hollywoodb - Slashdot User

Submission + - Super Bowl XLV 2011 commercials (beercartel.com.au)

Submitted by beercartel on Monday February 07, 2011 @09:50PM

beercartel writes: Super Bowl 2011 sacked the defenders and put a blitz on the attackers — while I don't know my NFL terms I do know ads and that is one thing that the Super Bowl is packed full of commercials where hundreds of thousands of millions are paid to get 1 minute of glory! Enjoy these beer related commercials for Super Bowl XLV 2011 and one ad about Darth Vadar just because it's cool.

Submission + - Verizon iPhone could have supported GSM and CDMA (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by tekgoblin on Monday February 07, 2011 @08:40PM

tekgoblin writes: iFixit has revealed in its recent teardown of the Verizon iPhone 4 that the phone could have supported both GSM and CDMA networks. They know this because the phone contains a Qualcomm MDM6600 chip which supports "HSPA+ data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps and CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. A/Rev. B." They also point out that the phone lacks a sim card slot which would be needed for it to support GSM networks. Who knows why Apple did not allow the phone to actually support both networks, maybe Verizon didn't want it or maybe AT&T. Maybe the next iPhone 5 will support both Networks and be sold directly from Apple on a website where you can choose which carrier that you want.

Another difference with the new iPhone 4 than the previous AT&T one is the changed antenna design. As you can see above on the left is the Verizon iPhone 4 with 4 segments in the antenna design while AT&T on the right has 3. The changed antenna design allows the phone to work on Verizon's 2 800 MHz and 1900 MHz CDMA/EVDO bands, while AT&T had to support 4 GSM bands and 4 UTMS bands for international usage.

Submission + - Drug Dogs False Alert Over 200 Times In Study (sfgate.com)

Submitted by Aldenissin on Monday February 07, 2011 @08:32PM

Aldenissin writes: The accuracy of drug- and explosives-sniffing dogs is affected by human handlers' beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional cues, UC Davis researchers have found.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Animal Cognition, found that detection-dog teams erroneously "alerted," or identified a scent, when there was no scent present more than 200 times, particularly when the handler believed that there was scent present.

In other words, at best, dogs are responding to the subtle non-verbal cues of their masters to find drugs or explosives where the human thinks there should be drugs or explosives. The cop suspects you have pot so his body language makes the dog alert. At worst, the cop is purposefully cuing his dog to alert when he wants a handy excuse to violate your 4th Amendment rights.

Submission + - XOOM - $799; WiFi Requires 3G Activation? (dailytech.com)

Submitted by WrongSizeGlass on Monday February 07, 2011 @05:29PM

WrongSizeGlass writes: The price of Motorola's XOOM Tablet has been leaked in a Best Buy ad. The $799 Android 3 enabled tablet will be available starting Feb 24th. Though the price may seem a bit high, the most surprising detail is that activating the Xoom's WiFi will require signing up for at least one month of Verizon's 3G service. Let's hope the fine print in the Best Buy ad turns out to be a typo.

Submission + - Takedown letters for WP7 Tetris Clones (karios.gr)

Submitted by karios on Monday February 07, 2011 @04:29PM

karios writes: Today I received a takedown letter from a law firm representing the Tetris Company for copyright violation for my game Tetrada which I published on the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. The witch hunt, after Android, iOS and other platforms continues on Windows Phone 7 which is a pity, since some of tetrominoes games in the Marketplace were pretty decent.

Submission + - US navy unveils new X-47B Drone (omgshots.com) 3

Submitted by Mavra on Monday February 07, 2011 @04:26PM

Mavra writes: This unmanned, bat winged stealth drone attacker made its solo demonstration flight in California. The new drone named X-47B is little bit smaller than the B-2 stealth bomber, took off from Edwards Air Force Base, successfully attained 5,000 feet at a preprogrammed route for 29 minutes in the air.

Its experimental design and concept is totally changed from the robotic planes that are currently being used. It can be controlled by a computer from an aircraft carrier and moreover its faster than other unmanned jets, such as the Predators and Reapers being used in Afghanistan. The X-47B has the ability to fly at 40,000 feet at 500 miles per hour speed. and the laser guided bombs makes it more dangerous. But this prototype is still under development and will be complete in late this year.

Submission + - Shareholders Push Hard for Apple Succession Plan (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn on Thursday February 03, 2011 @04:49PM

eldavojohn writes: Apple has been a couple weeks now sans their iconic fearless leader and the shareholders are getting restless without a succession plan. Essentially the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) is saying that there hasn't been enough disclosure in why exactly Steve is absent and they'd like an annual succession plan delivered to shareholders. Apple is recommending that on February 23 at its annual company meeting, its shareholders vote against the proposal for a succession plan. Apple may have a plan for life after Steve Jobs but if they do they are not sharing it with anyone — not even their financiers!

