hobbes vs boyle - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Sorry, but glossy screen == no buy (Score 1) 627

by hobbes vs boyle on Sunday February 27, 2011 @09:15AM (#35329988) Attached to: New Apple MacBook Pro Reviewed

From TFA:

The MacBook Pro15-inch (Thunderbolt) has several screen options, all of which require that you pay a significant premium, although I can't think of many consumer laptops that have an anti-glare screen (a $150 option).

So yes, there is a non-glossy option. I find it somewhat odd that the reviewers compares the MBP to "many consumer laptop." Most of the business line models od Dell, HP, Lenovo have non-glossy displays or at least offer the option, too.

Submission + - Consumers Buy Less Tech Stuff, Keep it Longer 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Saturday February 26, 2011 @01:54PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The NY Times reports that there are indications that a sea change is taking place in consumer behavior as a result of the great recession: Americans are buying less tech stuff and making it last longer (reg. may be required). Although in many cases the difference is mere months, economists and consumers say the approach may outlast a full recovery and the return of easy credit, because of the strong impression the downturn has made on consumers. For example Patti Hauseman stuck with her five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning before she bought a new computer for Christmas — actually, a refurbished one. "A week later, the old one died. We timed it pretty well,” says Hauseman adding that it was not so much that she could not afford new things, but that the last few years of economic turmoil had left her feeling that she could be stealing from her future by throwing away goods that still had value. Consumers are holding onto new cars for a record 63.9 months, up 4.5 months from a year ago and 14 percent since the end of 2008, according one research firm and industry analysts also report that people on average are waiting 18 months to upgrade their cellphones, up from every 16 months just a few years ago. “We’re not going back to a time of our grandmothers’ tales of what they kept and how they used things so carefully,” says Nancy F. Koehn, a professor at the Harvard Business School and a historian of consumer behavior. ". But we’ll see a consistent inching or trudging towards that.""

Submission + - Budget NAS Devices - A distant dream? 2

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Saturday February 26, 2011 @12:58PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "I recently decided to man up and sort out my mid to long-term storage situation. Having a strict budget of under £200 didn't seem too bad, especially with the low price of hard drives these days. £120 bought me 2 x 2TB Samsung drives.

But how to use them? I like many others am working solely from a laptop these days so a network accessible consumer NAS was needed (with DNLA for streaming to the PS3 also a requirement). Only problem — suitable units from Thecus, Netgear et al seem to cost a couple of hundred themselves. I picked up a budget £50 second-hand enclosure and it's awful — terribly designed software which gives actually no faith in the underlying RAID1 array.

The only alternative appears to be to roll my own — but for £80 how do I achieve this without resorting to an old, load & power-hungry box? Is anyone rolling their own ARM based unit or is Atom the way to go once again? Also, underneath what is everyone using? A flavour of server 'NIX, FreeNAS, unRAID?"

Submission + - New Apple MacBook Pro Review

Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Friday February 25, 2011 @05:05PM

adeelarshad82 writes: As fate would have it, an Intel chipset glitch delayed shipments of almost every laptop manufacturer, save one. Apple, which has typically been last in transitioning to new technology, is now among the first to launch laptops with Sandy Bridge. The Apple MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt) is the fastest laptop out there. Powered with a Quad-core Core i7 processor and AMD Radeon HD 6750M, the MacBook Pro has a lot of fire power to offer. Unfortunately though it is still a bit expensive and there is a lack of Thunderbolt devices to take advantage of the new interface.

Sex Drugs and Texting 287

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 10, 2010 @12:07PM from the busy-hands-are-happy-hands dept.

statesman writes "The Associated Press reports that teens who text frequently are three and a half times more likely to have sex. A survey of 4,200 public high school students in the Cleveland area found that one in five students sent more than 120 text messages a day or spent more than 3 hours a day on Facebook. Students in this group were much more likely to have sex. Alcohol and drug use also correlate with frequent texting and heavy Facebook use."

Submission + - Swiss High Court Bans Snooping on File Sharers (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 09, 2010 @09:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: Forget about "you can click but you can't hide" campaigns in Switzerland. In a precedent setting ruling, the country's High Court barred Logistep and other private companies from collecting IP addresses on peer-to-peer networks to later send threatening letters to file sharers. According to the judges IP addresses are personal data and although copyright violation is a problem it doesn't justify the kind of privacy invasion that is considered acceptable for criminal proceedings. In light of this decision the administrator of the now defunct Razorback eDonkey server and his lawyer are now about to sue the IFPI which happens to be based in Zurich.

Company Presses Your Ashes Into Vinyl When You Die 101

Posted by samzenpus on Friday August 27, 2010 @01:48PM from the music-of-the-soul dept.

Lanxon writes "Music lovers can now be immortalized when they die by having their ashes baked into vinyl records to leave behind for loved ones, reports Wired. A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favorite tunes or their last will and testament. Minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles."

The Genius of the Lego Printer 187

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 02, 2010 @03:00PM from the dot-by-dot-by-dot dept.

Barence writes "If you've ever struggled to build anything more complex than a cube of Lego, this will blow your mind. It's a fully functioning Lego printer, complete with felt tip print head."

