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User: ElderKorean

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  1. Re: Get a real browser on 83% Of Consumers Believe Personalized Ads Are Morally Wrong (forbes.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Donâ(TM)t forget that most people also use a mobile phone that was created by an advertising company.

  2. Re:Answer: Anyone who's dealt with Oracle on How Google Photos Became a Perfect Jukebox for Our Memories (medium.com) · · Score: 2

    >> Who expects software to make them cry? Answer: Anyone who's dealt with Oracle

    I nearly cry every time I fire up Google Picasa to edit my photos, and realise that this awesome piece of software will never be updated. It's face tagging was awesome and around long before Google Photos could do that.

  3. Re:Fishing for that result? on Fukushima's Nuclear Signature Found In California Wine (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, it was the French analyzing California wine. What did you expect?

    One wonders if they also looked at French wine using the same process/rigour?

  4. Re:Technology isn't advanced enough yet on No One Is Buying Smartwatches Anymore (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1
    The Pebble has an always on display that is perfectly readable under normal room lighting levels and also bright sunlight. In darker rooms and night-time a simple flick of your wrist is all it takes to turn on the back-light to display the time, or navigate a dark house. I had a basic Pebble, but have upgraded to the Pebble Time Steel, with colour e-ink display and metal band. The standard watch faces are fine for some people, but I wanted a little more. I've some fairly basic programming skills (20 years rusty), and I've been able to create my own face that has just the elements that I want. I've had fun learning about: math for the hand movements; generating and displaying tick marks; adding vibrations for a basic chime; displaying battery levels.

    Battery life sitting at about 9 days, which I could extend if I took out the second hand movement, smooth moving hands (and didn't update the whole display every second). When it's getting flat, I can charge it fully while having a shave and shower.

    I'm more than happy with mine.

    Why on earth would you ever need 30 fps on a watch?

  5. Re: Apple users on Will The iPhone 8 Include Augmented Reality? (bgr.com) · · Score: 0

    You think that's bad, I've got an iPhone and I drive a Prius. But I have a Pebbel and not an iWatch if that counts for anything

  6. Re:It could be if..... on Could the Best Windows 10 Laptop Be a Mac? · · Score: 1
    I work in a school where some of the student/teacher laptops are touch and some not.

    I don't need or want touch on a desktop - I've got a full keyboard and and a real mouse.

    On my personal macbook pro - touch would be nice, but the mac's touch-pad is pretty sweet, though occasionally I connect a real mouse

    On last year's laptop, a 12" windows laptop with a tiny touch-pad - it is crying out for a touch screen.

    On this year's model laptops that have windows 8, touch screen and a touch-pad too - it is awesome.

    For fast use the touch screen, clicking dialog boxes, installing software, fixing things - you generally don't have to keep typing.

    For accurate use the touch-pad. editing, anything that uses both keyboard and mouse.

  7. Re:Yes - known for years. on Could the Best Windows 10 Laptop Be a Mac? · · Score: 2

    Yes. The best hardware.

    Only one fucking mouse button.

    But the best hardware.

    Not used one lately hey?, the whole magic mouse surface is the button - and it is multi-touch enabled.

    One finger click for regular left click. Two finger click for regular right click.

  8. Re:Yes - known for years. on Could the Best Windows 10 Laptop Be a Mac? · · Score: 1

    Although you can boot Windows on a Mac, you don't have to do that. Windows, including Win 10, can be run safely in a Parallels or VMWare sandbox.

    On a Mac you can have both of these - my Windows 7 bootcamp install is also the VMware target. So I can run it natively for games, and later as a VM if for I'm working on OSX. Not upgraded yet to 10 - hoping it works just as well.

  9. Re:It's "not just the about the money!" on When Will Your Hard Drive Fail? · · Score: 1

    That is one major advantage to OS X. You can make a drive image and boot off of it. Helps for migration testing and backups. It really frosts me that Microsoft hasn't figured out how to do that yet. I can keep a 128 GB flash drive in my bike bag and restore my laptop anywhere in the world I can get a new HD. Pretty damned convenient.

    I love the fact that the included OSX backup (and dead simple) program Time Machine, creates a bootable USB backup - there's nothing remotely similar in Windows land but should be.

