1.6 Donut Update. Now they have started their own App store in what seems to be a grab for the App store money, they are actively blocking Optus customers from accessing paid apps available to every other carrier in Australia, forcing customers to either root their phone and use the Market Enabler App or purchase and use a second sim to access paid apps.
Comment ChromeOS is a Good Thing! (Score 5, Interesting) 289
ChromeOS is a very good move for everyone involved. Remember, this OS and the devices it will run on are not targeting average slashdotters. I can personally vouch that I come across daily contact with people, business people not just teenagers, who don't use anything other than their browser. The worst aspect of a computer for them, is upgrading, updating all applications, viruses, malware, and general maintenance of the system. They nearly all fail in these, and after a year, they think their laptop is not usable anymore and go and buy a new one. They would LOVE this OS, and are they primary targets of it. Also, synchronisation between multiple computers is a bitch, that even they most fail at. And they hate leaving their documents here and there. Files and directories don't work for them, it's a broken metaphor for most people, and as much as love to organise my files in hierarchical directories, they simply don't care. They just want access to their information, when they need, as conveniently as possible.
I hate Web apps as much as the next guy on this forum, and even use my trusty IMAP client for fetching my emails from Gmail. But I can't deny that web apps are the future, specially when HTML 5 comes off age and becomes widespread. If you look back at what the Web looked like 5 years ago and compare it to now, you'll see that it will be irresistible in 5 years time. Have a look at http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ to get a taste of what we are looking at.
On a more general note, anyone who is comparing this to old failed projects based on thin clients, X terminals or net pcs, is missing the point. Yes, the technology behind this might be similar to those, but times are changing. On the one hand, people are getting used to ever-present always-available services. On the other hand, 3G is now widespread, affordable, and provides great utility for many. Laptops and phones are converging. 2007 was the year of netbooks, 2010 might be the year of smartbooks (running ARM processors). Smartphones are morphing into Internet tablets (e.g,, N900). These are very different, and interesting times.
Yes, this is cloud computing, and yes, it raises huge privacy issues. It is up to us the tech savvy crown to raise these issues and address them.
Slashdotters can always run their trusty Debian or Fedora or FreeBSD or on their computer. And they remain great choices. But Google is pushing applications to go online and cross browser. They are pushing for open source drivers. They are pushing for open standards and cooperation with upstream and downstream projects. This is a Good Thing (TM) for all of us, even if we are not the target consumers of this OS.
Comment Re:Makes you wonder... (Score 2, Informative) 239
Well my user agent string right now is: (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.212.0 Safari/532.0), which says I'm running the latest Chrome very nicely on my Linux box.
If you are using Ubuntu, I suggest you give this PPA a try: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa
It's daily builds of Chromium. I've been running it now for a week, and it has not crashed on me a single time. There is a x86 version, as well as a AMD64 version, and the 64-bit version is now true 64 bit, i.e., it does not depend on 32 bit libs.
It's stable and nearly feature complete. Supports all plugins (including Flash) out of the box, if they are installed on your machine. It imported all my settings and profile from Firefox. I like its original look, but it can now also use native Gtk themes of your system, so that it meshes really well with the rest of your system. It implements the one-process-per-tab architecture, and uses a *lot* less memory than Firefox. In fact, it is astonishingly more responsive and less memory-hungry than FF.
There are a few things left, for example printing doesn't work on it yet. Once they implement printing, I'm sure they will roll out the Beta.
Google is also working on an extension framework, so things as AdBlock will become a reality soon.
Give it a try, it's very impressive.
Maddog's New Hampshire "Unix" Plate Turns 20 212
An anonymous reader writes "Local newspaper talks to Linux International's Jon 'maddog' Hall, who lives in New Hampshire, and who since 1989 has had a 'Live Free or Die' UNIX license plate — a real one, not a conference hand-out — on his Jeep. From the story:
'The day he installed the UNIX plates, he went early to work at DEC's office on Spit Brook Road in Nashua, to be sure to get the parking space right next to the door used by all the Unix engineers. He watched them come in and, one after another, do a double take at seeing the real-world version of the famous fake plate. "People would race in and yell, 'Who is it? Whose plate is it?!?'" Hall said. It was his then and it is his now. After 20 years, one suspects you will have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers.'"
Open Source Solution Breaks World Sorting Records 139
allenw writes "In a recent blog post, Yahoo's grid computing team announced that Apache Hadoop was used to break the current world sorting records in the annual GraySort contest. It topped the 'Gray' and 'Minute' sorts in the general purpose (Daytona) category. They sorted 1TB in 62 seconds, and 1PB in 16.25 hours. Apache Hadoop is the only open source software to ever win the competition. It also won the Terasort competition last year."
