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User: Rob_Warwick

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Comments · 98

  1. Re:Macs are not replacing Windows PCs on Apple's Missed Opportunity With Leopard Delay · · Score: 4, Informative
    How long is it going to take for Windows or OSX to get multiple desktops?

    About a week. Apple is calling it 'Spaces' in Leopard.

  2. Re:This is stupid. on High School Students Forced To Declare A Major · · Score: 1

    Fair enough. Wikipedia places American lesson lengths at 30-90 minutes long. To salvage a point out of it I'll redo the math. I'm going to claim that assuming 90 minute lessons, for 16 weeks (call it four months with school vacations, which was one semester for me when I was in Canadian High School), at his $100/hr, the cost is $2,400. Even less expensive to keep kids from making pricey mistakes.

  3. Re:This is stupid. on High School Students Forced To Declare A Major · · Score: 1

    And, at least at my school, sex education consisted of one class a week for about 3 months. 16 classes don't cost all that much, even at $100/hr that's only $3,200.
    Even $1,600. I'm not quite sure how you got 16 weeks into 3 months either.
  4. Re:Public DNS is corrupt, but Private DNS is subli on DNS Complexity · · Score: 2, Informative

    tv is the country code for Tuvalu.

  5. Re:And any K-12 school IT staff worth their salt.. on Principal Cancels Classes, Sues Over MySpace Prank · · Score: 2, Interesting
    FTFA:

    Trosch and the school's IT person attempted to block MySpace, but students were "backdooring a fire wall and getting into" it anyway.
    I wonder if students were actually comprimising their firewall, or if they were just using a proxy or something like that.
  6. Re:Graham Article on EFF Patent Busting - Prior Art Needed for VOIP · · Score: 1

    I've no idea, past what is quoted above, but I somehow doubt it. Thanks for clearing me up on exactly what they're looking for.

  7. Graham Article on EFF Patent Busting - Prior Art Needed for VOIP · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm not sure if this qualifies, since the article wasn't written until 2005, but Paul Graham mentions in one of this articles that a friend of his wrote some VoIP software in 1994. The article is available online.

    In 1994 my friend Koling wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data packets that could be sent over the Internet. We weren't sure at the time whether this was a proper use of the Internet, which was still then a quasi-government entity. What he was doing is now called VoIP, and it is a huge and rapidly growing business.
  8. Re:And it was just getting good on Second Life Hit By Massive In-Game Worm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Turing complete refers to a language that's capable of emulating a Universal Turing Machine. It has nothing to do with the Turing test except for who it's named after.

  9. Re:ichat improvements on Apple Unveils Extra Leopard-isms To Developers · · Score: 1
    It's not entirely new functionality, though as far as I know you previously had to rely upon Applescript calls to iChat to do this.

    A way to do it that doesn't feel kludgy? Excellent.

  10. Re:This entire story is awfully disturbing. on Laptops Searched and Confiscated at U.S. Border · · Score: 3, Interesting
    So my question is this. If searching files on a physical device is legal, would it not also be legal for customs to "inspect" all electronic data that crosses international borders?

    As I understand US law (IANAL, I'm not even an American) there's a difference legally between data that's in transmission and in storage. One falls under wiretapping laws, one is just under search laws (if I remember).

    Here's an mp3 of the talk where I heard about it at HOPE Number Six: http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/network_monito ring_and_the_law.mp3

    Incidentally, the same conference that I had my laptop searched coming back from. Canadian customs officials, I'm a Canadian citizen. They used spotlight for a couple minutes in a back room and then returned it. I would /love/ to know if there is some legal info about this, since I would have been willing to assert my rights, I'm just not sure what they are in that situation. I figured that they have roughly the same rights as if I was carrying a stack of (paper) notebooks and wanted to read through 'em, but that'd be logical, and I've rarely seen the law work logically where a computer was involved.

  11. Condemn copycats? on My Dream App For the Mac · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This paragraph out of their FAQ annoys me:

    Okay, maybe you guys aren't going to steal my idea, but what about other people? If I'm a finalist and my idea is online for everyone to see, couldn't anybody potentially steal it?

    Technically, yes. Unscrupulous developers could do just that. But if it comes to our attention that someone is pilfering ideas from our contestants, then we will do everything in our power to publicize and condemn their actions. And if any copycat apps do surface on the open market, we have faith that the Mac community will do the right thing and not subsidize plagiarism.

    Ultimately, we cannot offer any guarantees about the security of your ideas, but it's a chance that we are willing to take. Remember, we have just as much to lose as you do.

