An anonymous reader writes "We all know that the specs of your inkjet printer, driver settings, and ink cartridges can make a big difference in the quality of your prints. But the cheapest and simplest aspect of printing can also have a big impact on the final quality: the paper. This short article is an interesting read, the author actually found ways to 'benchmark' inkjet printer paper."

RyanDJ writes with his reaction to the Sony PSN outage, wondering if our rush to online services and digital distribution for games is a bit too enthusiastic. "I love technology, I just want it to slow down. I know I sound like an angry old 'get off my lawn' kind of guy right now, but until my 8-bit Nintendo dies from plastic corrosion and age, it will continue to play any game I find just as it was supposed to. Online dedicated games, one day, will lose servers. System crashes, such as the Sony problem, will cause interruptions. I feel if we don't slow down, stabilize the current technology and ensure its safety, find ways to guarantee that items bought are permanently owned even without a physical copy, we might see a company such as Nintendo saying that online isn't worth it!"

RickJWagner writes "Once upon a time, I thought communication was one of my strong suits. Alas, a few years into my programming career I realized I'm more of the head-down codeslinging type, not one of the schmoozing managerial types. So when I have a point to make, I really like to have my data ready to do the talking for me. In that capacity, this book is a very good weapon to have in my arsenal." Read on for the rest of Rick's review.

asgard4 writes "Decades in the making, Donald Knuth presents the latest few chapters in his by now classic book series The Art of Computer Programming. The computer science pioneer's latest book on combinatorial algorithms is just the first in an as-of-yet unknown number of parts to follow. While these yet-to-be-released parts will discuss other combinatorial algorithms, such as graph and network algorithms, the focus of this book titled Volume 4A Combinatorial Algorithms Part 1 is solely on combinatorial search and pattern generation algorithms. Much like the other books in the series, this latest piece is undoubtedly an instant classic, not to be missing in any serious computer science library or book collection." Keep reading for the rest of asgard4's review.

eldavojohn writes "Test-Driven JavaScript Development by Christian Johansen is a book that thoroughly guides the user through some of the more advanced aspects of the JavaScript language and into Test-Driven Development (TDD). Throughout it, Johansen introduces great methods and utilities like libraries to accomplish all aspects of TDD in JavaScript. The book begins with Johansen demonstrating and teaching the reader some of the more advanced aspects of JavaScript to ensure that the following lessons in TDD are well understood. The best part of the book is in the last half where Johansen builds a chat client and server completely out of JavaScript using TDD right before the readers' eyes." Keep reading for the rest of eldavojohn's review.

MassDosage writes "Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server written by David Smiley and Eric Pugh provides in-depth coverage of the open source Solr search server. In some ways this book reads like the missing reference manual for the advanced usage of Solr. It is aimed at readers already familiar with Solr and related search concepts as well as those having some knowledge of programming (specifically Java). The book covers a lot of ground, some of it fairly challenging, and gives those working with Solr a lot of hands-on technical advice on how to use and fine-tune many parts of this powerful application." Keep reading for the rest of MassDosage's review.

brothke writes "With many different types of log and audit data, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) attempts to fix that by aggregating, correlating and normalizing the log and audit data. The end result is a single screen that presents all of the disparate data into a common element. While great in theory, the devil is in the details; and there are plenty of details in deploying a SIEM on corporate networks. Security Information and Event Management Implementation provides a solid introduction, overview and analysis of what a SIEM (also known as SIM, SEM, SEIM and others) is, and what needs to go into it for an effective deployment and operation." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Hugh Pickens writes "Jamie Madigan writes in GamePro that psychologists and experts on fear are trying to understand why so many gamers enjoy being terrified by horror-themed video games and movies. Researchers say some people are sensation-seekers attracted to any emotional high, be it from sky diving, shark-punching or horror films. Other personalities are drawn to situations showing the disruption of social norms in ways that will probably never happen in real life. But a more encompassing explanation of horror's inherent appeal is how it helps us master our fears. 'Watching a horror film gives us back some control,' says Dr. Andrew Weaver. 'We can experience an adverse event through film, and we know that it will end. We'll survive it. We'll go on with our lives.' Interestingly, horror only seems to work if the player or viewer knows that what they see is fake. In one famous experiment, researchers had subjects watch a movie featuring authentic scenes of live monkeys having their brains scooped out and of children — I kid you not — having their facial skin peeled away in preparation for surgery. 'The vast majority of the study's participants refused to finish watching the films despite that more grotesque movies playing at the theater down the street could outdo those scenes,' writes Madigan. 'We seem to need to know it's fake.'"

