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  1. Re:Don't trust applications, ever on Outlining a World Where Software Makers Are Liable For Flaws · · Score: 1

    That's exactly what CapDesk was designed to do: http://www.combex.com/tech/edesk.html

  2. Re:Funny in summary on Economy Puts US Nuclear Reactors Back In Doubt · · Score: 1

    While I agree with you in general, I protest your reference to the interview with the co-founder of Greenpeace. Nowhere in his article did I find the words "idiot", "fringe", "democrat", "party", "morons", "kooky", "wack" or "jobs". Perhaps you meant to reference another article?

  3. Explanation is economic on Why You See 'Free Public WiFi' In So Many Places · · Score: 1

    Every coffee shop and airport I go to has free Wi-Fi. (And a lot of bars too.) But it's in infrastructure mode and named after the establishment. I think the explanation is economic; that it's an incentive for you to come in and buy their stuff.

  4. Why text when there's e-mail? on What Carriers Don't Want You To Know About Texting · · Score: 1

    SMS was just a stopgap service before they started Internet-enabling phones. Now that most new phones support e-mail, why bother texting? E-mail is cheaper and can use the same interface.

  5. Re:in this election on How Powerful is the Turn-Off Power of Spam? · · Score: 1

    It's not 200 out of 100 million voters. It's 200 out of the voters in Florida, whatever number that is.

  6. Veicon Technology on Thin Client Solutions For Libraries? · · Score: 1

    My company specializes in exactly what you are looking for. Veicon Technology provides thin-client solutions to libraries, hospitals and hotels, but mainly libraries. Our package includes a server which sits at your library, and all the terminals connect to it via RDP or ICA. They display a "start page" with links to your catalog and databases. From there you can also enter the V-Link application, which has a launch pad for applications, such as IE, Netscape/Mozilla, and MS Office.

    The terminals are reset when you start them - users can't install things on them. They can save files in a temporary folder on the server, or to floppy drives or USB flash drives. The user has very limited permissions on the server, and all their files are erased when they log out. Thus, no viruses can spread.

    There is far less maintenance involved than with PCs, and it is mostly done by our support team.

    I'm an engineer, not a salesperson, so if you want to find out more, contact our sales team.

  7. The prices are most shocking on Fifteen Years of Technology Reporting · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Having lived through that 15-year era, I have to say that while I don't bat an eye at the MHz or MB ratings of equipment, the prices reported back then are astoundingly high.

    They are talking about $28,000 PCs... who the heck would ever pay that much for a PC? They talk about $3,000 as a "breakthrough" when today you can grab an average system for $1,000 or less.

    I would be curious to see a price trend chart over the years, of the "high-end PC", "average PC" and "bargain PC", whatever that meant in each time period.

    Personally, I was into Commodores 15 years ago. The Amiga 2000 cost abour $2000 when your average PC cost about $5000. I never understood why people would buy PC compatibles back then!

  8. The Three Laws: Unsafe At Any Speed on I, Robot Hits the Theaters · · Score: 1, Funny

    Inspired by the success of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Ralph Nader has decided to throw his hat into the 2004 election race, and promote it with his new film, The Three Laws: Unsafe At Any Speed.

    This film tackles the emerging issues of AI technology that Nader expects to be hotly debated in this election year.

    "US Robots claims to be providing a service to the international community by providing a cheap source of manual labor, getting the humans out of the sweatshops. In fact, they are endangering the lives of humans everywhere with their illogically formulated laws of robot behavior," Nader said in an interview on Friday.

    Mathematicians are in conflict over the laws, but that doesn't stop Nader. He claims, in fact, that the laws were designed to benefit certain wealthy members of US Robots and Mechanical Men, and congressmen.

    "They should have just stuck to modems," insists Nader. "Those are safe at speeds up to 53K, according to telco regulations."

    Nader's film opens in theaters nationwide on July 23rd.

  9. Jimmy Hoffa found on Bobby Fischer Found · · Score: 1

    In related news, Jimmy Hoffa was detained in Malaysia, attempting to organize a Nike workers' union.

    He was discovered by the same breadth-first, alpha-beta pruning algorithm that found Fischer. The algorithm is called "Deep Thicket".

  10. Forget the PDA, here comes the PEDA on Forget the PDA, Here Comes the TDA · · Score: 5, Funny
    Studies show 90% of PDA users lose their PDAs. Why worry about losing your PDA ever again? The SolePad(tm) PEDA (podiatric embedded digital assistant) fits right in your shoes!

    Walk your way to a new day! This innovative product, made possible by the NASA space program, has undergone 35 years of development and cost over $10 billion.

    Advantages over PDA's:
    • Large footprint allows easy data entry. What is more natural than walking?
    • Take notes with the innovative Hopscratchpad.
    • Simultaneous data entry with both feet!
    • Play fun built-in games such as Twister(tm) and Kickman, and educational software such as Prance Prance Evolution.
    • Experience multimedia interactive fiction such as Stomp: The Interactive Multimedia Experience (requires force-feedback module).
    • Contains FOUR MULTIMEDIA LAYERS of Teflon, Foam, Silicon and Plastic!
    • Easy connection to Segway(tm) docking station.
    What people are saying about SolePad:
    • "Finally, my hands are free to do my work. I love taking notes with the Hopscratchpad." - Jackie Chan, actor
    • "I kept losing my shoes. Now I have an excuse to keep them on!" - Bikram Choudhury, yoga instructor
    • "This is the greatest new technology I have seen since Jackito." - Michael Jackson, singer
    Special prepaid introductory price: $1000/ft.

