Slashdot Mirror


User: doobydoobydoo

doobydoobydoo's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
22
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 22

  1. Just switched myself on Slashdot Asks: What's Your Preferred Note-Taking App? · · Score: 1

    I used Evernote Basic (the free level) for several years but just switched to OneNote a couple of days ago when they announced I could no longer sync between my desktop, laptop, iPad and (Windows) phone.

    I used Microsoft's conversion tool and it worked pretty well.

    OneNote 2016 on its own is completely free - you don't need the whole of Office to use it. Evernote's tagging is better, but there are addins for OneNote that boost the tagging of OneNote somewhat (such as "OneNote Tagging Kit": https://onenotetaggingkit.code...)

  2. 1,500 years to prepare to defend ourselves or run on Alien Contact Unlikely For Another 1,500 Years, Says Study (msn.com) · · Score: 1

    Does this therefore set a timeframe of the order of 1,500 years for us either to colonise other planets, to defend ourselves against unknown aliens of unknown capabilities and intent, or to build the technology for at least some of us to flee?

  3. Re:Technology can't stop these on Ask Slashdot: Can Technology Prevent Shootings? · · Score: 1

    The big difference: Europe never allowed citizens to own guns the way the US does. Maintaining the gun control in Europe is much easier than introducing one in the US. In the US, it requires the taking back of a lot of guns, which is not likely to happen. Specially not the illegal ones.

    There are illegal weapons in Europe too. Granted it will take some time, but there's no reason why gun control couldn't be introduced in the US, with guns withdrawn, amnesties held, illegal weapons slowly uncovered. It's not going to be a quick process, and there will need to be a change of mindset over one or more generations, but the fact that there are lots of weapons about now doesn't mean the U.S. could *never* get to a situation where guns are rare.

  4. Warrant canary to get around censorship? on Tech Companies Face Criminal Charges If They Notify Users of UK Government Spying (techspot.com) · · Score: 1

    Could a warrant canary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary) be used to get around such gagging? Yahoo, MS, Google, etc., could have a page that you can go to that either says "You are not the subject of a state-sponsored attack via us" or is blank. When it's blank you can assume that the spooks are prying. You could even sign up for regular emails stating the same. When those emails stop you know to go check your page.

  5. ... if a child as young as the Childline survey suggests is accessing pornography surely the parents are neglectful?

    That would only hold if parents had some magical ability to effectively block all access by kids to mobile phones, handheld consoles, games machines, computers, and also access to those of any of their friends, peers, etc.

  6. Will it be all repeats, just like the main site? on Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to SlashdotTV! (Video) · · Score: 1

    Will it be all repeats, just like the main site?

  7. Light barrier on Light Barrier Repels Mosquitoes · · Score: 1

    should be a barrier for neutrinos as well!

  8. Re:And if we start "harvesting" working satellites on DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones · · Score: 1

    There are lots of things the law doesn't allow that governments and the military get away with.

  9. And if we start "harvesting" working satellites? on DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't this technology also allow working satellites belonging to others to be "harvested"?

  10. Patent for idea that has been around for years on Returning Power From Electric Cars To the Grid · · Score: 1

    Hasn't this idea been around for years? I know Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air (http://www.withouthotair.com/) covered this back in 2008, and it wasn't new then.

  11. 45 microwatts, if anyone is interested... on MIT Researchers Create New Tiny Energy Harvester · · Score: 1

    Why this didn't go in the summary I really don't know.

  12. Re:Time to Usable on Windows 8 To Feature 'Fast Startup Mode' · · Score: 2

    There are precious few (useful) tools available to track down everything the system is doing, and even fewer to help you improve the situation.

    Soluto does both, for Windows Vista and better, anyway.

    I tried Soluto on my old laptop and was not impressed. I had lots of things in Startup that it either wouldn't disable or that I couldn't disable (lots of system processes, sound driver, etc. - basic stuff I'd need). I disabled tons of stuff but it didn't really seem to be any better (and, in addition, Soluto itself needs to start up, which slows things down quite a bit. I tried the "Delayed load" option, but that didn't seem to improve matters much, to be honest. Whilst being quite aggressive in what I turned off, there seemed to be marginal improvement at best. I think instead there's something fairly fundamentally wrong with a lot of Windows services, etc., and maybe the Windows scheduling, that just take an age to load.