  10. Re:Always backup your data to a different machine! on When Will Your Hard Drive Fail? · · Score: 1

    I have to disagree - Yes, I personally go for a waaay more paranoid backup approach, but just backing up to an external USB HDD (though with a "real" backup, not his manual drag-and-drop BS) puts someone a whole world of hurt better off than 99% of computer use

    If Grandma calls and says her HDD died and she hasn't "run that DVD backup thing" in a few months, well gee, sucks for you, granny! If, however, she calls and asks for help getting her nightly USB drive backup reinstalled to a new computer, hey, cool, she's lost almost nothing.

    Once my parents had access to a decent internet connection (not just a modem) then I soon transferred them over to use Crashplan and have everything backed up at my place on an old Windows Home Server - works perfectly fine, and I get an email if the backup fails or doesn't run regularly.

    Sure I'd have to build a new PC if theirs fails but all dad's family tree info and photos are safely backed up at my place (and online too)

  11. Re:ST only needed transparent aluminum for... on Breakthough Makes Transparent Aluminum Affordable · · Score: 1

    What is this Star Trek IV you speak of? On a related note, isn't it weird how they skipped straight from ST II to ST VI, and Spock was suddenly back with no explanation?

    Likewise, I'm still waiting for the release of Star Wars Episodes I, II, & III to be made.

    There was an attempt a few years ago by some George Lucas look-alike, but they were far too silly to really be part of the story:

    Midichlorians and a Jar like character - strange ideas for a semi-decent sci-fi story.

  12. Re:What if... human's just weren't cut out for it? on How Civilizations Can Spread Across a Galaxy · · Score: 1

    As for humanity surviving on Earth - aside from a "grey-goo" scenario, or malevolent AI bent on human extermination, I can't think of anything that would actually present a credible threat to the species. Now lot's of things could bring about the collapse of our civilization, or even *almost* wipe out the species, but even a 99.9% extermination rate would leave 7+ million people - twice the population that is estimated to have existed before the birth of agriculture. Even a 99.9999% extermination rate would leave 7+ thousand people - more than the estimated population during the worst of the last major ice age. And those few survivors would have access to a wealth of knowledge and technology undreamed of by our ancestors - I doubt they'd have trouble eventually rebuilding a new civilization, at worst it might take a few thousand years - and we've been tool-makers for over a million already.

    The biggest problem that people starting to rebuild civilisation after most of us have been wiped out - is going to be energy sources, then metals.

    All of the easy to get to coal, oil and metals have been strip mined and basically used up - the really hard to get to stuff (which they won't be able to get to) is going to be all that remains.

    The coal and oil could eventually be replenished, but only in geological timescales (and favourable conditions)

    I suspect they'll be a stone-age people until a passing UFO checks out the world that suddenly went quiet.

  13. Re:Long story short (ad-less) on Backblaze's 6 TB Hard Drive Face-Off · · Score: 1
    For my desktop 'games' machine - I went the path of booting from a normal 500Gb HDD, that also had a partition for media.

    I had a 250Gb SSD used for just games only - LotRO, Firefall.& all steam (easy enough to move the library to be on the SSD)

    Turn on PC, go make cuppa, return and check any updates done, play games from the fast...

    Brought some 120Gb SSD as early Christmas present for myself to replace that boot HDD and another,

    Also found that a Windows 8.1 touch laptop with only 2Gb memory is perfectly fine with an SSD - was forever swapping but usable with HDD.

  14. Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone on Drone Sightings Near Other Aircraft Up Dramatically · · Score: 1

    Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.

    Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.

    ...

    Recently on the news in Australia. If they see drones operating near bushfire where water bombing aircraft/helicopters are flying they will ground them.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

    Current regulations are that drones have to be 30 metres away from people, they are not be used in built-up areas, not to exceed 400 feet in height and not be flown in controlled air space, but there is no law against flying near bushfires. Drones must not create a hazard for other aircraft, but if the device was several hundred metres away from its operator, how would they know if a firefighting aircraft was approaching?

  15. Re:Windows app that displays these meaningfully? on Data Center Study Reveals Top 5 SMART Stats That Correlate To Drive Failures · · Score: 1
    I work at a school and see plenty of failing laptop drives - mostly from kids not sleeping their laptops while walking around.

