Comment Toolbars (Score 1) 1

by Halborr on Tuesday June 14, 2011 @11:26PM (#36445718) Attached to: Avira Antivirus adding Toolbar and other

I hate toolbars. I didn't even know companies were still trying to push their toolbars onto you. Reminds me of IE6 and having 3 or 4 toolbars on the screen, to the point of having roughly half of your browser window (or more, depending on your resolution and monitor size) be filled up with the browser itself, instead of the webpage. It does sorta make me nostalgic for the late late 90's to early 2000's, though. Maybe because I was a little kid then. I still don't want toolbars.

Submission + - Righthaven loses (wral.com)

Submitted by

redwolfe7707

on Tuesday June 14, 2011 @10:23PM

redwolfe7707 writes: "AP is reporting that the LasVegas Sun says that Righthaven:
LAS VEGAS — A federal judge in Nevada says a Las Vegas law firm targeting unauthorized content on the Internet cannot sue others over a news company's copyrights.
The Las Vegas Sun reported Tuesday the dismissal of a lawsuit by copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC against the website Democratic Underground.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Roger Hunt says copyright plaintiffs must control the rights to material in order to sue for copyright infringement."

Submission + - Steam Offering Free-to-Play Games (industrygamers.com) 1

Submitted by donniebaseball23 on Tuesday June 14, 2011 @09:07PM

donniebaseball23 writes: Valve's digital Steam service is going strong with 30 million active accounts and now the developer has further boosted its offerings by adding free-to-play titles, reports IndustryGamers. Steam is kicking off its support of the free-to-play model with five titles (which will include in-game Steam exclusives): Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms. Valve's support of free-to-play shows just how widely accepted it's become.

Submission + - Obama: "We don't have enough engineers' (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs on Tuesday June 14, 2011 @08:25PM

dcblogs writes: President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. In 2009, the U.S. produced 126,194 engineering graduates for bachelor's and master's degrees and for Ph.D.s. The U.S. had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%. "We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations, but we still don't have enough engineers," said Obama. He's counting on the private sector to help expand the number of graduates.

Submission + - Mac OS X Lion Has A Browser-Only Mode (digitizor.com)

Submitted by dkd903 on Sunday June 12, 2011 @02:00PM

dkd903 writes: It turns out that there is a feature in OS X Lion which no one expected and was never announced at WWDC. The feature we are talking about is “Restart to Safari”. As you might have guessed from the name, this feature makes it possible to restart the Mac into just the Safari browser and nothing else.

Submission + - Why Doesn't 'Google Kids' Exist? 2

Submitted by theodp on Saturday June 11, 2011 @10:03PM

theodp writes: Slate's Michael Agger wishes there was a website his 6-year-old son could visit on his own to watch amateur Star Wars Lego movies and other stuff he's curious about. 'But I don't leave him alone on YouTube,' he laments, 'because I never know if some strange-ass video will appear in the 'Related Videos' section.' The now defunct TotLoL was one such site, offering handpicked child-appropriate YouTube videos, at least until it was done in by a change in YouTube's Terms of Service. Agger suggests that Google should create Google Kids, a search engine that filters the Web for children. 'Think back to when you were a kid and your parents dropped you off at the library,' explains Agger. 'In the children's section, the only 'inappropriate' stuff to be found was Judy Blume's Forever, which someone's older sister had usually already checked out anyway. Similarly, Google Kids would be a sort of children's section of the Web, focused on providing high-quality results based on age.' In the meantime, Agger can always have his kids spend a little quality time with Michael Jackson over at AOL Kids.

Submission + - JavaScript Gameboy Emulator, Redux (i-programmer.info) 1

Submitted by Prosthetic_Lips on Saturday June 11, 2011 @09:41PM

Prosthetic_Lips writes: Now we have a GameBoy Color emulator written in HTML5/JavaScript and it will run ROM images stored locally. What is amazing is that it runs the games at a playable speed.

Yes, this was first covered 6 months ago ( http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/11/05/2334206/A-JavaScript-Gameboy-Emulator-Detailed-In-8-Parts ), but it seems like it is pretty complete at this point. You can load roms stored locally, and keep data using localStorage.

