Comment Re:Don't be fooled (Score 1) 126
I personally lean towards jQueery
Submission + - Meet BlackBerry Playbook, a tablet PC from RIM (zdnet.com)
siliconbits writes: Today, at the BlackBerry Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, company President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis kicked off the event with the widely-anticipated news: a tablet PC of its own. Called the BlackBerry Playbook. the device is a a “flash-loving,” “device-paring,” “enterprise ready” tablet with an uncompromised browsing experience on a 7-inch screen. It is 9.7 millimeters thick and features a high-res wide screen display that supports 1080p with HDMI and USB ports.
Comment Well yes, if you don't use your brain (Score 1) 385
If you take the time to think about and investigate how and why it's so good then you're probably making yourself smarter than you would have been without it in the first place.
The same argument can be used for good advertising, and probably other things too.
Scientists Need Volunteers To Look At the Sun 110
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Royal Observatory's 'Solar Stormwatch' needs volunteers to help scientists spot Sun storms — known as coronal mass ejections — before they cause damage on Earth. 'When you look up at the Sun obviously it's too bright to look at properly,' says Dr. Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory, but 'with special instruments and telescopes you can see there's all sorts of stuff going on.' NASA already monitors the Sun using two 'STEREO' spacecraft that produce 3D images of earth's nearest star, which can show the trajectory of these explosions. However, the sheer amount of data means NASA's scientists are unable to analyze the data as closely as they need — which is where the world's Internet population comes in. After a brief tutorial, users get access to the actual 3-D images taken by the STEREO spacecraft. If a user believes they have spotted the beginnings of a solar storm, they can bring it to the attention of scientists. 'Every little bit counts,' says Kukula. 'I've spoken to the scientists involved and they all agree that even if you log-on and just do it for a few hours, get bored and never touch it again it's all really useful — and helps them to do their work.'"
Comment Re:Was really useful, but buggy (Score 1) 148
Oh yes, I'm very much aware of this nifty feature (which Opera had many moons ago...). However I think the value of ubiquity came from the ability to subscribe to feeds of commands (potentially many from a single feed) that get regularly updated with new features. Oh yes, and it's *really* easy to create your own and make them as interactive as you like.
Comment Was really useful, but buggy (Score 2, Informative) 148
Ha. I just went and read about this myself. Personally I found ubiquity really useful. I loved the way I could select a postcode, press a keyboard combo and then just type "map" to get an interactive Google Map. I especially liked the way I could subscribe to feeds of commands, most of which had a whole host of handy options. The natural language process part of it was simple, but easily good enough for the intended purpose.
The reason I stopped using it was because new versions weren't backwards compatible and cleaning up after an update became a bit of a mess. I don't know if others had the same experience?
Comment Re:Please excuse the vulgarity of my comment, but (Score 1) 65
I just want to buy some milk for my son at the grocery store
Get a cow? Although, it looks like you already tried to apt-get one...
Submission + - Suggestions for a Coax - Ethernet Solution? 2
watanabe writes: I just moved from a house with Cat5e wiring to a house with.. A whole bunch of coax cables. Like, my living room has five coax cables coming out of a hole in the wall. All of them go back up to my attic.
The house is big, (and I like it, thank you), but I have realized that our digital usage pattern (media server + squeezeboxes + remote time machine backups to a linux box) will not work without wiring. I am currently bridging some old Linksys WRT54Gs to the right places, but of course, that slows everything down.
This got me thinking: 100mb ethernet is four wires, yes? And I have four wires for every two coax cables. What about a two coax-head -> ethernet jack setup? Has anyone done this before? Searching online only gives me $100+ coaxethernet transceiver type boxes. At that price, a HomePNY system would make more sense.
I'm willing to solder if I have to, but I first wanted to get advice and holes shot in my plan, if there are any.
Submission + - School spying on student webcams
jargon82 writes: A Pennsylvania high school is using laptops they issued to students to spy on them in homes and outside of school. According to a class action filling the webcams and microphones in these laptops could be remotely activated by school officials, and have been used in this role. One student was accused of "improper behavior in his home" and the school provided a photo taken via his laptop as proof.
Comment Speech is more distracting (Score 1) 1019
I find that if people are talking, or if a phone rings, etc., I easily lose my train of thought. The worst thing is when people in the office are having a very loud teleconference. Music helps to drown it all out. Especially music I am familiar with. Personally I listen to Lemon Jelly, Death Cab for Cutie or anything tagged "Liquid Funk" on last.fm.
I think there should be a new /. poll: "What genre of music do you listen to when coding?"
I think there should be a new
Comment Re:Simply put (Score 1) 528
On one hand, I agree: The average desktop user doesn't want to spend there time organising how they are going to achieve the task at hand. They just want to get on with it.
On the other hand, users such as many of those in the open source desktop world are likely to spend a little more time thinking about how they can improve their productivity through streamlining their interactions with the desktop manager and will at least give it a go.
Personally I think it will be an effective way to context switch ones interface between tasks.
On the other hand, users such as many of those in the open source desktop world are likely to spend a little more time thinking about how they can improve their productivity through streamlining their interactions with the desktop manager and will at least give it a go.
Personally I think it will be an effective way to context switch ones interface between tasks.
Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195
diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."
Comment Integrate it with an intelligent vocabulary (Score 1) 64
Maybe if this were integrated with an intelligent tag vocabulary, such as the one at http://annotator.imense.com/faq-annotator/, the lives of those poor people manually tagging these images can be improved. Not to mention the potential increase in accuracy.
Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Best Tool For Remembering Passwords? 1007
StonyCreekBare writes "Lately I've been rethinking my personal security practices. Should my laptop be stolen, having Firefox 'fill in' passwords automatically for me when I go to my bank's site seems sub-optimal. Keeping passwords for all the varied sites on the computer in a plain-text file seems unwise as well. Keeping them in my brain is a prescription for disaster, as my brain is increasingly leaky. A paper notepad likewise has its disadvantages. I have looked at a number of password managers, password 'vaults' and so on. The number of tools out there is a bit overwhelming. Magic Password Generator add-in for Firefox seems competent, but it's tied to Firefox, and I have other places and applications where I want passwords. And I might be accessing my sites from other computers that don't have it installed. The ideal tool in my mind should be something that is independent of any application, browser, or computer; something that is easily carried, but which if lost poses no risk of compromise. What does the Slashdot crowd like in password tools?"
