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User: mrboyd

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  1. Re:Hey on 15 Years of Microsoft Bob · · Score: 1

    I'm more annoyed by the fact that when we request a specific profile they always screw up the selection.

    >> We didn't send you the CV of the ex NASA lunar lander rocket designer because he didn't have word and excel on his CV. You need a technical profile right? So let me do my job and call this guy who sold his bakery six month ago but he has made his own website and the shape of his C and D indicate that he's a strong team player.

  2. Re:Medical... on Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I bought a sennheiser travel headset that filters background noise has an option to enhance voice from background noise and can do bluetooth. It was 150Euros. I'm pretty sure that redesigned without the fancy and the useless extras (bluetooth, blink-blink) it would fit the form factor of an hearing aid and probably isn't technologically very far (in terms of components and dsp used). I can feel a lot of margin in the hearing-aid business.

  3. Re:I hope this cloud bullshit ends soon. on Google Opens Apps Marketplace · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not the solution for everyone but it sure is one for my 5 employees company. Google gives me an email/shared calendar/document sharing and website hosting for a ridiculously low price. We use an hosted CRM, billing and issue tracking software for a a near zero infrastructure cost and the recurring if far below what the local cisco distributor would charge us to even have 10 minute look at our setup. We wouldn't be able to afford self-hosting and maintaining a tenth of the applications we use if we had to do it in house. And most important for us at this point it works for roaming users; google app integrates well with blackberry without the need for a BES. etc.. etc..

    Last week i needed to do a quick survey of our customers about a specific point and it took me all of ten minutes to set up a form using google docs; that less than the time it would have taken me to launch emacs remember the syntax for a doctype. Sure google forms sucks for anything more complex than a five bullet points questions but it beats sending excel sheet by mail.

    Am I scared to have all my company information on Google's and third party servers, sure. We keep backups. I sometime wonder if it's a mistake but franckly at this point relying on Google to treat my data respectfully or relying on myself to do a decent admin works and fight off "Chinese" attack it more or less the same. The cloud is cheaper (for us).

    When the company will have grown (fingers crossed) we'll re-assess the situation and most likely move things back in-house. In the mean time it's a boon for us.

    TL;DR: my SMB can't afford to manage everything we use in-house. Google apps and SAAS (aka cloud) is cheaper.

  4. Y2K bug on Dot-Com Craze Peaked 10 Years Ago This Week · · Score: 2, Funny

    Most likely a shitty automated brokerage system that initiated a fire sale when he calculated the net earning of his NASDAQ stock over the first trimester of 1900... Sheeple panicked, history ensued. And they say the Y2K bug had no impact... Geee.

  5. Re:Turn the key off or put the car in neutral..... on $1M Prize For Finding Cause of Unintended Acceleration · · Score: 1

    Even my SUV monstrosity drives fine without steering assistance. At highway speed you barely need to turn the wheel anyway and the effort would on par with holding a glass of water as opposed to driving with the pinkie.

  6. Re:Me thinks on $1M Prize For Finding Cause of Unintended Acceleration · · Score: 2, Funny

    About time car drivers had something to keep them awake.

    That's what the 50 buttons bluetooth enabled media center controller on the steering wheel is for.

  7. Re:Metric Everywhere on Astronauts Having Trouble With Tranquility Module · · Score: 1

    Well.. for baking I like it better when the quantity are given in baker's percentage instead of fixed size whether in cup or grams. Somehow it makes more sense to me to have everything expressed in percentage of the mass of flour, particularly when I need to make more or less dough.

  8. Re:privacy is key on Google To Challenge Facebook Again · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Relax, I don't know what's going on in your life for your first thing on your mind to be about cheating swinging gay porn and whatnot but most of us just want to avoid their close friends, vague relation and coworker to mix it up too much.

    We all have pro-email and personal email but I'd bet that the majority of us had to give out the personal one away in a professional context for whatever reason (file size limit, exchange server bogged down, msn/google chat, etc..) and we really don't need our clients and recruiters to know about the boozing festival we had last week end for our childhood friend's birthday. It's not that we're ashamed of it. It just none of their business.

  9. Re:Compliance Rates & Hands-Free Use on Phone and Text Bans On Drivers Shown Ineffective · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately you seem to be in the minority of people who openly recognize they're not some kind of crossbreed of Michael Schumacher and Petter Solberg. My very own poll amongst people I know (take that double blind) gives me 95% of "Those rules are for bad drivers, it should not apply to me because I'm that good". And for "Those rules" I had the same results with any of seatbelt, driving drunk, driving under the influence of marijuana, texting, speed limits, eating, swerving, tailgating etc. Try to reason with them and make them read any scientific document linking behavior X and accident rate and you'll get a blank stare followed by a complete denial. "Then I must be the 99th percentile of people who are perfect drivers even when texting drunk as 200mph and sleep deprived".

    I simply do not pickup my phone when driving, there's nothing important enough that anyone may have to tell me worth risking my life. I can't count how many time I had to explain it to decerebrate individuals. "Whaa? Why?? You can't drive and talk at the same time? You're retarded or what?"

    Now if the kid doesn't want to comply, first time you tell him why he should, the second time you remove his toy, the third time he'll spend the night in the closet. For adults that 1/ a fine, 2/ drivers license suspension, 3/ jail time.

