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Displays

The End of Non-Widescreen Laptops? 668

Posted by CmdrTaco from the aspect-ratios-give-me-shivers dept.
Santi Onta writes "Today Lenovo retired the last NON-widescreen laptop they offered (the T61 14.1) from the market, and Lenovo is just an example (Apple, Sony, HP, etc. are the same). I understand the motivation behind all the laptop manufacturers to move to widescreen: they can still advertise that they offer 14.1 or 15.4 screens, but the screen area is smaller, and thus they save more money. Some people might like widescreens (they are useful for some tasks), but any developer knows that vertical space matters! Less vertical space = less lines of code in the screen = more scrolling = less productivity. How can laptop manufacturers still claim that they look after their customers when the move to widescreens is clearly a selfish one? I just wish they offered non-widescreen laptops, even if it were for a plus (that I'd be more than happy to pay)." I've always preferred the widescreen aspect ratio -- vertical matters, but having two nice wide columns always mattered more to me. Until this reader's submission, I hadn't realized that it was such a contested issue. Does this matter?
Databases

Zvents Releases Open Source Cluster Database Based on Google 87

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the surprised-it-took-this-long dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Local search engine company, Zvents, has released an open source distributed data storage system based on Google's released design specs. 'The new software, Hypertable, is designed to scale to 1000 nodes, all commodity PCs [...] The Google database design on which Hypertable is based, Bigtable, attracted a lot of developer buzz and a "Best Paper" award from the USENIX Association for "Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data" a 2006 publication from nine Google researchers including Fay Chang, Jeffrey Dean, and Sanjay Ghemawat. Google's Bigtable uses the company's in-house Google File System for storage.'"
Mozilla

Hotmail Doesn't Work With Linux Firefox 2.0 396

Posted by kdawson from the whoa-there-big-feller dept.
An anonymous reader tips a column up at freesoftwaremagazine.com in which the writer discovers that the latest UI enhancements that Hotmail has recently introduced don't work with Firefox 2.0 under Linux. The writer concludes that the webmail interface has been artificially limited by basic user-agent sniffing. The solution is simple enough — spoofing the User Agent that Firefox reports.
Security

TSA Changes Screening Based on Blog Suggestion 279

Posted by Soulskill from the hey-they-actually-listened dept.
hhavensteincw writes "Less than a week after it launched a new blog aimed at gathering suggestions from air travelers to improve airport security processes, the Transportation Security Administration changed a practice where some screeners were requiring passengers to remove all electronics, including Blackberries, iPods, and cords from carry-on luggage. Seems the TSA didn't know this was going on, and after the question was raised on its blog, it clamped down on the practice. The TSA also provided a detailed description of their reasoning behind the liquids policy. We discussed the opening of the blog last week."
Science

Birds Give a Lesson to Plane Designers 250

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-a-bird-it's-a-plane-no-really dept.
Roland Piquepaille points out a news release from the University of Michigan where researchers are looking to birds and bats for insights into aerospace engineering. Wei Shyy and his colleagues are learning from solutions developed by nature and applying them to the technology of flight. A presentation on this topic was also given at the 2005 TED conference. From the news release: "The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second. Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G. Flapping flight is inherently unsteady, but that's why it works so well. Birds, bats and insects fly in a messy environment full of gusts traveling at speeds similar to their own. Yet they can react almost instantaneously and adapt with their flexible wings."
Government

Legalize File Sharing, Say Swedish MPs 545

Posted by kdawson from the common-sensical dept.
CrystalFalcon writes "In the past week, the file sharing debate has exploded in Sweden, with numerous mainstream politicians finally having understood the issue. Last week, seven Swedish MPs wrote a prominent opinion piece saying that fully legalized file sharing is not just the best solution, it's the only solution. Now their number has increased to 13, and the issue continues to grow. Good summaries at TorrentFreak and P2P Consortium. Original opinion piece in English here."
Google

Dvorak Says gPhone is Doomed 454

Posted by Zonk from the that's-doom-ed dept.
drewmoney writes "Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness John Dvorak rants his way through an article explaining why the gPhone will never work. 'First of all, it wants to put Google search on a phone. It wants to do this because it is obvious to the folks at Google that people need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? Of course, they can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask! I've actually used various phones with Web capability. They never work right. They take forever to navigate. It's hard to read the screens ... I also hope that people note the fact that the public has not been flocking to smartphones of any sort.' "
Google

A Google Blunder- the Sad Story of Urchin 164

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-analytics-is-free dept.
Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"
The Internet

Japanese Online Connectivity Ahead of EU/US 259

Posted by Zonk from the sweet-sweet-connectivity dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The experience of getting online in North America and Europe is years behind the internet connectivity options in Japan, the New York Times reports. While here in the US cable and DSL options are still struggling to reach rural areas, eight million Japanese consumers are now enjoying fiber optic speeds at home for comparable prices. The article explores the fiber-to-the-doorstep approach the country's telecoms are taking, with examination of both the ups and downs of such an ambitious project. 'The heavy spending on fiber networks, analysts say, is typical in Japan, where big companies disregard short-term profit and plow billions into projects in the belief that something good will necessarily follow. Matteo Bortesi, a technology consultant at Accenture in Tokyo, compared the fiber efforts to the push for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel. "They want to be the first country to have a full national fiber network, not unlike the Shinkansen years ago, even though the return on investment is unclear."'"

Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux? 1483

Posted by Zonk from the do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Mark Golden, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, tried to switch from Windows to Linux, and found it too complex for his liking. He writes: 'For me, though, using the Linux systems didn't make sense. I often send documents and spreadsheets between my home PC and the one at work, which uses Microsoft Office. And the files are sometimes complex. Meanwhile, for both personal and professional computer use, I want access to all multimedia functions. While solutions may exist to almost every problem I encountered, I was willing to invest only a limited amount of time as a system administrator. Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.'"

Windows Vista Delayed Again 539

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ok-for-the-business-version-to-have-security-holes dept.
Trenty writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has delayed Windows Vista yet again. Jim Allchin told analysts that the OS would not ship in January of 2007, which is a 1-2 month delay. Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Welcome to Political Troll Opt-Out

Journal by PoliticalTrollOptOut

Slashdot is full of political trolls. These are people who advocate political ideas dishonestly and disrespectfully, and abuse and insult users who question or threaten their (often dubious) worldview. We cannot help the deficiencies in America's educational system, nor can we force people to have morals or civility, nor can we stop them from abusing the moderation system, and (this being America) we would fight to the death to defend their right to speak their mind (no matter how depraved th

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