Comment Re:Let's see... (Score 1) 823
In fact, it's the lowest side possible--that's the jurisdictional amount threshold for filing a claim in Federal court. IMO it supports the idea that she's not in it for the money.
Farewell To the Floppy Disk 616
s31523 writes "Those of us who have been in the IT arena for a while remember installing our favorite OS, network client, power application, etc. by feeding the computer what seemed an endless supply of 5.25" soft floppy disks. We rejoiced when the hard 3.5" floppies came out, cutting our install media by 1/3. We practically did backflips when the data CD-ROM arrived and we declared: we will never need any other disk than this! It is with sadness that I report the beginning of the end for the floppy: computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out."
Gamers React to Vista Launch 171
As cranky as IT folks are about having to roll out new Vista installs, support them, update them, etc, gamers are matching them in irritation. Ars Technica recommends you dual-boot XP and Vista if you want to keep gaming on your PC. Voodoo Extreme explores Vista's crappy audio setup, while Computer and VideoGames reports that some small developers think Vista will ruin PC gaming (a comment we've heard before). C&VG does have a slightly more hopeful article up too, talking about the future of Vista gaming and what the new OS could mean for games ... once all the kinks are worked out.
Submission + - Ancient village unearthed near Stonehenge
Submission + - Google's Bosworth: Why AJAX Failed, Then Succeeded
An anonymous reader writes: eWEEK has a story on a talk from former-Microsoft developer Adam Bosworth (now VP for Google) entitled "Physics, Speed and Psychology: What Works and What Doesn't in Software, and Why." Bosworth depicts issues with processing, broadband, natural language, human behavior, and dishes on Microsoft. From the article:
"'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications.'...
Drawing on the lessons he learned from the initial failure of AJAX, Bosworth admonished developers to think about user activity. 'Ask what the frequency is,' he said. 'Unless an app is used over and over each day, make it simple, even if more clicks [or] pages are required.' Also, 'Ask how long it takes to execute a requested task,' he said. 'If it takes more than 2 seconds, consider not providing the task or splitting it up into small, user-controlled tasks.' Moreover, 'sites where people don't go a lot don't need AJAX-style UIs [user interfaces],' Bosworth said. 'If we started building AJAX for AJAX's sake we wouldn't be doing our customers any favors.'"
"'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications.'...
Drawing on the lessons he learned from the initial failure of AJAX, Bosworth admonished developers to think about user activity. 'Ask what the frequency is,' he said. 'Unless an app is used over and over each day, make it simple, even if more clicks [or] pages are required.' Also, 'Ask how long it takes to execute a requested task,' he said. 'If it takes more than 2 seconds, consider not providing the task or splitting it up into small, user-controlled tasks.' Moreover, 'sites where people don't go a lot don't need AJAX-style UIs [user interfaces],' Bosworth said. 'If we started building AJAX for AJAX's sake we wouldn't be doing our customers any favors.'"
Skype 5-way Calling Limit Cracked 427
BobPaul writes "It turns out when Skype limited 10 way calling to Intel Processors only it really was arbitrary! Maxxus has a patched version of Skype that allows 10-way calling regardless of the processor installed. There's also info about the patch: "The patch is the result of two phases: code analysis and design of the patch. The code analysis, or reverse engineering, reveals the relevant code block, which overrides Skype's limitation for Intel's dual-core CPUs. The patch design isolates the minimal set of instructions that need to be modified to cancel this limitation." Windows only so far."
