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User: evronm

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  1. Re:H1-B on Examining Presidential Candidates' Tech Agendas · · Score: 1

    I actually don't know of any country which really embraces importing talent from overseas.

    I actually know of precisely one: Dubai. They import essentially their entire workforce. And they're doing pretty well :).

  2. Re:Wow! on Wal-Mart Asked to Drop Christian Video Game · · Score: 1
    So far, I'm pretty much alone in my religion.
    Actually, you might not be. Check out Zoroastrianism. Sounds a lot like what you're talking about (though IANAZ).
  3. Re:You can't just type in a location? on OLPC Project Interface Revealed · · Score: 1

    Just because there is no URL bar doesn't mean you can't type in a URL. I routinely hide the URL bar on my laptop to preserve screen space, and then just hit Ctrl+L when I need to type in a URL.

  4. Re:Costa Rica on If Not America, Then Where? · · Score: 1

    To be fair, yeah, that's true. Nonetheless, the facts I stated about Costa Rica remain salient. I've done my homework, and it seems to me as close to the ideal place to live as exists on the planet right now.

    Of course, we'll see if I still feel that way after living there for a few months :).

  5. Re:Costa Rica on If Not America, Then Where? · · Score: 1
    With no Army there is no promise of governmental stability

    Well, they've managed to remain stable for 120 years. That's only 20 less than the U.S. (since the civil war). As such, they've become an important banking/business/trading center and have the explicit support of every military in South America.

    This is a country which, in its entire existence, has managed to piss of nobody. In my mind, that makes their future stability much more likely than that of the U.S., which has managed to piss off over a billion muslims.

  6. Costa Rica on If Not America, Then Where? · · Score: 2, Interesting
    And I'm actually doing it. My wife and I have been planning it for about 7 months and we're finally moving next Tuesday. The reasons we chose Costa Rica:
    • Stable Government
    • No Army
    • Great weather (where we'll be living, parts have terrible weather)
    • Very low cost of living
    • Availability of most services, including high speed internet, in the central valley
    • Very nice people, for the most part
    • Large, established expat community
    • Close to the U.S. so it's easy to visit friends and family
    We will, of course, be blogging about our move (see my sig for the URL). If you're looking to ditch the States, I don't blame you one bit, and I highly recommend you look into Costa Rica. It's got most of the comforts of home, plus rainforests and monkeys and stuff.
  7. IOW on Opera to Start Phoning Home? · · Score: 1
    Opera announced an addition that will keep it in step with its rivals. Johan Borg, a developer working on the browser, said
    I think he was misquoted. What he really said was "Firefox and IE are irrelevant."
  8. That's why we need on Giant Rock Growing in Mount St. Helens' Crater · · Score: 4, Funny

    Giant paper.

  9. Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened on Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened · · Score: 1

    whew! OK, my world makes sense again.

  10. Re:Today we fight together..tomorrow? on Induce Act Stalled For Now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, it tells you an election is coming up and they don't want to be asked about this in the last 30 days before people vote.

    That is all that has happened, nothing else.

    You're close, but this is actually much more sinister. It's a very common tactic that goes like this:

    1. Propose a piece of legislation which is laughably and completely unreasonalby draconian and make a half-hearted attempt at passing it.
    2. Sit and watch while people all over the place spend their time and money opposing it until it is defeated.
    3. Propose the draconian legislation you really want. By this point, the opposition has already exhausted their funds and energies, and your legislation passes with little opposition.

    Steps 1 and 2 have now been accomplished. I'm just waiting for step 3 when more of my few remaining rights have been taken away. It will, as you say, though happen after the election.

    *sigh*

  11. Re:Playing follow the leader on Desktop Apps Ripe Turf for Open Source · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If all we ever do is try to emulate the M$ Office and other popular desktop apps, We'll will never be able to offer a superior product. It's time to add non bloating features that outshine the commercial software.

    I tend to disagree. Office suites represent a very mature category of software. Just about any feature that is useful (and many that aren't) has already been added to these.

    With software like this, all we really need to do is emulate and interoperate with what's already out there, and beat it on cost.

  12. Re:my most used extension ever... on Exploring Firefox Extensions · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, the situation is as follows: The "edit css" feature of the developer toolbar brings up a window with all the css of the current page loaded. You can then edit the css and see your changes on the page as you make them. This is incredibly neat because you don't have to reload the page to see your changes; they just happen.

    However, there's no way to save your changes from this window. The text in the window doesn't even necessarily represent a single file, but rather all the css in the current page. Therefore, even if you're working with a single file, you have to go back to your text editor to save your changes. If you're working with multiple css files, you have to figure out which file to modify and save. It gets to be a real hassle.

    That said, as long as you're mindful, it's still an incredibly useful tool. You just really have to watch what you're doing...

  13. Re:my most used extension ever... on Exploring Firefox Extensions · · Score: 1
    It even lets you edit CSS live on the web.

