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User: notyou2

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  1. USB thumb drive for OSX install disk! on Apple Announces iLife '11, FaceTime Mac, Lion, Mac App Store, MacBook Air · · Score: 1
  2. Video hook-ups on IT's Love-Hate Relationship With Laptops · · Score: 1

    WHY is 10% of all meeting and presentation productivity wasted on hooking the laptop up to the damn projector or plasma screen?

    I don't understand why it's still so technologically challenging to sync a laptop with an external display, reliably and expediently. Mac's get this right more than windows machines do, but even they're a little sluggish at it.

  3. Re:20 Million users contributed feedback on Users Being Migrated To New Version of Hotmail · · Score: 2, Informative

    I will admit to still having one hotmail account, which I use as a spam catcher. If I ever need to provide an email account for something on the web that I know is going to generate spam, I just give 'em the old hotmail account, which I check once every month or so. So just in case you didn't know -- if you own mycoolname@gmail.com, then mail sent to mycoolname+anything@gmail.com will reach you as well. When I sign up with spammywebsite.com, for example, I use the address mycoolname+spammywebsite@gmail.com. If I wind up with spam from them, I know it, and can immediately set a filter to flag all such email appropriately.

    This doesn't *always* work. There are some websites whose form validators reject email addresses with a plus sign in them. And I've even seen sites that juggle the plus sign so inappropriately that it gets passed unencoded as a GET variable, and turns into a space. But by and large, it's a very useful trick.
  4. Ummm... free data plan anyone? on Apple Turning Cell Phone Market Upside Down? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So a "missing" $200 subsidy translates to $8.33/month on a 2-year contract. Perhaps instead of directly subsidizing the phone itself, Cingular is subsidizing the cost of the data plan for the phone? Seems like this would make good marketing sense, and provide the potential buyer with a perceived savings (since that same data plan at retail might actually cost them $10-20/month).

  5. 13 million seems awfully high on RFID-Reading Passport Scanners Installed · · Score: 1

    U.S. passports -- about 13 million will be issued in 2006

    Is this really correct? That would mean that over the course of a decade, roughly 130 million passports are issued? So there are 100-something million active passports... 1 in 3 americans (of all ages). That seems high.

  6. Re:Lens Hood on First Super Close-Up Pictures of Mars · · Score: 1

    So what's the advantage of keeping tracking the orientation of the satelite relative to the Sun versus having a complete hood?

    Having a sun-synchronous orbit allows you to keep your solar panels under predictable illumination.

  7. Re:Alrighty... on Reporter Phone Records Being Used to Find Leaks · · Score: 1

    I'll grant you that my "publish" wording was inaccurate. However, I stand by my original sentiment. For example...

    Suppose someone installs hidden video cameras in my house and records everything that goes on inside. Does it matter whether they publish the video on the internet, or just keep it for their own private "collection?" Regardless of whether it gets published or not, it's an invasion of my privacy. And I would in fact call that a reasonable litmus test... if I don't want something private about me spread all over the internet, then it's private enough that I don't want "just anyone" (that includes the government) to have access either. It should require a warrant (and DOES, incidentally).

    I submit that the president wouldn't care to have his phone call records handed over to just anyone (let's not even say published... let's just say collected and kept by some third party that he hasn't chosen to give them to). Those logs are private... for national security reasons, for political reasons, and for his own personal reasons. Thus he finds that his calling record has privacy value. So why is his logging of MY calling records not any kind of violation? And why do people accuse me of "having something to hide" simply because I (like the president, I think) don't want to turn over such records to just anyone?

    People have taken the administration to court over records of who they've called and who they've had meetings with.

  8. Alrighty... on Reporter Phone Records Being Used to Find Leaks · · Score: 1

    If the president and his lackeys are so committed to the notion that collection of these records doesn't constitute an invasion of privacy and doesn't require a warrant, then they naturally wouldn't care if someone published THEIR private AND professional phone call logs.

    What that's they say, they don't want to? Why? Do they have something to hide?

    This all makes me sick.

  9. Re:I don't (anymore) on Explaining Complexity in Software Development? · · Score: 1
    Says yagu:
    (Aside: as for the original poster, congratulations on being able to explain "big O notation". I sometimes suspect my girlfriend of faking it.)

    I'm sure I could take that sentence out of context and make a joke about it. Lucky for you, I'd never do such a thing.
  10. Work on Mars! on Summer of Code Now Taking Student Applications · · Score: 3, Informative

    Check it out... you can do work for NASA Mars missions: http://code.google.com/soc/mars/about.html

  11. Wildcard searches work on Google Goes to Mars · · Score: 1

    Try "russia*" to catch both "russia" and "russian", for example.

