gjt - Slashdot User

Clashing Scores In the HTML5 Compatibility Test Wars 203

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 03, 2010 @07:12PM from the jake-the-explainer-steps-in-early dept.

Andreas(R) writes "Microsoft has published a set of HTML5 tests comparing Internet Explorer 9 to other web browsers. In Microsoft's own tests, IE9 performs 100% on all tests. However, the Internet Explorer 9 HTML5 Canvas Campaign has published results that show that Internet Explorer gets 0% on all their tests." The results reported here are selected with tongue in cheek: "Therefore, we'll also present shameless results from tests which have been carefully selected to give the results that the PR department has demanded."

Comment It seems you have to install Flash from the Market (Score 2, Informative) 154

by gjt on Saturday May 22, 2010 @08:12PM (#32310010) Attached to: Installing Android 2.2 "Froyo" On the Nexus One

I just updated the original post with instructions to get Flash. Basically, search for "flash 10.1" in the market.

Comment Actually, you can grab it now (Score 4, Informative) 154

by gjt on Saturday May 22, 2010 @07:51PM (#32309846) Attached to: Installing Android 2.2 "Froyo" On the Nexus One

And no point trying to get it before you get it pushed to you?

The Over-The-Air update is a staggered rollout. But, the manual method that I wrote about here let's you avoid the wait. That said, it also seems to only be for the Nexus One now. Can't find a Droid update yet.

Submission + - Installing Android 2.2 "Froyo" on the Nexus One (gadgetopolis.com)

Submitted by gjt on Saturday May 22, 2010 @05:50PM

gjt writes: I awoke this morning to see TechCrunch's MG Siegler post what appeared to be the first news of Froyo's availability. I frantically went to my phone's settings and tried to check for an update -oe but no luck. Then I went to xda-developers.com and sure enough there was a very long thread (now over 132 pages) of fellow eager beavers waiting for release (and trying to figure out how to get it). Several hours went by waiting for a semi-technical user to get the update and check the Android logs for the download location. It turns out you can get it straight from Google. With the information scattered around in different places I decided to consolidate the How-To into a single post over here.

Submission + - Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by Laxori666 on Saturday May 22, 2010 @02:37PM

Laxori666 writes: Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.

Submission + - Isohunt Gets a Permanent Injunction (newteevee.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun on Saturday May 22, 2010 @05:22AM

suraj.sun writes: Judge Stephen Wilson of the US District Court of California, Southern District issued a permanent injunction ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/31719090/Isohunt-Permanent-Injunction ) against the popular torrent site Isohunt yesterday, forcing the site and its owner Garry Fung to immediately prevent access to virtually all Hollywood movies.

The injunction theoretically leaves the door open for the site to deploy a strict filtering system, but its terms are so broad that Isohunt has little choice but to shut down or at the very least block all U.S. visitors. Fung could be held in contempt of court if he doesn’t comply with the injunction, and he could possibly be thrown into jail.

So what can Isohunt and Fung do to comply with the injunction? The verdict states that they have to cease “hosting, indexing, linking to, or otherwise providing access to any (torrent) or similar files” that can be used to download the studios’ movies and TV shows. Studios have to supply Isohunt with a list of titles of works they own, and Isohunt has to start blocking those torrents within 24 hours.

NewTeeVee: http://newteevee.com/2010/05/21/u-s-court-isohunt-has-to-shut-down/

Submission + - Economist calls for 'Open source' biology (economist.com)

Submitted by Socguy on Saturday May 22, 2010 @02:14AM

Socguy writes: With the announcement that a team of researchers has created the first artificial life, the Economist has been pondering the implications of what this brave new frontier means when the power to build living organisms filters through to anyone with a laptop. Traditional methods of restricting and regulating dangerous technology has more or less worked so far, but the Economist thinks that this time may be different. They are calling for an open system where the 'good guys' can see and counter any dangerous organisms that are released accidentally or otherwise.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16163154&source=features_box_main

Theora Development Continues Apace, VP8 Now Open Source 312

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @02:32PM from the long-term-vision dept.

SergeyKurdakov writes "Monty 'xiphmont' Montgomery of the Xiph Foundation says the latest action-packed, graph- and demo-clip-stuffed Theora project update page (demo 9) is now up for all and sundry! Catch up on what's gone into the new Theora encoder Ptalarbvorm over the last few months. It also instructs how to pronounce 'Ptalarbvorm.' Ptalarbvorm is not a finished release encoder yet, though I've personally been using it in production for a few months. Pace on improvements hasn't slowed down — the subjective psychovisual work being done by Tim Terriberry and Greg Maxwell has at least doubled-again on the improvements made by Thusnelda, and they're not anywhere near done yet. As a bonus Monty gathered all Xiph demo pages in one place." Also on the video codec front, and also with a Xiph connection, atamido writes "Google has released On2's VP8 video codec to the world, royalty-free. It is packaging it with Vorbis audio, in a subset of the Matroska container, and calling it WebM. It's not branded as an exclusively Google project — Mozilla and Opera are also contributors. Builds of your favorite browsers with full support are available." An anonymous reader points out this technical analysis of VP8.

