Slashdot Mirror

spider web that got caught in a hurricane.

No kidding.

Well that is how he afforded these two along with his humble home. I'm sure he knows how to make money with advertising.

Yesterday's news tomorrow :P

These newly found spiders are in many colours not usually associated with arachnids, such as pink and purple
photo

I like neckties. I don't see what the big deal some people have with them is, other than they're a bit old school. Men who think ties are uncomfortable just need to get a properly sized shirt. I suspect a lot of men these days only have one suit that's been sitting int he closet for years and doesn't fit them -- if it ever did. Of course you hate getting dressed in something like that, it'd be like putting on a straight jacket.

In general formal business attire is comfortable, it should feel as close to being in your pajamas as possible. A properly fitted suit looks good on anyone, unlike business casual which works for some but makes others look like slobs. Remember MacWorld '97 where Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs both wore collarless shirts (Source: The Register,Oct 6, 2011)? Jobs looked OK, albeit a bit parson-ish. Amelio looked like an understudy for Clarence, from *It's a Wonderful Life*.

Formal business attire seems foreign to a lot of guys these days, almost a piece of lost lore like shaving with a straight razor. But it's more user-friendly than it looks. The secret is to find a menswear store you like and let them take care of you. Then go back every year or two for a new suit so you always have something that fits. If you never wear suits and you know you're going to need one for an upcoming event, three weeks before you need it try on that old suit. If it's not perfectly comfortable, go straight to the menswear store.

Chrome is the most secured browser - new study:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/09/chrome_ie_firefox_security_bakeoff/

* No Opera results compared (too bad, it's my "weapon-of-choice" online), but, similar results based on security featuresets compared showed similar results a month or so before this (Dec. 2011)...

(Sandboxing's a nice feature, but imo @ least, a bit "overrated", because sandboxes DO GET BROKEN, & in Windows 7 @ least, you can natively isolate ANY APPLICATION via right-click on it in taskmanager & set it as UAC VIRTUALIZATION enabled (which isolates applications' registry writes to the current profile only, NOT the ENTIRE SYSTEM/ALL PROFILES) - or, even moreso (filesystem, registries etc.) by using a tool called "SandBoxie" (64-bit capable too)).

APK

P.S.=> Anyhow/anyways, from the link above's a really nice chart used there for comparison of security-features & the criteria used as well -> http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/12/09/sandbox_comparison_small.png

... apkChrome is the most secured browser - new study:

So what you are saying, OCG, is that attempting to avoid a licencing fee by using a similar but different piece of "intellectual property" should be illegal?

Like I said, if there existed examples of common red London bus/b&w Big Ben artwork before 2006, then that would constitute prior art, and the plaintiff shouldn't have won. However, TFA says that the defendant could not provide dates for the examples he offered.

Apple Computer agrees with you. As you know, they own flat glassy tablets with rounded corners. Don't try to avoid patent licencing by making similar but different tablets...

Apple isn't suing over glassy tablets with rounded corners. It's the overall combination of similar design elements that obviously came from Jonathan Ive's design studio which no tablets or smartphones looked like previously: the exact same black border with the same spacing, the same chrome back with just enough peeking over the sides to frame the black front, the same hardware dimensions, the same earpiece slit, the same software icon grid with in many cases the exact same icons...I mean, come on. That entire combination of so many visual and behavioral similarities is clearly a design copy.

Take a look at these iOS devices and you can all the industrial design elements that the copies incorporate to resemble the originals as closely as possible. It's not just simple variations but complete recreations, without having done the design work that Apple had to go through to come up with them (Jobs probably had a whip). There weren't smartphones or tablets that looked like those devices before Apple put those designs out on the market.

And by the way, the previous link is a trick. Those are Toshiba devices, not iOS devices. You literally can't tell the difference from the picture. That's how much of a clone they are. So I don't blame Apple at all for going after competitors who just repackage their work, especially because, as has been mentioned before around here, if the knock-offs are poorly made or faulty in some way, it can actually damage Apple's brand because the devices are intentionally made to look so similar.

