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Java

Introducing JITB — a Flash Player Built On the JVM 126

Posted by Soulskill from the stay-as-long-as-you-like dept.
MBCook writes "Joa Ebert has started working on a new program called JITB. Announced in a talk at FITC San Fran, it's a Flash player written to use the Java JVM to run ActionScript, and in a simple graphics test case (making 1 million calls to flash.geom.Point) was 30x faster than Adobe's Flash player. There is an impressive demo video on YouTube showing the point test."
Graphics

NVidia Cripples PhysX "Open" API 393

Posted by timothy from the semi-open dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a foot-meet-bullet type move, NVidia is going to disable PhysX engine if you are using a display adapter other than one that came from their company. This despite the fact that you may have an NVidia card on your system specifically to do this type of processing. 'For a variety of reasons some development expense, some quality assurance and some business reasons Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs.' Time to say hello to Microsoft dx physics or Intel's Havok engine."

Comment Discovery of Aliens for Me (Score 1) 903

by baez (#29371891) Attached to: Which Breakthrough Is Most Likely?
Seems like every other month we see a story about how a newer and smaller planet is discovered around a star. I think it'll only be a few more years before we find some kind of life on one of these planets ... do plants count? Obviously Sharks with Frickin' Lasers is possible right now, but I don't see a whole lot of research going into this discovery. I find it odd that Human Level AI is winning at the moment. I'm not all that familiar with the current state of this technology, but it seems at first glance to be about as hard as World Peace. Anyway, my money is on Aliens long before AI or Sharks with Laser Beams.
Education

Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA 216

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-put-them-in-a-wiki dept.
Unequivocal writes "Recently California's Governor announced a free digital textbook competition. The results of that competition were announced today. Many traditional publishers submitted textbooks in this digital textbook competition in CA as well as open publishers. An upstart nonprofit organization named CK-12 contributed a number of textbooks (all free and open source material). 'Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California's standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.' Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler. None of the publisher's submissions were so recognized. CK-12 has a very small staff, so this is a great proof of the power of open textbooks and open educational resources."
Microsoft

Why Microsoft Is Chasing Yahoo 245

Posted by CmdrTaco from the jeeves-wanted-to-much-money dept.
latif writes "Microsoft has been chasing Yahoo for quite a while now. Most people think that it all started with Microsoft's acquisition bid for Yahoo, but this is not so. It is well-known that Microsoft and Yahoo have been negotiating since at least May of 2006, and may have been negotiating since 2003. I have done a thorough analysis utilizing information made public over the past five years and my analysis suggests that most people are completely wrong about what Microsoft wants from Yahoo."
NASA

Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement 400

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can-see-your-house-from-there dept.
schliz writes "Nasa has announced that it intends to officially retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, four years before it has a replacement craft ready. The space shuttle fleet will make ten more flights, mainly to add modules to the International Space Station and carry out repairs and upgrades to the Hubble orbital telescope. The retirement will leave the US without orbital capacity for at least four years, until the Ares booster programme is complete. European and Russian launchers will service the space station in the meantime."
Hardware Hacking

New Firmware Fixes Previously Bricked iPhones 182

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the house-that-iphone-built-comes-crumbling-down dept.
drcagn writes "Ars Technica reports that Apple's new 1.1.3 firmware update unbricks iPhones damaged from unlocking and updating the firmware months ago. In September, users who hacked their iPhone's firmware to unlock it found their iPhone bricked when they updated to new firmware, creating a massive upset and internet furor. Although Apple claimed this was not an intended effect of the update, it held the stance that it is not their responsibility to ensure that updates work with users' warranty-voiding hacks, and many cried foul. This update, which provides new features Jobs showed off at Macworld, while not officially unbricking the iPhone, has restored iPhones from Gizmodo and a reader of the Unofficial Apple Weblog."

Comment Re:NBC Offers Their Shows on Their Site (Score 1) 474

by baez (#20593929) Attached to: TV Torrents — When Piracy Is Easier Than Purchase
The Heroes episodes were available a day after they aired last season. I expect they'll do the same this season (11 more days, woohoo!). And I think the episodes were available for quite some time after the season ended. But as another poster above mentioned, they removed the Heroes eps from their website after the DVDs were released. I'm not sure I can fault them for doing that...

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