  10. Re:No on Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? · · Score: 1

    The first instruction on the test is to read all the other questions.
    It's used to quickly and memorably teach kids that at the beginning of a test you should a) read the instruction carefully b) spend a minute looking at all the questions to see where are your strengths and weaknesses. This allows you to find which questions are the easiest for you to answer and to get them out of the way early on. Then you do all the slightly harder questions and finally give a shot at those you're not sure you'll get right. It's really basic time management so that you don't get bogged down on the third problem for half of the time while there's still 20 questions left. If you're still doing your test sequentially that's your problem.

  11. Re:Why put tabs in code anyway? on Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting · · Score: 1

    but my editor has a single keystroke...

    then

    (It isn't always convenient to bring up a development environment...

    My point exactly! THANK YOU :)

  12. Re:Why put tabs in code anyway? on Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting · · Score: 1

    So, for all those tab fans, what is it about tabs that you find useful?

    • When I want to dedent I can press del once, not four times.
    • I like my code when the indent size is about 4 space wide, my neighbor likes his code cramped at 2 spaces and some other weird people like it at 8 spaces. With tab and the editor settings we can all get what we want. Without generating a whole file modification changeset each time we decide to disagree on code spacing.
    • ~15% in code file size reduction. I know, who cares, but still.. It feels cleaner.
    • The key is called "Tab" when I press it I want a \t not random number of spaces. I don't care that VT-XYZ did not support it in 1980.

    What are the benefits of using spaces in 2010? The only rational I've heard is that back in the time of computer dinosaurs some editors only knew how to render tab with 8 spaces and that was too much for the people who had 80 columns screens so they decided to type 4 spaces instead of using the tab character. So more code would fit on their screen.

  13. What about getting back some... on IPv4 Free Pool Drops Below 10%, 1.0.0.0/8 Allocated · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I seriously doubt that GE, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, HP, Apple, MIT, Ford, AT&T (again), Halliburton, Bell, Prudential securities, UK government Department for work and Pensions, Dupont de Nemours and Co., Inc, Merck, USPS and some others deserve or need a /8.

  14. Re:foot.shoot(); on HandBrake Abandons DivX As an Output Format · · Score: 1
    Since it is still widely used I believe the terms unfashionable, outmoded, passé, outdated, out and anachronous would not be better than the term used by the parent poster since they all connote a lack of usage of the format.

    Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then

    erm...

  15. Re:foot.shoot(); on HandBrake Abandons DivX As an Output Format · · Score: 2, Informative

    Windows 7 does. It was long overdue but now it's "out of the box".

  16. Like that's going to work this time... on Nvidia Announces 3D Blu-ray Format For 2010 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    From TFA

    3D Blu-ray movies will need screens with refresh rates of 120Hz, double the current standard of 60Hz, and 2x speed Blu-ray drives. As with all of Nvidia's 3D products, shutter glasses will be required to view films. The new specification raises concerns about the capability of current hardware to play forthcoming 3D releases, with Berraondo confirming that “future Blu-ray equipment will need more powerful chips” to play content smoothly, with “the majority” of major manufacturers set to release “brand new players” next year.

    I'm sure the people who can afford a fullHD tv@120Hz and a new player to see shrek 3D will rush to buy it. All 20 of them.

  17. Re:Why? on VMware's Dual OS Smartphone Virtualization Plan Firms Up · · Score: 1

    I thought it was mostly used as a way to detach the software form the hardware thus limiting the impact of hardware failure. I don't really see how virtualizing a crappy OS will give you load balancing. Did you mean redundancy?

  18. Re:Code Name is Offensive on Intel Shows 48-Core x86 Processor · · Score: 2, Informative
    Really? then wtf is that job offer on intel website for a CPU Architect in bangalore for?

    In this position, you will be responsible for architecting advanced client platforms for 2015 and beyond. We are now in the early research and pathfinding for the 2015 generation of CPU products. Our team engages in early architecture analysis, microarchitecture research and/or development, performance and/or power modeling and analysis, including detailed architecture validation versus RTL

    Here's what they do in Bangalore: http://www.intel.com/jobs/india/iidc/index.htm. Seems like some people in India have enough skills to design a CPU.

  19. Re:Not possible on Would You Use a Free Netbook From Google? · · Score: 3, Funny
    I can imagine the only ad I'd feel compulsed to click if I had to work in google docs on a chrome netbook.

    Looking for a faster word processor?
    Microsoft Office 2010.
    50% off with a real pc.

  20. Re:Zero Emissions are worse?? on Berkeley Engineers Have Some Bad News About Air Cars · · Score: 1

    Just compressing air from solar, wind power, etc gives Zero emissions no matter if the efficiency is only 1% or 100%

    Well it does matter if we need to cover 3 football field with solar panel for every person who wants to commute in an air car. We're going to run out of space. Anyway, 2010 is around the corner and my flying car running on recycled garbage should theoretically be available shortly.

  21. Re:How can xterm be improved? on GNOME 3 Delayed Until September 2010 · · Score: 1

    did you mean C-x,C-s?

  22. Re:OH NO!!! on Flash Vulnerability Found, Adobe Says No Fix Forthcoming · · Score: 1

    I usually get punched when I reach 4 so I don't recommend doing it.

  23. Re:360 on Microsoft Disconnects Modded Xbox Users · · Score: 1

    They technically own 0 of it because they most likely got the game via bitorrent in the first place.

  24. Re:But it's still clunky and silly on Esquire Launches First Augmented Reality Magazine · · Score: 1

    and wireless.

  25. Re:But it's still clunky and silly on Esquire Launches First Augmented Reality Magazine · · Score: 1

    It will be cold in hell when I voluntarily wear ad-displaying glasses.