    We use (currently) PartedMagic Linux distribution on a boot USB. The "Disk Health" tool happily reports on failing drives and gives reasons.

    Added bonus is that Linux is better than windows at allowing data to be copied from a failing drive (and doesn't care about the NTFS file permissions)

  16. Re:This update deleted my "All Programs" list on Windows 8.1 Update Crippling PCs With BSOD, Microsoft Suggests You Roll Back · · Score: 1

    I'm going to have to reinstall Windows 7, and I can't tell you how excited I am about this.

    What about your backup, restore to that.

  17. Re:ugh on The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record · · Score: 1

    Every time it snows, deniers claim "see, there's no global warming" and believers say "weather is not climate!"

    Brisbane (QLD Australia) has last week had the coldest Winter morning in 102 years, many people are saying "what global warming?" :-(

  18. Re: Of course on The Video Game That Maps the Galaxy · · Score: 2

    And Elite did this in 1984 Was it obeying the same rules or just creating "random stuff"?

    From what I remember the star and planet creation happened through an algorithm, as you could visit the same location when playing Elite on a totally different computer, eg BBC Micro, or (eventually) PC version. There was some fluctuation on commodity prices but even that wasn't really random, more cyclic.

  19. Re:What The?!? on US Agency Aims To Regulate Map Aids In Vehicles · · Score: 1

    Didn't you know? Even more regulation is all we need to a happier and more prosperous life.

    Didn't you know? All we need for a happier and more prosperous life is to go completely Thunder Dome!

    Why not? I already run Barter Town...

    I guess you two are in Australia, seeing as Thunderdome was on TV last night - still fresh in your mind.

  20. Re:The Real Story Should Be... on How Open Government Data Saved New Yorkers Thousands On Parking Tickets · · Score: 1

    A red directional arrow means no turn on red in most states. A round red light is turn after stop.

    From another country (ie Australia) you cannot proceed through a red light or arrow at all, only on green can you go.

  21. Re:What about old virgins? on Computer Geeks As Loners? Data Says Otherwise · · Score: 1

    How many are old farts and still virgin like me? I will be like The 40 Years Old Virgin soon. :P

    Past that one, 44 years and counting...

    I work doing IT support in a school, talking with students and teachers all day though I am definetly an introvert.

    I have no problems at social event - will happily go along - I don't need to be talky talky while there though.

    I'm incredibly shy when I want to talk relationship questions with a girl. I just can't bring it up, or ask them out...

  22. Re:42 on Mathematician: Is Our Universe a Simulation? · · Score: 1

    I don't know about that, but if this is a simulation then could someone please tell me where I can find the reboot switch? I want out.

    Also from Douglas

    "“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”"

  23. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid on Stephen Hawking: 'There Are No Black Holes' · · Score: 1
    Anglican's don't think the world is 6000 years old either. Neither does the Catholic Church.

    It's the penticostals (generally in America) that you need to convince.

    From the wikipedia article about Ussher "Ussher is also popular amongst creationists, even though they reject his methodology of using the most up to date contemporary scientific, chronological, historical and biblical scholarship to date the age of the world."

  24. Re:Where is everybody? on Studies Say Earth Won't Die As Soon As Thought · · Score: 1

    ...

    I suspect the reason we haven't heard from anybody is that the lifetime of high-power technological civilizations is only a few hundred to a thousand years. We're only about 200 years into industrial society, and we've already burned through most of the easy to get natural resources.

    And when we manage to blow ourselves back to the stone age, we'll never be able to leave it without 'external' help - for the same basic reason, all the easy to access resources that made advances possible are gone.

    Wood and fire is about all that will be left.

    We've destroyed the natural water sources, removed biodiversity from plants. Are there any naturally occurring grains anymore?

  25. Re: If this was Apple... on Samsung Fudging Benchmarks Again On Galaxy Note 3 · · Score: 2

    But in introducing the feature, apple even said that 50% of users don't create a passcode, even the 4 digits one, because people find it inconvenient. The fingerprint sensor is for THOSE users. To make "good enough" security convenient.

    I like the locking feature, but would like it to be GPS based, or even phone tower / wifi name. When I'm at home I don't want (or need) a lock on my phone, but when I'm away from home I do. Work could be an options for people too, but I work in a school - there's no way I'm leaving that unlocked, even on my desk.