The ramification is that you won't be able to use HTTPS on the vast majority of web sites. According to the Register, of 1 million web servers sampled: 604,242 supported TLS v1.0, 838 supported TLS v1.1, and 11 supported TLS v1.2.

Let me save you a few minutes RTFA.

an app for wirelessly syncing iPhones with iTunes libraries

... is such an obvious idea that talking about "stealing" it is meaningless. It is also something that has existed for some time on other platforms - e.g. Samsung Android phones can do wireless sync of pretty much everything since Galaxy S. So he can't claim the idea.

Cupertino wasn't even subtle about the appropriation, using the precise name and a near-identical logo to market the technology

Let me clarify something here. The precise name in question is "Wi-Fi Sync". For an application that syncs your phone over wireless. Gee, that's one obscure name for this kind of app - no way Apple could have stumbled onto that by chance!

Now the logo. here is the side-by-side comparison. Now, this consists of the de-facto standard "expanding wave" icon for wireless signal (on Apple's version, pretty much exactly as it's rendered in the status bar), placed inside the de-facto standard "circle of two arrows" icon for sync. The amount of creativity required to produce such an icon, given what the app does, is exactly zero - it's literally taking two stock icons for two parts of the (itself obvious) name, and merging them together. If someone asked me to sketch an icon for such an operation, this would probably be one of the first things I'd draw.

If you really want to bash Apple, a meaningful point would be that a third-party app implementing such wireless sync had to use private APIs (which is what caused its rejection from App Store) - on Android, such things are easily implemented.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/12/19/ballmer_fester_bulb.jpg

About 15 years ago the NSA guys on exchange would brag that they has an Enigma on display and all the CSE had was the Cray loveseat.

Have You Seen This Pair? Call 800-555-1212 REWARD

http://regmedia.co.uk/2010/05/28/hayley580.jpg

http://regmedia.co.uk/2010/05/28/hayley580.jpg

If this is what future geeks are going to look like, I'ms sure as hell staying in the industry!

OK, here's one http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/11/16/sven_deeptime_490px.jpg This charts CO2, temperature, and galactic cosmic rays. There's no correlation between temperature and CO2, but definitely one with GCR.

A reasonable report via http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/03/atm_trojans/ and something slightly more technical http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/06/03/trust_wave_atm_report.pdf via trust wave.

I made the image fit the screen (CTRL + [+]) and, well that was it. It felt no different. It looked no different.

Surely it's just a matter of practice when using large on screen keyboards?

Aim for the top of the triangle? Why bother outlining the keyboard letters at all?

Back in the day, just before 3DFX went down, the Voodoo5 graphics card had its own power brick: http://regmedia.co.uk/2006/08/10/3dfx_voodoo5_6k_2.jpg

I recently had to upgrade from a 2 year old 500W power supply because it didn't have enough (6 pin?) power cables for my GeForce 9800GTX. I was honestly disappointed, but went ahead and bought a new one. I now have a 700W power supply from rocketfish, and I think that's quite insane.

In the end, I think graphics card manufacturers might just go back to external power bricks. Either that, or people will get tired of ever-increasing power and cooling requirements... I think that console manufacturers, for one, would not be so happy with the idea of having to design a console that can supply 400W+ to a GPU. This might pressure GPU manufacturers into limiting the power requirements of their future chips.

The computers were still new in the box, from reseller stock, but the warranties were expired?

According to the lawsuit, among other things:

(1) Tiger sold used/refurbished Dell computers not covered by any Dell warranty, but covered by a third party warranty, and presented them as being covered by a Dell warranty.

(2) Tiger sold computers that were variously used, refurbished, or purchased from other resellers and advertised them as new, original, and obtained directly from Dell.

I don't see an allegation in the lawsuit that Tiger specifically sold new computers, in the original box, obtained from other resellers and represented them as in warranty when the warranty had expired. I think, to the extent that TFA conveys this impression, it is a misreading of the allegations in Dell's suit conflating two different, but related, misrepresentations that Dell accuses Tiger of making.

Nowhere near it. Check out this image of a dual core 45nm CPU die. On the left is its L2 cache. Nearly half the chip is cache, and it's only 6MB.

