epochbb - Slashdot User

Google Browser Sync To Be Discontinued 195

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:14AM from the going-gently-into-that-good-night dept.

Dude With An Afro writes "What could have been a great Google project is now history. For those who never used it, Google Browser Sync was a Firefox extension that synchronized your bookmarks, web history, browser sessions and passwords across multiple computers by temporarily saving them to Google's servers. According to the Google Browser Sync team: 'It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don't have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.' For all of those who fell in love with Google's Browser Sync, our only hope now is to resort to poorly maintained 3rd party extensions without Google's blessing." While it was undoubtedly a useful utility, the argument can also be made that it wasn't the most secure extension in the world, what with having your personal data kept on Google's servers and shot around the internet.

Comment Re:Cona Vacuum Brewer (Score 1) 592

by epochbb on Thursday May 17, 2007 @07:35AM (#19158939) Attached to: What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee?

Agreed -- vac pots produce the cleanest and most consistent coffee. If you can't afford the Cona, the Bodum Santos is almost as good, though Bodum can't seem to make up their mind about whether or not they want to keep making the model. It's still available from some places, though (try http://greenbeanery.ca/ if you're in Canada). Don't be fooled by the electric version, it's far inferior (made of plastic, harder to clean, etc). As a cheap and very effective upgrade, which puts the Santos on an equal footing with the Cona IMO, I purchased an antique glass Cory filter rod on eBay to use instead of the plastic filter that comes with the Bodum Santos. Now my coffee never comes in contact with plastic or metal during brewing. Yum! As for the beans themselves, go for some Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Many people call it the best coffee in the world, and I tend to agree!

What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee? 592

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @06:25PM from the good-to-the-last-drop dept.

markov_chain asks: "For a while I've been making coffee using home-ground whole beans and a standard drip maker. I settled on this method for its simplicity and good taste, even after trying numerous other methods (such as the French press, gravity percolators, and pressure percolators), each coupled with either pre-ground or whole beans. So far, the fresh ground beans are the only factor that made a significant difference in taste. However, when I recently spotted a a site that vaguely extols freshness, I began to wonder how much the freshness of the beans themselves affects the quality. Normally I thought the whole beans would retain the quality far longer, due to less surface area exposed to air, but clearly there still must be a decline; worse yet, it is difficult to gauge that decline since the sellers usually do not advertise the age of the beans. I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans?"

Should Chimps Have Human Rights? 1019

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @04:30AM from the our-brothers'-keepers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Brazilian court has already issued a writ of habeas corpus in the name of a chimp. And now an Austrian court may well decide that a chimpanzee is a 'person' with what up until now have been called human rights." From the story in the Guardian/Observer: "He recognizes himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin. A group of world leading primatologists argue that this is proof enough that Hiasl, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, deserves to be treated like a human. In a test case in Austria, campaigners are seeking to ditch the 'species barrier' and have taken Hiasl's case to court. If Hiasl is granted human status — and the rights that go with it — it will signal a victory for other primate species and unleash a wave of similar cases."

Canada May Lose Copyright Fair-Use Rights 303

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 14, 2007 @03:47PM from the rights-eh? dept.

DotNM writes with an article from the CBC reporting that the Canadian government is considering removing fair-use rights from Canada's copyright law. From the article: "Exacerbating the situation is intense pressure from the United States, where Canada is considered a rogue when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. It still hasn't ratified a 1997 World Intellectual Property Organization copyright treaty... Two of the most controversial issues are [DRM] and the closely related technological protection measures."

Beware the Apple iPhone iHandcuffs 406

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday January 14, 2007 @10:26AM from the future-of-gizmos dept.

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"

iPhone Not Running OS X 476

Posted by kdawson on Saturday January 13, 2007 @04:24PM from the but-but-steve-said-it-was dept.

rochlin writes "We know that Steve Jobs has said the iPhone won't accept third-party apps. The iPhone looks to be running on a Samsung provided ARM core processor. That means it's not running on an Intel (or PPC) core. That means it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense (Apple can brand toilet paper as running OS X if they like). Darwin, the BSD based operating system that underlies what Apple has previously been calling OS X, does not run on ARM processors. The Darwin / Apple Public Source licensing agreement says the source would have to be made available if it is modified and sold (paraphrased; read it yourself). A Cingular rep has said the iPhone version of the OS source will not be made available. It will be closed, like the iPod OS and not like Darwin. So if it ain't Darwin, it ain't OS X (in any meaningful way). An InfoWorld article on an FBR Research report breaks down iPhone component providers and lists Samsung as the chip maker for the main application / video cpu. So, that leaves the question... What OS is this phone really running? Not Linux or the source would need to be open."

Could YouTube Be the Killer-App for Apple's iTV? 111

Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 30, 2006 @06:33AM from the the-dnd-psas-in-the-living-room dept.

mrspin writes "With Macworld Expo just over a week away, many expect Apple CEO Steve Jobs to announce further details (and the availability) of the company's yet to be released set-top-box, codenamed iTV. Powered by something similar to Apple's Front Row media center software, the iTV is designed to get the media content that's housed on a Mac (music, movies, and photos), streamed to the living room television. However, with its built-in wireless networking (suspected to be the faster 802.11n), why not bypass the Mac and have the iTV connect directly to the Internet? The combination of iTunes and DRM-free MP3s provided the 'killer app' for the iPod. YouTube could well do the same for Apple's soon-to-be released set-top box."

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