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User: MichaelSmith

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Comments · 11,670

  1. Re:Out of curiosity... on Malicious Spam Jumps To 3B Messages Per Day · · Score: 1

    I bet their work is more enjoyable and interesting than mine, over all.

  2. Re:Yanee dah poo noo, ho ho ho on Advanced Social Skills For Humanoid Robots · · Score: 1

    The phone I was trying to set up for her is my Motorola and the implementation was sufficiently different enough to turn her off. I suppose the point is that as people become more set in their ways the user interfaces they interact with have to adapt to their expectations.

  3. Re:Yanee dah poo noo, ho ho ho on Advanced Social Skills For Humanoid Robots · · Score: 1

    Not everybody has a nephew hanging around to put restraining bolts on the droids and argue with them. And even if they did it might not work out well. If I was to buy a robot to help my elderly mother it would have to be able to communicate with her, because she definitely isn't going to communicate with a R2 unit. Two days ago I tried to set up a new mobile phone for her but she didn't like the SMS interface (apparently Nokia phones "just know" what she wants to type) so she kept the old one.

  4. Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported) on Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution · · Score: 1

    Or you can write an app for the iPhone, like Bejeweled. Play it in flash on the browser, or on the iPhone as an app.

    What happened to write once, run anywhere? No money in it I suppose.

  5. Re:There can only be one! on Nokia, Intel Merge Maemo, Moblin Into MeeGo · · Score: 1

    Well, iPhone is doomed to stay as proprietary garbage, as is WinMo 7.
    Now what's left: Android, Meego, Palm, ...

    Those 3 could probably work together... Maybe Android is too full of itself and Samsung should join Meego and drop Bada too.

    There is SHR and QtMoko. Enlightenment is the desktop environment for SHR and the enlightenment team are working for Samsung now.

  6. Re:Like the LCD on Hands On With Notion Ink's Pixel-Qi Equipped Adam Tablet · · Score: 1

    I am not claiming a touch interface can work exactly like a mouse interface. I just think it makes sense to touch something lightly to get information about it, and more heavily to interact with it.

  7. Re:OpenMoko on Nokia, Intel Merge Maemo, Moblin Into MeeGo · · Score: 1

    The openmoko software projects are entirely community driven. The hardware development is only done by educational institutions now I believe. Parts of the software stack will most likely survive beyond the openmoko project. The Enlightenment team are working for Samsung on smart phones for example. For now, I have a great phone which I like using and which I can develop for, so I am happy.

  8. Re:Meanwhile on Breaking the Squid Barrier · · Score: 1

    I'm done for. They will scan my brain for remnants of this article, do away with me and march on New Zealand to rescue their brothers and sisters.

    I am starting to get worried now. I am pretty sure that I have not acquired any lumps of metal in my eyes over the last 44 years, but how can I be sure? This is my first time in a really strong magnetic field and I don't want to find out what it feels like if there are unaccounted metallic splinters in there. I plan to keep my eyes closed.

  9. Re:Like the LCD on Hands On With Notion Ink's Pixel-Qi Equipped Adam Tablet · · Score: 1

    the one problem i have had with browsing when using a touch screen, is the need for "mouse over" various elements.

    This is where I think a variable pressure touchpad would help.

  10. Re:Meanwhile on Breaking the Squid Barrier · · Score: 3, Funny

    done on a squid pro quo basis.

    Aghhhh!

    I am having a brain MRI tomorrow morning and if it shows abnormalities it is all your fault.

  11. Re:Will be interesting, but... on Operation Titstorm Hits the Streets · · Score: 1

    The best chance I think is voting for the greens and giving Kevin the scare of his life. I doubt it will work though.

  12. Re:"tit storm" on Operation Titstorm Hits the Streets · · Score: 1

    Almost as good as "Banned in Queensland." Bad Taste, Peter Jackson's first film proudly proclaims this on the case.

    Well, pretty much everything was banned in Queensland in those days...

  13. Re:Question on Operation Titstorm Hits the Streets · · Score: 1

    It does depend a bit on time of day. There definitely seem to be peak times for the Australian contingent when the US is asleep.

