tciny - Slashdot User

Microsoft May Add Eavesdropping To Skype 218

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 27, 2011 @12:21PM from the i-heard-that dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a Microsoft patent application that reaches back to December 2009 and describes 'recording agents' to legally intercept VoIP phone calls. The 'Legal Intercept' patent application is one of Microsoft's more elaborate and detailed patent papers, which is comprehensive enough to make you think twice about the use of VoIP audio and video communications. The document provides Microsoft's idea about the nature, positioning and feature set of recording agents that silently record the communication between two or more parties."

Comment I believe it's called (Score 1) 295

by tciny on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:07PM (#31040846) Attached to: DARPA Aims for Synthetic Life With a Kill Switch

"retire", not "kill".

Comment Sooo, essentially... (Score 2, Informative) 211

by tciny on Sunday January 10, 2010 @10:25AM (#30714376) Attached to: The FBI Wants To Know About Your IT Skills

... the Stasi of the IT world or am I misreading this? The wording seems intentionally diffuse.

Microsoft Wants To Participate In SVG Development 292

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @03:37PM from the speak-friend-and-enter dept.

rossendryv writes "After many years of fighting against the standard, Microsoft announced they are joining the WC3's SVG working group to help with the development of SVG. 'We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform,' said Patrick Dengler, senior program manager on Microsoft's Internet Explorer team in a blog post."

Comment Re:Consoles (Score 1) 536

by tciny on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @07:28PM (#30305028) Attached to: Best PC DVR Software, For Any Platform?

That very much depends on where you live. Over here in Europe all you need is PlayTV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayTV) to record live TV and do all the usual stuff you'd expect from a DVR. True, it doesn't let you run your own applications, but then again I'm struggling to come up with anything I'd want to run on a media centre other than - well - media players.

Comment Consoles (Score 1) 536

by tciny on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @06:56PM (#30304530) Attached to: Best PC DVR Software, For Any Platform?

Why isn't anyone mentioning the consoles? Both the 360 and PS3 offer Netflix streaming... The PS3 is a rather capable media player overall... DVD/BluRay, MPEG via DLNA, Netflix, PSN video store, recognises external USB storage so you can play your movies off it etc.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 2, Informative) 153

by tciny on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @08:17PM (#26910227) Attached to: 5 Powerline Networking Devices Reviewed

I use one of these at home and while it's not the best pick for moving large amounts of data between machines, it's a good solution for sharing an internet connection without having to run wires all the way around the flat. I tried WiFi, but it's an old victorian house in central London and something seems to cause massive interference. Not persistently, but every odd minute I'd lose the connection to the router. The bottom line being: I don't think anyone is trying to argue that these things are going to replace wires or WiFi for the common case. There are situations - like mine - though where they're a very convenient solution.

T-Mobile G1 Rooted 246

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 05, 2008 @11:35AM from the that-didn't-take-long dept.

An anonymous reader writes "T-Mobile's G1 phone, the first commercially available Android based phone, has been rooted. The exploit is extremely simple to execute, just requiring you to run telnetd from a terminal on the phone, and then connecting to the phone via telnet."

Microsoft Announces Windows Azure, Cloud-Based OS 419

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 27, 2008 @09:24PM from the do-you-feel-azure-after-use dept.

snydeq writes "Microsoft today introduced Windows Azure, its operating system for the cloud. The OS serves as the underlying foundation of the Azure Services Platform to help developers build apps that span from the cloud to the datacenter, to PCs, the Web, and phones. Cloud-based developer capabilities are combined with storage, computational, and network infrastructure services, which are hosted on servers within Microsoft's global data center network."

Google Launches Lively, an Avatar Based 3D World 358

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 09, 2008 @08:38AM from the get-a-first-life dept.

no.good.at.coding writes "Google has launched a Windows-only, in-browser (you need to install a client first, though) 3D avatar world — Lively — that you can embed in websites and use to interact with other people. It's not as expansive as Second Life yet, but expect things to get better."

Excavations at Stonehenge May Answer Questions 160

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 31, 2008 @11:22PM from the not-the-most-up-beat-tourist-attraction dept.

Smivs writes "The BBC are getting set to fund a dig at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. The two-week dig will try to establish, once and for all, some precise dating for the creation of the monument. An article from the BBC news website explains how the dig will investigate the significance of the smaller bluestones that stand inside the giant sarsen pillars. 'Researchers believe these rocks, brought all the way from Wales, hold the secret to the real purpose of Stonehenge as a place of healing. The researchers leading the project are two of the UK's leading Stonehenge experts — Professor Tim Darvill, of the University of Bournemouth, and Professor Geoff Wainwright, of the Society of Antiquaries. They are convinced that the dominating feature on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire was akin to a "Neolithic Lourdes" — a place where people went on a pilgrimage to get cured. Modern techniques have established that many of these people had clearly traveled huge distances to get to south-west England, suggesting they were seeking supernatural help for their ills.'"

Ray Tracing To Debut in DirectX 11 219

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 31, 2008 @11:01AM from the directx-11-is-confusing-to-my-brain dept.

crazyeyes writes "This is breaking news. Microsoft has not only decided to support ray tracing in DirectX 11, but they will also be basing it on Intel's x86 ray-tracing technology and get this ... it will be out by the end of the year! In this article, we will examine what ray tracing is all about and why it would be superior to the current raster-based technology. As for performance, well, let Intel dazzle you with some numbers. Here's a quote from the article: 'You need not worry about your old raster-based DirectX 10 or older games or graphics cards. DirectX 11 will continue to support rasterization. It just includes support for ray-tracing as well. There will be two DirectX 11 modes, based on support by the application and the hardware.'"

Comment Re:On-site tech support is key. (Score 1) 416

by tciny on Friday December 28, 2007 @08:38PM (#21844746) Attached to: Apple Stores Demonstrate That Retail Still Lives

Working 2 minutes from Apples Regent Street (London) store and having had a few problems with my MacBook I can say that Apple is no better than any of the other retailers if not worse.
You'll need to get yourself an appointment first. No problem if you paid the extra 200 pounds for pro care; you can book up to 14 days in advance. If you're sane however, you can only make bookings for the same day on their website. I stayed awake til midnight a couple of times before I got fed up and realized that there's absolutely no point in trying.
I thought the idea was at some point: Walk into the store, make an appointment, come back later; but that's definitely not the case.

I used to have a dreadful Dell notebook, and while the thing itself was rubbish, the service was a lot better than what I experienced with Apple.

First User-Created UTIII Mod Created for PS3 28

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday December 26, 2007 @02:35PM from the i'll-cook-you dept.

For the time being, mod creators have to jump through an official 'hoop' with Epic games to see their content made available to Unreal Tournament III PS3 players (something Tycho lambasts Epic for at Penny Arcade). Just the same, content is beginning to trickle out, and Eurogamer has the word that DM-Shrine is now available for download for holiday-bored PS3 owners. "Epic didn't make this map. Thomas did and he already released it for PC users of UT3. We didn't do any editing or changes to it. All we did was bring it into the editor and "cook" it into the proper format for the PlayStation 3 and tested it to make sure it ran properly and was good fun. We're waiting on some paperwork from Sony that will allow us to release an editor update so mod creators can do this cook process for themselves. We expect to have that very soon."

Transformers Full Theatrical Trailer Available 352

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday May 18, 2007 @02:25AM from the more-than-meets-the-eye dept.

roelbj writes "The full trailer for Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers movie is now finally available on Yahoo. Unlike the teaser trailers that have only hinted at what the final effects would deliver, we can at long last get a much better feeling for how the live-action CGI Transformers will look."

Slashdot Top Deals