Slashdot Mirror

Sky News showed the new plane — which was not carrying passengers at the time — had been sprayed by foam, but there were no signs of fire.

But there is! Scorch marks on the roof in front of the tail section.

Check it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23295115 [bbc video feed]

I assume some people can't access the video, or would prefer not to: http://imgur.com/DSuowjU

Which demonstrates the importance of online activism. While spending Sunday afternoon in my armchair commenting on a Slashdot thread is not going win a lot of admiration (why did you do during the war? why son, I worked my keyboard, that is how I got blogger butt), it does make a difference. Everyone who throws their support for Snowden on these threads, everyone who signed the petition to pardon Snowden, everyone whoever linked to Restore the Fourth is making a difference. It is easy to make fun of online activism, but clearly we are making a difference or our opposition would not spend so much money trying to manipulate us.

Martin's autopsy is publicly available (PDF). Now tell me: in the autopsy report, how many wounds did Martin have at the time of death? What was the cause of the wound(s)? Does this support or refute the assertion that Zimmerman attacked Martin first?

There are also publicly available photos of Zimmerman immediately after the encounter. Given the location of Zimmerman's wounds, does this support or refute the position of the prosecution or the defense? Further, are you aware that strikes to the back of the head are illegal in sport fighting because they carry a risk of serious injury or death?

You can already opt out on 8.1: http://i.imgur.com/UY2RgUo.png

Yeah, I tried that and it mostly worked. Though there are a few issues.

Hopefully implementing Small Icons mode and an Add-ons Bar will be as easy...

Can do the same thing in Windows 8.1: http://i.imgur.com/eJgwVTC.jpg

Have you even used the product you're bashing?

http://i.imgur.com/uhSNk4V.png

.

That is an old screenshot, I don't get paid for these posts and my family and my time is too valuable to me to sit and take the effort to convince Google fangirls on the internet., Interesting to see that so many complain but not a single person has posted a proper screenshot they claim makes it all okay.

Google changed it from this http://cdn.userstyles.org/style_screenshot_thumbnails/58617_after.jpeg to this http://www.ismoip.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screenshot1.png to this http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png to make more money by confusing people, and people like you defend them as if Google can never do any wrong. Sad, really.

A MUCH smaller subset actually wanted the old start menu back. I know I don't. There are elements of the old start menu that I liked, but most of it was a bad idea. Start -> All Programs was a complete disaster -- lets put a hierarchy of everything installed on your computer in a small non-resizable popup menu.

Most users don't use the heirarchal menu very often. They usually either type the first few characters to search, or use one of the recent programs listed. But if you're in one of the instances where you're trying to access a program that you don't use very often, and don't remember the exact name of it, the hierarchical menu is light years beyond the start screen.

For example, take a look at what my Windows 8 start screen looks like. It's an absolute mess, and nearly unusable in my opinion. The Start8 menu that I installed is much easier, quicker, and far more intuitive to use. I suspect that many users feel the same way as I do.

The current Google page, the first is an ad, second is not. http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png

Ok, compare that to my screenshot: http://www.google.com/#output=search&q=mesothelioma

Looks nothing like your image at all. The one ad at the top clearly states "Ads related to mesothelioma" and has a space between it and the rest of the search results that come from page content matching.

I'm tempted to even call your image a fake.

This is definitely preferable to the several walls of floor to ceiling bookshelves that I have currently: http://i.imgur.com/Y8dmMbN.jpg

And for another $30 I could have had a 64gb card, which I suspect could easily hold the entire contents of your typical B&N store (minus videos and audio/picture books).

Wrong, please read my other post first. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3904125&cid=44103749

See these screenshots.

The current Google page, the first is an ad, second is not. http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png

A few years ago http://www.ismoip.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screenshot1.png

Before that http://cdn.userstyles.org/style_screenshot_thumbnails/58617_after.jpeg

Bing may be worse, but comparison to Bing is irrelevant, it's like comparing Walmart and a mom&pop store. The mom&pop store needs to do these evil things to survive, Walmart can treat employees and customers better because they make lots of profit. Also, Google is the one that claims not to "do no evil" on their site, which Microsoft is the very definition of evil and consumer hostile tactics (see Xbox One).

Your second link, in the comments has a solution to the problem presented in the article. If someone has a monitor that only displays 256 colors, and doesn't display my high color picture correctly, that is my fault how? How about creating a solution to the problem, an alternative CSS for Google that can be used on older / crappier monitors, rather than complaining?