Tetris Clones Pulled From Android Market 396

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 28, 2010 @06:48AM from the bad-news-bears dept.

sbrubblesman writes "The Tetris Company, LLC has notified Google to remove all Tetris clones from Android Market. I am one of the developers of FallingBlocks, a game with the same gameplay concepts as Tetris. I have received an email warning that my game was suspended from Android Market due to a violation of the Developer Content Policy. When I received the email, I already imagined that it had something to do with it being a Tetris clone, but besides having the same gameplay as Tetris, which I believe cannot be copyrighted, the game uses its own name, graphics and sounds. There's no reference to 'Tetris' in our game. I have emailed Google asking what is the reason for the application removal. Google promptly answered that The Tetris Company, LLC notified them under the DMCA (PDF) to remove various Tetris clones from Android Market. My app was removed together with 35 other Tetris clones. I checked online at various sources, and all of them say that there's no copyright on gameplay. There could be some sort of patent. But even if they had one, it would last 20 years, so it would have been over in 2005. It's a shame that The Tetris Company, LLC uses its power to stop developers from creating good and free games for Android users. Without resources for a legal fight, our application and many others will cease to exist, even knowing that they are legit. Users will be forced to buy the paid, official version, which is worse than many of the ones available for free on the market. Users from other countries, such as Brazil in my case, won't even be able to play the official Tetris, since Google Checkout doesn't exist in Brazil; you can't buy paid applications from Android Market in these countries."

FSF Asks Apple To Comply With the GPL For Clone of GNU Go 482

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 26, 2010 @04:04PM from the y'know-fellas-the-license dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Free Software Foundation has discovered that an application currently distributed in Apple's App Store is a port of GNU Go. This makes it a GPL violation, because Apple controls distribution of all such programs through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is incompatible with section 6 of the GPLv2. It's an unusual enforcement action, though, because they don't want Apple to just make the app disappear, they want Apple to grant its users the full freedoms offered by the GPL. Accordingly, they haven't sued or sent any legal threats and are instead in talks with Apple about how they can offer their users the GPLed software legally, which is difficult because it's not possible to grant users all the freedoms they're entitled to and still comply with Apple's restrictive licensing terms."

NSF Gives Supercomputer Time For 3-D Model of Spill 102

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 26, 2010 @03:43PM from the why-can't-we-just-add-a-vinegar-spill? dept.

CWmike writes "Scientists have embarked on a crash effort to use one the world's largest supercomputers to create 3-D models to simulate how BP's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill will affect coastal areas. Acting within 24 hours of receiving a request from researchers, the National Science Foundation late last week made an emergency allocation of 1 million compute hours on a supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center to study how BP's gusher will affect coastlines. The computer model they are working on 'has the potential to advise and undergird many emergency management decisions that may be made along the way, particularly if a hurricane comes through the area,' said Rick Luettich, a professor of marine sciences and head of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who is one of the researchers on this project. Meanwhile, geographic information systems vendor ESRI has added a social spin to GIS mapping of the BP oil spill."

Nero Files Antitrust Complaint Against MPEG-LA 247

Posted by Soulskill on Monday May 24, 2010 @04:40PM from the hot-topics-getting-hotter dept.

hkmwbz writes "German technology company Nero AG has filed an antitrust complaint against the MPEG-LA, the company that manages the H.264 patent pool. Nero claims that the MPEG-LA has violated the law and achieved and abused 100% market share, by, among other things, using 'independent experts' that weren't independent after all, not weeding out non-essential patents from the pool (in fact, it has grown from the original 53 to more than 1,000), and retroactively changing previously-agreed-on license terms."

Researchers Restore Youthful Memory In Aging Mice 145

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @06:19PM from the je-me-souviens dept.

An anonymous reader writes "German neuroscientists made a breakthrough in 'age-related cognitive decline', a common condition that often begins in one's late 40s (especially declarative memory — the ability to recall facts and experiences). Their new study identifies a genetic 'switch' for the cluster of learning and memory genes that cause memory impairment in aging mice. By injecting an enzyme, the team 'flipped' the switch to its on position for older mice, giving them the memory and learning performance they'd enjoyed when they were young. Now the team ultimately hopes to recover seemingly lost long-term memory in human patients." The video, which explains the gene flipping mechanism, is worth a watch (2:18).

Germany Demands Google Forfeit Citizens' Wi-Fi Data 318

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @02:31PM from the forfeited-trust dept.

eldavojohn writes "Germany has ordered Google to give up hard disk drives used to store German data collected during their Street View operations in that country. This follows Google's admission last week (after prodding from the Germans) that it had collected the data from unsecured wireless area networks from around the entire world as its roving cars collected the photo archive for Street View. Google says they've offered to just destroy the data, in cooperation with national regulators, but the German government wants to know what they've collected. They do not think that destroying the drives suffices for compliance with the laws. Officials went so far as to say of the situation, 'It is not acceptable that a company operating in the EU does not respect EU rules.' Germany has certainly been keeping their eye on the search giant." The Ars coverage notes that the US FTC may be looking more closely at Google's collection as well.

Google Stops Ads For "Cougar" Sites 319

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @10:52AM from the here's-to-you-mrs-robinson dept.

teh31337one writes "Google is refusing to advertise CougarLife, a dating site for mature women looking for younger men. However, they continue to accept sites for mature men seeking young women. According to the New York Times, CougarLife.com had been paying Google $100,000 a month since October. The Mountain View company has now cancelled the contract, saying that the dating site is 'nonfamily safe.'"

Slashdot Top Deals