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User: Quantumstate

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Comments · 288

  1. Re:Not impressed on Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Beta For Android, Maemo · · Score: 1

    It is normal for sync to ask for a password/key. Otherwise anybody could grab your private data.

  2. Re:Where.. on Why Are We Losing Vertical Pixels? · · Score: 1

    This is because web pages have an infinite height, you don't need columns you can just scroll instead.

  3. Re:Transmissions from phone on Long Island Town Enacts Tough Cell Tower Limits · · Score: 1

    I know this happens but the total radiation from the occasional handshake is far less than a phone call and the tower will be handling calls all of the time.

  4. Re:Transmissions from phone on Long Island Town Enacts Tough Cell Tower Limits · · Score: 1

    Of course people do. But when your phone is on it sends occasional handshake messages to the tower. The tower will be contacting many phones which are making calls so it has a much higher average (mean average) signal strength.

  5. Re:Transmissions from phone on Long Island Town Enacts Tough Cell Tower Limits · · Score: 1

    Your point ignores the fact that your phone is in use for a small fraction of the day but the tower is in constant use. You need to apply a large adjustment on the optimal range for this.

  6. Re:Hrm on Judge Allows Subpoenas For Internet Users · · Score: 1

    Really? where I live (UK) you would contact the police. They investigate and the crown prosecution service would prosecute the thief for theft. You can't sue someone for a criminal offence.

  7. Re:Why not just use bookmarks? on Google Confirms Chrome GPU Acceleration · · Score: 1

    When I am researching something I often open a lot of pages from a search, organised tabs keep these items together. I am only ever going to look it up once so I won't need a permanent bookmark, but I still might want 20 web pages open on various topics.

  8. Re:At least they tell you.. on Apple Wants To Share Your Location With Others · · Score: 1

    When I visit that website in my browser (firefox) I get a little bar at the top asking if I want to share my location with the website. So I vet the sites myself on a case by case basis rather than having Apple decide for me. I am under the impression that Android has a similar permissions system when you install an app.

  9. Re:This is so simple on Microsoft Hides Firefox Extension In Toolbar Update · · Score: 1

    This is useless as a security measure. If the software is installed on your system then it has enough access for whatever it wants to do anyway. On startup it already opens the addons window and highlights the newly installed item giving a message saying it has been installed.

  10. Re:Aliens! on America Versus the UFO Hacker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He isn't trying to avoid being prosecuted for this case. He is trying to have the case heard in the UK on the basis that he will get a fairer hearing and a more reasonable sentence. The US government is trying to get him extradited on the basis that he caused millions of dollars of damage. This claim seems ridiculous because it is based on the cost of securing their system, as far as I have heard he did not modify the system, he just read some files.

    As an analogy is is like you not having a lock on the front door, then having someone walk in and not do any damage, but then you decide you want $large sum in damages to hire a security consultant and get a lock fitted on the door.

  11. Re:The Oracle Trimaran..250% faster than the wind. on Google-Backed Wind-Powered Car Goes Faster Than the Wind · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sailing boats don't go faster than the wind when moving directly downwind. They tack at an angle which allows them to go faster than the wind speed in the downwind direction while never actually travelling directly downwind.

  12. Re:Future Multi CPU + GPU Combos on AMD's Fusion Processor Combines CPU and GPU · · Score: 1

    GPU's are already highly "multi core". They have been for years. I am not sure if they call them cores, they are slightly different from CPU cores but it is effectively the same idea. his si why GPU's are so much better than CPU's at graphics and some other parallel tasks with things like CUDA.

  13. Re:Meh. on AMD's Fusion Processor Combines CPU and GPU · · Score: 1

    1 year is definitely unusual for the life on a PC. My parents still have a nice Dell from 2001 (with the ram tripled from the original and an extra hard drive) which is working fine. The floppy drive on it died but nothing else has had a fault. But ignoring the anecdotes, the data shows that the average life is far more than one year. Here in the EU it is not legal to offer less than 2 years warranty so they need a decent survival rate just to stay in business.

