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User: TheoCryst

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  1. Re:Office handles this string perfectly on Typing These 8 Characters Will Crash Almost Any App On Your Mountain Lion Mac · · Score: 1

    Try typing it into the search box in the toolbar in Word/Excel/PowerPoint. The document fields of the Office apps aren't "standard" OS controls (whereas the document body of TextEdit is), so they're not susceptible to the bug. But the search field, which appears to be a standard system search field, is.

  2. iPad may be more than enough on Ask Slashdot: Using a Tablet As a Sole Computing Device? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My mom is the very definition of computer illiterate -- my sister and I have been trying to teach her to use a computer (first a PC, later a Mac) since the mid '90s, and she simply cannot grasp the basic concepts. She can sort of work a keyboard (it looks like a typewriter), but mice constantly thwart her. Add to that the fact that she has trouble discerning "windows" on a desktop as being discrete items, and you can see why we finally gave up trying to teach her once we had both gone away to college.

    About a year ago I managed to acquire an unneeded iPad, and made the decision to gift it to my mother. For a woman who has literally never used a computer without assistance, never mind owned one, she took to it immediately. She's now able to browse the internet, send and receive emails, and even navigate the app store when she wants additional functionality. And after a full year, I haven't received a single "oh no, I think I broke it" call.

    That being said, my mother is not your mother (AFAIK), so your mileage may vary. If you think her needs can be satisfied by an iPad (web browsing, shopping, email, media consumption, and no more than light content editing), I highly recommend it. There's just no beating its ease of use. An external bluetooth keyboard would be nice for longer writing sessions, however.

  3. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X on Firefox 17 Launches With Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks · · Score: 3, Informative

    Additionally, any site that renders text will look better. Firefox 17 doesn't render text at the higher DPI supported by new MacBook Pros, causing every site to look blurrier than it would in Chrome or Safari.

    For the record, the same is true in Windows: change the scaling factor of the OS, and Firefox simply scales the same low-res text. It's unclear whether the change I mentioned in nightlies will fix Windows as well; I simply haven't tried it yet.

  4. Still no Retina support for OS X on Firefox 17 Launches With Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apparently they have it in nightly builds now, but it hasn't trickled down to the main release channel quite yet. Bummer.

  5. Re:To be fair on Windows 8 Has Scaling Issues On High-PPI Displays · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure that you understand the point he was making. Yes, the web browser is the one that ultimately displays the image, but you can't magically make a small image look clear when stretched to be larger. The only way to fix that problem is for the web designer to serve higher resolution images. Or better yet, avoid static PNGs and JPGs whenever possible, especially for text.

  6. Re:IMAP/Exchange support? on Microsoft Unveils Outlook.com, Hotmail's Successor · · Score: 1

    ActiveSync is available for Outlook 2010 and older as a plugin (called, in traditional MS fashion, the Microsoft Office Outlook Hotmail Connector), and I believe will be built into Outlook 2013 when it comes out. No clue about Mac Outlook though (AFAIK it's not currently supported).

  7. Re:And they think companies will use Windows Mobil on LG To Pay Licensing Fees To Microsoft For Using Android · · Score: 2

    I think this is a big reason why the Nokia deal is so important to Microsoft. In pretty much every aspect, it appears that Microsoft is ultimately trying to push Nokia+WinPhone as a product in and of itself, with little thought given to the OEMs. In my humble opinion, this is the right strategy. Microsoft can't (and doesn't want) to compete with Android directly, since they'd be going up against an entrenched and inexpensive foe with whom the carriers and OEMs already have a strong relationship. And after Windows's dominance in the 90s, they know exactly how futile competing against that can be.

    But by betting heavily on Nokia, Microsoft has guaranteed themselves a partner who will build hardware specifically tailored to their OS (and vice versa) and who will never have to choose between putting marketing dollars behind Windows Phone or Android.

  8. Re:Easy enough on McCain Decries "Hobbits," Accused of Ringbearing · · Score: 1

    I can't think of a single government function that is supported by "all" (for absolutely any reasonable fraction of "all") of the American people. Social Security? Gone. Medicare? Nixed. NASA, FDA, FCC, Department of Transportation? Won't stand a chance.

  9. Re:Was a wise move by Apple on How Mac OS X, 10 Today, Changed Apple's World · · Score: 3, Informative

    No file system upgrades yet, but Lion (v10.7) will ship with full-disk FileVault.

  10. Re:Why is this news? on Windows 7 Trumps Vista By Reaching 20% Share · · Score: 1

    The interesting part is that Vista was the "latest and greatest OS" for twice as long as Windows 7 has been, yet Win7 has already passed Vista's peak marketshare. In other words, Windows 7 has more market penetration after a single year than Vista had after two. Pretty impressive to me.

  11. Re:Sounds just like Microsoft on Microsoft Is Releasing an H.264 Plugin For Firefox · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Microsoft is investing pretty heavily into HTML5 going forward (starting with IE9), and all this does is ensure that 99.9% of Windows 7 users have the ability to view H.264 video content. With this plugin, the three browsers that make up the vast majority of Windows users--IE, Firefox, and Chrome--along with Safari now fully support H.264 video.

  12. Re:unethical on Scientists Propose One-Way Trips To Mars · · Score: 1

    What's unethical about volunteering for a one-way trip? It's not like they're suggesting that people be forced to abandon their lives and homes to colonize a ball of dust millions of kilometers away. If you're willing to sacrifice everything to be one of these pioneers, power to you!

