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User: pantherace

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  1. Re:Angry on You Will Get DirectX 11.2 Only With Windows 8.1 · · Score: 1

    If he means to finish booting and stop being slow, then he's justified in blaming Windows 7.

    I did a comparison between it and the current distro of Kubuntu at the time it came out. I was initially amazed that it matched Kubuntu's time to desktop, at about 1:30 (+/- 15 seconds), then noticed it was slow, and kept hammering the hard drive until about 5:00. Kubuntu was done hitting the hard drive and being slow at the 1:30.

    That was a new boot, without anything on it. Due to the fragmentation on the file system, it takes a lot longer to boot now (I have not recently measured it multiple times, but >2:30). Kubuntu takes a bit longer, but less time (+30 seconds perhaps)

    Mind you that was a Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz, with I think 4GB of RAM and a fast hard drive (not an SSD) a few years ago.

  2. Re:But can you play Crysis on it? on 4K Computer Monitors Are Coming (But Still Pricey) · · Score: 2

    AA is a hack because of insufficient resolution.

    Tell me, which is better: playing on an old SVGA 800x600 with 4x AA, or playing on 1600x1200 with no AA?

    Or higher AA, but I'm willing to bet, with a quarter the AA setting, that 1600x1200, will look better than that 800x600. I'd bet 3200x2400 would look even better.

    More resolution is better than more AA. More AA is better than nothing, but it's still a hack.

  3. Re:OpenSCAD ? on Ask Slashdot: Best 3-D Design Software? · · Score: 1

    I will also suggest openscad. I'm not great at it (I tend to use blender for quick one offs.)

    However, it's amazing what you can do with it, when leveraging the community. I made a replacement gear for my lathe last week, and it worked great.

  4. Re:users? on NetBSD To Support Kernel Development In Lua Scripting · · Score: 2

    See?

    It's good for everyone!

  5. Re:Where can you even find components like that? on TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C Stands For Color · · Score: 1

    They make them. Seriously TI fabs the Z80s for the calculators.

  6. Re:More elaborate schemes? on Advertisers Never Intended To Honor DNT · · Score: 1

    Because aside from Konqueror, I don't know of a browser which makes this easy to do.

    Unless I've missed something, I haven't seen another browser which prompts you about the cookie, can have accept/reject and one of this cookie or the entire domain (as well as all cookies) in a nice window.

    Mind you, it's a pain for a short time before you get those lists setup, but after that, it's great in the cases you do go to a new site and want to allow it. Every other browser I've seen requires editing a configuration dialog/file to change that. Which even though I can do, frankly, it's too obnoxious to do. I stick with noscript and abp. When I want to really be secure, I use a different browser with a completely different and more secure setup.

  7. Re:But are the 'users' becoming products? on Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed · · Score: 1

    Windows Live Messenger.

    Also, no way to disable it aside from blocking the ad at the bottom. I had to install that specifically for a particular job.

  8. Re:WTF. on Torvalds Takes Issue With De Icaza's Linux Desktop Claims · · Score: 1

    Frankly, having taught some basic computer classes, while not absolute, I would suggest that in general, that some of the things that come with being elderly, and young, do play HIGHLY into the general computer competency.

    When I taught classes with both old and young people, anyone under about 25, even if they claimed ignorance, had been exposed and generally only required a very small push to direct them to what they wanted to do. They understood the basics of operating especially a GUI. They've grown up with it in our culture. They have been exposed to concepts.

    Contrast this with people who while smart, were older, especially if over 40. They simply often times lacked the familiarity, so something as basic as say, selecting a particular object on a menu took a lot of work to figure out what was going on. Repeat this for the many common GUI interfaces... and that familiarity meant that in general, being elderly does have a strong correlation with what's perceived as illiteracy.

    I've also been the one doing tech support for PhDs. Really smart people... who haven't been exposed to things. One of the people I helped with things did projects on Quantum computing. One of the few people I know who impresses me with raw intelligence. Generally, though the experience was with things like Fortran (which works much faster than people think).

