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Comment Re:What a load of crap (Score 1) 496

With Vista and probably Win7, WoW wants to install to the users\public\games\ folder, not in Program Files. I ran WoW on a laptop that had been upgraded from XP to Vista and on either a patch or the Wrath install (sorry, don't remember now, it's been a while), the install routine prompted to be allowed to move the installation from program files to users\public\games\. User info was stored by account under the wonderfully named WTF subfolder, prior to the Battle.net migration. Now, patch information, at least, is stored under the user's documents folder. I haven't poked around enough to see if any user specific stuff is stored there.

Cellphones

Verizon Doubles Early Termination Fee and More 520

An anonymous reader writes "If you buy a smartphone through Verizon, be prepared for an increase in the early termination fee. Verizon is doubling the phone-subsidy to $350. What's more, is that Verizon also actively charges customers for accidental data transmissions of as little as 0.02kb. 'They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch 'Get it now' or 'Mobile Web'—usually a single key like an arrow key. [...] The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn't matter; they've told me that ANY data--even one kilobyte--is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.'"
The Internet

HTTP Intermediary Layer From Google Could Dramatically Speed Up the Web 406

grmoc writes "As part of the 'Let's make the web faster' initiative, we (a few engineers — including me! — at Google, and hopefully people all across the community soon!) are experimenting with alternative protocols to help reduce the latency of Web pages. One of these experiments is SPDY (pronounced 'SPeeDY'), an application-layer protocol (essentially a shim between HTTP and the bits on the wire) for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimal latency. In addition to a rough specification for the protocol, we have hacked SPDY into the Google Chrome browser (because it's what we're familiar with) and a simple server testbed. Using these hacked up bits, we compared the performance of many of the top 25 and top 300 websites over both HTTP and SPDY, and have observed those pages load, on average, about twice as fast using SPDY. Thats not bad! We hope to engage the open source community to contribute ideas, feedback, code (we've open sourced the protocol, etc!), and test results."

Comment Bah - let it go (Score 1) 857

My mother was forced to change to right handed writing and they made her practice - the result: beautiful script that was completely unreadable. They tried to make me change as well, but I wasn't having anything of it. Being left handed, cursive was more effort that was it was worth, so I developed a quite legible block print (incidentally, taking after my right handed father, who was an engineer). In short, penmanship is a Medieval art in a modern world.

Comment Destroying local knowledge? (Score 1) 519

Only for people who use it who would have gotten by just fine without it. For people like my wife, who lack the gene for direction sense, it's a godsend. For me, don't need it, won't use it - just another distraction, to compete with the plethora of things that already distract us in the car - cell phone, ipod, the Whopper that you are mostly wearing by the time you are done and the inability to find a decent block of music on the radio (hence the ipod).

Heh, the captcha is "quantity"

Mozilla

Firefox To Get Multi-Process Browsing 383

An anonymous reader writes with news that multi-process browsing will be coming to Firefox. The project is called Electrolysis, and the developers "have already assembled a prototype that renders a page in a separate process from the interface shell in which it is displayed." Mozilla's Benjamin Smedberg says they're currently "[sprinting] as fast as possible to get basic code working, running simple testcase plugins and content tabs in a separate process," after which they'll fix everything that breaks in the process. Further details of their plan are available on the Mozilla wiki, and a summary is up at TechFragments.
Privacy

Judge Rules IP Addresses Not "Personally Identifiable" 436

yuna49 writes "Online Media Daily reports that a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personal information. 'In order for "personally identifiable information" to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer,' US District Court Judge Richard Jones said in a written decision. Jones issued the ruling in the context of a class-action lawsuit brought by consumers against Microsoft stemming from an update that automatically installed new anti-piracy software. In that case, which dates back to 2006, consumers alleged that Microsoft violated its user agreement by collecting IP addresses in the course of the updates. This ruling flatly contradicts a recent EU decision to the contrary, as well as other cases in the US. Its potential relevance to the RIAA suits should be obvious to anyone who reads Slashdot."
PC Games (Games)

Experimental Video Game Evolves Its Own Content 167

Ken Stanley writes "Just as interest in user-generated content in video games is heating up, a team of researchers at the University of Central Florida has released an experimental multiplayer game in which content items compete with each other in an evolutionary arms race to satisfy the players. As a result, particle system-based weapons, which are the evolving class of content, continually invent their own new behaviors based on what users liked in the past. Does the resulting experience in this game, called Galactic Arms Race, suggest that evolutionary algorithms may be the key to automated content generation in future multiplayer gaming and MMOs?"

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