Latest Front Page News

The Average Webpage Is Now the Size of the Original Doom

Submitted by: Odio @ 06:43 PM | Saturday, April 23, 2016 | (url: http://www.wired....)

Today the average webpage is about the same size, data-wise, as the classic computer game Doom, according to software engineer Ronan Cremin.

A compressed copy of the installer for the shareware version of Doom takes up about 2.39MB of space. Todays average webpage, meanwhile, requires users to download about 2.3MB worth of data, according to HTTP Archive, a site that tracks website performance and the technologies they use.

Thats not totally analogous comparison, but it does illustrate the webs growing obesity problem. Recall that Doom is a multi-level first person shooter that ships with an advanced 3D rendering engine and multiple levels, each comprised of maps, sprites, and sound effects, Cremin writes on MobiForge, a site for mobile web developers. By comparison, 2016s web struggles to deliver a page of web content in the same size.
Many sites are even larger than the average. WIREDs homepage is about 7.8MB, which would take six 1.44MB floppy disks to store. Individual pages are a bit lighterour story on giving up JavaScript for a week weighs in at just 3MBbut are still big enough to require multiple disks.

So how did we get here? As internet connections have gotten faster, publishers and developers worry less about efficiency. Thats led to a growing number of analytics scripts, animated ads, and high-resolution photographs. Each individual script may be small, but eventually they add up, slowing down page loads not just by adding bulk but by increasing the number of connections required to load a page.

Apart from being inefficientand potentially violating users privacythis massive growth in page size could wind up costing users money. Wireless internet providers have been phasing out unlimited data plans for years, and even unlimited plans tend to throttle speeds after users hit a certain download limit. Fixed line internet providers like Comcast are also imposing bandwidth limits, which means that one day soon every megabyte might count.

Category: Software | 7 Comments
Tags: doom

There's hope for Ender yet!

Submitted by: Odio @ 08:21 PM | Monday, March 14, 2016 | (url: http://medicalxpr...)

Today, there is only one class of antiviral medicines against herpesvirusesa family of viruses that cause mononucleosis, herpes, and shingles, among other illnesses - meaning options for treating these infections are limited. If viruses become resistant to these frontline treatments, a growing problem particularly in clinical settings, there are no alternative drugs to serve as backup.
In a search for new drugs to treat viral infections, scientists from the University of Utah School of Medicine found that a medicine routinely used to treat heart failure, spironolactone, has an unexpected ability to block infection by Epstein Barr virus (EBV), a herpesvirus that causes mono and is associated with several human cancers. They find that the drug's antiviral properties stem from its ability to block a key step in viral infection that is common to all herpesviruses. Spironolactone's target is distinct from that of existing drugs, revealing that it could be developed into a new class of anti-herpesvirus drug.
"It's remarkable that a drug we have used safely in the clinic for over 50 years is also an effective EBV inhibitor," says senior author Sankar Swaminathan, M.D., chief of infections disease at University of Utah Health Care and professor of internal medicine. "It goes to show how basic research can reveal things we would never have found otherwise." In collaboration with research assistant professor of internal medicine Dinesh Virma, Ph.D., and Jacob Thompson, he published the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


You can now delete unwanted games from your steam library. Shhh!

Submitted by: Mooley @ 07:30 PM | Friday, December 4, 2015 | (url: http://m.ign.com/...)

Valve will now allow users to delete games from their Steam library. Valve did not announce this feature publicly, but NeoGAF user Enter the Dragon Punch found the option on Steam's support page.

tl;dr


Demonoid is back up

Submitted by: Odio @ 11:49 PM | Friday, May 16, 2014 | (url: http://www.demono...)

Evidently the popular bittorrent site has been back online since the end of March 2014. It's running the original database, so all the user information is still there.




http://www.demonoid.ph


US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus

Submitted by: SINep @ 02:27 AM | Saturday, April 17, 2010 | (url: http://arstechnic...)

We've all seen the studies trumpeting massive losses to the US economy from piracy. One famous figure, used literally for decades by rightsholders and the government, said that 750,000 jobs and up to $250 billion a year could be lost in the US economy thanks to IP infringement. A couple years ago, we thoroughly debunked that figure. For years, Business Software Alliance reports on software piracy assumed that each illicit copy was a lost sale. And the MPAA's own commissioned study on movie piracy turned out to overstate collegiate downloading by a factor of three.

Can we trust any of these claims about piracy?

The US doesn't think so. In a new report out yesterday, the government's own internal watchdog took a close look at "efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods." After examining all the data and consulting with numerous experts inside and outside of government, the Government Accountability Office concluded (PDF) that it is "difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."

More specific studies that focus only on single industries don't fare much better because "the illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult." And when it comes time to choose a substitution rate (how much of the infringing activity should be counted as a lost sale), we're left only with "assumptions... which can have enormous impacts on the resulting estimates."

The GAO then went on to slam three particular reports often linked to the government. They're all commonly cited, they're all bogus, and at least one is still being used officially.

Category: Software | 31 Comments
Tags: piracy

Microsoft: Windows 7 sales exceed Vista sales by 234%

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 07:36 PM | Thursday, November 5, 2009 | (url: http://windowstea...)

