Firefox 3.5 beta 4 released – benchmarked
Posted by Srinath
The next release of the immensely popular Firefox was initially versioned as FF 3.1, and now re badged as 3.5. After 3.1 beta 3, now comes 3.5 beta 4 and here is a glimpse of the performance numbers. Tests run on a macbook with 2.4ghz core2duo, 2gb ram and Mac OS X 10.5.6. All addons were disabled.
So long Geocities
Posted by Srinath
For those who were fortunate enough to have Internet access in the 90's here is saddening news indeed - one of the earliest social networking site, geocities has finally shutdown. Yahoo has pulled the plug on the legendary site which allowed users to connect with others with the same taste on various topics, and create their own pages. It was the earliest free host if you will.
Yahoo bought the company near the peak of the dotcom bubble for more than $3 billion, which, along with the rise of alternative services, quickly spelled the end of GeoCities’ prominence. Today, it appears that the end of GeoCities is being made official, as Yahoo has closed the service to new accounts and posted an FAQ with some details as to how the shutdown will go.
Wikipedia page here
Adios.
Petition Against Airtel India unFair Usage Policy
Posted by Srinath
As many would know, Airtel has implemented their so called Fair Usage Policy(FUP) that puts sever limits on the data transfer on unlimited connections. This, coming from the most reputed ISP in India has literally shocked many users, including me. I have sworn by Airtel for their quality of service for 3 and half years, and happily recommended it to various other friends/relatives.
But this FUP puts an end to all the goodwill they created. Not only is it outright cheating, it also defeats the very point of unlimited connections. And in a country like India where internet is slowly expanding, it is a major roadblock.
To view the complete details of the policy, visit this page
To view the draft of an online petition, created by members of http://broadbandforum.in, visit this page
Sign the online petition against the policy here
$10 laptop from India – a sci-fi story?
Posted by Srinath
You've read it everywhere, in everyplace. Supposedly sporting 2gb of ram, and is wi-fi enabled. That's pretty much all the information that is being given out right now. Touted as India's response to the OLPC plan, it being developed by the Human Resource Ministry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and Indian Institute of Science. It is meant strictly for students, and will be distributed directly by the government through schools, and colleges.
The question is - how true is the cost projection? I'm a big fan of such initiatives, but common sense prevails and its pretty damn clear that this is unrealistic. MIT's OLPC was projected at about $100, but finally ended up being priced upto $190. In short, I believe the Indian government is trying to pull off another cheap publicity stunt. Unless the exchange rate of the US Dollar goes upto Rs.1ooo, I don't see this happening.
But then again, the initiative will be heavily subsidised by the government to make it as cheap as possible. But will they take upto 90% of the price remains to be seen. I'm sure in the current financial position, they simply cannot and will not do so.
Until further details - this simply isn't going to happen.
UPDATE: Yea, its a total flop show. The device is actually some sort of external storage, not a laptop. More here