Cody Taylor

An anonymous reader writes “Professional digital photographer and website publisher Rob Galbraith has performed both objective and subjective tests on laptop displays, finding that the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are ‘deep into the not acceptable category’ when used in ambient light environments. The Apple notebook came in dead last for color accuracy, and second to last in viewing angles (besting only the Dell Mini 9). He concludes: ‘Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds.'”

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imamac writes “It appears Cox Communications is the next in line for throttling internet traffic. But it’s not throttling of course; Cox’s euphemism is ‘congestion management.’ From Cox’s explanation: ‘In February, Cox will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on our high-speed Internet network in our Kansas and Arkansas markets. During the occasional times the network is congested, this new technology automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic — such as web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming — moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily…’ Sounds like throttling to me.”

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Today we’ll show you an all-inclusive method that can grab songs from most, if not all, websites. The drawback? No automatic naming, the files are in FLV format rather than MP3, and you’ll have to drag them out of the cache yourself. However, user input is minimal, especially on playlist type websites.

Here’s a viral Web site where people can send anonymous messages to the bosses and co-workers who drive them crazy.

Hugh Pickens writes “For years, the computer industry has made steady progress by following Moore’s law, derived from an observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore that the amount of computing power available at a particular price doubles every 18 months. The Economist reports however that in the midst of a recession, many companies would now prefer that computers get cheaper rather than more powerful or by applying the flip side of Moore’s law do the same for less. A good example of this is virtualisation: using software to divide up a single server computer so that it can do the work of several, and is cheaper to run. Another example of ‘good enough’ computing is supplying ‘software as a service,’ via the web, as done by Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Google, sacrificing the bells and whistles that are offered by conventional software that hardly anyone uses anyway. Even Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon: the next version of Windows is intended to do the same as the last version, Vista, but to run faster and use fewer resources. If so, it will be the first version of Windows that makes computers run faster than the previous version. That could be bad news for computer-makers, since users will be less inclined to upgrade only proving that Moore’s law has not been repealed, but that more people are taking the dividend it provides in cash, rather than processor cycles.”

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nandemoari writes “After flirting with open source development for some time, Microsoft has made another step towards real commitment with the release of source code for Web Sandbox, a program used to test and secure web site content. The Sandbox source code will be released under the Apache 2.0 license, an open source license agreement allowing the content creator to maintain copyright while permitting others to develop the product for their own use. Microsoft has gradually been increasing their involvement with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) since 2008 when they agreed to fund development of certain ASF initiatives.”

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Virgin America is suing a company that allegedly created a phony ad, making it look like Virgin was trying to profit from the US Airways crash. Virgin claims Adrants Publishing posted an ad on its website, Adrants.com, showing a photo of the jet planted in the Hudson River, with the caption, “The Hudson Crash: Just One More Reason to Fly Virgin.”

The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, weighs in on Google Knol, the potential Wikipedia killer which recently passed the 100,000 article mark.

How much private information is available about you in cyberspace? Social Security numbers are just the beginning. She had me at hello … or just about. Our conversation had barely started when privacy activist Betty Ostergren interrupted me to say that she had found my full name, address, Social Security number and a digital image of my signature