  14. Re:Solution... on Tabnapping Scams Around the Corner? · · Score: 1

    Tabs usefully group views, so I can open a window which I use for looking up some maths things, another for slashdot stories perhaps. Also current window managers aren't designed for having that many different windows open, so many applications use the tabbed approach like editors/ides.

    Tabs can provide a specialized interface for web browsing such as tree style tabs which works very well, providing another level of organisation.

  15. Re:Lightspeed limited, not an ansible on Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over 16 km In China · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It happens faster than the speed of light, but it isn't any use without extra information which can only be sent at light speed. You could use it to send secret messages since the state is instantly transferred and cannot be intercepted on the way and then the extra information can be used to get the data.

  16. Re:How is a Mac open? on Valve's Newell Thinks PS3 Needs To Be "Open Like a Mac" · · Score: 1

    Looking through the list, it is not stuff which is open sourced by Apple. It is open source which is used by Apple.

    I know that Apple do contribute code back to these projects which is great, but I couldn't see anything on the list (I only read it quickly) which had been started by Apple. Webkit is probably the largest piece of open source work they have done and has been changed significantly from the khtml base so this deserves credit.

    But even with this, pretty much every user facing application from Apple is closed source.

  17. Re:Laptop Useage in Class? on Sniffing the Wireless Traffic of MIT Students · · Score: 1

    It is not that people don't have laptops, virtually everybody has a laptop (apart from a few desktop users like me). I don't know of a single person without a computer.

    A computer is essential unless you want to visit the computer lab every other day to check for emails.

    There just isn't a culture of having laptops here which perpetuates itself.

  18. Re:Laptop Useage in Class? on Sniffing the Wireless Traffic of MIT Students · · Score: 1

    At my maths course in the UK there are two people who use laptops in lectures, one is a laptop which converts into a tablet so the guy takes note with a stylus. Then other guy types the notes up using Word 2007. Everybody else uses paper. The only exception is the computing course (introductory programming) where a lot of people had laptops and which were recommended.

  19. Re:OK ... on No HTML5 Hulu Anytime Soon · · Score: 1

    There are some fairly decent Javascript IDE's Komodo IDE/Edit comes to mind. Spouting ridiculous hyperbole about assembly really doesn't help your case at all.

  20. Re:US colleges don't come cheap on Too Many College Graduates? · · Score: 2, Informative

    £3000 per year. This gets paid by a student loan form the government (interest matching inflation in theory) for anyone in the UK. Cambridge subsidises its teaching heavily beyond normal government funding because the University (plus individual colleges) has large investments and gets a lot of donations from alumni.

  21. Re:numbers have meaning, too on BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009 · · Score: 1

    Probably

  22. Re:numbers have meaning, too on BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009 · · Score: 1

    You missed

    For every dollar of legitimate software sold, another $3 to $4 in revenue is created for local firms.

    Plus naturally the 33% increase in software sales over 4 years. See the figures do add up.

  23. Re:Three major flaws on BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009 · · Score: 1

    You missed the fact that the $140 billion for ailing economies was calculated using a $3-4 bonus for the economy for every $1 spent on the software.

  24. Re:End all software piracy now... on BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009 · · Score: 1

    I do exactly the same. Loads of people who I know have pirated copies of Photoshop for example. Most of them don't need it, I only know one person who does more advanced editing in Photoshop than I do in GIMP. GIMP is highly capable and will do what most people need and more. I don't think anyone I know who has a pirated copy would have bought it (the person who does the advanced stuff has a legitimate copy).

  25. Re:End all software piracy now... on BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009 · · Score: 1

    You are misinterpreting the wikipedia article. If the method described was followed accurately then the open source software would be absorbed by lowering the average amount of software on a PC. This is assuming they take the average using a representative statistically significant sample of course. This strikes me as unlikely so you conclusion may be correct even with faulty reasoning.