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User: dkman

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Comments · 335

  1. Re:A turd by any other name on Microsoft Is Killing Off the Internet Explorer Brand · · Score: 0

    Will Darnell: "Ya know Pepper, ya can't polish a turd."
    Christine (1983)

  2. Re:E-books have covers??? on New Site Mocks Bad Artwork On Ebook Covers · · Score: 1

    +1 indeed.

    If you're using a Kindle Fire or the PC Kindle App you do get color covers, but I can't say that I've ever paid a lot of attention to them.

  3. Re:Considerable resources? on Billionaire Teams Up With NASA To Mine the Moon · · Score: 0

    It's more about the opinion that if you fuck up the moon you could very well destroy life on the planet. That said we're not likely to mine enough of the moon to mess things up that bad. But I don't trust a billionaire to care about performing that process in a non-damaging responsible way. Cutting corners and squeezing people may be how he made his billions (I didn't check). And if he did fuck thing up he wouldn't pay the price, "we" would.

    Of course, using the moon as a base to build and launch things deeper into space makes perfect sense. If he helps get that process figured out it could do a lot of good for humanity.

    Then we can spread like a disease across the solar system. For all the good we do this planet it's probably better for the universe if we die here.

  4. Re:That clinches it. on PC-BSD: Set For Serious Growth? · · Score: 1

    You left out Valve. If (and that may be a big IF, but one can hope), if they are able to get enough game developers supporting Linux as a real option then I think a double digit shift in market share is certainly possible. The biggest problem then is the legacy games. My main system has been running Linux for a while now (though I had dual boot there to play some games). Now I have a secondary system that runs windows for those games (with a dual boot to Linux, just because), but they generally stay in their primary OS in suspend mode.

    Ideally I always wanted to have something like a hypervisor that runs on the bare metal where I could install both OS to run at the same time and some key combination to switch between the two. I don't care about dedicating a core to an OS I'm not looking at right now - I've got 8 after hyperthreading. I'd happily give 1/2 the cores and 1/2 the ram to each. But I want the full video performance for gaming in whichever I'm looking at. I don't know if anything (vmware, etc) does that..and they probably wouldn't be at a price point I'm willing to pay. Hell, having two systems is probably cheaper.

  5. Re:Marketing Genius Move on AT&T To Match Google Fiber In Kansas City, Charge More If You Want Privacy · · Score: 1

    I also appreciate the "We'll go build out our service where better service already exists" logic when it would be better to improve service where Google fiber doesn't exist, making it economically difficult for Google to justify the investment.

    Right now I pay TWC $65 a month for 50Mbps. I have the option to pay AT&T about the same (and enter a contract). I would gladly take Google fiber here. Luckily I live in Charlotte, where Google fiber is in the works, sadly I live far enough from the center that I may not be able to get it.

  6. Alternatives on Ask Slashdot: Gaining Control of My Mobile Browser? · · Score: 1

    Chrome has ScriptSafe. I don't like it as much as NoScript, but it's the closest I've found. AdBlock, Ghostery, and LastPass are on Chrome as well. I'm not sure which ones work with the mobile browser though.

    There's also one called ScriptBlock, but I haven't tried it.

  7. Re: This sewer of hate is not about gender on WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes · · Score: 1

    Before you flame... I know that they aren't threatening to take funding away, they are giving funding to those who do fit. The thought remains the same, but I have no problem with passing money out - it's your money do what you want. But I don't appreciate when they take that money from places that do have students who just happen to be white males.

  8. Re: This sewer of hate is not about gender on WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Along the same lines I can point out 2 good reasons boys are generally driven in that direction.
    1. Boys are into video games - for the very same reason that big gaming is targeted at boys and that the majority of players are male. Those gamers are into computers and the possibility of coding future games, so they go into computer science. Girl gamers are starting to become a little more common, and their representation in computer science might increase organically if everyone just left it alone.
    2. Boys like to build things - along the lines of Lego, blocks, and carpentry. Boys dominate "shop class", but I don't recall any big push to change that. OK, the shop class I had in high school did have a fair amount of girls in it, so maybe that's not a big concern. The building enjoyment flows into programming because the program that comes out at the end was "built" by you.