    So it's nothing inherent about being elderly/young, except for the times they were exposed to, which clearly does have an effect on computer literacy. There are of course exceptions.

    There are also things like my opinion, that in general, a younger person generally doesn't understand the way computers work as well as an older person with equivalent education for their time. This is due to the rise of things like Object Oriented Programming, Java, etc. Consequence of the times they are in.

  9. Re:Proof at last! on Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro · · Score: 1

    Yes. I can. Or could until Asus closed their estore which had just about everything required except processors and ram.

    Assembling laptops isn't hard. What is a pain in the ass is rebuilding phones from parts.

  10. Re:An inherent limitation of the form factor? on Ask Slashdot: Scripting-Friendly Smartphones? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's not an inherent limitation of the device.

    It's that the keyboards almost universally are horrible for it, because they are designed for things like natural speaking. Their processing of symbols is subpar.

    The same is true of most small bluetooth keyboards, or built in keyboards. Frankly, my Zaurus SL-5500 from 2003 has a better keyboard on a mobile than almost anything that's come since. (And in fact, the only things I can think of that rival it that I have encountered, are also Zaurus devices.)

    I have found one that I don't think sucks so far, it's "hacker's keyboard" on android. (Most important things it has that seemingly every other keyboard lacks are tab and arrow keys... easily accessible. It has some limitations though, and you'll almost certainly want to enable portrait 5-line keyboard) Though I usually use it more with my table as opposed to with my phone, though it does work there just fine, I use the phone more for email/texting/etc, so having a keyboard (swype) which is better for those things as default means the other isn't used as much.

  11. Re:First comment on referenced article on Free Software Faces a Test With Qt · · Score: 1

    Indeed, even when I was running direct cvs and later svn versions, that rarely happened, and usually it was fixed if I rebuilt it a few hours later.

  12. Re:Ballmer was right again on 50% of Apple's Revenue Comes From the iPhone · · Score: 1

    In the US, they do on T-mobile... oh wait.

  13. Re:any Apple fanboy want to support this lawsuit? on Apple Sues Samsung Over Galaxy Phones and Tablets · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, but having used a Zaurus (my SL-C1000 recently died) there is little difference in the UI from Apple's, and the first ones appeared about 2003 (Actually probably a bit sooner, considering the SL-5500 I grabbed has a Rom 3.13 build date of Jul 2 2003, and I got one as a birthday present, which wouldn't have occurred in 2003 yet.):

    The dock actually isn't that new, the only thing that's 'new' about it is bringing it on screen vs dedicated buttons. (And even on the Zaurus, with I think the 3.1 rom, the button's actions could be changed, so even configurable isn't anything new.

    There are very very minor differences:
    Tabs are smaller, and accessed via swiping the screen vs taping the icon.

    There weren't any universal graphical icons at the bottom on Qtopia. However, there were universal physical buttons. (see above)

    Lack of a universal way to get to the icons, via the start menu-like construct in the lower left of Qtopia, granted, that bar holds the notifications and similar, and has been moved to the top of the screen of both of the two new UIs under discussion.

    Hardware: Stylus & finger vs finger-only. While it allows for a few things like multi-touch, capacitive touch screens suck in a lot of ways, and now resistive touch screens are starting to support multi-touch.

    Hardware: Multiple-touches. that does give a bit of difference, but considering it's mostly used in photos and maps, wouldn't I wouldn't have interacted much with the Zaurus/Qtopia equivalents, as I didn't have any GPS equipment.

    Also note, that most of these are present in (Original) Palms, which would push them back further in time, but I didn't use Palm much. The Palm also had the hardware buttons like the dock. (Actually had some in the touch sensitive area around the graffiti area)

    Having something like the dock on screen is simply a consequence of reducing physical buttons.

  14. Re:Big words... on AMD Challenges NVIDIA To Graphics Throw-Down · · Score: 0, Troll

    Can we include phones too?