That's it guys, no one can complain about any problem on any internet website if it's fixable by CSS or a browser extension, and if the "complainer" hasn't gone around to every internet user's home and installed it.

This is like Monsanto suing farmers for not removing every microscopic seed that got blown over from the next farm by the wind or by animals or insects.

The 400lb gorilla in search having an effective monopoly changed it from this http://cdn.userstyles.org/style_screenshot_thumbnails/58617_after.jpeg to this http://www.ismoip.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screenshot1.png to this http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png to make more money by confusing people, and this is my fault because I haven't created a CSS style to change it(which is extremely trivial even for a beginner web dev)? Wow.

Also, I loved how you totally ignored the fact that it's not just crappy monitors that cause the problem but it has been scientifically proven(see the link i provided in the post) that older people cannot see contrast well.

Now you're going to blame me for not inventing an anti-aging drug to fix the problem. I can see it coming.

http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.pngYou cut off the line right above that clearly says, "Ads related to mesothelioma" with plenty of contrast. There's plenty of problems without making up fake ones, lying jerk.

Google and other ads are specifically designed to look like search results and exploit the fact that older people cannot see contrast of the background as well as younger people. Or even younger people using bad quality or badly calibrated monitors. (Or using Flux).

The contrast on the background is much lower than the federal 508 standard for contrast and I think has changed to over the years to a lighter shade as Google "optimizes" it.

http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png

One is an ad and one is a search result, is there much difference? Given the average quality of monitors, I think those are designed to fool even otherwise sharp eyes.

There is a border on the right of the ads but none on at the bottom. Google must be getting tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from the color change from blue to yellow, the ones shown in the example are about $50 to $100 for each click.

http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/

Guess they employ many behavioral psychologist super PHDs who tweaked the carefully and scientifically calibrated colors on ads and removed all contrast including borders to make many folks not realize where the ads end and the actual results begin. Forget about people going to paid websites and screwing websites that don't charge users that rank well organically because they're good and popular but don't give the Googolplex any money.

"Study:Contrast sensitivity gradually decreases with age"
http://www.eyeworld.org/article.php?sid=818&strict=0&morphologic=0

It's dick-waving, nothing more.

http://i.imgur.com/XH0CoHU.gif

http://imgur.com/lbzhxoE

FTFY.

http://i.imgur.com/eEzQn.jpg

Maybe the guy's cables are patched like this. http://i.imgur.com/jVbuPjTh.jpg

How about one made from a caulking gun? http://imgur.com/a/2PHdj

Rage all you want against the 'terrifying new revelations' about government data collection, this is the INEVITABLE arc of human societies.

I know Toynbee may socio-historically old-fashions, but it seems a never-ending repetitious cycle: humans scrabble their way out of chaos and savagery, build cohesive societies that take care of basic needs freeing their citizenry to think and dream and grow. Ultimately, the weight of a society exceeds its carrying capacity (largely through the people's ignorance of how great they have it compared to the alternatives) and everything collapses in anarchy and violence, until some inspired individuals lead the way back out of chaos again.

But we're social animals (emphasis on the latter). Freedom is HARD; look carefully behind a student's eyes on graduation day, and you'll see a core anxiety "OK WTF do I do NOW with my life?"

(An aside: I believe that this is the core reason that college is perceived to be so necessary to job-hunters today. It's not the commonly-ranted "companies are demanding college degrees for everything" complaint, that's confusing cause/effect. I believe that the comfort-value of a life-on-rails with few meaningful choices has kept people in school longer and longer. It's simple, lazy, expensive procrastination of "real life" for another 4+ years. Faced with a ridiculous excess of applicants with college degrees, wouldn't you as a business likewise begin to demand them if only as a first-tier way to weed out candidates who ostensibly have fewer skills? If you think about it, it's actually contrary to what they should WANT in an employee, and why a thoughtful HR department should consider carefully if they really want degree-holding applicants, if the degree isn't directly pertinent to the job.)

You can see it too if you play a face-to-face roleplaying game with today's teens, they are literally paralyzed with choices, as opposed to the linear games with fixed, obvious options that they're used to from their PC or consoles.

In a couple of moments of startling clarity from an otherwise vapid film:
"Loki: I come with glad tidings of a world made free.
Nick Fury: Free from what?
Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. ...
Loki: Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

They are lines that are supposed to enrage, of course, to light the righteous indignation in freedom-loving Americans (and in fact it's immediately followed by the formulaic 'defense of the lone guy brave enough to stand up' and Capt America's line "You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."

