Comment Fix the headline! (Score 1) 2
Grrr. If this gets to the front page of slashdot please fix the headline:
other codecs than -> codecs other than
H2.64 -> H.264
Submission + - Why IE9 will not support other codecs than H2.64 (msdn.com) 2
jlp2097 writes: There is a new article up on Microsofts IEBlog explaining why IE9 will only support H.264:
First and most important, we think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers. Relative to alternatives, H.264 maintains strong hardware support in PCs and mobile devices as well as a breadth of implementation in consumer electronics devices around the world, excellent video quality, scale of existing usage, availability of tools and content authoring systems, and overall industry momentum – each an important factor that contributes to our point of view. H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area.
The article goes into detail for each of these points and is an interesting read, confirming a lot of points already discussed here.
First and most important, we think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers. Relative to alternatives, H.264 maintains strong hardware support in PCs and mobile devices as well as a breadth of implementation in consumer electronics devices around the world, excellent video quality, scale of existing usage, availability of tools and content authoring systems, and overall industry momentum – each an important factor that contributes to our point of view. H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area.
The article goes into detail for each of these points and is an interesting read, confirming a lot of points already discussed here.
Submission + - Why ICQ is so important to Russia (wired.co.uk) 2
Lanxon writes: Sell your old ICQ number on the Russian market, and you could make hundreds of dollars, reports Wired. The news of DST acquiring the instant messaging service ICQ from AOL for a fraction of its original price might seem, to the English-speaking world, as an offloading of obsolete software assets. But the reality is quite different: In Russia, ICQ is enormous, and Russian-language internet auction sites trade desirable ICQ numbers for the equivalent of hundreds of pounds or dollars. The more repeating figures are there, the more expensive it gets. The posh 9060900, for example, will set you back 11,111 rubles (around £250/$400).
Submission + - Is Windows 7 Actually Faster Than Ubuntu 10.04? (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Phoronix has published their first set of benchmarks that compare Windows 7 Professional to Ubuntu 10.04. This first article covers the OpenGL / gaming performance of Windows and Ubuntu using a number of tests and different resolutions and six different computers are used in the comparison. Ubuntu 10.04 ran surprisingly good compared to Windows 7, but the Intel Linux performance is where the numbers plummeted.
Man Spends 2,200 Hours Defeating Bejeweled 2 179
An anonymous reader writes "A California steel contractor spent 2,200 total hours over the last three years racking up a high score in Bejeweled 2. He exceeded the 2^31-1 maximum score programmed for the score display, proving that there is, in fact, an end to the game. I suppose congratulations or condolences are in order."
Aral Sea May Recover; Dead Sea Needs a Lifeline 131
An anonymous reader writes "It's a tale of two seas. The drying up of the Aral Sea is considered one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history, but the northern sector of the sea, at least, is showing signs of life. A dam completed in 2005 has increased the North Aral's span by 20 percent, and birds, fish, and people are all returning to the area. Meanwhile, the Dead Sea is still in the midst of precipitous decline, since too much water is being drawn out of the Jordan River for thirsty populations and crops. To keep the sea from shrinking more, scientists are pushing an ambitious scheme called the 'Red-Dead conduit,' which would channel huge amounts of water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. However, the environmental consequences of such a project may be troubling."
WD, Intel, Corsair, Kingston, Plextor SSDs Collide 56
J. Dzhugashvili writes "New SSDs just keep coming out from all corners of the market, and keeping track of all of them isn't the easiest job in the world. Good thing SSD roundups pop up every once in a while. This time, Western Digital's recently launched SiliconEdge Blue solid-state drive has been compared against new entrants from Corsair, Kingston, and Plextor. The newcomers faced off against not just each other, but also Intel's famous X25-M G2, WD's new VelociRaptor VR200M mechanical hard drive, and a plain-old WD Caviar Black 2TB thrown in for good measure. Who came out on top? Priced at about the same level, the WD and Plextor drives each seem to have deal-breaking performance weaknesses. The Kingston drive is more affordable than the rest, but it yielded poor IOMeter results. In the end, the winner appeared to be Corsair's Nova V128, which had similar all-around performance as Intel's 160GB X25-M G2 but with a slightly lower capacity and a more attractive price." Thanks to that summary, you might not need to wade through all 10 of the pages into which the linked article's been split.
Comment Re:Nothing new (Score 4, Informative) 152
And with all that said, perhaps it's time to put Microsoft's SVG implementation through the
Not necessary - here is a nice comparision for all current browser implementations of SVG and how much tests of the official SVG test suite they pass : SVG Implementation Table. If you click on the chart you get a very detailed view.
To summarize:
IE9: 29% of the SVG test cases,
Firefox: 72%,
Chrome/Safari: 83
Opera: 93%
IE9 is way behind, Opera is the winner in this test
Comment Re:already exists (Score 3, Interesting) 206
These devices are starting to get common in Europe (and maybe elsewehere) - they are called smart meters. They will be required for a smart grid which in turn is presumed to be required for mass deployment of electric cars. These devices are neither new nor did google invent something that hasn't existed before.
Server Room Smells Can Be an Early Warning 154
Barence writes "As embarrassing as it may seem, an eggy smell in a server room needn't mean broaching the delicate subject of hygiene with a colleague. It can actually be a signal that something is about to go wrong with your server setup, as this consultant discovered after days of assuming questionable personal habits were to blame. The culprit? An expiring UPS device, sending out its own unique warning signal."
Comment Re:Wha? (Score 1) 65
Whoops. Looks like my pseudo-HTML is not well formed (look at the closing brackets). But you get the idea.
Comment Re:Wha? (Score 3, Interesting) 65
(I am not the orginal poster). But inspecting his post, this seems to be fairly easy: [b][em][strong]you text here[/b][/em][/strong]. This is the result: result . Slashdot should really not allow stuff like this.
Funeral Being Held Today For IE6 194
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."
Code Review of Doom For the iPhone 161
Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform.
"Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...)."
7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators 289
An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."