It has been quite amazing to watch the global excitement build around Windows 7, especially during a tough economic climate. It was just a few short weeks ago that we learned about Windows 7 outselling the UK's "own" Harry Potter. In Japan, anxious PC users waited in line to be one of the first to get their hands on Windows 7. And just today, according to the NPD groups' weekly tracking service, Windows 7 software unit sales in the U.S. increased 234% over Windows Vista's first few days of sales. "A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season," said Stephen Baker at NPD.


Microsoft Security Essentials Released

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 02:52 PM | Tuesday, September 29, 2009 | (url: http://www.micros...)

Microsoft's new antimalware solution, Microsoft Security Essentials, is now available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Category: Software | 48 Comments
Tags: free microsoft

Windows 7 "Family Pack" price revealed

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 12:05 PM | Friday, July 10, 2009 | (url: http://www.comput...)

Microsoft Corp. will price a multi-license "family pack" for Windows 7 at $149.99, according to at least one online retailer that has posted pricing details prematurely.

Fadfusion.com, a Missouri-based online seller of computers, electronics and office supplies, lists something called "W7 Family Pack - Home Prem Upg" on its site for $138.99, an $11 discount from the $149.99 it claims is the package's suggested retail price.

The software, which will purportedly let users upgrade as many as three PCs in a single household to Windows 7 Home Premium, is listed as "discontinued" by Fadfusion.

At $149.99, the Family Pack would save a buyer $210 over three separate Home Premium Upgrades.


Firefox 3.5 is Out

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 10:10 AM | Tuesday, June 30, 2009 | (url: http://www.mozill...)

Firefox 3 is faster, smarter and most importantly much safer than your version. Download it today!

Category: Software | 0 Comments
Tags: firefox

Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) Free Download

Submitted by: XTasy @ 12:57 AM | Tuesday, May 5, 2009 | (url: http://windowstea...)

Microsoft is offering a free download of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). Use Internet Explorer to download it.

This RC will expire on June 1, 2010, but starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours.


IE 8 due for March 20th release

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 08:13 AM | Friday, March 13, 2009 | (url: http://www.neowin...)

Taipei Times reports Microsoft Taiwan has announced during a press meet that Internet Explorer 8 will be released on March 20 in the local Taiwanese version. It was earlier predicted that Microsoft will RTM IE 8 in the week of March 16. Now we can expect the release of Internet Explorer 8 alongside MIX09 on March 19.

The Internet Explorer 8 sessions are now live on the MIX website which also includes the keynote address by Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer team at Microsoft.

As the Taiwanese version is getting released on March 20, we could expect Internet Explorer 8 (English version) being released in MIX09.

For now, the version information of IE 8 in the About screen does not reflect Release Candidate 1 in the recent Windows 7 builds 7048 and 7057


Windows 7 Has Secret 'Off' Switch for Internet Explorer

Submitted by: Jinzo @ 03:23 AM | Monday, March 9, 2009 | (url: http://www.foxnew...)

It appears that you can disable IE in windows now to combat the EU's anti trust againist Microsoft.


Secunia: Firefox buggier, but issued fixes quicker

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 01:37 PM | Friday, March 6, 2009 | (url: http://news.cnet....)

Firefox had 115 reported flaws in 2008, nearly four times as many as every other popular browser, and nearly twice as many as Microsoft and Apple combined.

However, the report found that Mozilla was quicker to patch Firefox's flaws that were disclosed publicly without vendor notification compared with Microsoft. These "zero day" vulnerability disclosures contain information that can be used by attackers to write exploits for the flaw.

Microsoft took 110 days to issue patches for the two most serious flaws, while it took Mozilla an average of 43 days to address its three flaws, Secunia reported. One of the IE vulnerabilities remained open for 294 days in 2008, according to the report.


Microsoft Releases Vista SP2 Release Candidate

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 05:00 PM | Wednesday, February 25, 2009 | (url: http://www.pcmag....)

Microsoft on Wednesday released Service Pack 2 Release Candidate (RC) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

"Starting today, the RC of SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers to test prior to final release," Brandon LeBlanc, a Windows communication manager, wrote in a blog post. "In the very near future, we will be making the RC broadly available for anyone to download and test. You can expect another blog post from me when that happens."

The final SP2 is expected to be released in the second quarter of 2009, he said.
"In addition to all previously released updates, SP2 will contain changes focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards,"


Details on Windows 7 SKUs

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 12:35 PM | Tuesday, February 3, 2009 | (url: http://www.winsup...)

Unlike with Vista, where Microsoft crowded the market with too many mainstream product editions, Windows 7 will ship in just a handful of common-sense product editions. And also unlike with Vista, these product editions are all true supersets of each other, so there are no overlapping feature sets (which is good) and upgrades will be much simpler (which is even better).

"As we moved to Windows 7, we looked back on the key learnings we had with Windows Vista and the conversations we've had with partners and customers," Microsoft senior vice president Bill Veghte told me in a recent briefing. "Everyone was looking for simplicity and clarity. They don't want to compromise capabilities as they stepped up."