    I love that feature too, but you have to use it sparingly, or it will bite you in the ass. One time, I wrote like 50 lines of CSS in this things, and then hit reload by accident. Man was I pissed!

    That kind of thing never happens to me in other apps, because years of experience have taught me to save often. But when saving entails copying the entire file and pasting it over the old one, then saving, you tend to procrastinate saving.

    I imagine there's some clever way of getting around this, and I've given it some thought but haven't really come up with anything solid. Any ideas?

  14. Well, now I know what I have to do... on Todd Need[ed] a Liver · · Score: 1
  15. Re:Ironic... on Public Markets For Predicting Google's Market Cap · · Score: 1
    It's like gambling on someone else playing the slot machine. o.O O.o What's the point?

    I wish it was like that. If you could gamble on someone else playing slots, all you'd have to do is bet against them, and you'd win most of the time.

  16. Re:The most incredible thing about this story on CA Dangles $1M Bounty for Ingres Conversion Tools · · Score: 1
    This is a good thing. Not a yawn by any stretch of the imagination.

    This is by no means a yawn. It is, in fact a very good thing, and newsworthy. My point is, Borland has already done this. There are plenty of great open source databases out there. This is good, but by no means incredible like it would have been merely 5 years ago.

  17. The most incredible thing about this story on CA Dangles $1M Bounty for Ingres Conversion Tools · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To me, the most amazing thing about this story is that it's not really that big a deal. Sure, it merits the ./ front page, but it really isn't that earth shattering.

    Five years ago, it would have been positively mind blowing! This just shows how far open source has come. And for those of us who have been hawking open source since the 90's, it's truly gratifying to read a story like this, say "Cool, another little win," and move on.

  18. Nah on Just Add, Umm, Water · · Score: 3, Funny
    Would you eat food cooked in your own urine?

    Nah, that would piss me off.

    Sorry... somebody had to...

  19. Re:Powerful incentives (and interests) on Hatch Pushes INDUCE Act · · Score: 1

    You're missing my point: As long as guns, which can be used to actually kill people, are legal, it's hard to argue about the potential abuses of copy restriction circumvention devices with a straight face. The politicians do manage it, though...

  20. Re:Powerful incentives (and interests) on Hatch Pushes INDUCE Act · · Score: 2, Insightful
    What's next? Are you going to make Adobe Photoshop illegal?

    What about guns? As long as those are legal, it's clear that any of these laws outlawing software that could "potentially be misused are clearly hypocritical.

    - "P2P apps can be used to illegally copy music"

    - "Guns can be used to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings"

    See what I mean?

  21. What's left for them? on AT&T to Leave Residential Business · · Score: 1

    They're selling their cellular business to Cingular, they're not doing land lines any more, what's left? Do they have any other revenue producing businesses?

    I imagine they're not betting the farm on Plan 9...

  22. What about patents/DMCA? on Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS · · Score: 1
    On challenges facing developers today, Stallman said the worst was the proliferation of laws that explicitly ban free software for certain jobs.

    What about software patents that make it impossible to know whether or not your program infringes some stupid patent?

    What about the DMCA which exposes the programmer to possible jail time for writing code?

    Next to these, laws the explicitly ban free software for certain jobs seem positively benign.

  23. Re:the past is the future on PHP 5 Released; PHP Compiler, Too · · Score: 1
    I'm starting to think there are no new ideas any more, just re-hashes of old ideas. Unix, almost 35 years old, looks to be once again the wave of the future. LISP is still teaching us lessons. And the command line is still the most powerful sysadmin tool we have.

    I'm inclined to agree, but I should add that Unix, Lisp, and the command line solved the problems for which they were designed very well. As a consequence, it will take a lot to supplant them, and IMO that's a good thing.

    How many times in your career do you want to have to learn a whole new interface to do something you can already do quite well?

  24. This is NOT why I feel spoiled on Linux Users Are Spoiled · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It sites examples such as the availability of wide ranging software packages that Microsoft can't hope to provide.

    Yes, Linux comes with a lot of software that Windows doesn't . However, you can easily download most of it (in fact, Cygwin makes this almost trivial).

    No, the reason I feel spoiled as a Linux user is that, in the past 9 years, I have not had a single virus, trojan or worm, and I've never needed software to deal with or prevent these.

    Further, in that time, I have never seen a pop-up window I didn't specifically request, and I haven't given a second thought to spyware or adware. These things just aren't part of my life, thanks to Linux (yeah, I know, non-IE using Mac users can make the same claim).

    I usually take this for granted, but every once in a while, I sit at somebody else's Windows machine and realize just how fortunate and yes, spoiled, I am.

  25. I can forgive the alliteration on Kids Improve Writing Online · · Score: 1
    Harry Potter fan fiction forums (sorry about the alliteration)

    But writing "forums" when one means "fora" is simply unforgivable.

    For the humor impaired, the above is joke. Get over it!