    There are some toys aimed at getting girls into building things, so that's a good thing as well. I don't know that threatening funding is the best plan. That puts all of the pressure on the teacher or school to try to drive girls in that direction (and makes me think that down the road "unwillingly" isn't out of the question, or granting a passing grade for sub-par work just to keep the numbers up). Games that girls are interested in and getting girls into "building things" at an earlier age is where the attention needs to be. So that lies more in the parents, and asking parents to make their daughters good little cogs isn't likely to garner much traction...which is why nothing has worked so far.

  9. I have a Panasonic similar to this one
    I was able to figure out the link that would essentially give me the picture the camera sees right now (ie, take a picture mode). Then I wrote a c# program to grab that photo, compare that to the prior image and save it with a time stamp if it was sufficiently different. That "compare" part was never fully fleshed out so I just saved everything. I think I had it going every 15 seconds so it chewed up some disk space. But I digress.

    If you can grab the current picture from the web cam you can roll your own "grab the picture, upload to site" script. Both of those should need credentials, so their are security implications. I believe my cam had it in the URL like an FTP user@host configuration. It also had a PTZ (pan,tilt,zoom) control via web page. So getting the right angle from the mount may be easier with that.

  10. Stanley "Cool Brick" on The "Cool Brick" Can Cool Off an Entire Room Using Nothing But Water · · Score: 1

    If the Stanley tool people marketed it would it be Stanley Cool Brick?

    Get it? Ahh screw it. Get off my lawn!

  11. Re:They need more QA staff on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 1

    To run VitrualBox under Windows 10 preview just get the older version x.12, later versions don't launch (for some reason). Uninstall and install x.12 (I don't remember the exact number, but it ends in 12) and it will be golden.

  12. Re:This is no surprise... on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 1

    I saw it on Slashdot about a year ago and it has stuck with me.

    ORACLE: One Raging A**hole Called Larry Ellison

  13. Re:Does It Matter? on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure what you're asking by "auto deploy" but you can run a Win 8.1 guest or Win 10 preview guest in VirtualBox. Windows 10 preview broke the ability to run VirtualBox inside it after version x.12 (I think it was x.18 or 20 at the time), but that may be resolved now. You could uninstall and install x.12 to run like normal.

    I restored my surface back to 8.1 so I'm not sure about later developments.

  14. Re:Breaking old cards on AMD Catalyst Is the Broken Wheel For Linux Gaming · · Score: 1

    I was only pointing out that there are laptops where the graphic card is in fact a "card"/module rather than something integrated into the motherboard. But they're not necessarily cheap to swap out.

  15. Re:Hope the trend continues. on Google Releases More Windows Bugs · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'd rather that the 90 day clock have a snooze for 30 days option, so it's not disclosed to everyone. I'd rather that the developer (even MS) have time to fix it right rather than rush a fix that needs a later fix or a fix that breaks something else.

    Some times you need to dig through code and figure out what the hell's going on so you can figure out why it's broken and fix it. And it's not like Google is the only one submitting bugs.

  16. Re:Curiously familiar on SpaceX Landing Attempt Video Released · · Score: 1

    I'm kind of wondering if they could put some arms on the platform to reach out and grab it at that point. I had wondered how they intend to "manage" it once it does land. A big pole on a boat is one wave away from falling over, so they have to have some plan to "strap it down". If they had 4 claws come up from each corner to stabilize it they may have been able to recover from this landing.

    Then your complex part is terrestrial, where it's not offsetting potential payload and easier to maintain.

    I know it sounds simple on paper - the rocket's still moving and you don't want to damage it. But it's worth thinking about. If your claws end in horseshoe-shaped claws and those claws have rollers (so the rocket can move up and down with little friction - think jerking off the rocket if that helps), then those rollers could be locked in place after landing.

