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Mozilla

Mozilla To Ditch Firefox Extensions? 415

An anonymous reader writes "Although some have raised concerns about how sane switching to Jetpack is, it seems that Mozilla's new gadget is bound to replace the powerful extension mechanism we know. Maybe Mozilla wants to replace all the great add-ons we use daily with gadgets that add an entry to the Tools menu, or maybe they just want to draw thousands of inexperienced developers into putting together a bunch of HTML and CSS that won't integrate in the UI. It seems to me that in light of recent decisions we've discussed before, Mozilla isn't going in the right direction. What do you think ?"

Comment Re:1 word. (Score 3, Interesting) 596

Too expensive for my tastes (the pricing for the Cintiq seems to be at least partially "we're the only ones with something like this on the market so we can charge whatever we want").

Well, it looks like it is possible to build DIY Cintig from a LCD panel a normal Wacom panel (with a bit of skill :).
There is an example buildlog:
http://www.bongofish.co.uk/wacom/wacom_pt19.html
An there is a forum of the DIY Cintiq community:
http://forum.bongofish.co.uk/index.php
So I am now hunting for 15" LCDs with external power supply and old 12"x12" Wacom tablets :D

IT

Do IT Pros Abuse Their Power? 460

An anonymous reader writes "I have noticed that many airports and hospitals I've visited have some kind of internet usage policy in place. Some use software similar to Websense, which effectively blocks sites based on blacklisting them by category. A commonly used blacklist prevents users from accessing 'forums or discussion boards,' yet I find that often these networks allow users to access sites like Fark, Slashdot, Digg and other message boards that appeal to the technical culture one might find in the IT world. In your experience, do IT administrators abuse their supervisory powers? Has there ever been a backlash from users or management for doing so?"
Earth

Global Deforestation Demoed In Google Earth 207

eldavojohn writes "On Google's official blog, they claim a 'new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests.' Ars has more details on what Google unveiled at Copenhagen. If you have Google Earth installed, you can find a demonstration here. Many organizations and government agencies are on board with this initiative to put deforestation before the eyes of the public. If only satellite data of North America existed before the logging industry swept in!" It's interesting to contemplate the implications for intelligence gathering of Google's automated tools to compare satellite photos.
Cellphones

Samsung Enters Smartphone Wars With Bada OS 175

MojoKid writes "Samsung is betting there's room for more in the smartphone market and has unveiled its new bada OS. The name 'bada,' means 'ocean' in Korean and was chosen to convey the 'limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform.' Samsung claims the OS is extremely simple for developers, saying that bada was built to be extremely interactive with its users — including flash control, motion sensing, fine-tuned vibration control and face detection. Samsung is hoping developers will take this user interface and create a variety of applications focused around it, and thus provide different types of apps than exist for the iPhone and Android OS. The bada OS has a variety of sensors, including accelerometers, tilt, weather, proximity and activity. Samsung will be hosting a series of Developer Days in Seoul, London and San Francisco, among other cities, throughout 2010."
Earth

CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage 581

eldavojohn writes "Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"
The Internet

Transpacific Unity Fiber Optic Cable Leaves Japan 136

JoshuaInNippon writes "The 10,000 km (6,200 mile) long Unity fiber optic cable, funded by Google and five East Asian communication companies, left Japanese shores on November 1st to be laid along the northern Pacific Ocean floor. The Japanese end of the cable is expected to be fused to the American end sometime around November 11th. The cable, which was announced in February of 2008 at a cost of around $300 million USD, has the theoretical capacity of 7.68 Tbps, but will be set at a capacity of about 4.8 Tbps (supposedly equivalent to about 75 million simultaneous phone calls) during its initial use. When Unity begins full operation sometime early next year, it is projected to increase internet traffic capacity between the two regions by over 20%, a wonderful boost to transpacific relations!"

Comment Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score 1) 744

The default OS is is shipped with is quite ironicaly modified Ubuntu 9.10 :)
They just grabbed some alpha/beta and customized it for the device.

Other than the default distro, you can run Mer, Android and WinCE.
The os can be booted from the internal flash (some iNand) or from the SD card and the device is said to be basicaly unbrickable.

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