Submission + - AT&T Sued for Systematic iPhone Overbilling

Submitted by Hugh Pickens writes on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @05:58PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: UPI reports that AT&T is facing a lawsuit that says AT&T routinely bills for 7 percent to 14 percent more data transactions than normally takes place that could blossom into a costly class-action case. Court papers claim that attorneys set up a test account for an iPhone, then closed all of its apps and left the device unused for 10 days. AT&T still billed the account for 2,292 KB of usage. "A significant portion of the data revenues were inflated by AT&T's rigged billing system for data transactions," say court papers filed on behalf of AT&T customer Patrick Hendricks. "This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station." Attorneys say they would file to have the case moved to class-action status, which makes the outcome relevant to all of AT&T's iPhone accounts.

Comment Re:Windows Logo on New Fedoraproject.org Site (Score 1) 200

by hollywoodb on Thursday November 04, 2010 @07:52AM (#34122808) Attached to: Fedora 14 Released and Reviewed — Advanced, and Not For Wimps

The "shapes" derive from the Fedora Infinity logo, which iirc debuted with Fedora 8. It's basically the mathematical sign for infinity, rotated counter-clockwise by 45 degrees with the lowercase Fedora "f" imposed onto it. It's quite elegant.

Graphics-heavy Fedora Wiki page on F8 artwork.

Comment Re:They need to stop arresting the FINDERS (Score 1) 466

by hollywoodb on Wednesday May 12, 2010 @12:18PM (#32183440) Attached to: Apple Loses Another 4th-Gen iPhone

No, but park it in my parking space, don't remove it after I have you served with a notice to either do so or that I will go to court and get title of it, and guess what - I *can* go to court and get title transferred. Uhhhh...what?? What law is this? IAAL and I've never heard of this legal maneuver.

I believe what is being referred to (and misinterpreted) are abandoned vehicle laws. Some states have abandoned vehicle laws where a property owner can file a title claim on vehicles that are determined to be abandoned. Different states have different rules for what qualifies as "abandoned". For example, Minnesota Statute 168B.

Comment Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating (Score 1) 472

by hollywoodb on Monday May 03, 2010 @12:42PM (#32073942) Attached to: IE Market Share Falls To Historic Low

Here's how I run "Chrome": First I go to http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/waterfall/console Then I find the build that's all green for Windows and green for the first dot in the first column. This is how I decide it's a good Windows build. Do the same for your OS of choice. Make note of the build number on the left. Find the build here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/ Navigate to the snapshot build directory. For Windows, you'll find a "portable" zip directory. Doesn't require install. There's also a mini-installer, which I use. End result is Chromium, up to date, and without some of the Google-added things that I don't really want.

Comment Re:padding (Score 1) 113

by hollywoodb on Friday February 19, 2010 @11:30AM (#31199634) Attached to: Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Gets Go-Ahead From EU, US DoJ

I haven't switched, but sometimes Bing's results genuinely are better. I still use Google for "interesting" searches, but when I just can't remember the URL to something or similar, Bing is typically better.

Experiment for the reader:
A very specific thing. I want the WikiBooks LaTeX guide, and I can never be bothered to remember the kinda-long URL.
Type "wikibooks latex" (no quotes) into both Bing and Google. Tell me which results are better.

Submission + - Data confirm it: Tech workers are really unhappy (computerworld.com)

Submitted by cweditor on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @06:34PM

cweditor writes: IT job satisfaction has plummeted to a 10-year low, one survey found. Another on general job satisfaction rang in at a paltry 45%.

Submission + - Minnesota introduces world's first carbon tariff (boingboing.net)

Submitted by hollywoodb on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @03:40PM

hollywoodb writes: The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean renewable energy Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012... Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders, but the utility companies that operate in MN have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota, which is preparing a legal battle against Minnesota over the tariff.
Sources: BoingBoing, Scientific American, TreeHugger

Submission + - 'God of War 3' only possible on the PS3? 2

Submitted by alaskana98 on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @03:05PM

alaskana98 writes: According to this article from Playstation University, Sony states that the much anticipated Sony title God of War III can only be run
on PS3 class hardware. More specifically, they claim that only the PS3's Cell SPU can handle the advanced light rendering employed
throughout the game.

What do you think, fellow Slashdotters? Is this just more 'fanboy fuel' marketing hype, or is there actual weight to this claim?

Slashdot Top Deals