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Comment .NET (Score 3, Insightful) 381

by dowlingw (#36176018) Attached to: Windows 8 ARM Will Not Support Legacy Software
It's not like Microsoft don't want you to use .NET anyway. All Microsoft need to do is support the CLR runtime and framework under the new version and anything running on .NET that doesn't call unmanaged code will work straight away. Same for anything running on Java, and it's not like that doesn't run on other architectures already. That means productivity apps like OpenOffice/etc will also work. It's not all doom and gloom!
Medicine

High Fructose Corn Syrup To Get a Makeover 646

Posted by samzenpus from the same-great-taste dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With its sweetener linked to obesity, some cancers and diabetes, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) doesn't want you to think 'fructose' when you see high fructose corn syrup in your soda, ketchup or pickles. Instead, the AP reports, the CRA submitted an application to the FDA, hoping to change the name of their top-selling product to 'corn sugar.'"

Comment Actually great for these companies! (Score 5, Insightful) 156

I would have thought the monitoring companies would have loved the NBN, it means they can ditch large, space and power consuming analog PSTN gear with power and space efficient routers. As far as saying theres no monitoring, thats BS. If you're offering a Layer 2 wholesale product, you can see whether or not there are tunnels established for that client, and if the tunnel is up - you can poll to see if the device is reachable. Also a win for alarm system companies, who now get a chance to make ludicrous profits on installing entirely new alarm systems country-wide. Sounds like a knee-jerk reaction that if given attention might actually do these parties more harm than good...
Handhelds

Nokia Releases Qt SDK For Mobile Development 76

Posted by timothy from the utterly-cute dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has released its unified Qt-based SDK for cross-platform development for Symbian and MeeGo (plus Maemo) devices. The blurb reads: 'Today sees the release of the Nokia Qt SDK, a single easy-to-use software development kit (SDK) for Symbian and Meego application development. Developers can now develop, test, and deploy native applications for Nokia smartphones and mobile computers. The beta version of the SDK is available for download from today, ready for developers to kick off development for new devices, including the just-announced Nokia N8.'"
Role Playing (Games)

The Gamebook Writers Who Nearly Invented the MMO 72

Posted by Soulskill from the if-wishes-were-epic-mounts dept.
mr_sifter writes "In the 1980s, gamebooks were all the rage, and most geeks have read through a Fighting Fantasy novel or two. You might even have heard of Fabled Lands, arguably the most ambitious gamebooks ever — it was planned as a series of 12 books, each representing a different area of the world, and players could roam freely from book to book. It was completely non-linear, and unless you died, there was no way to finish. In 1996, the authors, Dave Morris and Jamie Thompson, hooked up with game developer Eidos and started work on what would have been a ground-breaking computer game version of their books — an MMO, in other words. Unfortunately, development hell awaited. This article tells the story of the game that could have been WoW before Warcraft."
Image

Aussie Gamers Dress As Zombies To Raise R18+ Awareness 85

Posted by samzenpus from the know-we'll-get-to-common-ground-somehow dept.
swandives writes "Australian gamers will dress as zombies to raise awareness about the lack of an R18+ rating for video games in the country. The protest will begin at Hyde Park Fountain on March 27 and lumber through Sydney, raising awareness of the need for a higher classification rating and hopefully causing a bit of havoc at the same time! Computerworld Australia has pictures of previous zombie protests in the lead-up to the event. Australia has a long history of lobbying for an R18+ games classification but, even after a decade, video games are banned from sale if they exceed the maximum M15+ classification. So far, the list of banned titles includes 7 Sins, Risen, Left 4 Dead 2 and Dark Sector. Others, like Alien vs. Predator, were initially banned but appealed the rating and are now MA15+."

Comment Now we'll see what happens (Score 1) 252

by dowlingw (#31017440) Attached to: Landmark Ruling Gives Australian ISPs Safe Harbor
It will be interesting to see if the studios take up a campaign of harassment lawsuits against individuals in AU. At least ISPs won't be foisted with another short-sighted compliance issue - now all us Aussies need to do is avoid Stephen Conroy's mandatory internet filtering debacle.... In either case, this is a great thing for industry: well done iiNet!

