javaski - Slashdot User

Dell's Rugged Laptop Doesn't Quite Pass 4-Foot Drop Test 113

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 10, 2009 @10:49AM from the pretty-toughbook dept.

narramissic writes "Dell's new Latitude E6400 XFR laptop is designed to withstand drops, dust and high pressure water spray. The company claims the laptop, which is intended for military use, can withstand rain and wind gusts of up 70 mph, and can work in temperatures from -20 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. It can also work for an hour at an altitude of 15,000 feet and is designed to withstand drops of around 4 feet (48 inches) when not operating and 36 inches when operational. The LCD screen floats a little bit within the LCD cover so it can take impacts and shock, said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman. But watch as the laptop that Dell used to show these features wasn't able to withstand the rough treatment that was part of the company's demonstration."

The Realities of Selling On Apple's App Store 223

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 10, 2009 @05:16AM from the languishing-on-the-midlist dept.

Owen Goss writes "Everyone is familiar with the story of the iPhone developer who spends two weeks of spare time making a game that goes on to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reality is that with the App Store now hosting over 25,000 apps, the competition is fierce. While it's true that a few select apps are making developers rich, the reality is that most apps don't make a lot of money. In a blog post I take a hard look at the first 24 days of sales data for the first game, Dapple, from Streaming Colour Studios. The post reflects what is likely the norm for developers just getting into the iPhone development game."

Intel Envisions Shape-Shifting Smartphones 79

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 09, 2009 @10:01AM from the optimus-phone dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's not sci-fi, but rather advanced robotics research which is leading Intel to envision shape-shifting smartphones. 'Imagine what you would do with this material,' says Jason Campbell, a senior researcher at Intel's Pittsburgh Lab who's working in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University. 'If you want to carry the device, you'd make it as small as possible by making it pack itself as densely as possible. When you go to surf the Web, you're going to make it big.' The material being studied is transparent silicon-dioxide hemispheres, which can roll around each other under electrical control to create different shapes. The lab has built 6-inch long actuators, which it's working to reduce to 1-mm tube-sized prototypes. When will we see a shape-shifting phone? 'In terms of me being able to buy it, that's a difficult forecasting problem, because I have to guess about manufacturing costs,' Campbell said. 'I won't do that. But we hope the science will be proved out in three to five years.'"

Comment Re:Don't ask us (Score 1) 161

by javaski on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:57PM (#14761737) Attached to: Being School District Admin?

I had the exact same thing happen. I found out a relatively simple way to completely bypass the schools security software and brought it to the attention of the school's network admin. Her response? "Oh.. umm... Well, we were obviously already aware of that and have been working to fix it. You realize I could have you suspended from school and possibly press legal charges, right?" Needless to say, before leaving my senior year, I disabled the security on a dozen or so computers in the library.

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