    Because I'm pretty sure my phone beats an Intel chipset...

  15. Re:It can beat my table? I hope so. on My $200 Laptop Can Beat Your $500 Tablet · · Score: 1

    Did it cost more than 300$?

  16. Re:Remember: ATT Illegally Tapped Our Phones on AT&T To Acquire T-Mobile From Deutsche Telekom · · Score: 1

    Actually, at least for 3g with some (their Galaxy S variants) the T-mobile one will work on both T-mobile and AT&T, but the AT&T will only work on AT&T. I don't know about the others, but it wouldn't surprise me if that wasn't the only phone that's like that.

  17. Re:How does that Hopey-Changey horseshit taste? on White House Wants New Copyright Law Crackdown · · Score: 1

    Out of curiosity, who among either the Democrats or Republicans in the primaries did you not consider crazy and/or corrupt, or would you make the same statements no matter who had been put forth by the D/R?

  18. Re:200-line patch on Linux 2.6.38 Released · · Score: 1

    Blender, yafaray, and some others, especially look at the fluid simulation (and turn up the resolution!)

    There: all the 2.8GHz CPU pegging you want.

  19. Re:Journalism on Third Blast At Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Plant · · Score: 1

    Couple of weeks ahead even.

  20. Preserving privacy on Ask Slashdot: Privacy Paranoia · · Score: 1

    The oldest method: Don't be interesting.

    While a bit tongue in cheek, it's a fairly good way. Even if your data is in whatever databases, if there's no use of it, then it might as well not exist.

    Unfortunately, that works both ways in some cases. I keep hearing about Charlie Sheen. I decided to look a little last night and no one has made a coherent summary of it. Better yet, could everyone stop talking about him?

    Granted, that won't prevent automated things like targeted advertising. However, if you haven't yet developed a mental filter for advertising, I'd get started, it helps on so many things. In fact, if not for being a method for infection/malware, I probably wouldn't use adblock. (That I got tired of the Flash/PDF ads that tried to infect my machine was the ultimate catalyst for that. Too bad for sites that are ad based, but there are enough sleazy ads that they lose out.)

  21. This isn't the first... on 3D Printers Create Edible Objects · · Score: 2

    There was one done quite a bit ago that used sugar as the print material. Wasn't very high resolution, but it worked, and could be eaten. Also, I've heard of Rep-raps using chocolate (and other substances) in the past.

    This also doesn't appear very high resolution, so I'm failing to see what about this is first or even particularly novel about it. The only first I see is the specific things they used.

    Ah, indeed, I have found a link: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab

  22. Re:Mistake in Summary on No P = NP Proof After All · · Score: 1

    If that isn't counting reverse paths a->b->c = c->b->a then you can halve that, as they are the same.

    There are plenty of optimizations on TSP, the problem is that the worst case is what gets nasty. There are also things which will give an estimate (1.5x shortest, if I recall correctly) if some conditions are met.

  23. Re:Whytanium? on Intel Unveils Next Gen Itanium Processor · · Score: 1

    It's the only place people can get VMS, or HP's UNIX.

    Which is a shame, because VMS has some interesting and nice features, so even if it weren't used wholesale, more exposure could lead to other OSes implementing them.

  24. Re:HP is the worst on Recent HP Laptops Shipped CPU-Choking Wi-Fi Driver · · Score: 1

    A tip: Quite often 7zip will be able to extract those 'executables' without having to run them.

  25. Re:Mostly unnecessary on 1Gbps Wi-Fi Coming Soon To a Billion Devices · · Score: 1

    802.11a fixed devices/networks are fairly rare (802.11a clients are fairly common, as part of abgn cards, but I've seen a number of seemingly bgn only cards. (They might be capable of a and not well documented, or they might be limited to the 2.4GHz band, either way, they strike me as dodgy so I don't have first hand experience with them.)

    If you want an adhoc for transferring, I would usually suggest A if both are capable of it.