Comment Power Cost (Score 1) 804

by JoshRoss on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:20AM (#45793389) Attached to: What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?

Apple spent much effort in making the Mac Pro power efficient, drawing at most 450W. And, I would guess far less on average. If you're paying about 11 cents, per kWh and using it 8 hours a day, at most it's going to cost you about $144. With all the fans and other things in a typical PC, I have to imagine that it would be possible to double or triple the annual power consumption costs of the Mac Pro.

Comment If I had a time machine (Score 1) 421

by JoshRoss on Saturday October 27, 2012 @12:51AM (#41786797) Attached to: Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ Scores In the Twenty-First Century

If I had a time machine that could take me back to 1899, I don't think my newly acquired smarts would help me in getting into Harvard. Oh well. -Josh

Apple Patches Massive Holes In OS X 246

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 20, 2010 @05:23PM from the well-it-wouldn't-be-polite-to-patch-windows dept.

Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost: "Apple's first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site." Hit the link for a list of the highlights among these fixes.

Comment Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook (Score 1) 394

by JoshRoss on Sunday July 12, 2009 @01:27PM (#28668285) Attached to: Outlook Inertia the Main Factor Holding Business From Google Apps

"Now businesses can run Microsoft Outlook on Google Apps instead of Microsoft Exchange, so they can achieve the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps while employees use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar." http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html You just have to cough-up some cash for the Premier Edition.

Watchmen 50 Days On, Was It Worth the Gamble? 448

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday April 23, 2009 @10:54AM from the well-i-enjoyed-it dept.

brumgrunt writes "Friday marks the 50th day on general release for what was the long-awaited Watchmen movie. But how much money has it made, and how has it measured up to Warner Bros' expectations? Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "

IE8 Beta Released To Public 605

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday August 28, 2008 @08:04AM from the upgrades dept.

Tim writes "English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese versions of Internet Explorer 8 have been released for public beta. New features include accelerators, which provide instant context menu access for a number of common tasks; automatic crash recovery, which prevents a single page's failures from taking down your entire browser; and browser privacy, a feature that didn't make Firefox 3. I'm primarily a Firefox user, and I've been using IE8 at work (MS) for the past few weeks. It's a definite improvement over previous versions, and brings a lot to the table that Firefox requires extensions for. Give it a spin, submit feedback, and help keep all browser makers on their toes by facing each other's competition."

iPhone Web Claims Draw Governmental Rebuke in UK 517

Posted by timothy on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @11:30AM from the zoolander-bit dept.

Wills writes "Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying 'all parts of the internet are on the iPhone', but it had to be withdrawn after Britain's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave 'a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone' because the iPhone cannot access Flash or Java – features that are essential to some websites. This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?"

Same Dev Tools/Language/Framework For Everyone? 519

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 08, 2008 @12:06AM from the one-size-fits-none dept.

AC writes "Upper management of the company I work at recently declared that all new development should be done with a single combination of development tools, language, and framework. The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one group / project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch. Of course the chosen language / framework used by everybody does not need to be the best tool for the job, but it should be good enough to allow every project to get done. What does Slashdot think about this? Is it OK to use the same development tools and language for every project, instead of choosing what fits best? Will the time saved be sufficient to offset the time lost to the 'not the best tool for the job' environment developers will be forced to use?"

Hans Reiser Leads Police To Nina's Body 1523

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 07, 2008 @10:05PM from the removing-all-doubt dept.

jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has led police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.

Douglas Hofstadter Looks At the Future 387

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 12, 2008 @05:54PM from the postponing-the-singularity dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "detailed and fascinating interview with Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel Escher Bach fame) about his latest book, science fiction, Kurzweil's singularity and more ... Apparently this leading cognitive researcher wouldn't want to live in a world with AI, since 'Such a world would be too alien for me. I prefer living in a world where computers are still very very stupid.' He also wouldn't want to be around if Kurzweil's ideas come to pass, since he thinks 'it certainly would spell the end of human life.'"

Pentagon Wants Kill Switch For Planes 548

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 11, 2008 @09:47PM from the jettison-the-wings dept.

mytrip writes "The Pentagon's non-lethal weapons division is looking for technologies that could 'disable' aircraft, before they can take off from a runway — or block the planes from flying over a given city or stretch of land. The Directorate's program managers don't mention how engineers might pull off such a kill switch. But, however it's done, they'd like to have a similar system for boats, as well. They're looking for a device that can, from 100 meters away, 'safely stop or significantly impede the movement' of vessels up to 40 feet long, with 'minimal collateral damage.'"

Coding Flaws Caused Moody's Debt Rating Errors 277

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 21, 2008 @05:31PM from the uh-oh-spaghettios dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Financial Times has the story that billions in incorrect AAA ratings given out by Moody's were the result of a coding error in its computer models. 'Internal Moody's documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in 2007 that products rated the previous year had received top-notch triple A ratings and that, after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four notches lower.'"

Comment Re:Clocks as computers (Score 1) 903

by JoshRoss on Sunday May 11, 2008 @06:00PM (#23371974) Attached to: What Is the Oldest Code Written Still Running?

Or perhaps player pianos?

Microsoft Prefers Flash To Silverlight 306

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday May 10, 2008 @10:39AM from the recoding-takes-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft still has not adopted Silverlight, and uses Flash all over its websites. 'Despite all the controversy over Microsoft using Silverlight to take over the rich internet market from Adobe Flash, the software giant seems to be not even trying. In fact, even most Microsoft web sites are using Flash instead of Silverlight.'"

How Microsoft Dropped the Ball With Developers 814

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 05, 2008 @08:17PM from the new-vistas dept.

cremou writes "As part of an Ars Technica series on how one developer migrated from Windows to OS X (and why), this second article concentrates on how Microsoft bungled the transition from XP to Vista. The author looks at some unfortunate decisions Microsoft made that have made Windows an unpleasant development platform. 'So Windows is just a disaster to write programs for. It's miserable. It's quite nice if you want to use the same techniques you learned 15 years ago and not bother to change how you do, well, anything, but for anyone else it's all pain... And it's not just third parties who suffer. It causes trouble for Microsoft, too. The code isn't just inconsistent and ugly on the outside; it's that way on the inside, too. There's a lot of software for Windows, a lot of business-critical software, that's not maintained any more. And that software is usually buggy. It passes bad parameters to API calls, uses memory that it has released, assumes that files live in particular hard-coded locations, all sorts of things that it shouldn't do.'"

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