penp - Slashdot User

Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card 290

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 25, 2008 @11:11PM from the time-value-of-money dept.

theraindog writes "High-end graphics cards get all the glory, but most folks have a difficult time justifying $300 or more for a single PC component. But what if you could get reasonable performance in all the latest games from a budget card costing as little as $70? With game developers targeting the relatively modest hardware available in current consoles and trickle-down bringing cutting-edge features down to budget price points, today's low-end graphics cards are more capable than ever. To find out which one offers the best value proposition, The Tech Report has rounded up eight graphics cards between $70 and $170, comparing their game performance, Blu-ray playback acceleration, noise levels, and power consumption, with interesting results."

Jack Thompson Disbarred 522

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 25, 2008 @02:41PM from the it-burns-it-burns dept.

Sockatume writes "The Florida Supreme Court has approved Judge Dava Tunis' recommendations for the permanent disbarment of John B. "Jack" Thompson, with no leave to reapply and $43,675.35 in disciplinary costs. The ruling is a step up from the enhanced disbarment that had been suggested by the prosecution, which would have forbidden him from reapplying for ten years. Thompson has 30 days to appeal the ruling before the disbarment is permanent. Thompson responds to the ruling."

SDK Shoot Out, Android Vs. IPhone 413

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 25, 2008 @10:44AM from the take-the-pepsi-challenge dept.

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister delves into the Android and iPhone SDKs to help sort out which will be the best bet for developers now that technical details of the first Android smartphone have been announced. Whereas the iPhone requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.4 or later, ADC membership, and familiarity with proprietary Mac OS X dev tools, the standard IDE for Android is Eclipse. And because most tasks can be performed with command-line tools, you can expert third parties to develop Android SDK plug-ins for other IDEs. Objective-C, used almost nowhere outside Apple, is required for iPhone UI development, while app-level Android programming is done in Java. 'By just about any measure, Google's Android is more open and developer-friendly than the iPhone,' McAllister writes, noting Apple's gag order restrictions on documentation, proprietary software requirements to view training videos, and right to reject your finished app from the sole distribution channel for iPhone. This openness is, of course, essential to Android's prospects. 'Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer's platform of choice — especially when ISVs can translate that market share into application sales,' McAllister writes. 'Sound familiar? In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.'"

Apple Censors App Store Rejection Notices 477

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 25, 2008 @08:33AM from the because-they-can dept.

isBandGeek() writes "After a few reasonable App Store bans, such as the ones on I Am Rich and NetShare, developers started complaining about excessive restrictions on applications like Podcaster and MailWrangler, supposedly because they provided 'duplicate functionality.' In response, Apple rubbed salt in their wounds by slapping non-disclosure agreements on application rejection notices. Now developers are not even allowed to tell their fanbase that Apple decided to withhold approval for an application. Is Apple confident that Google's open platform Android won't be much of a threat?"

Comment Mod parent up +++++ (Score 1) 767

by penp on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @10:00AM (#20836471) Attached to: Sony BMG Says Ripping CDs is Stealing

Mod parent up! it's this kind of tactic that is killing the music industry. Why continue to make anything good when we can make people pay more for what they already own?

Submission + - Hacker does a DIY Amiga in FPGA (hetnet.nl)

Submitted by on Thursday August 02, 2007 @04:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: Developer Dennis van Weeren recently announced completion of his from-scratch completely re-engineered Amiga chipset. His PCB design is fully operational and compatible and his verilog code has been released under GPL. Will this finally give the Amiga community a new breath of life?

Submission + - Linux as a Short-Lived Project

Submitted by LinuxNut on Thursday August 02, 2007 @12:58PM

LinuxNut writes: Continuing their historical series looking at the early Linux kernels, KernelTrap is discussing the 0.02 and 0.03 kernels released in late 1991. Though the actual source code has been lost to time, the article offers an interesting collection of emails by Linux creator Linus Torvalds about his new operating system, 'for hackers by a hacker.' Version 0.02 was the first usable release, gaining the ability to run programs such as gcc if compiled on Minix. Version 0.03 fixed buffer-cache issues that made it possible to compile gcc from Linux. Interestingly enough, at this point Linus thought of Linux as a short-lived project saying, 'wait for Hurd if you want something real. It's fun hacking it, though (but I'm biased).' Though not short-lived, Linux has continued to prove to be fun to hack.

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