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Open Source

OpenBSD 4.7 Preorders Are Up 191

Posted by timothy from the so-you're-in-favor-then? dept.
badger.foo writes "The OpenBSD 4.7 pre-orders are up. That means the release is done, sent off to CD production, and snapshots will turn -current again. Order now and you more likely than not will have your CD set, T-shirt or other cool stuff before the official release date. You get the chance to support the most important free software project on the planet, and get your hands on some cool playables and wearables early. The release page is still being filled in, but the changelog has detailed information about the goodies in this release."
PHP

Eight PHP IDEs Compared 206

Posted by timothy from the colonic-extraction dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Rick Grehen provides an in-depth comparative review of eight PHP IDEs: ActiveState's Komodo IDE, CodeLobster PHP Edition, Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT), MPSoftware's phpDesigner, NetBeans IDE for PHP, NuSphere's PhpED, WaterProof's PHPEdit, and Zend Studio. 'All of these PHP toolkits offer strong support for the other languages and environments (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL database) that a PHP developer encounters. The key differences we discovered were in the tools they provide (HTML inspector, SQL management system) for various tasks, the quality of their documentation, and general ease-of-use,' Grehen writes.'"
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."
Software

Safari 4 Released, Claimed "30 Times Faster Than IE7" 465

Posted by timothy from the don-your-pith-helmet dept.
CNETNate writes "Apple has released the beta version of Safari 4 for Mac and PC, with claims that its Nitro rendering engine is '30 times faster than IE7,' and three times faster than Firefox 3. Other new features include 'Top Sites,' which shows users the most frequently visited Web pages, 'Full History Search' for searching through not only the URLs and titles of visited pages, but also the complete text within the page itself — something Opera has been doing for a while."
The Military

DARPA Creates Remote Controlled Insects 101

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the bug-with-a-bug dept.
EmagGeek writes "Attempts by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create cybernetic insects (hybrids of biological and electronic 'bugs') have yielded ultra-low power radios to control the bugs' flight and a method of powering those circuits by harvesting energy, according to research that will be reported this week at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. 'Electrodes and a control chip are inserted into a moth during its pupal stage. When the moth emerges the electrodes stimulate its muscles to control its flight. I expect a run on bug zappers any day."
Music

Bands Bypass iTunes With iPhone Apps 155

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the more-you-tighten-your-grip-tarkin dept.
iminplaya writes to tell us that the band "The Presidents of the United States of America" (yes, the peaches guys), are trying to expand their engagement with fans by selling their music via Apple's App store, something others have experimented with but never dealt with on this level. "The app, called 'The Presidents' Music — PUSA,' sells for $2.99 on the App Store (iTunes link) offers users access to four full albums, including the band's early 'lost' recordings. This includes the previously-unavailable FroggyStyle — 'unless you have one of the 500 cassettes the band sold in 1994, you've never heard this before,' reads the app description. The app also features a number of extras and exclusives that the band says are updated regularly, and fans can read the band's blog directly from the app on their iPhones or iPod touches. The music, however, is not actually contained within the application itself; instead, it is streamed to the app from a server, requiring the user to be connected to a network of some kind (iPhone users on the cell or WiFi network, iPod touch users on WiFi) in order to access the media."
Cellphones

Is the Bar of Soap Tomorrow's Smarterphone? 141

Posted by timothy from the next-generation-uses-earwax-proximity dept.
Barence writes "Researchers at MIT have developed a gadget that knows whether you want to use it as a camera or smartphone, just by the way you're holding it. So, if you hold the device, dubbed the Bar of Soap, out in front of you like a camera it will automatically bring up an LCD viewfinder. However, if you then switch to holding it as you would a mobile phone, it will bring up a touchscreen keypad instead. The Bar of Soap utilises a three-axis accelerometer and 72 surface sensors to track the position of the user's fingers and its position."
Security

Building a Better CAPTCHA 197

Posted by Soulskill from the we-have-the-technology dept.
jcatcw writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that CAPTCHA cracking isn't that difficult these days. It has even become a business. For example, DeCaptcher.com will solve CAPTCHAs for your spamming needs at a rate of $2 per 1,000 successfully cracked CAPTCHAs. In response, newer systems are in development. Both Carnegie Mellon and Penn State (is there something about the water in PA?) are working on image-based systems. ESP-PIX and SQ-PIX both require the viewer to interpret pictures. Imagination CAPTCHA from Penn has the user find the center of an image. The idea is that humans are better at image recognition that computers, but humans can legitimately disagree on their interpretations and some humans are color blind. Problems remain. For now, sites would be well advised to look at reCAPTCHA — the system that works with Google Books and the Internet Archive to digitize printed texts — which comes with a wide variety of application and programming plug-ins and an open API."
Microsoft

Microsoft Donates Code To Apache's "Stonehenge" Project 184

Posted by timothy from the but-one-dimensional-villains-are-easier-to-comprehend dept.
dp619 writes "Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations."Reader Da Massive adds a link to coverage at Computer World.

Comment Resfued to match their own price (Score 1) 587

by rahuja (#26490289) Attached to: Circuit City Closes Its Doors For Good

Back during the Thanksgiving break of 2007, I bought an HDTV from CC, after some research online (and some previous research in-stores) on what brand/model I wanted and what was the best price available. I probably overlooked the near-by (2 miles from home) Best Buy store, and instead drove to the nearest CC (Fremont, about 12 miles) carrying that model at that price.

Next day, when I wanted to get a DVD player, I looked up their prices, drove back to get it, only to realize that they have different prices online and in-store. I asked if they would match their online price, but they refused ("not on Thanksgiving weekend" was their excuse). To get the lower price, I was given the option to order online and pick it in 24 minutes from the very same store (which basically meant I had to drive back home to logon, order, and then drive up back 12 miles).

Thankfully, some wisdom dawned upon me, and I decided to check the local BB store on the way back home. They carried the same product, for a marked price of around $20 more. However, when asked whether they would match the competitor price, they gladly agreed. I thought they would call or go online to confirm the competitor's price, but they agreed to the price I quoted I had seen at CC.

Not only did CC lose my $80 business on that DVD player, but also the high-margin accessories I bought with it - a Monster HDMI cable and a Monster surge-protector.

Needless to say, I have never visited CC since, and not just because I have a BB much closer to home.

My only regret is spending my $100 saving on the Black Friday special on TV on their lame "Circuit City Extended Protection Plan" (which I'm sure doesn't cover most accidental damage anyway), which will now be useless, since they are out business.

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