Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Useless Elements and Padding. (Score 3, Insightful) 250

Because -clutter-. I never maximise any windows, thats such a huge waste of screen space, even on a smaller laptop screen i still have some shells open in the background with logs and chat sessions etc in them. the main working window takes maybe 70% of the screen, and everything not in use right now, like email clients, browser, etc are minimised so they dont produce visual clutter.

Submission + - Questionable Patents From MakerBot (openbeamusa.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: OpenBeam USA is a Kickstarted company that builds open source aluminum construction systems (think erector sets). One of the main uses for the system is building 3D printers, and creator Terence Tam is heavily involved in the 3D-printing community. He's now put up a blog post about some disturbing patents filed by MakerBot. In particular, he notes a patent for auto-levelling on a 3D printer. Not only is this an important upcoming technology for 3D printers, the restriction of which would be a huge blow to progress, it seems the patent was filed just a few short weeks after Steve Graber posted a video demonstrating such auto-levelling. There had also been a Kickstarter campaign for similar tech a few months earlier. Tam gives this warning: 'Considering the Stratasys — Afinia lawsuit, and the fact that Makerbot is now a subsidiary of Stratasys, it's not a stretch to imagine Makerbot coming after other open source 3D manufacturers that threaten their sales. After all, nobody acquires a patent warchest just to invite their competitors to sit around the campfire to sing Kumbaya. It is therefore vitally important that community developed improvements do not fall under Makerbot's (or any other company's) patent portfolio to be used at a later date to clobber the little guys.'

Comment Combined it with the network of lockers (Score 1) 243

If this was combined with amazons network of lockers, they could pre-ship items they anticipate to sell into some of the lockers in that area, then when someone orders an item you can offer them immediate delivery if they are willing to go collect it from a nearby locker.

You would need some pretty accurate algorithms to make this work, as the space available in any given set of lockers is very small, but you dont have to be quite as accurate as per-customer, just down to the set of customers in the vicinity of the locker, and/or have used that locker in the past.

Comment Re:Unrealistic? (Score 1) 247

I worked for NTL briefly over a decade ago, just when they were first trialling cable modems, there was talk then of the possibility of offering Ethernet to the Premises, but it it didnt and couldnt happen because of the infrastructure costs.

Those little cabinets at the end of each street, where the fibre optic network terminates, were made to fit exactly all the equipment needed at the time, there is no expansion room at all to add ethernet switches, or fibre switches, or well anything.

So they would have to rip out and replace all the cabinets on every street across the country in order to offer any terribly new or exciting services to the masses, something i dont see them doing anytime soon, if ever.

Comment Re:Flash Player video performance vs. VLC (Score 1) 409

all video codecs decode to YUV data, as a result pretty much every GPU for over a decade has included hardware acceleration for handling that.

any sane person wanting to modify or overlay on that data would do so in YUV space, but not adobe, flash goes and hauls the entire frame over into RGB space, a big cpu hit in itself, then does its overlays, then expects the video hardware to help it with this rgb mode video it has, fail.

i dont care how much legacy code there is in flash expecting rgb mode, converting all you drawing operations to yuv (on the fly if necessary) and thus keeping the video data in yuv has got to be way way faster.

not doing this right is just plain laziness on adobes part, as has been pointed out.

Comment Re:Interesting. (Score 1) 174

Question 1:

Your phone can do "multitasking" -- explain to me what the advantage to this is? I mean, the advantage over the iPhone, that is - since the iPhone is obviously multitasking as it will play music, check your email, run a phone conversation, and allow you to launch any 3rd-party app, all at the same time. I suppose my question is, what real-world advantages have you seen with this "multitasking"

Heres a really simple example for you: MyTracks, a pretty easy to use GPS track log program you can get free off the market, i can run it, start it logging, and then do something else whilst it continues to run in the background.

Its not an application that needs my interaction other than to start and stop it, and i dont want to lock my entire device up doing that simple task all on its own.

Earth

States Push Makers' Role In Disposing of Electronic Waste 199

AaronParsons writes "An interesting NY Times article describes currently available programs for post-consumer electronics. One of the many interesting points in the article is that electronics manufacturers should be held responsible for recycling their products post-consumer: 'Maybe since they have some responsibility for the cleanup, it will motivate them to think about how you design for the environment and the commodity value at the end of the life.'"

Comment Re:Tux is the perfect face (Score 1) 459

I think its almost on the right lines, but the tux part is too much.

What you want is one of those trendy lifestyle type adverts, show a young trendy person going about their daily trendy lifestyle, interacting with various things along the way, phone, laptop, ATM, etc etc. Then go back and point out that every single thing they used was running Linux.

There are a number of successful brand advertisments like this already, that in essence are telling you "you too can have a cool life like this, and product/company $foo is what makes it happen"

Comment Re:Truth (Score 1) 1103

Oh, the other "problem" is that it is manual transmission. Slushboxes suck up fuel economy like most people don't even believe.

Technology has moved on you know, Semi-Auto boxes, its basically a manual box with a computer controlled clutch and shift mechanism, the manufacturers claim that in full-auto mode these get BETTER fuel economy than the equivalent manual in average driving conditions, as the computer wont run the engine at higher revs/gear combos than is actually needed.

Having driven a manual all my life i find myself now just leaving this in full auto mode, its right most of the time, and when i know something it cant anticipate, like a hill coming, i just flap the appropriate paddle and it changes gear at my request and carries on. If it ticks you off (i thought it would but it never has) you can just switch to manual mode and change gear up/down yourself.

Censorship

Submission + - UK Crown Prosecution Service say 'Cult' Acceptable 1

An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot readers may recall the story this week about the 15 year old who was under threat of prosecution for calling Scientology a cult in the recent demonstration. The CPS have decided ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7416425.stm ) that there is no case to answer and issued new guidance to the City of London police clarifying when they can use their public order powers.

From the article:
A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesman said: "In consultation with the City of London Police, we were asked whether the sign was abusive or insulting.
"Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness (as opposed to criticism), neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression."
A spokeswoman for the City of London Police said: "The CPS review of the case includes advice on what action or behaviour at a demonstration might be considered to be 'threatening, abusive or insulting.
"The force's policing of future demonstrations will reflect this advice."

Slashdot Top Deals

"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."

Working...