ANYONE who watches that and doesn't immediately recognize the historical, essential truth of Loki's statement hasn't been paying attention.

As artists have a particularly skillful ability to be succint:
http://i.imgur.com/DrlRmZK.jpg
(sfw)

Personally I suspect that freedom on the level of that envisaged by the Founding Fathers is unsustainable, because it demands a broad level of intelligence, education, the leisure to care about things larger than ones' next meal, and the willingness to put in the WORK. Lying in your hammock isn't freedom, it's the reward of freedom.

Either people are generally too indolent to be willing to work for it (think herd of sheep or cattle, happy to merely have food and get milked/sheared once in a while in exchange for perceived comfort & safety - until the farmer needs meat, but that's in the distant future...), or the governments have figured out that the way to ensure their grip on power is to opiate the masses. Either way, the masses are largely happy with it and always have been.

So stop your screaming and shouting. Ecce homo, indeed.

Last week, I had a gaming itch to scratch and I felt like playing the XCOM reboot. It's available for £34.99 on the App Store and I was hesitant to buy it because I wasn't sure how it would run on my Macbook with an integrated graphics. It's always a hassle trying to get a refund for purchased software so I searched online for a demo to get a feel for how it would play. After some searching, I found that the demo was only available for the Window's version.

So I downloaded a torrent of the game.

To my surprise, the game ran well on my Macbook's integrated graphics chip. I spent a couple of hours checking things out, playing through the tutorials and just having fun with the game. I then shut it down, and proceeded to buy the game. screenie

The developers who made the port did themselves no favours by not releasing a demo. The lack of playable demo coupled with the asinine rules governing purchased software (no returns, wtf?) mean they would definitely have lost a sale. However, thanks to the availability of the cracked version I was able to check that the game ran fine on my machine which then led to a purchase.

TL;DR
Torrents help push sales. True story.

Allow me to explain with a graph: http://i.imgur.com/nSD3ofw.gif

Afraid to be proven wrong by an AC? I guess I'll step in and point out said Coward is absolutely right.

In my experience, Impress's biggest problem is that their stock templates are pretty amateurish. Given a good professional template, it can do everything that really is necessary for presestation software to do. Excessive use of the bells and whistles in my mind takes away from a presentation rather than adds anything. Having to endure presentations where a speaker pauses to allow his bullshit aimation to finish is mind numbing.

I disagree with most of what you say. :-)

First, personally I don't care about the templates; I don't use them anyway. Almost to a T, my presentations use graphics and text on a plain black background. Makes things simple, but it has a couple nice properties like the fact that the edges of the screen aren't typically visible.

Second is the utility of animations. I'll be the first to agree that they can be used pretty ridiculously. However, they can also be used very well. For instance, I often find myself trying to illustrate a process, and often showing how things go around can be done with animations. I'd say most of the time an appear/disappear effect suffices (and I will sometimes "animate" that with separate slides), but not always. I've seen a couple of presentations that make fairly heavy use of animations and were rather well done, because they add rather than distract.

Third, there are a lot of other problems with Impress. I don't remember most of the annoyances I had with it, but I can give an example which is what ended my last attempt to use it to make a diagram not for a presentation: terrible block arrows. I consider that to be a basic shape, use it a lot, and it is just broken in Impress. The width of the body is proportional to the width of the entire arrow, which means that (1) two arrows that are different sizes will have different widths and (2) an arrow with a different width and height will look retarded. Compare to PowerPoint. PowerPoint will use the same width of line throughout, which solves (2), and gives you handles via which you can adjust properties like the width of the line and size of the arrowhead, which solves (1). When I was working on that diagram, I spent a few minutes playing around trying to figure out if there was a way to get what I want, and gave up and rebooted into Windows. (I'm sure that the approach is achievable in Impress -- e.g. draw the outline with a tool -- the point is that even something I consider an incredibly basic task is a PITA.)

In my experience, Impress's biggest problem is that their stock templates are pretty amateurish. Given a good professional template, it can do everything that really is necessary for presestation software to do. Excessive use of the bells and whistles in my mind takes away from a presentation rather than adds anything. Having to endure presentations where a speaker pauses to allow his bullshit aimation to finish is mind numbing.

