Comment: Didn't Popper already dismantle induction? (Score 1) 630
At least as a method of increasing knowledge...
Comment: Other ways to achieve high quality apps (Score 1) 711
Steve Jobs is wrong.
Now that the Apple fanboys have gone apoplectic... The reason Steve is wrong is not that he hasn't made what appears to be a sound business decision for Apple. Its that the purported reasons for doing so on behalf of customers is assuming that there are only two choices: Apple-provided toolkits and high quality, and third-party toolkits and low-quality. This is wrong. To me it's a classic tying argument, pulling together what you want (lock-in) with what you need (high-quality) and claiming they are inseparable. If you want the apps to be high quality, have a certification program which software vendors may submit to. Ensure this certification program only lets through the high quality apps you desire. Reject the rest. Then it doesn't matter which toolkit is used for which platform. Quality problem solved, and no draconian restrictions on development methods are introduced. Concerns are once again separate and honest.
But, as has already been pointed out, Apple is not interested in being honest with their customers. Steve is out for his business (as he should be). But no one should be under any illusions that this decision represents the only one which achieves high quality applications for his customers.
Comment: Get it from the IRS? (Score 0, Redundant) 377
All those employees who file their taxes with IBM's EID, compare to historical growth rates and IBMs hiring trends versus the current state of the economy, and I bet you could estimate it well enough for public policy purposes. Anyone want to start a data-mining operation contracting to the government to find this information for them? :)
One Quarter of Germans Happy To Have Chip Implants 170
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the identified-coward dept.
from the identified-coward dept.
justice4all writes "If it means shorter lines at the supermarket, a quarter of Germans would be happy to have a chip implanted under their skin. The head of Germany's main IT trade body told the audience at the opening ceremony of the CeBIT technology exhibition that one in four of his countrymen are happy to have a microchip inserted for ID purposes."
Sony Develops a Universal Game Console Controller 62
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the floats-like-a-dreamcast-stings-like-a-wii dept.
from the floats-like-a-dreamcast-stings-like-a-wii dept.
Go Rumors has discovered that Sony recently applied for a patent on a "universal game console controller." According to the patent filing, the controller "includes a hand-holdable housing and a touch sensitive liquid crystal display (LCD) on the housing. The LCD is caused to present, depending on what type of game console a user has selected, a controller key layout for a first type of game console or a controller key layout for a second type of game console. A key layout includes plural keys selectable by a user to input commands to a game console."
Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.
from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.
Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
An Inside Look At Warhammer Online's Server Setup 71
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the hate-to-see-the-power-bill dept.
from the hate-to-see-the-power-bill dept.
An article at Gamasutra provides some details on the hardware Mythic uses to power Warhammer Online, courtesy of Chief Technical Officer Matt Shaw and Online Technical Director Andrew Mann. Quoting:
"At any given time, approximately 2,000 servers are in operation, supporting the gameplay in WAR. Matt Shaw commented, 'What we call a server to the user, that main server is actually a cluster of a number of machines. Our Server Farm in Virginia, for example,' Mann said, 'has about 60 Dell Blade chassis running Warhammer Online — each hosting up to 16 servers. All in all, we have about 700 servers in operation at this location.' ... 'We use blade architecture heavily for Warhammer Online,' Mann noted. 'Almost every server that we deploy is a blade system. We don't use virtualization; our software is somewhat virtualized itself. We've always had the technology to run our game world across several pieces of hardware. It's application-layer clustering at a process level. Virtualization wouldn't gain us much because we already run very close to peak CPU usage on these systems.' ... The normalized server configuration — in use across all of the Mythic-managed facilities — features dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors running at 3 GHz with 8 GB of RAM."
Using Carbon Nanotubes to Capture Carbon Fumes->
Submitted
by
TechRev_AL
TechRev_AL writes "A California start-up called Porifera is developing membranes containing carbon nanotubes to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks more effectively. The membranes used to capture CO2 from smokestacks needbe selective, allowing carbon dioxide to pass through and not the other exhaust gases. This produces a concentrated stream of CO2 for capture. Porifera has found that carbon nanotubes are particular good at this--gases can move through the interior of nanotubes extremely quickly--at rates 100 times as fast as through conventional membrane materials."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Comment: Re:Windows as the standard? (Score 2, Informative) 267
Actually the XBox is also very easy to develop (XNA anyone?) The only real restrictions there are that if you want your game to go out to everyone as a full game on Live, you have to pass a certification process to ensure you abide by the rules for how apps are supposed to behave. But the tools are all there and MS does a good job of encouraging their use.
Comment: Terrible camera work (Score 3, Interesting) 81
Whoever was shooting that video, please... put down the camera and walk away. You clearly don't know what you are doing, and it sickens us to watch you. Either that or take your anti-spasmodics. I don't know how you managed to do it, but the most interesting bits - the stopping and starting - you managed to effectively miss. Did you even know what your subject was or why it would be interesting? Apparently not. Go home, please.