More than simple IT news!
Next week will see the formal launch of the Weightless radio protocol, designed for use in the soon-to-be-available white space frequencies. But can a protocol without weight really do it all?
Next Friday (30 September), all the major companies in the UK white space business will be gathered in Cambridge to talk about which protocol should fill the airwaves where television isn’t.
A new version number for a browser release may not be quite as major as it used to be, but Mozilla is promising a few fairly big improvements with the just-released Firefox 7. The biggest of those are all in the performance department, including “significantly” reduced memory usage (up to 50 percent less in some cases), and a new version of the hardware-accelerated Canvas that promises to speed up HTML5 sites. Also making its debut is a new Telemetry feature that lets users anonymously provide browser performance data to Mozilla if they choose to opt-in. Hit the links below for the complete rundown and download link. Read more…
The co-chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-TK), sent a letter Tuesday to the Federal Trade Commission seeking answers about the “supercookies” described in an August Wall Street Journal article.
The article described tracking technologies found on websites including MSN.com and Hulu.com that were capable of re-creating users’ profiles after people deleted regular cookies.
“We believe this new business practice raises serious privacy concerns and is unacceptable,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter. They ask
Samsung seems to have got their strategy down pat in the world of smartphones theyre doing gangbusters where the Android scene is concerned, selling more than 10 million units of the Samsung Galaxy S2 to date despite being launched rather recently, and while their own set of bada-powered phones arent doing too hot, Samsung still finds the time to support another operating system Windows Phone, where the latest model to be announced would be the Samsung Omnia W that will be the first Samsung device that runs on Windows Phone Mango, the latest version of Microsofts mobile operating system.
As with most of the other high end phones from Samsung these days, your eyes will be treated to quite the performance thanks to a vivid Super AMOLED display and overall industrial design, not to mention enjoying enriched content and a social communication experience that is enabled by People Hub.
Eureka’s second to last season has come to a twisty close.
We’ve got another Eureka cliffhanger, but at least we don’t have to worry about the alternate timeline subplot anymore.
The Astraeus mission has been a much more fun subplot, and allowed for more incremental and interesting character development, which really tested and strengthened the relationships among the characters.
The first half of the season was devoted to the characters feeling out of their element, after having been displaced by a time-travel accident, which created a lot of plot holes and awkward situations. Plus, every episode felt very emo, as the characters refused to try to fit in.
After the mid-season break, this continued for a time, but soon the show moved on, rather abruptly to the preparation for the mission to Titan.
It was so abrupt it was almost jarring. In one episode the characters were fretting over their situation and the potential discovery of their secrets, and then in the next, Felicia Day was there, and everyone totally forgot about that problem. The only reason that abruptness did not disrupt the verisimilitude of the story is because that old subplot was getting so stale that it was good to see it go.
Felicia Day is there to play the same character she almost always plays, the awkward and pretty, nerdy girl, but this does not diminish her performance, nor her appeal. The ‘science’ of the show hasn’t gotten any more realistic in the last few episodes, but that’s part of the charm of the show – like the two-hour DNA tests and ‘digital enhancement’ of photos on CSI, Eureka just wouldn’t be the same without the made-up science stuff (although I did roll my eyes extra hard every time they talked about their FTL drive).
As for the season ending cliffhanger, this is one of the best that this show has had. I knew of course that there would be a cliffhanger to carry us into the next season, but the nature of this one actually took me off guard, and was played so spectacularly by all involved. The drama is properly built, and the next season is heavily anticipated.
The next season of Eureka begins next spring, and will be the final season of the show, followed only by a special episode which will come later to tie up all the loose ends, since the writers originally thought they were getting another whole season.