GarfBond - Slashdot User

Firefox 4.0 Beta Candidate Available 366

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @11:08AM from the beta-burning-fox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla quietly posted the first beta build of its Firefox 4 browser early this morning. The 'Chromified' browser leaves a solid first impression with a few minor hiccups, but no surprises. If you have been using a previous version of Firefox 3.7, which now officially becomes Firefox 4.0, you should already feel comfortable with this new version. Mozilla has not posted detailed release notes yet, but there seem to be no major changes from Firefox 3.7a6-pre, with the exception that the browser is running more smoothly and with fewer crashes." Update: 06/29 18:40 GMT by S : Mozilla's Asa Dotzler writes, "Mozilla has not shipped Firefox 4 beta yet. We are in the process of making and testing the final set of changes, but we're not quite there yet." Changed headline to reflect this.

China Begins Monitoring Billions of Text Messages 178

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 16, 2010 @01:16PM from the that-would-be-a-terrible-job dept.

eldavojohn writes "The Telegraph is reporting that China has begun monitoring 'billions of text messages' in order to increase censorship. However, a People's Daily article claims they only monitor users who have been reported, and only shut down their message service if the complaints are true. Anything considered pornographic will require the user to bring a letter of guarantee to the local public security bureau promising to never again send such messages before service can be reactivated."

Apple Counter-Sues Nokia Over Patents 137

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 11, 2009 @04:40PM from the fight-fire-with-more-lawyers dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "About two months ago Nokia sued Apple for infringing Nokia patents in its iPhone. The 10 patents in the lawsuit, filed in the US state of Delaware, relate to technologies fundamental for devices using GSM, UMTS and/or local area network (LAN) standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. In the latest development to the case, Apple said Friday that it had filed its own suit against Nokia, countering Nokia's claims of patent infringement with its own."

Neanderthals "Had Sex" With Modern Man 536

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday October 27, 2009 @06:44PM from the strange-bedfellows dept.

According to Professor Svante Paabo, director of genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Neanderthals and modern humans had sex across the species barrier. The professor has been using DNA retrieved from fossils to piece together the entire Neanderthal genome, and plans on publishing his findings soon. He recently told a conference that he was sure the two species had had sex, but still had questions as to how "productive" the relations had been. "What I'm really interested in is, did we have children back then and did those children contribute to our variation today?" he said. "I'm sure that they had sex, but did it give offspring that contributed to us? We will be able to answer quite rigorously with the new [Neanderthal genome] sequence." What remains a mystery is what Paleolithic brewery provided the catalyst for these stone age hook-ups.

Xbox 360 Update Will Lock Out Unauthorized Storage 435

Posted by timothy on Monday October 19, 2009 @03:20PM from the don't-embrace-this-time dept.

itwbennett writes "The other shoe has dropped on the upcoming preview program for the next Xbox 360 update and it's going to cost you. In a post on the Major Nelson blog, Xbox's Larry Hryb reveals that this next update will lock-out unauthorized storage devices. As blogger Peter Smith reminds us, 'the Xbox 360 comes in two (currently) SKUs, one with a hard drive, and one without. The drive-less Xbox 360 Arcade unit is cheap ($199) but to realistically use it, you'll need to buy a "Memory Unit" (basically a proprietary USB stick) or an Xbox hard drive.... A 512 MB Microsoft branded Memory Unit goes for $29.99 at BestBuy.com. A 2 GB third party Memory Unit from Datel goes for $39.99, and the Datel unit is expandable using microSD cards....If you bought the Datel and it's full of data, between now and the launch of the new update you're going to have to run out and buy 4 of the Microsoft units at $29.99 each, or more likely, pick up the $99.99 60GB Live Starter Pack for Xbox 360.'"

Comment Re:Covered By Twenty Percent of the Bill of Rights (Score 1) 780

by GarfBond on Tuesday May 05, 2009 @03:46PM (#27837333) Attached to: Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon

I thought it was meant to be funny. Shame to see it marked as "insightful."

Comment Re:Rehash... (Score 1) 858

by GarfBond on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @02:55PM (#27406677) Attached to: Mac Tax, Dell Tax, HP Tax

Dell XPS M1730:
Weight: Starting at 10.6 lbs10 (4.81 kg)
Width: 16.0" (406 mm)
Height: 2.00" (50.7 mm)
Depth: 11.9" (302.6 mm)

17" MacBook Pro
Height:
0.98 inch (2.50 cm)
Width:
15.47 inches (39.3 cm)
Depth:
10.51 inches (26.7 cm)
Weight:
6.6 pounds (2.99 kg)1

Note how the 17" MBP is smaller in every single dimension. In your comparison, you made a huge compromise, and that was on the laptop's size. You can argue whether that's worth $1200, but it probably isn't worth $0.

Comment Hello Captain Obvious (Score 5, Interesting) 504

by GarfBond on Wednesday January 28, 2009 @09:41PM (#26648647) Attached to: Photog Rob Galbraith Rates MacBook Pro Display "Not Acceptable"

Par for the course on Slashdot, but basically the entire basis of his gripe is the glossy screen, hence the complaint about viewing angles.

Then there's this gem:

It's important to remember that, even though the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn't keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.

From earlier:

Sum it up, and what you have is a very good 15.4 inch (diagonal), 1440 x 900 pixel screen. Good, that is, for a laptop. Its characteristics are very similar to the MacBook Pro 15 inch we wrote about in July 2007, and others we've set up since. The display has some colour quirks that put it one or two steps below a good desktop display, and it's important to maintain a consistent, front-and-centre viewing angle, but as with the previous generation of this Apple laptop, display quality is absolutely acceptable and usable for image assessment and simple Photoshop edits in the field, as long as you're aware of the display's particular blend of strengths and weaknesses.

Basically, if you hate glossy screens, and it would appear these individuals do, the glossy can be a deal-breaker. Which anyone with half a brain could have told you without the trollish tone

FWIW, the 17-inch MBP comes with a matte-screen option. Time will tell if such an option trickles back down to the 15".

Comment Re:They're insane. (Score 1) 446

by GarfBond on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @01:09PM (#25723455) Attached to: Vital Parts of Games As DLC?

Really? Your only option to something you don't like is "pirate often?" How about not getting the game?

They don't owe you the game. You don't owe them your money. If you truly believed in voting with your dollars, free market etc., then you wouldn't even give them the satisfaction of a +1 piracy statistic.

Taking a very principled stand and then proceeding to just pirate the game because you want it that badly is just cowardice and selfishness. Remember, video games are not a need and you don't *have* to have it.

The X300 Could Usher in a New Generation of ThinkPads 132

Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 02, 2008 @04:25PM from the now-i-want-one dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The ThinkPad has long been a favorite of IT departments everywhere and is the preferred notebook for legions of no-nonsense users. As times have progressed the ThinkPad has improved but the X300 marks the most significant change in its design since the butterfly keyboard. While we've already discussed a few leaked specs, official news of big changes like LED-backlighting (the first on a ThinkPad) and a widescreen display accompany a number of important but smaller design tweaks. Current thinking is that these changes indicate that the X300 is the first step in a series of larger changes to the ThinkPad. The notebook has already received a number of favorable reviews, but the other changes - the ones that will ultimately trickle down to the rest of the ThinkPad line - are perhaps more interesting than this specific $2500+ notebook."

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