RJEM - Slashdot User

Comment Feature Complete? (Score 1) 103

by RJEM on Monday June 06, 2011 @04:37AM (#36348026) Attached to: Kogan Beats Samsung and Acer With World's First Chrome OS Laptop

For me, the biggest issue to adopting any kind of cloud-based computing solution is dependent on the ubiquity of high quality applications and (more importantly) fast access to my data. Currently I have severe doubts about both of these here in the UK.

Case in point: 3G coverage. I live in a 3G available O2 area (according to their map of said coverage) and indeed in my car park my phone connects without difficulty. Walk inside and it's a different story altogether. I have Wi-Fi access, but in a huge number of locations this isn't available and I would still like to be able to access my documents IF a mobile computing solution was necessary in my life.

The second point is actually carrying out the tasks I might want to do (on- or offline). Preparing a high quality presentation is not something I would enjoy trying on any netbook - let alone without using a desktop package - when it involves mid-sized video files or animations. More technical requirements like citation management have been mentioned above and certainly also hold true. Things just aren't as convenient in the current web ecosystem, so I'll steer clear for a while yet.

Right now, tablets and netbooks wouldn't serve any purpose for me, and certainly don't offer an 'improvement' so I'm playing a waiting game - these 'first' releases from Kogan, Samsung and Acer don't appear to be sufficiently different enough or useful enough to try out. I can't see that changing in the near future either.

Activision Reveals Call of Duty Subscription Plans 184

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 31, 2011 @06:23AM from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

dotarray writes "Activision has denied it and denied it, but now it's been revealed – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will feature an online service (that's what Call of Duty Elite is), complete with monthly subscription fees. 'Activision executives said they haven't yet figured out how much to charge for the service, but they expect the cost to be less than fees for comparable online-entertainment services, such as a $7.99-a-month Netflix Inc. movie subscription. Portions of the service will be free, including features inspired by Facebook Inc. that will let Call of Duty players meet for online gun battles with others who share various affiliations and interests. Another feature of the service will give Call of Duty players tools, modeled on those from stock-trading websites, to analyze their performance within the game, gauging factors such as which weapons have been most successful for them in killing enemies.'"

The Machines That Sparked the Beginning of the Computer Age 139

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 30, 2011 @09:44PM from the in-the-beginning dept.

jjp9999 writes "A war of spies and electromechanical machines that took place beneath the wires during World War II not only played a crucial role in the Allies' victory, but also helped spark the beginning of the computer age. Among the devices was the Enigma, a cipher capable of producing 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible code combinations, and a hulking machine, the Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer, capable of decoding the Enigma."

Activists Destroy Scientific GMO Experiment 1229

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 30, 2011 @11:30AM from the not-in-my-garden dept.

Freggy writes "In Belgium, a group of activists calling themselves the Field Liberation Movement has destroyed a field which was being used for a scientific experiment with genetically modified potatoes. In spite of the presence of 60 police officers protecting the field, activists succeeded pulling out the plants and sprayed insecticides over them, ruining the experiment. The goal of the experiment was to test potato plants which are genetically modified to be resistant to potato blight. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research."

Slashdot Top Deals