California Legislature Declares "Cuss-Free" Week 262

Posted by samzenpus on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:16PM from the f#*k-those-f@^king-f%&kers dept.

shewfig writes "The California legislature, which previously tried to ban incandescent light bulbs, just added to the list of banned things ... swear words! Fortunately, the measure only applies for the first week of March, and compliance is voluntary — although, apparently, there will be a 'swear jar' in the Assembly and the Governor's mansion. No word yet on whether the Governator intends to comply."

Comment Not standby (Score 2, Informative) 531

by nova_ostrich on Saturday January 30, 2010 @01:29AM (#30959684) Attached to: Has Apple Created the Perfect Board Game Platform?

When Jobs said it runs for 10 hours, he specifically gave an example of watching video on a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. Like all battery numbers, I'd expect it to be a bit less than the amount stated, but he did talk about a real activity. Moreover, after making the 10 hours claim, he added that standby time is one month.

Film Studios May Block DVD Rentals For One Month 545

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 27, 2009 @05:12PM from the some-dare-call-it-collusion dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "The LA Times reports that in an effort to push consumers toward buying more movies, some major film studios are considering a new policy that would block DVDs from being offered for rental until several weeks after going on sale. Under the plan, new DVD releases would be available on a purchase-only basis for a few weeks, after which time companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix would be allowed to rent the DVDs to their customers. 'The studios are wrestling with declines in DVD sales while the DVD rental market has been modestly growing,' says Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix. 'If we can agree on low-enough pricing, delayed rental could potentially increase profits for everyone.' Three studios have already tried to impose a no-rental period of about a month on Redbox, the operator of kiosks that rent movies for $1 per night, believing that Redbox's steeply discounted price undercuts DVD sales. Redbox has responded by suing the studios, seeking to force them to sell it DVDs simultaneously with competitors. Meanwhile, the company is stocking its kiosks with DVDs it can't otherwise obtain by buying them from retailers."

IBM Patents Tweeting Remote Control 282

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @11:18AM from the just-put-a-clock-in-something dept.

Fluffeh writes "IBM has applied for a patent on a network-enabled smart remote control that sends out a message to Twitter, Facebook or a blog when you start watching a TV show." Hopefully this launches an exciting patent landgrab of devices that are socially enabled. Your car can tweet when you leave your garage. Your dishwasher can tweet when the load is done. Your skillet can tweet when your eggs are burnt. And they say innovation is dead.

26 Years Old and Can't Write In Cursive 921

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 26, 2009 @03:33PM from the but-good-penmanship-is-sexy dept.

theodp writes "Back in 1942, Chicago mail-order house Spiegel's looked to handwriting analysis to identify inconsistent, unreliable, poorly adjusted people. Ah, those were the days. TIME reports we are witnessing the death of handwriting, noting that Gen Y struggles with cursive and the group following them has even less of a need for good penmanship. And while the knee-jerk explanation is that computers are to blame for our increasingly illegible scrawl, literacy prof Steve Graham explains that kids haven't learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. 'Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore,' he says. So much for 100 Years of Handwriting Success!"

How Apple's App Review Is Sabotaging the iPhone 509

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 20, 2009 @07:29PM from the race-to-the-bottom dept.

snydeq writes to recommend Peter Wayner's inside look at the frustration iPhone developers face from Apple when attempting to distribute their apps through the iPhone App Store. Wayner's long piece is an extended analogy comparing Apple to the worst of Soviet-era bureaucracy. "Determined simply to dump an HTML version of his book into UIWebView and offer two versions through the App Store, Wayner endures four months of inexplicable silences, mixed messages, and almost whimsical rejections from Apple — the kind of frustration and uncertainty Wayner believes is fast transforming Apple's regulated marketplace into a hotbed of bottom-feeding mediocrity. 'Developers are afraid to risk serious development time on the platform as long as anonymous gatekeepers are able to delay projects by weeks and months with some seemingly random flick of a finger,' Wayner writes of his experience. 'It's one thing to delay a homebrew project like mine, but it's another thing to shut down a team of developers burning real cash. Apple should be worried when real programmers shrug off the rejections by saying, "It's just a hobby."'"

YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6 481

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:51PM from the ding-dong dept.

Oracle Goddess sends word that YouTube is presenting IE6 users with a banner exhorting them to upgrade to a modern browser, and TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube will be phasing out support for IE6 soon. This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net at the imminent demise of this most despised and non-standards-compliant browser. The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits.

Symantec Exec Warns Against Relying On Free Antivirus 459

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 04, 2009 @09:29AM from the totally-unbiased-no-really dept.

thefickler writes "Clearly, the rise of free antivirus is starting to worry Symantec, with one of their top executives warning consumers not to rely on free antivirus software (including Microsoft's Security Essentials). 'If you are only relying on free antivirus to offer you protection in this modern age, you are not getting the protection you need to be able to stay clean and have a reasonable chance of avoiding identity theft,' said David Hall, a Product Manager for Symantec. According to Hall, there is a widening gap between people's understanding of what protection they need and the threats they're actually facing."