  17. Re:Gotta love Valve on Steam For Linux Bug Wipes Out All of a User's Files · · Score: 1

    A friend of mine had something similar happen with another game company. I think it was Sierra, but I don't remember. They would default their games to install to a C:\Program Files\Sierra\ directory. He would change those to C:\Games\. When he told the last game to uninstall he had the option to remove the "management app" (you know how game companies like those). When he did that it simply went up one folder and nuked everything. So his whole Games folder just disappeared. That's not as bad as losing everything your user owns below / , but he wasn't pleased.

  18. Re:Breaking old cards on AMD Catalyst Is the Broken Wheel For Linux Gaming · · Score: 1

    Oh, I should warn that baking the video card does stink up the house - so use plenty of ventilation afterwards. You can also search youtube to see some other folks have success with it.

  19. Re:Breaking old cards on AMD Catalyst Is the Broken Wheel For Linux Gaming · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My 4 year old Sager laptop has a GPU module (or slot, so it's essentially like RAM and can be replaced). When the graphic card decided to flip out a few weeks ago I searched around and they were around $230 shipping from China. Even though everything said to me that the problem was just the video card I decided to spend $1600 on a new Sager laptop. Since the old one was now disposable I decided to do the "bake the video card" trick (375 degrees for 10 minutes, in case you're interested - just remove all screws, heat sinks, and thermal paste). I let it cool, applied thermal paste, and gave it a shot - bam, worked like new. Since the new laptop was already in "processing" I decided to let it come anyhow.

    The old one is an ATI (HD 6990M). It handles linux gaming alright, it really depends on the game. Windows gaming it's great at - I just don't boot window often. The new laptop has an nvidia because I do feel that the nvidia drivers will be better in linux. Over the past 20 years I've given both companies some love.

  20. Re:Only iOS? on Ad Company Using Verizon Tracking Header To Recreate Deleted Cookies · · Score: 1

    I use Ting. It's a smaller service that piggybacks on Sprints network. They seem really good. I haven't dug to this level to make sure they don't do anything screwy, but if nothing else they aren't charging what Verizon does. You don't need to pick service levels, you only pay for as much as you use. I could have 3 phones on Ting and pay 1/2 of what I'd pay for 1 phone on Verizon.

  21. Re:Easy fix on Ad Company Using Verizon Tracking Header To Recreate Deleted Cookies · · Score: 2

    Only if you're request is going through Verizon. If it were a Firefox Addon I would be sending these fake headers from my PC which isn't going through Verizon.

    You may say "why do I care if I don't use Verizon?" and I'll respond with "and first they came for the Jews". If you think that's a big jump, well maybe it is, but you need to protect rights for all of the people or you don't deserve the rights you have.

  22. Re: nope on Chevrolet Unveils 200-Mile Bolt EV At Detroit Auto Show · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or the Chevy Colt

    The post apocalypse 4 legged version. Eats grass (biomass), exhausts fertilizer, very green edition.

  23. Re:if it doesnt work on Ask Slashdot: Are Progressive Glasses a Mistake For Computer Users? · · Score: 1

    I should have said that coke-bottles are the ones that make peoples eyes look big from the other side (ie, make the wearer's eyes look big when you're not the wearer).

    I should have also included
    Normal: what we consider normal glasses are those for near-sighted people who need them to see far away. These are thinner than coke-bottles and don't have the bug-eyed affect.

  24. Re:if it doesnt work on Ask Slashdot: Are Progressive Glasses a Mistake For Computer Users? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Coke-bottes: think lenses generally used by far-sighted people who need glasses to see in focus up close.
    Bi-focals: have a half-circle shaped area in the bottom of each lens at a different power (for reading) while the rest of the lens is set for regular viewing
    Progressive: has the regular lens gradually change to reading power so you don't have the tell-tale line (and power jump) associated with bi-focals.

  25. Re:Entitlement on Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Shrinking Storage Space In iOS 8 · · Score: 1

    That would be a fail move that would make upgrades very difficult. What should be required by law is that you market it as "8GB, 4 usable" and "16GB, 12 usable" assuming the OS took 4GB. If the next iteration OS takes 5GB then it's up to you to decide whether you want to install it or not. Personally I do think you should be able to OS downgrade, but that's another battle.