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User: soboroff

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Comments · 95

  1. Father of Computing on Remembering Alan Turing On His 99th Birthday · · Score: 1

    "Modern computing"? He's the father (or certainly one of the fathers) of computation as any sort of scientific or mathematical discipline.

  2. Hey Rocky... on First Rocky Exoplanet Confirmed · · Score: 4, Funny

    .... watch me pull a planet out of my hat!

  3. Apologies to Rummy... on Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over · · Score: 1

    You go to evolution with the planet you have, not the planet you wish you had.

  4. Re:makes sense, meh on Lego Loses Its Unique Right To Make Lego Blocks · · Score: 1

    By the cup? At the Baltimore Science Center, there is currently a K'nex exhibit along with tables where you can build your own models. If you want to take it home, you pay by the pound. Makes much more sense than selling by volume.

  5. Re:Favorite Acronym on (Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks? · · Score: 1

    The funny thing is, those jokes about Emacs being slow date back to the 80s. These days, I find that Emacs is about the fastest app to start on a modern Linux distribution.

    The rest of userland has gotten fatter and fatter, but Emacs has stayed about the same.

    Since the story asks for favorite things about Emacs, I will just add: Gnus. The best email app bar none.

  6. FIPS 140-2? on TrueCrypt 5.0 Released, Now Encrypts Entire Drive · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are they planning to submit their system for FIPS 140-2? The US OMB decreed that most laptops must be encrypted with full-disk FIPS 140-2-compliant encryption, but the only certified tools for this exist for Windoze. The algorithms used are fine, but this stamp of approval would be very useful for federal Linux and Mac users!

  7. Seems to cover product/news/travel results on Google Patents the Design of Search Results Page · · Score: 1

    Looking at the images in the actual patent, this actually seems to specifically cover how they present travel, product, and news results on top of the regular search results.

    I'm not 100% sure, since I can't seem to get to a technical description, just the pictures. But this isn't a patent on the design of general search results pages.

  8. Avi Rubin on the radio today... on Maryland Governor Wants Paper Ballots · · Score: 1

    http://www.wamu.org/programs/kn/06/09/21.php#12024

    Avi Rubin was a guest today on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU (a local NPR station). Not only is Professor Rubin an outspoken critic of the Diebold systems, he has also participated in the last two elections as an election judge. You can listen to the radio show at the above link once it gets archived later this afternoon. Some good commentary on Ehrlich's statement and on the election in Maryland in general.

  9. Transferring VHS to DVD? on Original Star Wars on DVD... Sorta · · Score: 1


    So I have the THX widescreen release of the original trilogy without the new scenes. What's the best way to transfer these to DVD?

  10. Release notes on Ubuntu 6.06 'Dapper Drake' Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    More useful information for geeks... although the support is indeed the real news.

    http://www.ubuntu.com/download/releasenotes/606

  11. Re: Words ending in us and the .us TLD on Similicio.us a New Relevancy Based Blog Finder · · Score: 1

    Hmmm.

    $ grep 'us$' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l
    11835

    Not done yet.

  12. USB == higher batter drain on MacBook Internal Photos · · Score: 2, Informative


    Note that by having internal components connected to USB, they have a higher battery drain (simply because of how USB works) than they would if connected some other way. You can save battery by shutting down the iSight and bluetooth when you're not using them.

  13. Expected error on Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies · · Score: 1

    The article blurb seems to assume that plain-old (analog?) elections are perfect, whereas digital voting is possibly subject to fraud. In fact there is error inherent in both schemes, both intentional and unintentional, and from a variety of sources.

    The problem with criticizing voting problems with electronic voting machines is that you don't have a comparable error rate for a paper ballot scheme. The question isn't how bad, it's whether it's worse or better.

    And frankly, the problem isn't error, because errors are unavoiable. The problem is accountability. And until e-voting is accountable and auditable, it should go away.

  14. Who is Udi Manber? on Google Gets A9 Search Chief · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not that it's so hard to hunt up his homepage(s), but the summary is that Udi Manber was a very big name in web search before web search became big business. He wrote agrep, Glimpse, Harvest, and other nifty things.

    This is a different kind of hire than snagging that guy from Microsoft.

  15. Forgot to mention startup times... on Understanding Memory Usage On Linux · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All those shared libraries are also part of the reason that KDE and GNOME can take so long to start up, and why more memory and a higher-RPM hard disk can speed things up. It does make me laugh sometimes that Emacs is now one of Linux's fastest-starting desktop apps.

  16. You can make your own VMs for VMware player on VMware to Make Server Product Free (as in beer) · · Score: 4, Informative
    "The company recently released a free VMWare Player which could only run but not create virtual machines."

    Sure you can. Take a gander at http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000153064739/

    What you don't get with VMware player is the nifty GUI to help you with the setup.
  17. Look out for that IG.... on NASA Inspector General Under Investigation · · Score: 0

    I was listening to a story on NPR this morning, that the astronauts on the ISS were going to launch "SuitSat", which is an empty Russian space suit with a radio transmitter inside and an antenna attached to the helmet. HAMs get to track it as it burns through the atmosphere. (What the point of this is, I couldn't begin to speculate...)

    Now I realize the suit isn't empty. It's the last guy who pissed off the NASA IG.

  18. I knew it... on Keyboards Are Disgusting · · Score: 3, Funny

    So that's why I always feel better after I get a new computer!

  19. Too late for nightmares... on Google's Blog Search · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If Technorati or other bloggers are having nightmares about blog search, it's way too late. Frankly, since having a successful blog is all about being read, I think that bloggers would clamor for good search tools.

    Speaking of which, there's been a workshop on blogs and blog search at the past couple WWW conferences. Here's some links:

    http://www.blogpulse.com/www2004-workshop.html
    http://www.blogpulse.com/www2005-workshop.html

  20. Really snappy! on GPL v3 Coming Out in 2007? · · Score: 1

    I recompiled my Gentoo install using a beta of the GPLv3, and my desktop alrady feels more responsive and snappy!

  21. Slashdot feed on New Google Homepage Features · · Score: 5, Funny


    It's good to be reminded that Slashdot is a Technology, not a Lifestyle.

  22. Area 51 query to Google Maps on Slashback: Lapses, Maps, Ludwig Van · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hey, if you just query "Area 51" on Google Maps, you get right there, plus a link to the Best Western!

  23. Re:Ajax links? on Google and Their Server Farm · · Score: 1

    Found some myself in the article and elsewhere:

    http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-s uggest-dissected.html
    http://johnvey.com/features/gmailapi/
    http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-googl e.html

    and a nice set of articles from Apple's Developer site... (see the one on scripting in iframes, and rendering XML with CSS and JavaScript)

    http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/ind ex.html

  24. Ajax links? on Google and Their Server Farm · · Score: 1

    Anyone got good links on Ajax? The articles on the Adaptive Path site are enough to grab your interest, but I'd like to see some full sample apps or a tutorial or something?

  25. Lawsuit! on A9 Search Engine Launches Yellow Pages · · Score: 1

    Hey, now British Telecom can sue Amazon!