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User: samurphy21

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Comments · 107

  1. Re:Really bad idea. on Roundabout Revolution Sweeping US · · Score: 1

    Do you have a steel or aluminum framed bike? If it's steel, then the issue is just that the sensor in the crack isn't sensitive enough, but if it's aluminum then you're invisible to the sensor as it only works on magnetic inductance. In eier event, you can glue a couple high powered neodymium magnets to the underside of your bottom bracket and it wqill make your bike look way bigger to those sensors.

  2. Re:Probably off topic, but I want to know! on Almost-Satnav For Cycling · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My Tracks will record your tracks, and I think allow you to import them into google maps. Google latitude, part of Google Maps, will allow those you tag as authorized to view your whereabouts, if you want people to find you when you're out on the road. Those are the two main apps I use for that kind of stuff.

    Do you need to be able to view your phone in this holder, or do you just want it to be able to gather data while you bike? I use a frame bag and just tuck my phone in there, when I'm out.

  3. Re:Yeah nothing works anymore on Throwing Out Software That Works · · Score: 1

    The problem is HTML5 is great and all, but:

    * it just a draft

    So was 802.11n, but that didn't stop you from having functioning 802.11n setups.

  4. Re:You Know on Rogers Shrinks Download Limits As Netflix Arrives · · Score: 1

    Here in Eastern Canada, we have Bell and Eastlink for internet, as well as Telus for Cell. Rogers isn't available in this area, either. I don't know WHERE this "Rogers Internet" is, but I suspect it's Ontario, which, as we all know, is like.. 99% of Canada, but only if you're FROM Ontario.

  5. Re:You Know on Rogers Shrinks Download Limits As Netflix Arrives · · Score: 1

    I don't think you can even get Rogers internet in Nova Scotia. There is a choice between Eastlink cable and Bell DSL, with a hodge podge of smaller places doing long haul wireless and such. Rogers DOES have cell phone "coverage" in this area, but it is laughably expensive and paltry coverage when compared to Bell or Telus's coverage.

  6. Re:Or on Damn Vulnerable Linux — Most Vulnerable Linux Ever · · Score: 1

    Or at the very least, from behind a hardware firewall/router.

  7. Re:Yeah, right. on BP Says "Top Kill" Operation Has Failed · · Score: 1

    The russians have used specialized nuclear explosions to seal gas field leaks. Oil fires, on land. Not underwater.

    I suspect it's still an option, and a quick google search shows that Obama has had his folks looking in to it since mid May to see if such an option would be viable under thousands of feet of water.

  8. Re:-1 Troll on Open Source Is Not a Democracy · · Score: 1

    I'm no political scientist, but I don't think that communism and democracy are mutually exclusive. A commune can vote democratically on decisions to be made by the whole.

    In fact, all votes being equal factors into communism quite well.

  9. False analogy. on Professors Banning Laptops In the Lecture Hall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doodling with pen and paper doesn't absorb the attention to the same degree as playing Facebook games and chatting with friends via IM.

  10. Re:It's plastic ! on Caltech Makes Flexible, 86% Efficient Solar Arrays · · Score: 1

    but hey, they'll keep going for ever! I never said anything about stopping.

  11. Re:It's plastic ! on Caltech Makes Flexible, 86% Efficient Solar Arrays · · Score: 1

    Really? You had to take a dig at japanese cars of old when you could have gone with american cars of now?

  12. Re:Thanks on New Wave of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sanitizers that lyse microbes with high doses of ethanol don't contribute to these antibiotic resistant critters, but over prescribing antibiotics definitely does.

    However, a major player is also the improper use of properly prescribed antibiotics. People who stop taking their medicine for strep as soon as they feel better instead of completing the course, as is required.

    This isn't entirely upon the doctors, but also upon those of us who don't follow doctors' directions.

  13. Doubly unreliable on iPhone's Liquid Sensors Can Be Triggered By Wintertime Use · · Score: 5, Funny

    We do a lot of service on macbooks at work, and there's been times when we've taking a unit in for service that "won't turn on" and the user "has no idea why", only to find out they're drippy inside, and none of the liquid sensors are tripped.

  14. Re:There's an important subtlety here on Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think I'm even MORE confused after reading what you wrote.

  15. Re:Hopefully not vaporware. on Lithium Air Batteries Get Boost From IBM and DOE · · Score: 2, Funny

    The latest technique involves wicking the sulfur into the pores of mesoporous carbon and then functionalizing the outside of the carbon with polyethylene glycol to keep the hydrophobic polysulfides inside when they form.

    I got a little bit hard right there.

  16. Re:Hopefully not vaporware. on Lithium Air Batteries Get Boost From IBM and DOE · · Score: 1

    Agreed. I live in Eastern Canada where they use a lot of salt on the roads this time of year. Even with undercoating, you'll rarely see a car which outlasts it's engine. Usually a car's body rots to pieces before it's mechanically unsuitable for continued use.

