podperson - Slashdot User

Comment Re:An F-15 is much bigger than a P-51. OMG BLOAT! (Score 1) 452

by podperson on Thursday October 22, 2009 @05:19PM (#29840263) Attached to: Engineers Tell How Feedback Shaped Windows 7

I don't think hardware has reached a "good enough" point so much as we don't see new machines that stomp our old machines eighteen months after we buy them. My three year old Macbook Pro benchmarks around 80% as fast as the current model (or similarly high-end PCs). No big incentive to replace it.

Comment Re:Let's give the devil his due (Score 1) 452

by podperson on Thursday October 22, 2009 @05:15PM (#29840225) Attached to: Engineers Tell How Feedback Shaped Windows 7

I've rebooted XP64 about four times in the last week ... all security patches.

Comment Re:He's also right (Score 1) 502

by podperson on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @11:23AM (#28095665) Attached to: World's "Fastest" Small Web Server Released, Based On LISP

If you have equal skill in optimization, but not necessarily equal time to spend optimizing.

Surely the effort required to optimize a program should factor in. Here, C may not fare so well.

BBC's Open Player Claims Not Followed Through 311

Posted by timothy on Friday August 15, 2008 @02:03AM from the working-on-it-working-on-it dept.

ruphus13 writes "BBC's iPlayer was originally built on Microsoft's DRM-protected technology, and has never really been liked by folks like the FSF. The BBC is trying to play nice, though, recently claiming, 'the BBC has always been a strong advocate and driver of open industry standards. Without these standards, TV and radio broadcasting would simply not function. I believe that the time has come for the BBC to start adopting open standards such as H.264 and AAC for our audio and video services on the web.' This article argues that actions speak louder than words, and this is where the BBC falls short. 'The fact that both AAC and H.264 are encumbered with patent licenses that make their distribution under free licenses problematic flies in the face of this definition. It's good to see a major organization like the BBC switching from closely held secretive codecs to more widespread and documented ones. But it would be even better to see them throw their considerable weight behind some truly open formats.'"

Strange Ubuntu/Vista Compatibility Bug, Solved 140

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 14, 2008 @09:36PM from the love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together dept.

Walter Vos writes "Since I've been running Vista and Ubuntu in dual boot with a shared FAT32 partition for my personal folders, I've been seeing some strange compatibility issues between these two operating systems. Somehow Vista locks the folders on the FAT32 partition that are used for folders like Documents, Downloads, etc. A blogpost I wrote gives a detailed description of the problem and a fix for it."

Using Photographs To Enhance Videos 102

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 14, 2008 @06:40PM from the ready-for-my-closeup dept.

seussman71 writes with a link to some very interesting research out of the University of Washington that employs "a method of using high quality photographs to enhance a video taken of the same subject. The project page gives a good overview of what they are doing and the video on the page gives some really nice examples of how their technology works. Hopefully someone can take the technology and run with it, but one thing's for sure: this could make amateur video-making look even better than it does now." And if adding mustaches would improve your opinion of the people in amateur videos, check out the unwrap-mosaics technique from Microsoft Research.

What Will Linux Be Capable Of, 3 Years Down the Road? 679

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 14, 2008 @05:47PM from the synthesizing-new-species-on-other-planets dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a prediction of the open-source future, InfoWeek speculates on What Linux Will Look Like In 2012. The most outlandish scenario foresees Linux forsaking its free usage model to embrace more paid distros where you get free Linux along with (much-needed) licenses to use patent-restricted codecs. Also predicted is an advance for the desktop based on — surprise — good acceptance for KDE 4. Finally, Linux is seen as making its biggest imprint not on the PC, but on mobile devices, eventually powering 40 million smartphones and netbooks. Do you agree? And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?"

Submission + - RIAA protests Oregon AG discovery request (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Thursday December 13, 2007 @05:29PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics, in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. See The Oregonian, December 1, 2007 ("UO suspects music industry of spying") and p2pnet, November 29, 2007 ("RIAA may be spying on students: Oregon AG"). Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf)"

RIAA Says Accused Students Are Settling 345

Posted by kdawson on Sunday March 25, 2007 @09:34PM from the cheap-at-half-the-price dept.

As we've been reporting, the RIAA has been offering settlements to college students suspected of sharing music online. Reader Weather Storm notes that more than a quarter of the alleged music pirates have accepted the RIAA's offer. Quoting: "...an attorney Ohio University arranged to meet with its students... said $3,000 is the standard settlement offer, though cases have settled for as much as $5,000."

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