    And to be completely honest, it's something I would gladly consider depending on who came along with me for the ride. Who wouldn't like to be the first one to get some action on an alien world?

  13. Re:Must burn. on Freetype Lands In... Microsoft Office? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not any more. During the big E&D shakeup earlier this year (during which Robbie Bach, the leader of E&D, left the company), the MacBU was moved into the greater Office group.

    They do, however, continue to operate as a separate and semi-autonomous group therein.

  14. I couldn't disagree more on Google Wave and the Difficulty of Radical Change · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google Wave didn't fail because it was "too innovative" or "too radical." History is jam packed full of inventions and technologies that succeeded precisely because they were drastically better than what came before them (lightbulb versus candle, car versus horse, calculator versus abacus, GUI versus CLI). Google Wave failed for a combination of reasons. It wasn't marketed well, it didn't really solve any problems, and it just wasn't "better" enough over the standard ways of browsing the web.

    Google Wave was a cool engineering project, but never should have been taken to market.

  15. Re:Heading the wrong direction? on DRM vs. Unfinished Games · · Score: 1

    Because that doesn't work. Cheapskates are cheapskates, and nothing will change that.

    Example: The good folks responsible for World of Goo ran a special "Pay What You Want" promotion for a little while. And you know what? The largest single datapoint was one penny, with the vast majority of people paying less than two dollars for a fantastic game. And of course, since the game was distributed DRM-free, an untold number of copies were downloaded via TPB and never went through this channel.

    No matter how good a game is, if you offer people a choice to get it for free (or nearly for free), they'll take it.

  16. Re:Fine with me... on Microsoft Out of Favor With Young, Hip Developers · · Score: 1

    Fair enough, but at the same time, Xcode and the iPhone SDK are 100% as well: http://developer.apple.com/

    Again, you don't have to pay to use Apple's developer stack. You only pay when you're ready to have Apple host and distribute your app.

  17. Re:I'm no Einstein on Inertial Mass Separate From Gravitational Mass? · · Score: 1

    But that's the point. That might NOT be true in all cases (at least at the quantum level), according to this paper.

    Remember, 1g is empirically measured to be 9.81 m/s^2. That means that, according to Einstein, a person in a spaceship accelerating at a constant 9.81 m/s^2 will feel the same pull to the back of the ship as they would feel standing on the surface of the earth.

    This paper postulates that, in certain situations and at the quantum level, those two feelings would NOT match up. The practical uses for such a deviation are endless -- spaceships with lower inertial mass than gravitational mass could be accelerated to near the speed of light with far less energy. Of course, whether that's possible or not (even if the paper turns out to be correct) is anyone's guess.

  18. Re:Wrong criteria on Ubuntu Replaces F-Spot With Shotwell · · Score: 1

    Lots of people care about managing photos, and I absolutely agree that a solid photo manager is crucial in any consumer-oriented OS, including Ubuntu. A powerful image editor, like the GIMP, is a nice bonus, but less important to most end-users. All most people need is an app that can create albums, crop, and remove red-eye.

    Does Shotwell meet these criteria? A quick look at their website seems to indicate yes. I'll probably download it tonight and see if their claims stand up.

  19. Re:using vendor API's !welcome? on How To Get Rejected From the App Store · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with using Apple's private APIs is that they tend to be unstable, and there are no guarantees that they won't change. Apple would very much rather that half the apps in their store didn't break because of an OS update that changes an undocumented API. And they've always been good about making private APIs public once they stabilize, so it's not as big a deal as this guy makes it sound.

  20. Re:Lightspeed limited, not an ansible on Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over 16 km In China · · Score: 1

    (Disclaimer: I am not a physicist.)

    I've wondered about this seeming inconsistency before, but I came up with an analogy that seems to rectify the problem.

    Regarding the instant-deformation: Imagine that we can represent space-time as a mattress, and your random mass as a bowling ball. When the bowling ball is already resting on the mattress, you can see the deformation plain as day. But place the ball onto an otherwise unperturbed mattress, and you can see how this deformation spreads over time. And if you could watch it with a high-speed camera, you would see that there's a bit of lag in the system: even after the ball has come to rest at its lowest point, portions of the mattress that are farther away will still be actively deforming, much like ripples in a pond.

    I'll need someone with more knowledge than me to resolve this with the inflation theory, however.

  21. Re:Adobe make a statement and drop Photoshop for M on Adobe Calls Out Apple With Ads In NY Times, WSJ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they (Apple) are already doing exactly that -- either building all-new apps from scratch, or revamping the OSS you mentioned. After all, you can just look at iWork versus Microsoft Office to see that they've got the stones to take on the entrenched giants.

  22. Re:What's the scariest part of this? on Oil Leak Could Be Stopped With a Nuke · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    But in the mean-time I have a lot of hardwood to sell to humanity.

    Oh, I think I've seen this movie before. But you were a gardener, and the housewife was so lonely...

  23. Re:MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL on Police Seize Computers From Gizmodo Editor · · Score: 1

    ...dude, it's a photoshop. Relax.

  24. Re:don't get it on Google Preparing iPad Rival? · · Score: 1

    When was the last time that a /. opinion on anything counted for something? The track record of this community on what the greatest thing ever is and what will fail is not exactly stellar.

    Are you kidding? /. has a flawless record!

    (Once you realize that you need to negate anything that you see on the front page, that is.)

  25. Re:This ought to be good on US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card · · Score: 1

    Remind me not to reboot him after he crashes.