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User: bazald

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  1. Acer Predator 21 X on Ask Slashdot: Which Laptop Has The Best Keyboard? · · Score: 2

    From PCWorld, "The Predator 21 X features a full-height mechanical keyboard using Cherry MX brown switches. Acer isn't the first laptop maker to integrate full-height mechanical keys, of course, but it's a nice touch. The keys are individually RGB-lit, too. If you don't like the colored WASD keys, Acer includes more sedate black keys in the box." It's probably not the laptop you want, but that seems like the answer to your question in absence of additional constraints.

  2. Megasite on Mega Accepts Bitcoin; Email, Chat, Voice, Video, Mobile Coming Soon · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    It sounds like Kim Dotcom is turning Mega...

    ...puts on sunglasses...

    ...into a megasite.

    Yeeeeaaaaahhhh!

  3. Fixed Refresh Rates on Carmack: Next-Gen Console Games Will Still Aim For 30fps · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A display (television or monitor) has a fixed refresh rate. Assuming vertical synchronization is turned on to avoid tearing, you're pretty much limited to a framerate which evenly divides into the true refresh rate of the display. If the refresh rate is 60 fps, possible targets include 60 frames per second (providing 16.7 ms of computation time per frame), 30 FPS (providing 33.3 ms of computation time per frame), 15 FPS (providing 66.7 ms of computation time per frame), and so on. Anything below 30 FPS is kind of a joke, so nobody reputable would consider allowing more than 33 ms computation per frame in a shipping game.

  4. Re:Accomplishment? on Gameplay: the Missing Ingredient In Most Games · · Score: 1

    A nitpick on my writing style, perhaps. I never claimed that novels or movies were interactive.

  5. Accomplishment? on Gameplay: the Missing Ingredient In Most Games · · Score: 1

    Do you feel a sense of accomplishment after having finished reading a novel, or watching a movie? Not every interactive piece of entertainment has to have a sense of accomplishment associated with it. A game can be interactive in a way that's interesting and entertaining without requiring a player to pick up a whole set of skills and really master them. You've missed the parent poster's point entirely. Some people prefer skill-based games, but not everyone does.

  6. Re:The Shadows and Vorlons... on US Judge Orders Apple To Share HTC Deal Details With Samsung · · Score: 2

    So the question remains, which one is Samsung, and which Apple ?

    Pretty obvious, really. Apple cares about being hip, "Who are you?", and Android is all about user choice, or "What do you want?"

  7. Re:Hey Slashdot on Slashdot Turns 15, What Are You Doing Later? · · Score: 1

    Excellent. Thanks.

  8. Hey Slashdot on Slashdot Turns 15, What Are You Doing Later? · · Score: 2

    What happened to the attendees lists for the 10th anniversary parties? The comments have been preserved, but they all seem to be registering 0 attendees. Losing that history is a bit sad.

  9. Tubes Eaten Away on Fusion Power Breakthrough Near At Sandia Labs? · · Score: 5, Funny

    How much energy goes into the production of the liner tubes, which are apparently eaten away throughout the course of the fusion reaction? Obviously this is all preliminary research, but I still think I'm missing something.

  10. Seriously? on Are SSDs Finally Worth the Money? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For a serious computer user, an SSD has been worth the money for a while now.

    * If you need to do serious disk I/O with a mid-size or smaller notebook, RAID isn't even an option for increasing speed.
    * Running multiple virtual machines? Want them to boot quickly? An SSD makes them feel native.
    * Running Windows as a native operating system, and have more than one or two programs that you legitimately want to launch at boot, and can't/won't disable? An SSD makes your computer usable within tens of seconds as opposed to multiple minutes.
    * Doing compilation? Syncing of filesystems with a system such as Unison? Doing anything filesystem heavy? The speedup is insanely awesome.

    If all you care about is running Your Web Browser and editing Word documents, or storing a few photos, obviously an SSD is a more questionable upgrade, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

  11. Which Registry Entry? on UPEK Fingerprint Reader Software Puts Windows Passwords At Risk · · Score: 1

    Can anyone tell me which registry entries I should check for? I'd like to verify that uninstalling the software has removed my "barely scrambled" password from the registry.

