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Google

Google Floats Balloons For Free Wi-Fi 115

Posted by Soulskill from the shannon-hartley-bernoulli-theorem dept.
New submitter BrokenHalo writes "Google has revealed that it has 30 balloons floating over New Zealand in a project to bring free Wi-Fi to earthquake-stricken, rural or poor areas. They're calling it Project Loon. '[W]e’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters.' Eventually, as the balloons move across the stratosphere, consumers in participating countries along the 40th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere could tap into the service. The technology will be trialled in Australia next year, possibly in Tasmania. If the latter happens to be true, then you'll probably hear the telcos' screams in New York."

Comment Re:Paying for More Slack Space (Score 1) 442

by TheDreadedGMan (#30577270) Attached to: HDD Manufacturers Moving To 4096-Byte Sectors

Running Windows 7 64-Bit RC here... installed on a 750GB Samsung drive formatted using defaults via the installer.

Opened the C:\Windows folder, typed "size:<=4096" in the search box, found 23,347 files, selected all, right-clicked properties, I get:
Size: 43.0 MB (45,126,095 bytes)
Size on disk: 91.1 MB (95,563,776 bytes)

so they are slightly more then twice as big, these "more, smaller files"... personally 45MiB of a 698,000MiB is not bad wastage...

Comment Re:F-lock hands down (Score 1) 939

by TheDreadedGMan (#29622597) Attached to: The Most Useless Key On My Keyboard Is...
my friend dubbed it "Fuck-Lock" after buying a new keyboard with it defaulting off and playing Battlefield 2 with default key bindings which has F9 to parachute... F9 F9 F9 "FUCK!" and then reach for F-Lock so it actually works... Most misguided design ever, sure, add media keys to your hearts content microsoft and logitech, but please don't fuck with default function keys!! they are there for a reason!

Comment AS 3112 (Score 2, Interesting) 711

by TheDreadedGMan (#28861641) Attached to: Favorite type of electical wall socket?
Australia / New Zealand standard looks like US standard but at angles so cannot be put in backwards. Has down-wards compatible higher-rated plugs. Sockets have switches on them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_3112 As far as this poll goes it's pretty dumb... you don't really prefer a standard you get one to match your area.
Communications

Apple Kills Google Voice Apps On the iPhone 541

Posted by kdawson from the hey-wait-isn't-he-on-our-board dept.
molnarcs writes "Apple pulls Google Voice-enabled applications from its App Store, citing duplication of functionality. The move affects both Google's official Google Voice and third party apps like Voice Central. Sean Kovacs, main developer of GV Mobile, says that he had personal approval for his app from Phil Shiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, last April. TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid suspects AT&T behind the move."
Biotech

Robot Invented To Crawl Through Veins 99

Posted by timothy from the oh-no-not-creepy dept.
Slatterz writes "Scientists from Israel's Technion University have unveiled a tiny robot, made using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, purportedly able to crawl through a person's veins in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer. The little robot — with a diameter of just one millimeter — has neither engine nor onboard controls, instead being propelled forward by a magnetic field wielded on it from outside the patient's body."
Cellphones

iPhone Shakes Up the Video Game Industry 325

Posted by Soulskill from the shakes-down-customers dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Troy Wolverton writes in the Mercury News that in less than a year, the iPhone has become a significant game platform, but its bigger impact could be to help change the way the game industry does business. 'It's got everything you need to be a game changer,' said Neil Young, co-founder and CEO of ngmoco, which develops games solely for the iPhone. With a year under its belt and an installed base of iPhone and iPod Touch owners at around forty million, the iPhone/iPod Touch platform has eclipsed next-gen console penetration numbers and started to catch up to the worldwide penetration of both Sony's (50 million) and Nintendo's (100 million) devices. Wolverton writes that not only is the iPhone one of the first widely successful gaming platforms in which games are completely digitally distributed, but on the iPhone, consumers can find more games updated more often, and at a cheaper cost per game than what they'd find on a typical dedicated game console. While an ordinary top-of-the-line game for Microsoft's Xbox 360 sells for about $60, and one for Nintendo's DS about $30, a top-of-the-line iPhone game typically sells for no more than $10. With traditional games, developers might wait a year or two between major releases; ngmoco is planning on releasing new versions of its games for the iPhone every four to five months. 'You have to think differently,' says Young. 'It's redefining what it means to be a publisher in this world.'"
Censorship

A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany 420

Posted by kdawson from the sun-going-down dept.
Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."
Businesses

Ideal, and Actual, IT Performance Metrics? 321

Posted by timothy from the spin-the-dial-shake-the-8-ball dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Recently it was revealed that our company measures IT performance by the time it takes to close trouble tickets. I consider IT's primary goal to be as transparent to the user as possible, thus this metric was rather troubling to me. Shouldn't we be focused on reducing calls, rather than simply closing them quickly? My question is: How is your IT performance measured, and how do you think it should be measured?"

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