AberBeta - Slashdot User

Submission + - PCGamingWiki looks into Linux gaming with Port Reports (pcgamingwiki.com)

Submitted by AberBeta on Friday October 24, 2014 @08:20AM

AberBeta writes: PCGamingWiki contributor soeb has been looking into the recent larger budget game releases to appear on Linux, including XCOM: Enemy Unknown & Borderlands: The Pre–Sequel produced by Mac porting houses Feral and Aspyr, and finds that while feature parity is high, performance could be a smidge better. However people accept the performance differences, the games are arriving, now the userbase needs to expand to make a virtuous cycle.

Submission + - Detritus from cancer cells may infect healthy cells (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter on Thursday October 23, 2014 @02:46PM

bmahersciwriter writes: Tiny bubbles of cell membrane — called exosomes — are shed by most cells. Long thought to be mere trash, researchers had recently noticed that they often contain short, regulatory RNA molecules, suggesting that exosomes may be one way that cells communicate with one another. Now, it appears that RNA in the exosomes shed by tumor cells can get into healthy cells and 'transform' them, putting them on the path to becoming cancerous themselves.

Comment Re:Cool, but... (Score 1) 218

by AberBeta on Thursday March 08, 2012 @11:32AM (#39288263) Attached to: Apple Switches (Mostly) To OpenStreetMap

Is geonames.org of comparable quality for you?

Comment Re:lol (Score 0) 218

by AberBeta on Thursday March 08, 2012 @11:30AM (#39288231) Attached to: Apple Switches (Mostly) To OpenStreetMap

It is no longer CC-BY-SA, but rather ODbL. See http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/We_Are_Changing_The_License

Comment Re:this, and then that other thing... (Score 2) 178

by AberBeta on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @12:51PM (#38726166) Attached to: OpenStreetMap Reports Data Vandalism From Google-Owned IPs

Note –Steve Coast now works for a competitor of Google (Maps).

Comment Re:Okay, good... (Score 1) 413

by AberBeta on Saturday January 15, 2011 @06:59PM (#34892704) Attached to: Google To Push WebM With IE9, Safari Plugins

'Firefox has h264 added on with the MS WMP plugin'

In Windows 7.
For users outside of that 20% of 90%, Firefox will support Ogg and WebM.

Comment Re:I hope that Firefox isn't playing Microsoft's g (Score 2, Insightful) 363

by AberBeta on Wednesday September 15, 2010 @05:32AM (#33584366) Attached to: Mozilla Unleashes the Kraken

If you hadn't noticed, every synthetic benchmark released from a browser vendor favoured their engine, at time of release. At least Google had balls to call it v8bench.
While I believe all benchmarks (and non-comprehensive ACID tests) to be 3dmark-style pissing contests where they encourage developers to fast-path specific used functions, I have more confidence in Mozilla producing another (Dromaeo also tried to have a more realistic workflow).

Comment Re:Ironkey also supports Linux! (Score 1) 191

by AberBeta on Monday July 13, 2009 @06:10PM (#28683505) Attached to: IronKey Unveils Self-Destructing USB Flash Drive

I got a review piece of hardware from InfoSec and tried it out in Linux.
You can mount it once the key has been set-up, but you can't set it up under Linux with the software provided.
So this key *requires* Windows before it can be used under Linux, which is pretty bloody stupid.

Since I don't have any copies of that software, it pretty much doubles the cost of the drive.

Submission + - Open Letter to Mozilla Regarding Their Use of HTML (osnews.com)

Submitted by AberBeta on Friday June 19, 2009 @01:24PM

AberBeta writes: We're on the verge of a serious evolution on the web. Right now, the common way to include video on the web is by use of Flash, a closed-source technology. The answer to this is the HTML5 video tag, which allows you to embed video into HTML pages without the use of Flash or any other non-HTML technology; combined with open video codecs, this could provide the perfect opportunity to further open up and standardise the web. Sadly, not even Mozilla itself really seems to understand what it is supposed to do with the video tag, and actually advocates the use of JavaScript to implement it. Kroc Camen, OSNews editor, is very involved in making/keeping the web open, and has written an open letter to Mozilla in which he urges them to not use JavaScript for HTML video. Coincidentally, this comes on the first day of the Open Video Conference, an event meant to espouse the virtues of using the video tag, which is hypocritically using Flash to live stream the event on their homepage!

Bookmark Open Letter to Mozilla Regarding Their Use of HTML5 Video (osnews.com)

by AberBeta on Friday June 19, 2009 @01:13PM

Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked 311

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 15, 2009 @08:45AM from the why-they-stick-with-office dept.

Elektroschock writes "For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council's 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council's study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, 'I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.' Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution."

Comment Re:Acid2 already looks fine in Fx 3.0.10 (Score 1) 282

by AberBeta on Friday May 01, 2009 @05:26AM (#27784657) Attached to: Firefox Beta Scores 93 On Acid3 Test

NoScript blocks more than just scripts, it will block data: URLs, iframes, etc.
I think you'll find the eyes are data: URLS.

Comment Re:Desktop Holder (Score 1) 259

by AberBeta on Thursday January 22, 2009 @08:47PM (#26568751) Attached to: Second Prototype of the $200 Open Source Tablet

If it's a contraction you want, it'd be Lego's, right?

Comment Re:FINALLY !!! (Score 1) 62

by AberBeta on Friday January 09, 2009 @11:42AM (#26387009) Attached to: ESA Embraces Open Source With New SAR Toolbox

That was NASA you insensitive clod!

Steam Cloud Launches This Week 69

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 04, 2008 @04:31AM from the names-that-are-puns dept.

Valve announced yesterday that their extension of Steam, called Steam Cloud, will launch later this week with the Left 4 Dead demo. Steam Cloud is "a set of services for Steam that stores application data online and allows user experiences to be consistent from any PC." We discussed an early announcement for it back in May. Valve adds that "Steam Cloud will be available to all publishers and developers using Steam, free of charge, and Valve will add Cloud support to its back catalog of Steam games. Cloud services are compatible with games purchased via Steam, at retail, and other digital outlets."

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