Eternal_Flame - Slashdot User

Google Previews App Engine 167

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 08, 2008 @09:12AM from the what's-not-to-like dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google is giving a handful of web programmers the opportunity to create and run their own Web applications on their servers. Today's launch of a preview release of Google App Engine signals a new era of collaboration with third-party software developers. 'The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new Web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic and has millions of users," said Google product manager, Paul McDonald in a blog post."

iPhone Wants To Hang On To the Old Year 104

Posted by timothy on Monday December 31, 2007 @07:53PM from the 223*3*3 dept.

pdclarry writes "Users of the iPhone have noticed that it is showing December 31, 2007, even where it is already the new year. There have been a number of reports confirming the problem: Bug in Clock, Problem with New Year: My Clock — shows wrong year, Worldclock went wrong for "tomorrow" items."

Submission + - GUI Design Book Recommendations? 8

Submitted by jetpack on Monday December 31, 2007 @07:39PM

jetpack writes: I've always hated writing user interfaces, and graphical user interfaces in particular. However, I suspect that is largely because I have no clue how to write a *good* one. By this, I don't mean the technical aspects, like using the APIs and so on. I mean what are the issues in designing an interface that is clean, easy to understand and easy to use? What are things to be considered? What are things to be avoided? What are good over-all philosophies of UI design?

To this end, I'd like to pick up a book or two (or three) and get my learn on. I'd appreciate some book suggestions from the UI experts in the Slashdot crowd.

Submission + - Facebook Goes 64 Bit: Expects to Grow Quickly (idealog.us) 1

Submitted by

NewsCloud

on Saturday October 20, 2007 @12:21AM

NewsCloud writes: "Facebook announced to developers today that they are moving to a 64 bit user ID in November (see below). At 32 bits, the current ID allows nearly 4.3 billion user accounts. Yet, despite having only 47 million users today, Facebook's move to 64 bits will allow it to have more than 18 quintillion (18,446,744,074,000,000,000) user accounts. Of course, there are currently only about 6.5 billion people in the world. Is Facebook setting their sights beyond Earth or just trying to avoid what happened when Slashdot ran out of space for comment IDs last year. Perhaps they are planning to implement personas. Anyway, do you have any idea how much Facebook would be worth with 18 quintillion user IDs? Sextillions..."

MacBook Pro Gets Santa Rosa Chipset, LED Screen 452

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @09:46AM from the well-isn't-that-special dept.

frdmfghtr writes "TechNewsWorld is reporting that Apple has updated the MacBook Pro line with the Santa Rosa chipset from Intel. In addition, Apple is also introducing mercury-free displays with some models. 'When Apple presented new editions of its MacBook line last month, the company excluded the latest Intel Centrino chips, dubbed "Santa Rosa," which had been released just days prior. The chips have found their way into Apple's new high-end MacBook Pro notebooks, which the company revealed Tuesday. Certain models use mercury-free displays, falling in line with the company's recent ecological promises.'"

Apple Sued Over 'Lacking' Macbook Display 680

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday May 23, 2007 @09:03AM from the going-to-sue-mcdonalds-next-because-their-sauce-isn't-special dept.

qu1j0t3 writes "Business 2.0 reports that two MacBook owners have filed a class action lawsuit charging Apple with deceptive advertising, as well as misrepresentation and unfair competition over the use of the phrase 'millions of colors' to describe the capability of the LCD displays in MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. The article likens the complaint to an an angry forum thread, and is more than a little bit skeptical of the plaintiff's motives. Perhaps it's their uncanny attention to detail. From the filing: 'The reality is that notwithstanding Apple's misrepresentations and suggestions that its MacBook and MacBook Pro display millions of colors, the displays are only capable of displaying the illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as dithering, which causes nearby pixels on the display to use slightly varying shades of colors that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it is not truly that color.'

Submission + - Robotic submarine maps worlds deepest sinkhole

Submitted by holy_calamity on Monday May 21, 2007 @05:34AM

holy_calamity writes: The world's deepest water-filled sinkhole has finally been mapped — by a robotic submarine who's descendants may swim on one of Jupiter's moons. The last attempt to find the bottom yielded the SCUBA diving depth record and the death of a diving legend. The sub's SONAR found that the divers were about 10m from the floor, and that the sinkhole which is over 300m deep could be connected to even deeper caves.