    There are many cars from as recent as 2000 or 2001 that are full of rust holes from people who don't bother to undercoat.

  17. Hopefully not vaporware. on Lithium Air Batteries Get Boost From IBM and DOE · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because this is a game changing technology, if it pans out.

  18. Re:GSM Providers on Canadian Android Carrier Forcing Firmware Update · · Score: 2, Informative

    Agreed. If the issue was that you can only get an Android phone via Rogers, then

    http://www.telusmobility.com/en/NS/htc_hero/index.shtml

    http://www.bell.ca/shopping/en_CA_ON.Samsung-Galaxywith-Google/69236.details

    There's at least two other nation wide carriers looking to do business with you, right now. Ones who have proper coverage in Eastern Canada, unlike Rogers, in many non-metro areas.

  19. Re:FIRST!!!! well almost on Why Everyone Has High Hopes For Apple Tablet · · Score: 1

    Then they right click on the left side of the icon. Communication skills on the sender's part don't compensate for listening skills on the receiver.

  20. Re:FIRST!!!! well almost on Why Everyone Has High Hopes For Apple Tablet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was always a sticking point for me in the Mac vs Windows debate. Windows users complain about the one button mouse as if it's a crippling feature, when in fact, the MacOS UI was designed with a one button mouse. Granted, once you go to third party apps like, say, photoshop or UT2004, you're longing for the right click, I suppose, but it does make it a less cumbersome interface for MacOS itself, as well as apps designed for the environment to have only the one button.

    I work tech support for a windows heavy environment, and the bottom end users are so mind bogglingly confused about the two buttons that it's laughable.

    "Click on the icon"
    "Right click or left click?"
    "If I say click, I just mean left click"
    "Ok, it brought up a menu.."
    "No, you right clicked on it, use the left button"
    "Oh.. Now i have a properties window"
    "No, you left clicked the menu.. not the icon.. close that and start over"
    "Ok, I have the menu up again, now what? I right click on properties?"
    "... bring it in, I'll do it"

  21. Re:Open Office is there on MS Issues Word Patch To Comply With Court Order · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We have a very unique structure at the university. Our clients are our 4000+ staff, faculty and students, all of whom have standalone laptop systems, not part of our managed systems. We are currently looking into putting our own ubuntu repository online for custom packages and updated revisions, but the headaches of this breaking mainline repository updates is daunting.

    The bulk of the systems (again, 4000+ laptops) never pass through our hands, so we can't configure them ourselves, and would have to provide documentation on this to the masses, 80% of whom would have no issues, and 20% of whom we'd end up having to handhold through the process of adding custom respositories, 5% of whom we'd have to see in person.

    We have a not insignificant amount of users, primarily library staff and long time faculty who are on the far side of 60 years old, and are resentful and afraid of the picture box with the typewriter.

    All in all, not insurmountable, just daunting, and it will be tackled some day, but the 2008-2009 school year marked the first year of official adoption by the faculty of OSS packages. We're still hammering out the wrinkles.

    And no, my official title is "Technology Services Consultant", but I act as backup to the software license officer when he is otherwise indisposed.

  22. Re:Open Office is there on MS Issues Word Patch To Comply With Court Order · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So angry.

    Have you ever had a support contract before? At the university where I'm the backup software license officer, we've got a Microsoft Campus Agreement, as well as software site license for SPSS, and multiple other statistical and mathematical software packages. If a widespread problem occurs due to a software fault, such as the calendar issues we were having on the 2003-2007 Office switch, they had someone on the problem and the problem resolved in less than a day.

    When a similar glitch occurred in our Evolution users, we had to submit a bug report, then wait for a new version to be released to repository, as we couldn't expect our users to compile from CVS, as the majority of them don't even have a build toolkit.

    There's anecdotal evidence for both sides of the argument, but I stand by what's been said.

  23. Re:Open Office is there on MS Issues Word Patch To Comply With Court Order · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's utopian thinking. For home use, I more or less agree with you. Business users have a lot of finely detailed and rigidly laid out documents, sometimes with proprietary macro or VBA coding in them. This stuff would be a huge pain to translate to an open standard, and there's no guarantee that OOo will display them faithfully and with fidelity.

    Plus, with a MS Office contract, you have a software vendor to fall back to when things go wrong. You don't get this to the same extent with OSS, which is why business is often slow to adopt it.

  24. Re:NTFS on Best Filesystem For External Back-Up Drives? · · Score: 1

    Recently? They have write caching and such on NTFS-3G now.. trickled down from their commercial Tuxera project.

  25. Re:The solution.. on Best Filesystem For External Back-Up Drives? · · Score: 1

    It means "without lack of regard".. GOD!

    Baltimore Orioles number one!