    SolePad: Finally, a step in the right direction. (tm)

    Kickman (c) 1981 Midway
    Twister is a registered trademark of Milton Bradley
  11. Run as a separate user! on MSN, Word Vulnerable To Shell: URI Exploit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems logical that the solution to many of these browser exploits is to run the browser with a separate set of OS permissions, i.e. as a separate user. This could be done using setuid under Unix. I don't know how it's accomplished on Windows.

    The special user would have greatly reduced permissions, which would prevent these exploits from being useful. This user could not execute anything but designated plugins, and could not save files except to a designated area.

    Why has this not been tried?

  12. Messin' with my radar detector on Radar For Safer Driving · · Score: 1

    Oh, no... now my radar detector will go nuts all the time! I'll never know when dat copper's commin...

  13. Re:Important note for oldtimers on Apple and Pepsi Ad Sports RIAA Targets · · Score: 1

    Downloading music for free was just the latest phase... computers have always enabled free trading. When I was in junior high and high school in the 80s , the thing was trading games on floppy disks. No big difference.

  14. Knitting Factory! on Apple and Pepsi Ad Sports RIAA Targets · · Score: 1

    Great labels - let's also not forget Knitting Factory!

  15. Black marker! on Subversive Gifts for New College Students? · · Score: 1

    Forget the UV marker, if you want to be subversive, get her a black marker so she can copy that Celine Dion CD. :)

  16. Unseated their elders? on The Empire Stumbles · · Score: 1

    Jon, maybe you haven't noticed that 1) Spider-Man has been around much longer than Star Wars, and 2) plenty of people who grew up with the original Star Wars, such as myself, also preferred the Spidey flick. It has nothing to do with some kind of mystical generational differences, it's simply the later stuff you said - that Lucas' stuff has become pompous crap, while Spider Man had a story and a heart, along with some nifty fun.

  17. What about Star Trek? on The Myth of the Lone Inventor · · Score: 1

    Come on, everyone knows from Star Trek that Zephram Cochrane will single-handedly invent warp drive, and Dr. Noonien Soong will build Data, an android far ahead of anything else available.

  18. Been out a few months on ATi's All In Wonder Radeon 7500 · · Score: 1
    Wow, this has been out a few months, as has the AIW Radeon 8500DV. A little slow on the news. I have the 8500DV, and it's great! It is similar to the 7500, but:
    • has a digital TV tuner instead of the analog one (better picture, but gets hot),
    • has faster 3D,
    • uses Immersion II technology for more advanced features and DirectX 8.0 support,
    • has two Firewire ports, including one on the nifty breakout cable,
    • costs about twice as much.
  19. Re:problems with it... on ATi's All In Wonder Radeon 7500 · · Score: 1
    Frankly, I think the auto-record-what-it-thinks-you-want aspect of TiVo is annoying, rather like MSWord's AutoCorrect, and I'm glad it doesn't have it. Anyway, you could always just write your own program to do that.


    The good TiVo features are there... the pause of live TV, and rewind/FF over that material.

  20. Emotional distress? on PetsWarehouse vs. Mailing List · · Score: 1

    One of the more bizarre things is that Novak is defending a corporation, yet claims $15M for "emotional distress"! How can a corporation have emotional distress?

  21. 400% tax? on Canada to Raise Tariffs on Recordable Media · · Score: 3, Informative

    Observe: an 40GB 2.5" HDD costs about $215 CDN

    Ratio: approx. $5/GB (3.5" HDDs are approaching $1/GB, but let's assume they don't use these in MP3 players)

    They are levying a $21/GB charge on MP3 players with HDDs - so for a 40GB this is $840

    So the tax is about 400% of the cost of the HDD! Even if you assume the base player w/o HDD costs $200, you would still be paying 200% tax on the entire device, making it triple what it would cost without the tax.

  22. Microcomputer? on Simple Inexpensive Mobile Computer: The Simputer · · Score: 1

    It's not a PC, but rather a microcomputer...

    Oh, so it's like an Apple II? Commodore 64? Cool!

  23. The next dirty little trick... on The New World of P2P Advertising · · Score: 1

    ...is that advertisers are going to put songs up for trade called "Fade to Black" or "Backstreet Bop" or whatever, which will be decoys actually containing an advertising message.

    Or, the record companies will deliberately put poor versions of MP3s up for trade to make people fret about the quality.

  24. What about GUILE? on KBasic · · Score: 1
    Hey, I thought GNOME was a GNU project, and the standard GNU scripting language is GUILE. I wasn't aware of a Basic project for GNOME. I expected it of KDE, since it's basically trying to clone Windows. But GNOME is a bold, unique project, trying to show a new way with things like CORBA. Let's stop trying to do things the Windows way, and show people a better one.

    GUI IDE's are great, but we already have Glade. What we need is GUILE-GTK+ bindings and Glade-GUILE.

    And yes, I started programming with BASIC, and I have used Visual Basic extensively, and boy, is it a pain. I wish my first language had been Pascal, or Java, or Python (although the latter two didn't exist).

  25. Can't you folk read adspeak? on DeXtop And Free Software · · Score: 2

    You shouldn't take Xi's statements so seriously. They are only targeting business users who already run other systems using CDE, and would like to run a Linux box with the same interface, and want to have a company to gripe at if something goes wrong.

    All ads use exaggeration in lauding the company's products. You have to take it with a grain of salt. When they say "Only one X server for Linux offers quality, performance and stability" it really means "our X server is stable and high-performance, and we take support calls." It is not really commenting on other X-servers.

    It's like when Exxon advertises that they "put a tiger in your tank." So do all the other gasolines. They're just trying to create a positive mental image of their own product, and they can't sound blase about it or you wouldn't buy it.

    The popularity of Linux proves that free GUIs are here to stay, too.