RickJWagner writes "OSGi is a Java framework that's designed to simplify application deployments in shared environments. It allows applications with differing dependencies to run side-by-side in the same container without any deployment time contortions. The end result is that your application that needs FooLib v2.2.2 can run right beside my application that needs FooLib v1.0, something not often possible in today's application servers." Keep reading for the rest of Rick's review.

brothke writes "When someone calls 911 in a panic to report an emergency, within seconds the dispatcher knows where the call is coming from, and help is often only moments away. When it comes to computer security incidents, often companies are not as resilient in their ability to quickly respond. Take for instance the TJX Cos. data breach, where insecure wireless networks were compromised for months, revealing millions of personal records, before they were pinpointed and finally secured. Once made aware of the issue, it took TJX an additional few months until the situation was completely in control and secured. In Computer Incident Response and Product Security, author Damir Rajnovic provides the reader with an excellent and practical guide to the fundamentals of building and running a security incident response team. The book is focused on getting the reader up to speed as quick as possible and is packed with valuable real-world and firsthand guidance." Read on for the rest of Ben's review.

Michael J. Ross writes "While it is possible to create a simple website using a base installation of Drupal, the real power of this content management system is achieved through the use of modules, which can be thought of as add-ons that extend the capabilities of Drupal in specific ways — oftentimes in conjunction with other modules. These modules are developed and contributed by PHP programmers who understand how to use one or more of the Drupal application programming interfaces (APIs) to access information stored in a Drupal database, such as content, user profiles, and theme settings. These APIs have changed with Drupal version 7, and thus Drupal coders could benefit from a book that explains how to create Drupal 7 contrib modules." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.

eldavojohn writes "The third edition of Hello, Android brings the book up to date on Android versions from 1.5 to 2.2 (FroYo). The book is predominantly tied to the Eclipse editing environment with several pages devoted to screen shots of the IDE. As the title suggests, this book aims to give the user the equivalent of a "Hello, world!" application in Android and succeeds in doing that but doesn't take the reader much further. From creating a sudoku application with increasing support to dabbling in OpenGL ES, the book's prime audience are people who know a little Java (with no aversion to Eclipse) and XML but absolutely no Android. You can find the source for all the examples." Keep reading for the rest of eldavojohn's review.

An anonymous reader writes "Forget Google Instant, the search giant is working on ways to push relevant info to users before they have even asked for it... Foursquare-style location 'check-ins' are also apparently on the way next year."

terrywallwork writes "Lance Flavell and Apress have been busy writing another Blender 2.5 based book. Lance Flavell (known as Lancer in the Blender community) is a very knowledgeable Blender user. So I was very interested to find out about this book when Apress announced its availability. So off I went and ordered the Ebook version of the book in PDF format." Read on for the rest of Terry's review.

Phoghat writes "The highly classified X-37B Space Plane is scheduled to land soon. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on April 22 atop an Atlas 5 rocket, and the Air Force is still being very secretive on all aspects of the flight. We do know that it's set to touch down at Vandenberg Air Force Base's 15,000-foot runway, originally built for the Space Shuttle program. In many ways, the craft resembles a Shuttle with stubby wings, landing gear and a powerful engine that allows the craft to alter its orbit (much to the dismay of many observers on the ground). Its success has apparently given new life to its predecessor, the X-34, which had been mothballed."

witthaus writes "Jeff Stanford's Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching is described in the preface as 'a recipe book' for creating communicative language teaching activities in Moodle. True to its description, the book contains over 500 pages of detailed, descriptive information on how to squeeze every last drop out of Moodle for language teaching purposes." Keep reading for the rest of Gabi's review.

climenole tips a great article by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in Scientific American. Quoting: "The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles. The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments — totalitarian and democratic alike — are monitoring people's online habits, endangering important human rights. If we, the Web's users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want."

terrywallwork writes "A while back I received an email from the people at Packt publishing telling me of a new book they had just put out, and since any email the mentions the possibility of being able to read new Blender books instantly gets my attention, I clicked the link and was presented with a web page detailing a book called Blender 3D 2.49 - Architecture, Buildings and Scenery. This was confusing as I remember having reviewed a book with almost the same title and identical cover picture. So I went to my reviews and checked and sure enough I found a review with the same book cover and almost the same title. So I deleted the email and just put it down to an automated email snafu. Unfortunately I should not have been so quick with the delete button as it turned out to be an updated version of the previous book they put out." Read on to see what Terry thinks of this book.

The StarCraft 2 team spent most of Blizzcon talking about the map editor and custom games. We spoke with Alan Dabiri, a Lead Software Engineer for Wings of Liberty who worked on the user interface and helped out on the game's integration with Battle.net. He provided some more details about plans for making the map editor more approachable, the coming updates for Battle.net (including chat channels), and a bit about the development of Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg-themed expansion being worked on now. Read on for our conversation about StarCraft 2.

asgard4 writes "OpenGL SuperBible in its fifth edition is almost a complete rewrite. The authors threw out the discussion of old-style, fixed-function programming and replaced it with an introduction to OpenGL that is exclusively focused on using shaders from the very beginning. All the things that got deprecated with the advent of OpenGL 3 got removed, making it a more relevant and up-to-date book than the previous editions. The OpenGL SuperBible still strives to be the 'world's best introduction to OpenGL' according to the authors. Let's see if it can keep that promise." Read on for the rest of Martin's review.