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User: jacksonj04

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  1. Uhh, 2G on iPhone 3G vs. Solar Death Ray · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's a 2G, not a 3G. I think the result would be the same though.

  2. Re:Not like I havent been saying this for a while on Developers Expect iOS and MacOS To Merge · · Score: 4, Informative

    You mean the new Mac Minis they released last week?

  3. Re:Real Ratina Display on iPhone 4's "Retina Display" Claims Challenged · · Score: 1

    But it wasn't (iirc) claimed that the iPhone had a higher resolution than the eye can distinguish, only that the eye couldn't distinguish the individual pixels.

    Either way, it doesn't change the fact that the display is significantly higher resolution than the old one, and on-par with a printed page from most consumer printers.

  4. Re:1990's? on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 1

    This is the world of business. If I want computers running Windows 7 in 5 years, I need to start writing the business cases right now. Not when someone in management finally snaps.

  5. Re:Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 1

    Mac. Not MAC.

    Honestly, how difficult is it? It's not an acronym!

  6. Re:Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 1

    It's a start. At least now the desktop doesn't make a difference, only your servers. Something platform independent like Ruby or PHP would be more useful in the long run, but baby steps are at least steps.

  7. Re:Pfff... on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 1

    Because computers are 'scary' and 'magical' things, and work by smoke. That and the user interface isn't an inherently intuitive one in a lot of applications (particularly legacy business ones). I suspect that's one of the reasons why the iPad is getting such good feedback from 'not computer people', because you interface with it in a more intuitive way.

  8. Re:Pfff... on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The ball isn't any more or less intuitive than why a picture of a floppy disk saves your document. It made sense once, but who uses floppies for saving documents nowadays? It's just become commonplace, much like "Exit" being under the "File" menu. Exiting the application has got absolutely nothing to do with the file.

    That's why when you ran Office 2007 for the first time there was a huge bubble saying "This is the new Office Button. It has things like Save and Print in it."

  9. Re:1990's? on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So that in a few years people don't arrive having never used XP and immediately start cursing at "this stupid system". Little things like the improved taskbar, the window snap and so on all work their way into how you interact and you suddenly feel lost without them.

    Software isn't the problem, people who use 7 at home and don't want to go back to XP at work are.

    That and the fact Vista and 7 don't support IE6. If the OS can't support it, IE6 is dead.

  10. Re:All voting systems are vulnerable... on Researchers Demo Hardware Attacks Against India's E-Voting Machines · · Score: 1

    Ugh yeah, should have clarified that it's anything which on its own identifies a voter with a vote, which a receipt (I'm guessing) would do much as a signed ballot paper does.

  11. Re:Amazing findings on Researchers Demo Hardware Attacks Against India's E-Voting Machines · · Score: 1

    Ask yourself what stops people from opening ballot boxes to mess with the votes? The answer (in the UK at least) is four uniquely serial-numbered ties which have their numbers noted when the box is sent out, and verified when it's opened. Just put all the innards in an epoxy resin, put them in a toughened metal cabinet, lock the door with a key and attach aforementioned ties. A screwdriver won't help you.

  12. Re:All voting systems are vulnerable... on Researchers Demo Hardware Attacks Against India's E-Voting Machines · · Score: 1

    In the UK in particular you *cannot* issue a receipt - anything which can be used to match a vote to a voter is illegal. Even signing your name instead of putting a cross renders your ballot spoiled.

  13. Re:Good and bad on UK University Researchers Must Make Data Available · · Score: 1

    Unless you happen to be a scientist in a related field, raw data tends to be next to useless. Anybody can draw pretty graphs in Excel and get worried about a rising trend line, declining trend line or anomalous result but it takes someone who knows what they're talking about to explain what they actually mean.

  14. Re:Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense on UK University Researchers Must Make Data Available · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know the multi-billion dollar LHC? Guess what they did their first physics on. Not finding new exotic particles, but proving that what we think we know so far still stands up. Duplicating data is exactly how things get proven and disproven. If Group A and Group B use exactly the same source data there's no possibility of Group B proving Group A's research wrong.

  15. Documentation and comments. on What Aspects of Open Source Projects Do You Avoid? · · Score: 1

    I wish I had a dollar for every time an OSS project spat out something like "ERROR: 0947445" with no mention anywhere of what aforementioned error code meant or how to fix it, then upon further dredging through a hundred uncommented lines of code to find out what was going on it turns out that the root cause was that I hadn't installed some-package-to-do-something-2.4-beta (which should have been a prerequisite, but isn't).

  16. Re:PS3 not tier one? on Valve Confirms Mac Versions of Steam, Valve Games · · Score: 1

    Source is actually on the more modular side of engine design - bolting in a new render path for OpenGL isn't massively taxing.

  17. Re:Woohoo! on Valve Confirms Mac Versions of Steam, Valve Games · · Score: 1

    My MacBook Pro with an 8600M GT plays L4D2 just fine and that's an '07 model.

  18. Re:The first thing to come to my mind... on Valve Confirms Mac Versions of Steam, Valve Games · · Score: 1

    Yes, because Valve are going to release the source so that the communities can compile their own distro-specific releases...

    I'd love to see Steam become a truly cross-platform application, but until the Linux community can come up with a way of making something as simple as a CLI utility install and run the same on every distro without resorting to --with-obscure-option-to-fix-ui-glitch and --without-something-that-doesnt-come-with-this-distro then it's not going to happen.

  19. Re:Here we go again! on UK's Freeview HD To Go DRM · · Score: 1

    You can record it to watch it later though. See the BBC's Internet Blog.

  20. Re:Not as bad a directed security camera's on Designing the Computer UIs In Movies · · Score: 1

    Hey now, some media players are hooked on their timelines. I recall RealPlayer back in the day insisted on a timeline and scrubber for live playback (it may still do, but I haven't used it for many, many years) and IIRC Windows Media Player still does.

  21. Re:Clever girl on Designing the Computer UIs In Movies · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But we know the OSS guys can't ever agree on some fancy UI (superfluous)...

    Lets be honest here, the OSS guys can barely agree on which letter should appear if you press the "A" key, never mind before you introduce shift, ctrl, alt, option, meta, super or chording.

  22. Re:Something, Something, Something, Dark Side on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    Weren't CompuServe email addresses numerical?

  23. Re:No biggie, but still on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    There are only so many lastname.tld kicking around, and if you have a common name you're screwed. I need to get to some quite obscure variations on my first name, last name and middle initials before I find a domain which is still available and can fit in a sensible amount of space.

  24. Re:I notice it. on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    Given the choice of the free mail providers out there who provide webmail and a reasonable approximation of reliability and longevity who would you choose?

  25. Re:yes on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Once upon a time AOL was a nice, neutral email provider.