  12. VCR repair shops on Soldering For Non-Solderers? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Find a VCR/TV repair shop in your area (yes, they do exist). I bet they'd do it for you either cheap or free.

  13. So sad on Experimental Transistor Breaks 600 Gigahertz · · Score: 1

    With their pseudomorphic heterojunction bipolar transistor, the researchers have demonstrated a speed of 604 gigahertz...

    Yeah, I have a family member who's bipolar, so I can relate.

  14. Uhmm.... on Plant a Seed, Get Sued? · · Score: 1
    Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime. A company called Monsanto sells those specially engineered seeds, and according to their license agreements, they make it illegal to replant the seeds harvested from a previous crop. To enforce this, they have brought many hard-working farmers to court and even thrown some in jail.
    Uhmm... you must be new here?

    1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to name a few. But I certainly salute your idealisic surprise at the evil that is our current patent system.
  15. Re:Umm, "FOSDEM"? on FOSDEM 2005 Speakers List Available · · Score: 1

    I've no doubt that the site details exactly what FOSDEM is, and from the roster of people in the article summary I guessed that it was something along those lines.

    But if the FOSDEM guys actually want to interest people in their site/meeting, wouldn't it behoove them to mention WhoTF they are in their submission? Likewise for the editor who felt it was an interesting enough story to post. And if they did mention it but the editor chose to clip that part, well... shame on the editor.

    I just don't get how this happens so frequently, I guess. If someone submits a story to slashdot about the 5th annual ABCFOOBAR convention... it just seems like it doesn't take a genius to see how desirable it might be to describe what ABCFOOBAR is.

  16. Umm, "FOSDEM"? on FOSDEM 2005 Speakers List Available · · Score: 1

    Is it too much to ask for submitters (or at least the EDITORS, for god's sake) to actually define acronyms and names that we see once or less a year around here? Why does everyone assume that their product/conference/association is a household name throughout the world?

  17. Simple on How Do You Deal w/ User Induced Stress? · · Score: 0

    Simple... shoot 'em.

  18. Re:Let me guess: on Will Google Launch A Browser? · · Score: 1

    ...it tracks every site you visit and doesn't let you delete the history

    Umm, am I the only one who sees HUGE potential here?

    Imagine a browser that DID do this, and integrated it with google search... i.e. I could search for a phrase within every webpage I've visited in the last year.

    That would be a seriously innovative new browser feature. And if you allow for some kind of granularity in how often my server-side browser history is updated (i.e. once every 50 pages, or when I search, whichever comes first), it actually doesn't sound all that impractical.

  19. Since it's slashdotted... on Recording Deals In The Digital Age · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obligatory google cache.

  20. Re:It sounds nice... on Zero Gravity Flights for the Rest of Us · · Score: 1

    Consider that sky-diving can also offer you zero-g styled environment

    Ummm.... or NOT!?

    When you skydive, you rather quickly attain a terminal velocity, after which you are no longer accelerating. At which point, you are in fact NOT in freefall, you are instead falling at a constant rate of speed, which means the sensations (other than the wind) are IDENTICAL to simply being at rest on the ground.

    Skydiving is not zero-g by any measure.

  21. HUH? What exactly is interesting/new here? on Carbontools - Intro to Open Geospatial Development · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is simply another commercial product in a very large sea of other free and non-free competing products.

    Did the submitter or editor even notice that this "open software" product isn't even available for purchase yet, let alone download?

    Fluff, pure and simple.

  22. Re:Good Chernobyl Reference on Interview With Chernobyl Engineer · · Score: 1

    Not trying to be negative, but that link is rather technical... anybody have something more understandable?

  23. Re:New Jade Version Released on Improving The Java Core Library · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sure the commons-collection is a nice implementation, but for those who haven't heard, Java 1.5 (currently in beta) contains most of the features you've named. Some are simply new classes in the collections framework, others are language extensions (i.e. generics for type-safe collections).

    Also, some of the features you named are already in java 1.4, such as identity maps, reference maps that allow garbage collection, adapters for converting collections to/from enumerations and arrays.

  24. Re:Now every virus program will say... on Hydan: Steganography in Executables · · Score: 1

    I am 1337.

    With this technique, couldn't it instead read:

    1 am l337.

  25. Re:What about the nausea problem? on Walking In A VR Future · · Score: 2, Informative

    Your ear detects ACCELERATION, not velocity... so if you're walking on the tiles, it will (roughly speaking) still experience the same up-down and swaying that you'd experience while walking on real ground, won't it?

    Basically, aside from the initial acceleration of starting to walk, won't this feel the same as "really" walking?

    On the other hand, I could certainly see how frequent changes in direction or velocity would confuse your ear, in which case I see your point.