Comment Now we'll see what happens (Score 1) 1

by dowlingw (#31017296) Attached to: Australian ISP iiNet Wins Against AFACT
It will be interesting to see if the studios take up a campaign of harassment lawsuits against individuals in AU. At least ISPs won't be foisted with another short-sighted compliance issue - now all us Aussies need to do is avoid Stephen Conroy's mandatory internet filtering debacle.... In either case, this is a great thing for industry: well done iiNet!
The Courts

Submission + - Landmark ruling gives Australian ISPs safe harbor (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by omnibit
omnibit writes: Today, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its ruling in favor of the country's third largest ISP, iiNet. The case was backed by some of the largest media companies, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. They accused iiNet of approving piracy by ignoring thousands of infringement notices. Justice Cowdroy said that the "mere provision of access to internet is not the means to infringement" and "[c]opyright infringement occured as result of use of BitTorrent, not the Internet...iiNet has no control over BitTorrent system and [is] not responsible for BitTorrent system." Many internet providers had been concerned that an adverse ruling would have forced themselves to police internet traffic and comply with the demands of copyright owners without any legislative or judicial oversight.

Comment IE8 displacing older versions! (Score 1) 422

by dowlingw (#30508604) Attached to: Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide
You need to look at the trends for IE7 and IE8, it looks like the market share is trending towards upgrades from IE7 to IE8, just like how Firefox 3 lost share at around the same rate as Firefox 3.5 gained share. Going by this, you'll see that IE8 is going to head straight back up to around the 40% mark. Which, all things considered is GREAT news - IE8 is a much better browser as far as standards-compliancy is concerned and it means the web is on it's way to being a much more stable platform, rah rah rah. Also interesting, check the decline in IE6 also - I wonder if IE6 users are flocking to IE8 also - maybe IE8 will end up with ~60% market share? No matter what happens, less IE7 and IE6 = WIN.

Comment Re:Maybe not the best solution (Score 1) 267

by dowlingw (#30321052) Attached to: DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court
My understanding of console games markets is that most consoles are sold as a loss-leader, and the profit is made by the manufacturers by what's known as an 'attach rate', the number of licensed accessories and games released for the platform. If Nintendo wanted to push out an open platform for unlicensed content (not under the Nintendo seal and guaranteed to work on the console), then the business analysts at Nintendo would be forced to put a bigger price sticker on the unit - which is already a stretch for what is seen as an underpowered console. From this point of view, I can understand exactly why controls like this are put into place. That being said, if they made a readily available 'community' developers kit available that allowed you to mess with the platform but not commercially release anything - this could actually work in their favour. They could encourage indies and whatnot to get familiar with the platform and do the groundwork on their product before needing to buy a commercial license. This could lead to an INCREASE in titles for the device, increase attach rates and be win-win for everyone. So it sounds to me like indies are having trouble getting what they want, and this should be the issue!
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Re:Garmin Edge 305 + Sport Tracks (Score 1) 188

by smeghead (#29652245) Attached to: Open Access To Exercise Data?

Another second here for Garmin + SportTracks.

I have had the Garmin Edge 305 for nearly a year and it's great. Though i've now got 2 "not completely functional" cadence/wheel speed sensors which I need to deal with.

SportTracks caches the google map tiles locally too, so even if your offline you can still see the maps for the areas you've been before (assuming you do alot of riding around your normal area).

And for sharing data online, Garmin Connect (formally MotionBased, and now free) is really good. It lets you show off how awesome you are.

Comment 70% of what exactly? (Score 1) 720

by dowlingw (#29102741) Attached to: XP Users Are Willing To Give Windows 7 a Chance
"More important, 70 percent of respondents who have used Windows 7 say they like it, which is a sign that Windows 7 stands a chance of being what Vista never was: an upgrade good enough to convince most XP users to switch." I'm betting that's not 70% of people who are currently using XP (versus Vista & XP combined)! I've literally just reinstalled XP from giving our Technet Win 7 (RTM) a go for a while, if they could make the interface more consistant and allow the old start menu behaviour - I could probably bear it permanently.

Comment I looked into this (Score 4, Informative) 585

by dowlingw (#29020021) Attached to: GPLv2 Libraries — Is There a Point?
I was recently looking into this using the concept of dual-licensed GPL/LPGL 'glue' connectors. This is the response I got back from the Free Software Foundation:

You are correct. The answer is no. If the LGPLed library dynamically calls the GPLed library, then it is the FSF's position that the LGPLed library is a derivative of the GPLed library, and thus the work as a whole may only be distributed under the GPL. Please see this section of the FAQ:http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLWrapper.

For your specific requirements, I'd advise touching base with them - they have an advice service for these types of questions.

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