Submission + - The Internet is killing local news, says the FCC (google.com)

Submitted by Art3x on Saturday June 11, 2011 @09:29PM

Art3x writes: The rise of the Internet has led to a 'shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting' says a a 475-page report by the FCC, and the consequences could be 'more government waste, more local corruption,' 'less effective schools' and other problems. Even though there are more media choices today than ever, newspapers have been laying off reporters, leaving a gap that is yet to be filled.

Submission + - SCOTUS rules against AT&T on LEC access/pricin (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by schwit1 on Thursday June 09, 2011 @01:58PM

schwit1 writes: Established local telephone companies including AT&T Inc. (T) must share disputed parts of their networks with competitors at cost, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

The unanimous ruling backs the position taken by the Federal Communications Commission in a fight stemming from the 1996 law that injected competition into the local telephone business. The law requires so-called incumbent local carriers, whose ranks also include Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and CenturyLink Inc. (CTL), to share their facilities with rivals.

Submission + - Apple Rips off Rejected App? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Haedrian on Thursday June 09, 2011 @01:44PM

Haedrian writes: Apple is famous for going to absurd lengths to enforce its patents and trademarks. It recently sued Amazon for calling its app store Appstore. And it has publicly lectured competitors to “create their own original technology, not steal ours”.

Last year, UK-Developer Greg Hughes for submitted an app for wirelessly syncing iPhones with iTunes libraries, which was rejected from the official App Store.

Fast forward to Monday, when Apple unveiled a set of new features for the upcoming iOS 5, including the same wireless-syncing functionality. Cupertino wasn't even subtle about the appropriation, using the precise name and a near-identical logo to market the technology.

Submission + - Federal courts to begin first digital video pilot (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday June 08, 2011 @02:17PM

coondoggie writes: "Federal district courts have been prohibited from allowing any sort of electronic dissemination of trials since 1946, but that is about to change.

Fourteen federal trial courts and 100 judges have been selected to take part in the federal Judiciary's three-year digital video pilot, which will begin July 18 and will go a long way towards determining the effect of cameras in courtrooms."

Comment Re:You seriously think (Score 2) 2

by Halborr on Wednesday April 20, 2011 @06:46PM (#35886040) Attached to: Lasers to replace sparkplugs in engines?

What technologies are you seeing that will replace it? Electric vehicles? Welcome to the cold north, where battery packs have even less capacity than room temperature. Turbines? Chrysler tried that in the 60's, it would only be good for a series hybrid. Diesel is an option, but US consumers are still wary because the crappy diesels of the 80's.

Comment Re:Everyone else uses H264/MPEG4 (Score 1) 336

by Halborr on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @11:19AM (#34848412) Attached to: Opera Supports Google Decision To Drop H.264

Um... Pardon me if I'm misunderstanding, but... A TV is a monitor and a tuner (a really basic computer). The PC takes care of all the decoding and just sends a video signal to your monitor. I'm not familiar with how HDMI works, so maybe that argument has some substance behind it with HDMI, but not with CRTs, which you seem to be arguing around.

Moreover, you still hook up your computer to your CRT tv? You can't get someone to give you their old CRT monitor? I just got a ~20" CRT monitor for FREE. They're not that hard to come by.

Dude, usually I'm behind the tech curve as well, but I feel like you're trying to name drop with CRT and VHS, except you're 12 years behind. You're making yourself look outdated.

Comment Re:Everyone else uses H264/MPEG4 (Score 2) 336

by Halborr on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @10:27AM (#34847738) Attached to: Opera Supports Google Decision To Drop H.264

All of those things are consumer electronics. Personal Computers sometimes have non-commercial software on them by the operator's choice.

You don't change the OS on your TV or radio for a reason.

Comment Computing Power? (Score 4, Interesting) 122

by Halborr on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @10:21AM (#34472956) Attached to: Android Phones Get Virtualization

This actually sounds... Like a great idea to have two numbers reach the same phone. My worry is the battery consumption will go through the roof (on a piece of technology that already doesn't have the greatest battery life times) and that computing resources will be in short supply on a mobile device (which brings us back to power consumption).