  12. Re:Yet another part of the world getting pissed of on New State-Sponsored Malware "Gauss" Making the Rounds · · Score: 1

    Yeah, the island of Lesbos isn't big enough to be considered a nation. Any 4th grader should know at least that much geography.

  13. Four on Hubble Discovers 5th Moon of Pluto · · Score: 4, Funny

    There... are... four... moons!

  14. Thanks Google on Facebook API Bug Deletes Contact Info On Phones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For the first time, I appreciate your API changes which broke direct contact synchronization through the Facebook app.

  15. "Password" Manager on LinkedIn Password Leak: Salt Their Hide · · Score: 1

    It's called a password manager. KeePass is a nice one. There are many others. How many passwords are so important to you that must internalize all of them? For me, the answer is "very few". Never reuse. Never recycle.

    Still, you're right that passwords are unideal--a PGP-like solution would be better. Even done poorly, all they could leak would be the information that you have an account. But if you stored a different PGP-key for each site in Keepass, then they couldn't even do that.

  16. Re:I Tried on After Launch Day: Taking Stock of IPv6 Adoption · · Score: 1

    I saw references to SixXS, and that's just about the only thing I haven't tried yet. Maybe when I get some spare time I'll try it, but I'd really rather get it working using my router than just passing through it. It's all just an experiment for me anyway.

  17. Re:I Tried on After Launch Day: Taking Stock of IPv6 Adoption · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I had problems with OpenWRT almost entering a bootloop. I didn't have any trouble with Tomato, but I seemed to be missing RADVD. I think I've gotten closest with DD-WRT, but I'll probably just wait until I finally decide to spring for a router upgrade. Thanks for the suggestion.

  18. Re:I Tried on After Launch Day: Taking Stock of IPv6 Adoption · · Score: 1

    Having iPv6 enabled on the big servers sounds good, but pinging www.google.com won't help me test anything unless I set my system to prefer IPv6 over iPv4. Seeing as I utterly failed to forward any actual IPv6 connectivity through my router, I'm still cut off from the IPv6 world. It's a good thing it shouldn't matter much until the ISPs will be virtually required to support it. By then I'll probably be inclined to just buy a new router that fully supports the IPv6 stack out of the box--no need for 6to4. (Maybe I'd have succeeded without the need for 6to4 anyway.)

  19. Whenever I see on Is OpenStack the New Linux? · · Score: 1

    Whenever I see "Whenever I see",

  20. I Tried on After Launch Day: Taking Stock of IPv6 Adoption · · Score: 2

    I really tried. I tried versions of DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato on my WRT54GL. I tried using 6to4 using both anycast and tunnelbroker. The best I managed to achieve with either method was successfully pinging ipv6.google.com. I never succeeded in pulling it up in a browser on any of my computers. I thought I got radvd working, but it must not have been working well enough. Maybe next year.

  21. Engineering and Science on Maryland Teen Wins World's Largest Science Fair · · Score: 2

    If all he did was get a specification from a client and build something to that specification, I'd agree with you. Seeing as he both developed the test and did a scientific evaluation, I think this qualifies as a healthy mixture of both engineering and science.

  22. Seems Obvious on Study Suggests the Number-Line Concept Is Not Intuitive · · Score: 1

    I have taught a number of people to code 2D and 3D games. Both 2D and 3D involve a lot of coordinate axis transformations that are almost universally non-intuitive at first. This is true in 2D despite there being a direct correlation between the data being mapped from the model/simulation to the screen (2D to 2D).

    This study finds it is non-intuitive to go from an abstract number or count to a line segment? Sure. What I'd like to see is the "sources of evidence [which] suggest that humans naturally associate numbers with space". They would surprise me.

  23. Indeed on Documentation As a Bug-Finding Tool · · Score: 2

    Explaining your work is a great way to demonstrate that you actually understand it. As the article illustrates, perhaps the most critical part is going back and verifying that the code matches the explanation.

  24. Re:The reason you haven't heard about it on Demoscene: 64k Intros At Revision Demoparty · · Score: 1

    Reread what he wrote. Assuming what you wrote is true, a program running on a DS would need a hardware upgrade much more than one running on a PSP. Therefore it would be much more likely to be good on a DS. QED.

  25. Definition vs Meaning on Boiling Down the Meaning of Life · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Life may have many definitions but no meaning at all.