  13. It seems that it uses air on Tractor Beams Come To Life · · Score: 1

    It is the heated air near the laser beams that moves the particle around, so this would be no use as a tractor beam in space, alas.

  14. Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? on The Humble Indie Bundle · · Score: 1

    I am about to buy this. , and will pay much more than I *have* to. Just because many companies are happy to screw me on price whenever they get the chance hasn't (yet) made me want to screw all companies when I get the chance. *I* still have some morals.

  15. Definitely a gimmick on Do You Have a Secret Immunity To 3D Movies? · · Score: 1

    I find that my eyes/brain fill in the 3D of 2D movies quite effectively. If they show a picture of a corridor my brain seems to make it look 3D and when someone walks behind someone else my brain doesn't shout, "Hey, that's flat, he just disappeared!" Instead my brain reconstructs the 3D image and it all seems to work.

    In 3D movies, if I look closely I can see that it looks more 3D than normal movies, but once I'm immersed in a good story I don't really notice the difference very much (unless the movie is full of "boo" gimmicks, which I can do without).

  16. Re:I don't understand the obsession... on New Phoenix BIOS Starts Windows 7 Boot In 1 Second · · Score: 1

    In theory, a hybrid sleep mode that actually worked would help achieve the same thing (similar power savings), but in my experience it often just doesn't work properly.

  17. Aren't the sales sort of equivalent? on Author's Guild Says Kindle's Text-To-Speech Software Illegal · · Score: 1

    If someone would have bought the audio book, but instead buys the ebook and listens to the text-to-speech, the Authors' Guild hasn't even lost out on royalties. I doubt very many people buy both the print and audio versions of the same books at the moment, so it's one sale either way.

    They are clearly just attempting to charge twice for the same thing.

  18. 20-30 min to get your time to vote? on E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections · · Score: 1

    ... Especially when I have to wait 20-30 min to get my time to vote, and I am in a relatively small voting district now. When I was in a larger district it was a 1-5 min wait to get you ballot, and a 1-5 min wait to scan in at one of the two machines.

    20-30 minutes? (1-5) x 2 min wait elsewhere?

    Every time I've voted here in the UK (over the last 20 years) I haven't had to wait at all. Maybe there will be someone ahead of me in the queue at the desk, often not. So maximum wait is, perhaps, 30s to get the ballot. Walk to booth and fill in the ballot (using my British 'HB' pencil 8-). Walk over to the ballot box and post my ballot in. All done in a minute.

    Generally the polling stations are open all day, and there are lots of them scattered about around town. You generally don't need to queue/wait at all because they each only serve a small portion of the local population.
  19. So the choices are... on Sony's Idea of DRM-Free Music · · Score: 1

    ... to buy the lossless CD, with box, cover art, booklet, resale rights, etc., for $11.99 (current price for the Manilow album at Amazon.com, for example) or most likely less if you shop around; download from iTunes for $12.99; or trek to the store, buy a special card, trek home again, and figure out where to go and what to do to download it from this new service, also for $12.99? [Or grab a high quality torrent for free, if you are that way inclined.]

    And they act like they expect this to be successful.

  20. Anyone know what the resolution of the video is? on Japanese Probe Returns First HD Video of the Moon · · Score: 1

    A quick back-of-the-envelope gave me just over 300m per pixel, left-to-right (a lot more top to bottom because of the curvature of the surface), based on the curvature of the horizon in the video, the radius of the moon, and an assumption that the image is not distorted. But I may well have screwed up. I was interested in knowing the real size of the features (craters, etc.). Anyone know what the approximate scale is?

  21. Re:Digital Download? on Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time · · Score: 1

    I don't want the hassle of compiling it, though. Will they read out the binary version, too?

  22. This is going to break a lot of batch scripts... on Longhorn Drops 'My' Prefixes · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... isn't it? Sure, programs can call SHGetFolderPath() to find out the path to the user's document folder, but batch files will typically have hard coded paths, no? I know a lot of ours do, so they'll all need updating. Even if they use environment variables, they'll probably have things like:

    xcopy /S /Y /C "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\*.*" z:\backupfolder