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Microsoft

Free Remote Access Tools For Windows and Mac Compared 152

Posted by timothy from the wish-you-were-here-printing dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Keith Schultz provides an in-depth comparison of seven free remote access tools for Windows, four of which offer compatibility with the Mac. 'As you read about each tool, you'll notice that I put a lot of emphasis on remote printing. I rely on remote access tools on a daily basis, and in most cases I need to be able to print to my remote PC. For someone that just wants to check their home/office email account or view documents from outside the office, all of the utilities here will work fine. But for those trying to get some serious work done, remote printing may be the deal breaker.' Many of the free tools under review offer paid or licensed versions for access to additional features."
Bug

Scaling Algorithm Bug In Gimp, Photoshop, Others 368

Posted by kdawson from the black-is-black-sometimes dept.
Wescotte writes "There is an important error in most photography scaling algorithms. All software tested has the problem: The Gimp, Adobe Photoshop, CinePaint, Nip2, ImageMagick, GQview, Eye of Gnome, Paint, and Krita. The problem exists across three different operating systems: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. (These exceptions have subsequently been reported — this software does not suffer from the problem: the Netpbm toolkit for graphic manipulations, the developing GEGL toolkit, 32-bit encoded images in Photoshop CS3, the latest version of Image Analyzer, the image exporters in Aperture 1.5.6, the latest version of Rendera, Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1, Pixelmator for Mac OS X, Paint Shop Pro X2, and the Preview app in Mac OS X starting from version 10.6.) Photographs scaled with the affected software are degraded, because of incorrect algorithmic accounting for monitor gamma. The degradation is often faint, but probably most pictures contain at least an array where the degradation is clearly visible. I believe this has happened since the first versions of these programs, maybe 20 years ago."
Operating Systems

Google Android — a Universe of Incompatible Devices 636

Posted by Soulskill from the maybe-just-a-galaxy-or-two dept.
snydeq writes "Galen Gruman writes about the dark side of the recent flood of Android smartphones: versions run amok. 'That flood of options should be a good thing — but it's not. In fact, it's a self-destruction derby in action, as phones come out with different versions of the Android OS, with no clear upgrade strategy for either the operating system or the applications users have installed, and with inconsistent deployment of core features. In short, the Android platform is turning out not to be a platform at all, but merely a starting point for a universe of incompatible devices,' Gruman writes. 'This mess leaves developers and users in an unstable position, as each new Android device adds another variation and compatibility question.' In the end, Google's naive approach to open sourcing Android may in fact be precipitating this free-for-all — one that might ultimately turn off both end-users and developers alike." As reader donberryman points out, you can even put Android onto some Windows Mobile phones, now.
Power

Creating Electric Power From Light Using Gold Nanoparticles 77

Posted by Soulskill from the nanite-power-supply dept.
cyberfringe writes "Professor of Materials Science Dawn Bonnell and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered a way to turn optical radiation into electrical current that could lead to self-powering molecular circuits and efficient data storage. They create surface plasmons that ride the surface of gold nanoparticles on a glass substrate. Surface plasmons were found to increase the efficiency of current production by a factor of four to 20, and with many independent parameters to optimize, enhancement factors could reach into the thousands. 'If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations, we could conceivably manufacture a 1A, 1V sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,' Prof. Bonnell explained. The academic paper was published in the current issue of ACS Nano. (Abstract available for free.) The significance? This may allow the creation of nano-sized circuits that can power themselves through sunlight (or another directed light source). Delivery of power to nanodevices is one of the big challenges in the field."

Comment Re:Amen (Score 3, Insightful) 1634

by theTechnophile (#30935170) Attached to: iPad Is a "Huge Step Backward"
Are you joking? Who do you think wants to run Photoshop on a slow ARM processor with a low-res uncalibrated screen and no useful input devices? How are you going to do audio work on a device whose primary audio input is the iTunes Store? You're going to do video production on something that has no way of getting video into it? Don't even think about writing your own webpages on the onscreen keyboard. It's obvious that the iPad is meant for consumption because it has no input devices meant for creation.

Comment Re:Incorrect premise (Score 2, Interesting) 945

by theTechnophile (#30890732) Attached to: The Apple Paradox, Closed Culture & Free-Thinking Fans

Really good quality IPS screens

A really good quality keyboard - with backlighting

There are no Macbooks with IPS screens. There have never been any Macbooks with IPS screens. Instead, the new ones all have that glossy crap on them. A really good keyboard? Any keyboard that lacks home/page up/page down/delete/end in the proper place is worthless.

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