A Push To End the Online Gambling Ban 205

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @06:08PM from the let-disintermediation-have-its-way dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts has introduced legislation that would roll back a ban on Internet gambling enacted when Republicans led Congress. The legislation would allow the Treasury Department to license and regulate online gambling companies that serve American customers. Frank's bill has roughly two dozen co-sponsors and the backing of the The Poker Players Alliance, with over a million members. But opponents are mobilizing to defeat the bill including social conservatives and professional and amateur sports organizations, which say more gambling opportunities could threaten the integrity of their competition. 'Illegal offshore Internet gambling sites are a criminal enterprise, and allowing them to operate unfettered in the United States would present a clear danger to our youth, who are subject to becoming addicted to gambling at an early age,' says Representative Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama and the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee. Another powerful roadblock could be the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. 'Gaming is an important industry to the state, and anything that affects it will be reviewed carefully,' says Reid's spokesman."

Comment About DataGrids and AdvancedDataGrids (Score 1) 541

by nova_ostrich on Saturday May 23, 2009 @03:32PM (#28068951) Attached to: HTML 5 As a Viable Alternative To Flash?

There is a DataGrid component in the free Flex SDK. The AdvancedDataGrid is part of the data visualization package that comes with Flex Builder Professional. In general, the Flex community thinks the AdvancedDataGrid is garbage. Slow, messy, and written by engineers that aren't part of the main Flex team who don't follow the official best practices. There are functions in its classes that are hundreds of lines long. I'm not kidding. I know guys who have written their own implementation of the features in AdvancedDataGrid because it sucked so bad. Thankfully, most use-cases for a DataGrid will be handled just fine by the regular DataGrid in Flex.

Comment Re:Have you even used Boxee??? (Score 1) 220

by nova_ostrich on Saturday March 07, 2009 @09:35PM (#27108997) Attached to: Hulu Again Removed From Boxee and Again Added Back

I imagine that the content owners aren't quite sure how Internet TV can be most profitable yet. I doubt they make much from advertising through Internet streaming compared to the traditional TV market. In a knee-jerk reaction, they're saying that if you're going to watch their shows on a TV (which Boxee obviously lets you do), then you should do it with the full set of commercials, rather than the one or two that get displays with the on-demand Internet streams. For the time being, TV streaming through a browser is probably considered a hassle for most viewers, so they have to make up for it with fewer advertisements. Boxee takes away the hassle (and in many cases, makes things BETTER than traditional TV), so content providers think they're getting ripped off again. In short, they're trying to insert the maximum amount of annoyance viewers will tolerate, and Boxee is screwing it all up! How dare they.

Comment No speculation necessary (Score 5, Informative) 220

by nova_ostrich on Saturday March 07, 2009 @09:27PM (#27108937) Attached to: Hulu Again Removed From Boxee and Again Added Back

Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, admitted on the company's blog that the content owners demanded that Boxee stop displaying Hulu content.

Google Solves Sharing Bug In Google Docs 69

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 07, 2009 @03:15PM from the use-of-journal-achievement dept.

RichardDeVries writes "Three weeks ago, I contacted Google about a bug in Google Docs that shared documents without permission. The issue has been resolved and affected documents have had their collaborators removed. The documents' owners have been notified: 'To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually.' See my journal entry for details on my contact with Google. Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google's eternal beta-status for a lot of their services."

Comment Re:This seems abrupt (Score 1) 856

by nova_ostrich on Saturday January 31, 2009 @05:37PM (#26679971) Attached to: Windows 7 To Skip Straight To a Release Candidate

This happens with Adobe Flash Player with every new major release. Dozens, if not hundreds, of websites think you have an older version of Flash Player because they check for something like majorVersion == 9 rather than majorVersion >= 9, and they display a "please upgrade" message when you're actually running the brand spanking new player. It's amusing, but a little sad since it happens over and over again. Still though, everything is fixed within a couple weeks, and it's no big deal. Microsoft needs to suck it up, accept that some developers are dumb, and force those folks to fix their broken version checks. It'll only increase the number of devs who did it wrong next time, and the problem will be worse when the major version finally gets a change.

South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity 849

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @07:07PM from the f@#k-those-f@#king-f@#kers dept.

MBGMorden writes "It looks like in an act that defies common sense, a bill has been introduced in the South Carolina State Senate that seeks to outlaw the use of profanity. According to the bill it would become a felony (punishable by a fine up to $5000 or up to 5 years in prison) to 'publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.' I'm not sure if 'in writing' could be applied to the internet, but in any event this is scary stuff."