Submission + - Cheaper Hydrogen Production Catalyst Discovered (gizmag.com)

Submitted by ElectricSteve on Monday May 03, 2010 @09:53AM

ElectricSteve writes: The Hydrogen Economy that may one day replace the Hydrocarbon Economy came a step closer this week with the announcement that researchers have discovered an inexpensive new proton reduction catalyst — seventy times cheaper than the Platinum commonly used now — that can significantly reduce the costs of producing hydrogen using electrolysis to split water into molecules of hydrogen and oxygen.

Climate Researchers Fight Back 641

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 23, 2010 @04:06PM from the best-defense-is-a-good-offense dept.

tomduck writes "The Guardian reports that climate researcher Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post newspaper in Canada in a libel action for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods.' The Post claimed he cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and tried to blame the 'evil fossil fuel' industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from mistakes in the 2007 IPCC report. This comes fast on the heels of another Guardian article describing lessons learned from the exoneration of UEA scientists involved in the so-called Climategate affair. Are climate scientists finally fighting back against their critics, who they were previously more inclined to ignore?"

Submission + - The Hard Drive Death Watch Begins Now (gadgetopolis.com)

Submitted by gjt on Monday March 22, 2010 @08:59PM

gjt writes: When Intel and OCZ recently announced new "affordable" Solid State Disk drives — offering a meager 32-40GB — we initially yawned. But, then we took a closer look at the press releases and the in-progress research and development in SSD technology and opened our eyes. While the new drives aren't affordable on a cost per gigabyte basis for everyone, it does set a precedent — and most importantly a barometer price of $100. And it really does start the death clock for hard drive technology.

Toshiba Ends Incandescent Bulb Production After 120 Years 430

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @09:37AM from the bright-ideas dept.

angry tapir writes "Toshiba has stopped production of mass-market incandescent light bulbs, putting an end to a 120-year manufacturing history of the products. The company, which is one of Japan's largest makers of lighting products, had planned to halt production next year but brought up the date by a year. It will now focus on more energy efficient products, including LED (light-emitting diode) lights, which contain a handful of white LEDs and draw a fraction of the power of incandescent bulbs."

What To Expect From HTML5 272

Posted by Soulskill on Monday March 08, 2010 @01:32PM from the endless-debate-about-video dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes a deeper look at HTML5, outlining what developers should expect from this overhaul of HTML — one that some believe could put an end to proprietary Web technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. Among the most eagerly anticipated additions to HTML5 are new elements and APIs that allow content authors to create rich media using nothing more than standards-based HTML. The standard also introduces browser-based application caches, which enable Web apps to store information on the client device. 'But for all of HTML5's new features, users shouldn't expect plug-ins to disappear overnight. The Web has a long history of many competing technologies and media formats, and the inertia of that legacy will be difficult to overcome. It may yet be many years before a pure-HTML5 browser will be able to match the capabilities of today's patchwork clients,' McAllister writes. 'In the end, browser market share may be the most significant hurdle for developers interested in making the most of HTML5. Until these legacy browsers are replaced with modern updates, Web developers may be stuck maintaining two versions of their sites: a rich version for HTML5-enabled users, and a version for legacy browsers that falls back on outdated rendering tricks.'"

Submission + - Did TiVo Succeed in Reinventing the DVR? (gadgetopolis.com) 1

Submitted by gjt on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @01:18AM

gjt writes: So last week Slashdotters looked at my submission entitled The Sad History and (Possibly) Bright Future of TiVo. TiVo just gave us a peak at that future. At their incredibly hyped up product unveiling atop Rockefeller Center in New York, TiVo unveiled it's first major new DVR product in 3.5 years — The new TiVo Premier. But will it do for TiVo, what the iPod did for Apple? Is it enough to turn around TiVo's ailing fortunes? I decided to pick apart the new product's specs and post the verdict.

The key takeaway seems to be that they've definitely improved their DVR. But they definitely did not live up to their own hype. HTPC geeks will probably still be disappointed.

Submission + - Armband Turns Skin Into Input Surface (chrisharrison.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @01:05AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have come up with a clever method to turn your skin into an input device using a special microphone array embedded in an armband. This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3XPUdW9Ryg) demonstrates the technology. This technology could not only allow people to use the palm of their hands as a keypad, but also control devices such as a music player simply by tapping your fingers.

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