I disagree with most of what you say. :-)

First, personally I don't care about the templates; I don't use them anyway. Almost to a T, my presentations use graphics and text on a plain black background. Makes things simple, but it has a couple nice properties like the fact that the edges of the screen aren't typically visible.

Second is the utility of animations. I'll be the first to agree that they can be used pretty ridiculously. However, they can also be used very well. For instance, I often find myself trying to illustrate a process, and often showing how things go around can be done with animations. I'd say most of the time an appear/disappear effect suffices (and I will sometimes "animate" that with separate slides), but not always. I've seen a couple of presentations that make fairly heavy use of animations and were rather well done, because they add rather than distract.

Third, there are a lot of other problems with Impress. I don't remember most of the annoyances I had with it, but I can give an example which is what ended my last attempt to use it to make a diagram not for a presentation: terrible block arrows. I consider that to be a basic shape, use it a lot, and it is just broken in Impress. The width of the body is proportional to the width of the entire arrow, which means that (1) two arrows that are different sizes will have different widths and (2) an arrow with a different width and height will look retarded. Compare to PowerPoint. PowerPoint will use the same width of line throughout, which solves (2), and gives you handles via which you can adjust properties like the width of the line and size of the arrowhead, which solves (1). When I was working on that diagram, I spent a few minutes playing around trying to figure out if there was a way to get what I want, and gave up and rebooted into Windows. (I'm sure that the approach is achievable in Impress -- e.g. draw the outline with a tool -- the point is that even something I consider an incredibly basic task is a PITA.)

Well, these make great monitors.. somebody has already mentioned the 50" sub-$1500 TV.

I would rather make the case that 4k, while great for PC monitors, are not compelling as consumer TVs. I realize there are charts that demonstrate, scientifically, that 4K is visibly better in a living room, with a large screen, over 1080p, but I don't buy it, at least not for motion video (games and shows). We are reaching the pivot point towards vastly diminishing returns.

I do that by dropping these pictures fro reference:

Pixel Fallacy example 1

Pixel Fallacy 2

The pictures explain as well as anything. I'd love the real estate for computer work, but games and video, not so much (at least, not to replace my 58" 1080p plasma)

Well, these make great monitors.. somebody has already mentioned the 50" sub-$1500 TV.

I would rather make the case that 4k, while great for PC monitors, are not compelling as consumer TVs. I realize there are charts that demonstrate, scientifically, that 4K is visibly better in a living room, with a large screen, over 1080p, but I don't buy it, at least not for motion video (games and shows). We are reaching the pivot point towards vastly diminishing returns.

I do that by dropping these pictures fro reference:

Pixel Fallacy example 1

Pixel Fallacy 2

The pictures explain as well as anything. I'd love the real estate for computer work, but games and video, not so much (at least, not to replace my 58" 1080p plasma)

its already been done and posted in this thread http://imgur.com/gallery/q5awp

It's actually a lot worse, and I say this as someone with no love for gun rights. You'll need a strong stomach for the reason why, though. (I mean it.)

Here's what the view THROUGH google glass looks like as opposed to the Recon which is nothing more than one of these cut in half with a modern set of sensors bolted onto it.

The Y capacitor can leak enough for an uncomfortable tingle on sensitive skin like your bare lap (eg wearing shorts) or the underside of your forearms.

That reminds me of Mr Bones' Wild Ride.

...that make me seriously doubt that this was a fire deliberately set by Belize officials:

1) Fox News. 'Nuff said.
2) John McAfee. Unintelligent, paranoid moonbat ramblings from somebody who could have murdered another person and did what could be best described as a Beer Run from the authorities but replace the word "Beer" with "Coke and Heroin" and replace "Run" with "Higher than a fucking kite"...

Yeah... Totally trustworthy person worth my trust.

Come on, they are electric ants! Clearly, it came from Red Alert.

But did you know...?

Robots are SMARTER than you.
Robots work HARDER than you.
Robots are BETTER than you.

Volunteer for testing today!

Generally parasites co-evolve with their hosts. Because of this, it is actually fairly unlikely to unearth some vicious ancient virus from waters a billion years old. Billions of years ago all that existed was bacteria and the oldest viruses we know about go back only hundreds of millions of years.

That said I fully endorse your Hermetic seal and wish you well in your initiating our flippered friends into the alchemic ways.