The Downide of Your ISP Turning to Gmail 266

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:26AM from the Google-Apps-Partner-Edition dept.

SlinkySausage writes "Google is offering ISPs the opportunity to turn over their entire email operation to Google, with all customer email hosted as Gmail accounts. This would allow Google to grow its user base rapidly (Google is a distant third with 51M users compared to Yahoo's 250M and Hotmail's 228M). There are some obvious benefits to end users — Google is offering ISPs mailboxes of up to 10GB per user. APCMag.com has posted an interesting piece looking at the dark side of Google's offer. Not least is in its reinforcing of the attachment people have to their ISP's email address, making it harder to change ISPs if a better deal comes along."

Bionic Eye Could Restore Vision 167

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 16, 2007 @07:15PM from the we-have-the-technology dept.

MattSparkes writes "A new bionic eye could restore vision to the profoundly blind. A prototype was tested on six patients and 'within a few weeks all could detect light, identify objects and even perceive motion again. For one patient, this was the first time he had seen anything in half a century.' The user wears a pair of glasses that contain a miniature camera and that wirelessly transmits video to a cellphone-sized computer in the wearer's pocket. This computer processes the image information and wirelessly transmits it to a tiny electronic receiver implanted in the wearer's head."

Feed Incorrect Results Easy to Get (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Friday February 16, 2007 @07:12PM

Scientists show how easy it is to draw skewed medical conclusions when looking for patterns -- like that Virgos have more morning sickness. Bodyhack reports from AAAS in San Francisco.

Journal SPAM: Linus fires latest shot in GNOME Wars 4

Journal by stoolpigeon on Friday February 16, 2007 @06:03PM

Linux.com is running a story about the continuing feud between Linus and some GNOME folks.Some bad blood between Linus Torvalds and GNOME developers is flaring up again. Previously, Torvalds has said that Linux users should switch to KDE instead of GNOME because of the GNOME team's "users are idiots" mentality. Now he has "put his money where his mouth is" by submitting patches to GNOME in orde

Microsoft Blasts IBM Over XML Standards 323

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 16, 2007 @09:49AM from the dude-i-am-so-telling-mom dept.

carlmenezes writes "Ars Technica has up an article discussing Microsoft's latest salvo against IBM. Microsoft's open letter to IBM adds fresh ammunition to the battle of words between those who support Microsoft's Open XML and OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument file formats. Microsoft has strong words for IBM, which it accuses of deliberately trying to sabotage Microsoft's attempt to get Open XML certified as a standard by the ECMA. In the letter, general managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paol write: 'When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats.' In contrast, the authors charge that IBM 'led a global campaign' urging that governments and other organizations demand that International Standards Organization (ISO) reject Open XML outright."

Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband 846

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 11, 2007 @03:40AM from the ethanol-and-fat-pipes-for-all dept.

Arlen writes "As many as 17,000 people (according to police estimates) watched Senator Barack Obama officially announce his candidacy for President in Springfield, Illinois today. He mentioned several things that will interest readers of Slashdot. The Senator said he wanted to free America from 'the tyranny of oil' and went on to promote alternative energy sources such as ethanol — a popular stance in the Midwest where he announced, because of all the corn farmers. He also talked about using science and technology to help those with chronic diseases, which is likely to have been an allusion to his staunch support for stem cell research. Perhaps most of interest to readers here is the following statement halfway through Obama's speech: 'Let's invest in scientific research, and let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America. We can do that.' Like nearly everything in his speech, this was met with robust applause from the crowd. You can watch a video of the entire speech at Obama's website."

Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia 355

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:33PM from the what's-left-is-right dept.

Unpaid Schill writes "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."

Sony and Universal Prohibit Sharing Via Zune 325

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 19, 2007 @11:56PM from the as-if-the-zune-didn't-have-enough-trouble-already dept.

ack154 writes "Engadget has a story about Sony and Universal Music apparently denying Zune owners the ability to 'squirt' songs by certain artists to other Zune users. That's right, if you've actually purchased songs from the Zune marketplace and happen to run into another Zune owner, you're prohibited from sharing certain songs. From the article: 'In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.'"

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