Comment Slashdot 'em while they are down (Score 1) 247
Well... I am sure the additional server load from curious slashdotters like myself can only be helping.
Comment Lawnmower Man (Score 1) 1200
"Ahhh!!! A back door!" ... and then I left the theater.
Submission + - CNN showing doctored Japan earthquake videos (cnn.com)
ctdownunder writes: CNN is showing purposely "enhanced" videos of shaking structures. The digital doctoring is obvious even to the untrained eye; the image is expanded and contracted quickly to simulate earthquake shaking.
Submission + - The Full Story Behind the Canonical vs GNOME Drama (gnome.org)
supersloshy writes: "I've seen a lot of GNOME bashing for various reasons here on Slashdot as well as several other websites. The problem with all of this is that you never hear GNOME's side of the situation, making a lot of disrespectful comments about GNOME (or the others involved) rather baseless and illogical. Dave Nearyhas an excellently thorough blog post which details problems on all sides that make the issue much more complicated than "GNOME is being idiotic by not accepting our technology". The points covered in the blog post include, among others, how Freedesktop.org is broken as a standards body, that Mark Shuttlework doesn't understand how GNOME works, that GNOME is not easy to understand, and that open discussions from the very beginning are important for specification development and adoption. This blog post by "Sankar" also covers similar points while defending GNOME."
Submission + - Japan Quake A Risk For Electronics Industry (ibtimes.com)
RedEaredSlider writes: Soon after an 8.9-magniture earthquake hit Japan, devastating cities and killing hundreds, questions have emerged as to how the event will affect electronics supply chains.
Japan, with the world's third largest economy, remains a major producer of electronics despite China's gains over the last decade. According to IHS iSuppli, Japan accounted for almost 14 percent of global electronic equipment factory revenue last year. The country accounts for 16.5 percent of that revenue in the consumer electronics industry.
Japan, with the world's third largest economy, remains a major producer of electronics despite China's gains over the last decade. According to IHS iSuppli, Japan accounted for almost 14 percent of global electronic equipment factory revenue last year. The country accounts for 16.5 percent of that revenue in the consumer electronics industry.
Submission + - Tsunami Warnings Now Faster, More Accurate (computerworld.com)
CWmike writes: As the deadly tsunami generated by Friday's massive earthquake off the coast of Japan headed toward the United States, scientists at NOAA's Center for Tsunami Research tracked its progress in real-time. Dozens of deep-ocean tsunami-monitoring sensors more than three miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean picked up information on the silent swell of water and transmitted it by way of a satellite to the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Wash. here, scientists crunched the data and quickly developed real-time predictions about how and when the tsunami would reach select locations in Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S west coast. The models predicted the wave arrival time, estimated wave height and the likely extent of inundation for about 50 communities likely to be affected. That kind of real-time, precision forecasting is a far cry from what was available in 2004 during the massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean, said Diego Arcas, a scientist with the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research (NCTR). 'It's almost a whole new world since 2004,' Arcas said.
Submission + - The cloud's Achilles' Heel is that it's uninsurabl (networkworld.com)
Roberto123 writes: "Cloud providers are boasting about how fast they're signing up customers and how much money they are saving them, but there's a big gap in the cloud business model. A risk assessment expert says the industry lacks a way of measuring the risks inherent in cloud computing and how to spread that risk."
Submission + - Worst computer episode in a movie?
Cuban Devil writes: Yesterday I rented a blu-ray movie and put myself to watch The Social Network. No comments about the story, but Zuckerberg's narrated performance on hacking Harvard servers made me wonder which was the worst computer action performance I had ever seen on a screen. I leave here my vote: worst episode was when I had to see Mr. Goldblum upload a virus, using a Mac, in a time it did not connect even to an ethernet network, and compromising the entire Alien fleet. Is anybody capable of remembering something below that?
Submission + - AT&T Sued for Systematic iPhone Overbilling
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.
Submission + - Lawsuit Claims AT&T Overbills on Data Plans (pcworld.com)
JThaddeus writes: A complaint filed in federal court in California alleges that 'AT&T has "systematically" overcharged iPhone and iPad owners with capped data plans by inflating the amount of data they download and adding "phantom traffic," a lawsuit claimed last week.' The plaintiff's attorney is asking the judge to grant the lawsuit class-action status for all iPhone and iPad users on capped data plans. 'AT&T said it would "vigorously" fight the suit.'
Comment Netflix helps to quantify the issue (Score 1) 89
In what has to be an interesting twist on net neutrality and bandwidth throttling, Netflix has released their numbers for network throughput sorted by ISP. Clearwire comes in dead last out of 16 US ISPs:
http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/01/netflix-performance-on-top-isp-networks.html
Submission + - AT&T iPhone charge per MB + somethin' (pcmag.com)
phorwich writes: Seems PC Magazine is reporting that Patrick Hendricks of California is suing AT&T for overbilling iPhone customers 7-14% on per MB data use charges. Do any /.'ers reliably track and audit their cell phone data usage in sync with their billing cycle? Is there an app for that? I chafed at AT&T's financial disincentive that pushed me away from 'unlimited data.' This sneaky miss-accounting make me iRate. How reliably can data usage be measured? What about OS data use versus user generated requests? Does the distinction matter?
Comment Duke Nuke 'em... (Score 1) 815
... forever. Is it more likely than cold fusion? I mean, both are theoretical, promise good things for mankind, and have a spotty past filled with false promises and dashed hopes. I am guessing we see a Duke sequel before we see a perpetual energy source, but that's me looking on the bright side.
Comment Re:4th (Score 1) 484
Slightly off topic, but it reminds of the person who once asked, "If I whistle a popular rock song where someone else can hear and then they start whistling it too, have I made an illegal copy?"
Comment The Store (Score 1) 416
Seems to me that the largest force driving iPhone/iPad/iPod success is the Apple Store. It's huge, draws developers, and provides good product at dirt cheap prices. OS considerations have become secondary.