Danger Mouse Releases Blank CD-R To Spite EMI 296
An anonymous reader writes "DJ Danger Mouse famously fought with EMI over his Beatles/Jay-Z mashup, 'The Grey Album,' and now seems to be battling with the label again. Rather than release his latest album and face legal issues with EMI, Techdirt is reporting that Danger Mouse will be selling a blank CD-R along with lots of artwork, and buyers will be responsible for finding the music themselves (yes, it's findable on the internet) and burning the CD."
Jammie Thomas May Face RIAA Trial Alone 143
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "With her trial coming up on June 15th, Jammie Thomas has received a motion by her lawyer to withdraw from the highly publicized case, Capitol Records v. Thomas. Ms. Thomas said in a written declaration (PDF) obtained from her by her lawyer that she was not opposed to the lawyer's withdrawal, and waived any hearing on the matter. The court papers submitted by the lawyer (PDF) also indicated that the RIAA was not opposed to the withdrawal — i.e. it graciously consented to Ms. Thomas having no legal representation — but was opposed to any continuance (i.e. the RIAA wants to make sure that Ms. Thomas does not have sufficient time to find other legal representation, or to prepare to handle the trial herself, or to enable new counsel to prepare to handle the trial). Nice of them."
Hosting a Highly Inflammatory Document? 471
IndianaKim writes "I have been asked if I can host or assist in hosting a highly inflammatory document that reflects poorly on a Police Department. I want to help, but I also do not want the headache and possible subjection to search warrants and/or illegal searches. The document is so inflammatory that it could interest the FBI and DoJ and cause them to investigate the government officials involved. I live in the same county, but not the same city, and therefore could be subject to a search (legal or not) by some of these government agencies. I have been asked to host it on a server outside of the US. At this time, I do not have the ability to do that, but I could set it up if I needed to. My question is: would you host it if you were asked? How would you go about protecting the document and yourself?"
Ubuntu 9.04 RC Released 239
Mohamed Zaian writes "The Ubuntu team has released the release candidate for Ubuntu 9.04; 'The Ubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, which brings a host of excellent new features.' The various other Ubuntu-derived distributions, like Kubuntu, have also had their RCs released."
Obama Picks Net Neutrality Backer As FCC Chief 409
Ripit writes "President Obama on Tuesday nominated Julius Genachowski as the nation's top telecommunications regulator, picking a campaign adviser who has divided his career between Washington, D.C., political jobs and working as an Internet executive.
Genachowski is likely to continue the Democratic push for more Net neutrality regulations, which are opposed by some conservatives and telecommunications providers. He was a top Obama technology adviser and aided in crafting a technology platform that supported Net neutrality rules."
XBMC Running On an Atom-Based MID 97
reborn writes "Someone's got XBMC running on one of those MIDs. This one is a Compal Jax10. It runs Linux and is powered by an Intel Atom processor clocked at 800Mhz along with Intel's GMA500, which is basically a licensed PowerVR SGX GPU. Except for the better GPU (and its screen and keyboard, of course), it is similarly specced as some of the lower-end netbooks. XBMC would make a great portable media player, given its ability to play media off the network and virtually all file formats, but in the end it depends on the price-point of these MIDs. Here's the video."
Amazon 1-Click Lawyers Make USPTO Work Xmas Eve 117
theodp writes "In a move that would do pre-makeover Ebenezer proud, Amazon.com's 1-Click lawyers put the USPTO to work on Christmas Eve. On Dec. 24th, the USPTO acknowledged receipt of yet another round of paperwork submitted by Amazon's high-priced legal muscle, the latest salvo in Amazon's 3-year battle to fend off a patent reexamination triggered by the do-it-yourself legal effort of actor Peter Calveley. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent is also under attack on another front — on Dec. 23rd, the USPTO received $810 from Amazon's attorneys together with a request that the agency invalidate Patent Examiner Mark A. Fadok's final rejection of 1-Click patent claims on the grounds of obviousness. On the bright side, patent clerks — unlike Bob Cratchit — get the day after Christmas off!"
Comment Re:From The Economist (Score 1) 275
Excellent read. Full of information, with lots of insightful details. The Economist never disappoints, it's an awesome publication.
The fact that it publishes the content of its print edition online, one day BEFORE the print edition is delivered, and it has still been able to massively increase its subscriber numbers (doubled in the past 3 years), just shows to prove that even in this age of Internet, when everyone else in the newspaper industry is complaining about falling revenues, good journalism has its place, and will always be valued.