  14. Re:and now for a god test on Greenlander's DNA Sequenced, After 5,000 Years · · Score: 1

    Reboot! Then we move to Mars and watch the action!

  15. Re:Makes me think of Arthur Clarke. on Toshiba Developing High-Density 1TB SSD · · Score: 1

    It would take about 200TB to record a lifetime of audio at CD quality.

    Yeah but this was just a note taker, and it could offload storage to bigger machines anyway.

  16. Re:Makes me think of Arthur Clarke. on Toshiba Developing High-Density 1TB SSD · · Score: 1

    Yeah but the minisec recorded audio, not video and handled email and encryption. I don't think Clarke thought that device would store more than a few gigs of data.

  17. Meanwhile on Breaking the Squid Barrier · · Score: 5, Funny

    Giant squid are trying to break the human barrier: to tes how long they can keep human beings alive at great depth. Currently the record stands at 120 seconds.

  18. Re:Metric Everywhere on Astronauts Having Trouble With Tranquility Module · · Score: 1

    We took the big bang approach in Australia for most things in the early 1970s. Speed limits changed overnight. Signs changed over a couple of weeks before the change. People who claimed they couldn't cope were pretty much told to STFU. I have a friend who went to a private school which stuck it out teaching imperial units as long as they could do it legally and he had a lot of trouble later at college when people wouldn't understand what he was talking about when he talked about inches, feet, etc.

  19. Re:Metric Everywhere (Viva Base 12) on Astronauts Having Trouble With Tranquility Module · · Score: 1

    One thing that Imperial units have going for them is that they better divide by 3 and 4. 12 and arguably 60 make a "nicer" unit base mathematically. Ten is merely a happenstance of tetrapod evolution. A "smart" god would have given us 12 digits instead of 10.

    By that argument a power of two should surely be best, but I expect that fourteen fingered aliens would favor base fourteen anyway.

  20. Re:Hubble on Astronauts Having Trouble With Tranquility Module · · Score: 1

    True but then NASA pretty much invented formal interface definitions, and as a result integration tests of hardware go much smoother than might be expected. And it is only hardware anyway. Its a bit like what my wife does as an architect. She specifies this type of wall and this type of fitting and expects them to work on site.

  21. Re:Cliche mushup on Astronauts Having Trouble With Tranquility Module · · Score: 2, Informative

    They should have aborted. He wouldn't think it was so funny after that.

    Only the crew had access to the abort button and I doubt any of the crews would have used it if they had a small chance of making a landing. There is some discussion in the ALSJ of what would have happened if the radar altimeter had failed to lock after high gate, preventing automatic throttle control during powered descent. Generally, engineers felt that a landing would be impossible and pilots felt that it was worth a go.

    And the engineers are probably right. Pilots tended to fly too high, and too slow while the computer saved fuel for a final deceleration close to the ground. If a pilot stopped the descent at 10000 feet to organize the landing he would run out of fuel.

  22. Re:and now for a god test on Greenlander's DNA Sequenced, After 5,000 Years · · Score: 1

    calling a neanderthal disabled *human* doesn't make sense

    I'm not. I was making an analogy. How would it feel to be the only Neanderthal on earth, unable to reproduce. If a community of Neanderthals was created, what would we humans do to them if they started breeding?

  23. Re:Welp, that's it on Southwest Declares Kevin Smith Too Fat To Fly · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I probably weigh as much as Kevin Smith, but my BMI is about normal. I am 193 cm tall and I find economy seats very uncomfortable. Any taller and I wonder if it would even be safe to travel in those seats.

  24. Re:Welp, that's it on Southwest Declares Kevin Smith Too Fat To Fly · · Score: 1

    So after takeoff the captain looks at his elevator trim setting and reshuffles the passengers accordingly.

  25. Re:and now for a god test on Greenlander's DNA Sequenced, After 5,000 Years · · Score: 1

    No I mean that disabled humans have an unhappy life because they don't fit into our society as it stands. Many of them can't breed or drive a car for example. I am not claiming that a recreated Neanderthal would be disabled in any way but I do doubt that they would live their life in a way that suited them. I think it is more likely they would live in a zoo, and I wouldn't want to see that happen.