This pic from TFA shows a "heating/cooling" interface which shows that the units are going to need a coolant circulation system which would makes the whole system more cumbersome than it appears at first glance. With each LRU at 400 pounds + the cooling system I doubt these would be mounted on a hummer.

My "vehicle" choice currently uses water cooling with the ocean acting a large heat sink so no additional cooling should be necessary. As a bonus, the buoyancy provided by the salt water will render the 400 pounds (that's weight for those of you across the big pond) much easier to deal with.

This pic from TFA shows a "heating/cooling" interface which shows that the units are going to need a coolant circulation system which would makes the whole system more cumbersome than it appears at first glance. With each LRU at 400 pounds + the cooling system I doubt these would be mounted on a hummer.

Another bullet point is that TFA states that "The firm has said that at least eight of these can be linked up to get a proper 100 kilowatt beam" but how exactly would that be done? this provides an idea, anybody "in the know" wanna chime in?

This pic from TFA shows a "heating/cooling" interface which shows that the units are going to need a coolant circulation system which would makes the whole system more cumbersome than it appears at first glance. With each LRU at 400 pounds + the cooling system I doubt these would be mounted on a hummer.

Another bullet point is that TFA states that "The firm has said that at least eight of these can be linked up to get a proper 100 kilowatt beam" but how exactly would that be done? this provides an idea, anybody "in the know" wanna chime in?

For a period of time Nvidia and ATI agreed to boost the market value of GPU's by arranging for similarly powered products to be sold at the same price.

The following PDF document describes the entire case: GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNITS
ANTITRUST LITIGATION

Copies of the E-mails are here E-mail evidence of price fixing

Both of us have spent the last three years trying to bring the perceived value of our products up to the level of Intel. The "GPU" category is clean and has served us well that way. We both have increased the price of our high end product several fold over the last 4 years while Intel's high end prices have more than halved. Creating another category serves to work contradictory to that. How does one cleanly position it versus a GPU and a CPU?? It will tear down what we have both built.

There are now at least 51 different anti-trust lawsuits in the pipeline

The usual punishment will be a large fine - maybe a donation to charity - donating money to a charity allowing poor families to buy GPU pc's for Christmas or education.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/02/28/tinfoil_car.jpg

Here's another version of that graph... with additional data. It shows something interesting, I feel.

Up to 94% of Arctic melt is due to dirty snow caused by soot changing it's albedo, rather than CO2 related warming, according the researchers at University of California and a certain Dr. Hansen[PDF warning].

The Antarctic and the Arctic are both up on last years ice, in the case of the Arctic by 10% (according to the NSIDC).

Is it possible that the melting in the Arctic is more to do with other emissions than CO2? After all, the majority of the worlds industry is in the northern hemisphere. I would think it is.

The Northern Passage, by the way, has been navigated at least 100 times since the start of the century, and in 1922 there was open sailing very close to the North Pole [PDF warning]. Submarines regularly surface there, too. 2007 had a shocking decrease in the amount of ice at the pole, definitely. But we cannot be certain WHY.

Even NASA acknowledge that "not all the large changes in the Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming".

We should still be tackling pollution, though.

Here's another version of that graph... with additional data. It shows something interesting, I feel.

Up to 94% of Arctic melt is due to dirty snow caused by soot changing it's albedo, rather than CO2 related warming, according the researchers at University of California and a certain Dr. Hansen[PDF warning].

The Antarctic and the Arctic are both up on last years ice, in the case of the Arctic by 10% (according to the NSIDC).

Is it possible that the melting in the Arctic is more to do with other emissions than CO2? After all, the majority of the worlds industry is in the northern hemisphere. I would think it is.

The Northern Passage, by the way, has been navigated at least 100 times since the start of the century, and in 1922 there was open sailing very close to the North Pole [PDF warning]. Submarines regularly surface there, too. 2007 had a shocking decrease in the amount of ice at the pole, definitely. But we cannot be certain WHY.

Even NASA acknowledge that "not all the large changes in the Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming".

We should still be tackling pollution, though.

You know I think improving programming languages is the wrong way to go. What we really need is a robot at the side of every programmer.

progbabysit

To kill off dumb programmers. Divide by zero ? *poof*. One error dialog "No error" followed by a resetting machine and it aims for the gonads.

