Comment Re:Yeah, but... (Score 2, Insightful) 501
Unless Google starts using VP8 exclusively for Youtube. How long would it take for VP8 to gain hardware decoding? Hint: Not long.
Comment How long until this is extended to all of OS X? (Score 3, Insightful) 711
So how long until Apple creates an App Store for OS X, and forces Developers to only write Apps in Objective C, under NDA?
Comment Re:And this is why I don't buy Apple (Score 1) 711
Because every Apple store and/or product produces a miniature Reality Distortion Field?
Microsoft's CoApp To Help OSS Development, Deployment 293
badpazzword writes "Microsoft employee Garrett Serack announces he has received the green light to work full time on CoApp, an .msi-based package management system aiming to bring a wholly native toolchain for OSS development and deployment. This will hopefully bring more open source software on Windows, which will bring OSS to more users, testers and developers. Serack is following the comments at Ars Technica, so he might also follow them here. The launchpad project is already up."
Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing 236
AusPublishingWorker writes "With the iPad arriving on the scene, it seems that Amazon is feeling the pressure on eBook pricing from publishers. ITNews reports that Amazon has agreed to deals with both Harper Collins and Simon and Schuster which would allow the companies to select their own prices rather than the default US$9.99 price tag. Given the recent deal with Macmillan, it seems likely that we'll be seeing eBook prices moving up towards $14.99 in the near future."
The Struggle To Keep Java Relevant 667
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions Oracle's ability to revive interest in Java in the wake of Oracle VP Jeet Kaul's announcement at EclipseCon that he would 'like to see people with piercings doing Java programming.' 'If Kaul is hoping Java will once again attract youthful, cutting-edge developers, as it did when it debuted in 1995, [Kaul] may be in for a long wait,' McAllister writes. 'Java has evolved from a groundbreaking, revolutionary language platform to something closer to a modern-day version of Cobol.' And, as McAllister sees it, 'Nothing screams "get off my lawn" like a language controlled by Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software vendor. The chances that Java can attract the mohawks-and-tattoos set today seem slimmer than ever.'"
First Collisions At the LHC 256
An anonymous reader writes "At 1:06 p.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST) today, the first protons collided at 7 TeV in the Large Hadron Collider. These first collisions, recorded by the LHC experiments, mark the start of the LHC's research program."
The Economics of Perfect Software 201
An anonymous reader writes "This article takes the interesting perspective that leaving bugs in software is good — little ones, at least. This quote is particularly insightful: 'How do you know whether a bug is big or little? Think about who's going to hit it, and how mad they'll be when they do. If a user who goes through three levels of menus, opens an advanced configuration window, checks three checkboxes, and hits the 'A' key gets a weird error message for his trouble, that's a little bug. It's buried deep, and when the user hits it, he says 'huh,' clicks a button, and then goes on his merry way. If your program crashes on launch for a common setup, though, that's a big bug. Lots of people will hit it, and they will all be pissed. ... The cost of fixing all the bugs in your program and then being sure you fixed them all is way too high compared to the cost of having a few users hit some bugs they won't care about."
5 Reasons Tablets Suck, and You Won't Buy One 553
Crazzaper writes "When the iPad was announced, a lot of people who didn't care about tablets came out to bash Apple's new device. These same people said 'I would have bought it if it had a full OS,' but in reality full OS tablets existed before the iPad rumors even started. This article gives an interesting perspective on why this happened, and argues that there's five big reasons why more powerful tablets exists but no one cares."
The LHC Is Back Online 123
medea and several other readers noted that the LHC came back online early this morning. Here is the tweet from CERN announcing the milestone. As we discussed a few weeks ago, CERN plans to run the LHC at half power or less through 2011.
Comment Middle Class gets hammered, not the poor (Score 1) 452
In the US the poor 20% of the population have nothing.
The poor in the US have Medicare. It's the middle class that gets screwed when they get layed off or fired. COBRA is too expensive to pay for, and they are ineligible for Medicare. If you have a pre-existing condition your even more screwed, as you have to find a job ASAP because no private insurance will cover you. You can't start your own company, because you have a pre-existing condition and no insurance company will touch you.
If your poor, more importantly if your a young girl in a poverty area, the best way to be provided for is to get pregnant. The goverment opens up it's coffers to support you.
So it's not the poor who don't have anything, they get covered, it's all about the Middle Class. They get screwed.
US Gov't. Ending Its Hands-Off-the-Internet Stance 452
Taco Cowboy writes in with a report from The Register about a US policy shift away from keeping hands off the Internet. "According to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce, the US government's policy of leaving the Internet alone is over. Instead, an 'Internet Policy 3.0' approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance." Here is the presentation in which Strickling enunciated these changes.
Comment Re:false dichotomy (Score 3, Informative) 200
Medicare and Social Security are NOT Mentioned in the Constitution, yet the national defense is. If you want to start cutting programs, go for Social Security and Medicare NOT National Defense.
Now, there are problems with the "Military Industrial Complex" that Eisenhower famously warned us of. Much of NASA's woes come from the boon doggle that are Cost Plus contracts. This is why switching to the COTS program is a big step in the right direction. Companies don't get money until they produce results, they can't just suck at NASA's teat.
Comment DO-178B for Cars (Score 1) 750
I think where this is ultimately headed is to require DO-178B like testing for Automobiles, just like we require it for Airplanes.
Re-Engineering the Immune System 175
destinyland notes a microbiology professor describing "Immunity on Demand" (or "Immunity 2.0") and wonders whether we could genetically engineer all the antibodies we need. "...there's a good chance this system, or something like it, will actually be in place within decades. Caltech scientists have already engineered stem cells into B cells that produce HIV-fighting antibodies — and an NIH researcher engineered T cells that recognize tumors which has already had promising clinical trials again skin cancer. Our best hope may be to cut out the middleman. Rather than merely hoping that the vaccine will indirectly lead to the antibody an individual needs, imagine if we could genetically engineer these antibodies and make them available as needed?"