It doesn't exist for a reason. Standard slots have a defined shape and size. When you're working in a world where your motherboard needs to be as tiny as possible, and fit around all the other components (like fans, batteries, etc), having stuff with a predefined size and shape narrows the design space, and makes a good laptop harder to produce. I mean, look at the retina MacBook Pro's logic board, where do you propose a standard graphics card slot goes on that? And no – on top is not the correct answer, the machine's too thin to mount something on top of, or below the logic board.

The other reason is that laptops generally run fairly marginal on cooling. A laptop designed to have a 30W GPU in it is not going to sufficiently cool a 45W GPU.

http://i.imgur.com/kDF2K9Z.png

You aren't going to like the changes coming to blue.

And the main character is a "nerd" portrayed in very positive light

The creator if the show did state that she wanted the main characters to have a wide variety of traits (the hard working one, the nurturing one, ect) as a kind of 'you can be who you want no matter what it is' message to the target audience of young girls. The nerdy one being the lead was a nice touch.

Also, a fun bit of trivia /. readers will probably appreciate, an episode once had a that character working with time dilation equations here.

Though true, it's also a pretty good implication that seeds are patentable as IP, because patent ineligibility would be something the Supreme Court could raise sua sponte (deciding an issue on their own initiative, as opposed to merely deciding issues addressed by the lower court).

I don't see why the court would ever do that in this case. The court doesn't give a rats ass why the executive branch has deemed Monsanto's plants patentable under the laws passed by the legislature (i.e., the Patent Office issued a patent in accordance with the law) and it's the legislative branch's job to change the law if the executive branch is doing something the people don't like. Since the legislature has done little more than add to the list of patentable plants (U.S. Plant Patent Act of 1930, U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970, amended in 1980 and 1994 to further restrict farmer and breeder rights) the court can't really argue that these type of patents are weak, untested, or even unusual. The laws in the US are not even significantly different than those in Europe, as most of the amendments above were made to bring US law in line with European under UPOV.

So, why is it the judicial branch's job to curb the patent office when the executive and legislative branches are ostensibly OK with the patent and laws (as is the international community) and there are no constitutional issues surrounding the case? The question before the court was "Does a patent right for self-replicating technology expire after an authorized sale?" and the answer was "No." If the answer were "yes" then you essentially couldn't patent plants, and given the body of law that explicitly says you can it seems unreasonable to think that the laws were made to be so pointless.

As usual, though, I encourage people to read the actual opinion of the court, which always explains things very well even if it ends up being very dense.

I am, however, laughing about this:

David F. Snively, Monsanto's top lawyer.

That's a horrible name for a lawyer, especially a corporate lawyer. I immediately think he looks like Snidely Whiplash.

Debian - the wellknown Linux distribution - did the same on the last stable version just recently released, Wheezy - http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/

The addon Adblock Plus is installed and enabled by default on the Iceweasel (ie Firefox) browser, with EasyList filter activated :
http://i.imgur.com/g0pMEaX.png - http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=693160

Even if I use some ads and tracking blockers, too (when there are animated banners, or sound, or to protect my privacy), IMHO it should be only the user who decides to put them, not the OS supplier, because it has an incidence on the web sites and numeric economy...

I've been a programmer for 15 years now, and the absolute worst people to work with are the ones who know just enough about programming that they vastly overestimate their knowledge. I don't want to work with a bunch of people who are on top of Mt. Stupid, least of all some exec who thinks a tiny bit of coding knowledge will help you make estimates about how long a bit project will take.

Let programmers program. Be serious about it, or don't do it.

Correlation is not causation, son. Also, the US stands in stark contrast. Increase in gun restrictions, and rape has been the fastest declining category of violent crime. Violent crime overall has fallen something like 80% in the last 20-30 years.

Sorry, I guess you said you wanted chrome on the right side of the screen.

Why can't I have a small word window open, and chrome on the right of the screen, and skype snuggled in the corner.

Yeah, I know. I want to do this all the time, but I just can't any more! Windows 8 sucks!

captcha = echelon I shit you not. http://i.imgur.com/4QD6KOG.png

Nobody gives a fuck about your goddamned captcha.

That's what I mean. You're all dead inside. You tell your stupid jokes from 15 years ago and seem to be stuck there when it comes to the rest of reality.

Bob
Me
Vista
Clippy
Zune

Each of those were still more useful than Windows 8

captcha = echelon I shit you not. http://i.imgur.com/4QD6KOG.png

Nobody gives a fuck about your goddamned captcha.

http://imgur.com/4mHWB

fuck obamapacman.com