    As it's been said, only a couple of the finalists are horribly innovative applications. Do they actually propose to try and publically shame the next guy who comes out with a cookbook app?

    (Yes, for the record, I am playing around with an implementation for someline like one of the apps on the list. It's far from the same application they're proposing, but it's similar enough in overall theme that they might try to 'condemn my actions' and claim copycat. I think I've got a decent app in development, but it puts a damper on it knowing that if it gets popular enough I'm going to have these folks screaming 'he stole the idea'.)

  12. Slackers will keep slacking. on Podcasts of University Lectures? · · Score: 1
    You're worried about the students who are going to try to cram the semester into the two days before the exam? I don't think you need to.

    All the students I've seen that slack for the entire semester on the idea that they'll just cram it all in at the end of the semester tend to continue their habits. They'll put in an hour of flipping through the textbook, convince themselves that they know the material, and then go into the exam room and screw up royally. No loss.

    Maybe put a price tag on 'em? Or throttle how much you can download to one every four hours or something? I'd tend towards the throttle approach if you think you /must/ control it, I know I wouldn't buy any lectures that I already paid for in tuition.

  13. Re:talk about over protective on Big Mother Is Watching · · Score: 4, Funny
    Its like TV, why raising your kids by yourself if the little friend from Panasonic can do it also

    You're still failing at raising your kids. Every one knows that responsible parents only let their kids watch a TV from Sony!

    Comeon, they aren't going to become good little consumers without proper guidance.

  14. Re:Paypal -- reachable by phone? Ha. on Voice Phishing Hits PayPal · · Score: 1

    Maybe they're counting on you thinking it's legit after you can't check it against the phone number on the website.

  15. Re:I just got a job there on What Do Geek Squad Technicians Actually Do? · · Score: 5, Funny

    +1 Sympathy Karma

  16. Shareware on How Open Does Open Source Need to be? · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I don't get why he's upset about Shareware.

    Finally we come to the "shareware" model, which is now really starting to draw my ire. Popularized by SugarCRM, it is a "model" where some of the code is open, but to get the full featured version you have to pay, and the full version is not open. Remember shareware? You download a little app for free that does some things, but if you want to unlock all of the features you send the guy ten bucks? If this software was so good, then why hasn't a community sprung up around the free version and made it better?

    Shareware is a limited or expiring version of an application made available for free with the idea that you should be able to try the software before purchasing it. It doesn't have a thing to do with open source, it's just another way of selling your closed source software.

    If he wants to be irritated at software that claims to be open source but charges for advanced features, that's fine. But he doesn't need to get annoyed at shareware.

  17. Re:The end is near! on Fashion in Space? · · Score: 1
    Its only a matter of time.
    Any day now, the ooozing hot fashion models and guys will crawl into our cubicles ...

    Here they come now!

  18. Re:SOP package? on System Integration Leads to MegaFunction Gadgets · · Score: 1

    The ATM at my University is in the SUB Building.

  19. Re:I don't condone or support piracy at all.... on Captain Copyright Targets Kids · · Score: 1

    My favorite part was where the guy suggests calling a lawyer about what's happened, and they decide to go the Copyright Vigilante root instead.

  20. Re:captchas discriminate against the blind on Web Users Angered by Anti-Spam 'Captcha' · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which is why you should /always/ use proper alt tags!

  21. Re:Dumbasses on Student Faces Expulsion for Blog Post · · Score: 5, Funny

    In an unconfirmed report, the English teacher for this school has apologized saying that the school needed a better example of irony because the students just weren't getting it.

  22. Re:Simple on What Should One Know to be Truly Computer Literate? · · Score: 4, Funny

    People in hospitals take pulling the plug far too seriously.

  23. Re:My easy solution on How do You Protect Your Online Privacy? · · Score: 1
    /You're/ the reason people don't believe me when I tell them my name is Bob.

    It is. Really.

  24. Re:Then what about HTML format emails? on Why Emails Are Misunderstood · · Score: 1

    Not foolproof though. I was beating a coworker's email client into submission and made some offhand comment about a smiley in one of her subject lines. She picked up the laptop, turned it sideways and said "THAT'S what those are!".

  25. Re:In The Not Too Distant Future on Favorite Film Scientists? · · Score: 1
    I assume we're talking Dr. Clayton Forester, in which case yes. I need to watch that movie again.

    Also topping my list:

    Mr. Spock (I don't know that he held a doctorate in anything, but he was described as a scientist)

    Dr. Rodney McKay (Ok, ok, TV, and recent TV at that, but where else do you get the line "Well, you wouldn't know that from this, would you? This might as well say 'bing tiddle tiddle bong.'")