And obviously for the microsoft offices we need this one :

we've killed all gays, I mean we don't have any and we have no microsofties in iran either

I say let natural selection improve programmers !

Oh and I require the exclusive use of this robot :

babysit

For uhm ... motivation.

Forget about the CD. Boot from USB and use something like this or any other distribution. And for USB sticks, there are so many types available, including ones that look like Lego, Micro-SD cards or Other things so that unless they storm your house when the device is plugged in, they realy would have no idea what to look for.

Apparently, it's even slower. In this story, there's a picture showing that even with the pre-release of Vista SP1, copying 24GB will take 100 years.

I like the EEE, and I think that the Macbook Air is pointless, so I guess that I'm the kind of person that you're looking to get some answers from.

The reason for my opinions on the matter stem largely from portability. The Macbook Air may only weigh 3lbs (certainly a technical innovation) but if you set it on top of a Macbook, it's going to be about the same size. Its length and width are almost identical. Only its height (thinness) and weight are less. To me, that doesn't make it significantly more portable than the Macbook.

The EEE, on the other hand, is much smaller than the Macbook Air. For portability, that's a much bigger difference than simply being thinner. The dimensions (found on reghardware.co.uk) can be found here: http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/01/16/asus_air_table_2.png

I think that it adds insult to injury that the Macbook Air costs $600 more than the Macbook for almost the same dimensions, but much more power. If Apple had come out with a 10" notebook, I'd feel very differently, but I just can't call the Air a subnotebook or an ultraportable, and as such, I have to compare it to other, normal-sized notebooks. When you compare it against these, it's a horrible deal.

"Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news."

The Register have been covering the Eee quite a bit, particularly a certain scantily clad busty beach babe, there's a theory going around that she's using an Eee but no matter how long I look at the picture I just can't see any computer - even when I'm using my own Eee!

just do this http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/02/28/tinfoil_car.jpg to your car

The thing that people forget is that HL2's art direction was amazing. I can't think of another title in recent memory that had a higher level of visual cohesiveness on a reasonable polybudget. For example, darkness consistently equals safety throughout the game, whereas any point you're exposed to sunlight is a location shrouded in danger. This is consistent both internally and externally. No-one, to my knowledge, has followed this color styling, yet it is an effective technique at making the player feel like an unwelcome outcast.

You can see how minimalist this tree really is. They only gave it just enough branches to cover the illusion, but not so many that it holds up to actual inspection. Another shot of said tree, from a more common angle. By not wasting any polys, they really can afford to put more on-screen. Heck, look at leaves. Artificially close, they are a big smear. But from the distance you normally see them, they can stick thousands of these things on screen, and they look beautiful.

Love the look of brick? Notice how in this shot they've burned the bump maps and damage maps and everything into the same texture? The increases the repetition in texture, but if you vary your geometry sufficiently the player will never notice. All they'll notice is a lot more is going on on-screen than they're used to. This technique looks terrible for big-open walls, but Half Life studiosly avoids big open walls within proximity of the player.

They even used a distinct pallete of blacks, muted browns, and light blues. This was far before anyone else was using anything but super-saturated primary colors.

Ignoring any technical accomplishments, this is an achievement of strong visual composition and consistent, solid art direction.

Well, wouldn't you know it, we just happen to have acquired a rough version of that very presentation. Geeks out there can read up on IBM's breakthrough ahead of time via this PDF - a Register exclusive.

Doesn't it suck when someone messes with your timing?

You can't go wrong with Archos. They do a nice range of players. I use an aging Archos Gmini 400 (sadly discontinued).

The nice things about them are:

1. Very Good build quality
2. Large variety of players from simple music only to full blown media players.
3. Mount as standard USB mass storage
4. NO DRM what-so-ever
5. Supports mp3, wav, ogg, wma, wmv, divx, xvid (some formats are player dependent)
6. Windows Media Player can sync to it (as can many other freeware library managers)

If my Gmini died, I go straight to the web and buy another Archos, no question.

-Jar.

The story [theregister.co.uk], and of course the vital link to Google earth [regmedia.co.uk].

When the hat is not enough