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User: DSmith1974

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  1. Re:I couldn't disagree more on Google Wave and the Difficulty of Radical Change · · Score: 1

    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).

    I happen to find the CLI far superior to the GUI.

  2. Re:Nothing new - Back in the Amiga days on F1 Simulators Revealed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok, but that's just to familiarize himself with the course - any game will do. F1 teams have now developed plug-ins for rFactor which are so true to life that the drivers are able to give feedback to the designers on new components, suspension and set-up before investing millions in actually making the things and flying them out to Spain or wherever to try them out on a race track for real. Combine this with the GIS data collected from the laser trucks and the simulator knows about every single bump and groove on the track down to the nearest milli-meter. It's really quite amazing - and keeps a fair few Phd boffins employed in interesting jobs for each of the big teams.

  3. Re:Redneck crap on $25,000 of Communications Gear In a $500 Car · · Score: 1

    I do believe that if that car were to maintain at velocity of exactly 88 MPH while simultaneously turning on all that gear...

  4. Nokia has shot itself in the foot without help. on Why Open Source Phones Still Fail · · Score: 1

    The N900 is a major step forward since it gives people root access and apt-get without jailbreaking and playing cat and mouse with the telcos. Unfortunately though, some dick decided to render it pretty much useless by shipping it with the worst touchscreen ever known to man.

  5. Re:Breaking the law on BBC Hijacks 22,000 PCs In Botnet Demonstration · · Score: 1

    If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law.

    Ok, so, I don't know much about the laws, but it is illegal, isn't it?

    Well, apparentley not since the intent wasn't criminal. Which kind of makes you wonder why we have to extradite Gareth McKinnon since he was only trying to find out the truth about UFOs.

  6. Re:annoyed on The Future of Google Chrome · · Score: 1

    You do realize that using a 'z' is the correct English usage and always has been? This is one area where our American cousins are actually more correct than we are. The usage of an 's' is commonly referred to as the 'Frenchified' version and is a dilution of the language due to cross-pollination with our Gallic neighbours. The misconception that the Frenchified usage is correct English has arisen since the Government adopted it for their official documents (in the 70s?). I can see the connexion, but read an early print of any of Tolkein's works and tell me how many instances you find. Use zeds.

  7. Dedicated distro on Which Distro For an Eee PC? · · Score: 1

    I don't know how transferable it is, but I purchased an Asus Aspire ONE for my better half at xmas and it came with a Linpus Distro which is a Netbook OS based on Fedora 8. Out of the bag it's a little locked down but after a few minutes of searching you can unlock the desktop and get an XFCE window manager and package-installer. Support for drivers is great - but then you'd expect that since it was the original OS that came with the Netbook.

  8. Re:woo on Microsoft May Be Targeting the Ubuntu Desktop · · Score: 1

    w32 can keep its lions share - that way the malware writers don't target much else and all the clueless users clog up the windows forums, leaving a high signal to noise ratio in the unix groups.

  9. Too bad.. on VMware Releases Open Source Virtualization Client · · Score: 1

    ..Sun's Virtual Box does it easier, quicker and got there first.

  10. Re:Yet one more client on Offline Gmail Launched · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess the selling points include that the presentation and interface will be very similar, users won't have to learn about and setup an IMAP interface or a new e-mail client like Thunderbird (easy for some, but less so for others) and you can spend 0% effort on house-keeping without having your in-box balloon to giant proportions. You'd assume the algorithm's pretty good, so there's a high chance you'll get what you need during the time you're disconnected. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I can certainly see some use in it. I just wish Google-Notebook would finally get the same Gears treatment!

  11. Re:Why? on Testing the KDE 4.2 Release Candidate, On Windows · · Score: 1

    Dolphin is.

  12. Re:just a pig with lipstick on Is Microsoft Improving Its Image? · · Score: 1

    I prefer the term; 'mutton dressed as pig'.

  13. EMACS! on Debian For Android Installer Released · · Score: 1

    Finally! But how to get the Ctrl, Esc and Function keys???

  14. What if... on 30th Anniversary of the (No Good) Spreadsheet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...John C. Dvorak were no longer paid to write lame articles?

  15. Re:Seriously... on iTunes DRM-Free Files Contain Personal Info · · Score: 1

    What if somebody inserts your email address into their AAC files before sharing them with the world?

  16. Re:Googles playbook on Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, not like that, the Google-Apps (writer, spreadsheet, etc.) are downloaded to your PC and you use them from there. So it's still the same mini-office suite that it is on-line and you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference (that is; the move from on-line to off-line mode is seamless). Or you can still just use them through a browser from any PC like you always did. MS/OO/3rd party tools don't come into it.

  17. Re:Moving to online Office may kill Microsoft on Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester · · Score: 1

    Well, I don't work for the IT dept, but generally it seems that most faults get caused by the air-con malfunctioning and then several machines overheating before the auto-graceful-shutdown mechanisms come into play. Maybe bigger organizations could duplicate everything and switch between mirrored systems, but for whatever reasons we don't quite have that. Our networks are also MS-DFS/Sharepoint based which I suspect leads to a lot of minor oddities/lost/changed files, corrupt DNS entries, etc. that occur from time to time. If I were King for a day, I'd like to try out a *nix back end for file-servers and name-servers as I'm pretty sure they'd be a lot easier to setup, maintain and be a lot more reliable.

  18. Re:Googles playbook on Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes you can, Gears will sync the two whenever the link becomes available again - meaning you can edit your docs on the plane, bus, with or without connectivity, etc.

  19. Re:Moving to online Office may kill Microsoft on Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester · · Score: 1

    The first time the file serving cloud takes a nosedive, everyone will scream and run away.

    Not quite. If you're to compare like for like, then it only has to be more reliable than your companies IT infrastructure. I don't know what the average is, but we probably have 4 or 5 serious network meltdowns per year that leave most staff twiddling their thumbs for a couple of hours or more.

  20. Re:Googles playbook on Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester · · Score: 4, Informative

    Personally I wouldn't trust important documents to stay on the web server. What happens when google goes belly up and starts shutting down their web servers?

    You are aware that all Google Docs can be backed up locally with Google Gears and also converted into a number of popular formats?

  21. Re:willingness to relocate on Dell Closes Ireland Plant; 2nd Largest Employer · · Score: 1

    Don't Panic! Once all the work has gone to the East, our salaries will in turn become lower than those in the East and the factories will return. I wonder if a global economy will ever stabilize where most regions are broadly similar?

  22. Re:Is this that important ? on Attempt To "Digitalize" Beatles Goes Sour · · Score: 1

    I doubt that either of those bands would deny the debt they owe to the Beatles.

    I would. On the interviews of the 'Led Zeppelin' DVD Jimmy Page politely states that he has a respect for the Beatles but also that they (the Beatles) are doing their thing and LZ are doing theirs - with no overlap and little common heritage. This stems from the fact that the Beatles were originally a skiffle band whereas LZ have a true rock and blues heritage and is likely the reason why every Beatles album has at least one lame track (Octopus' Garden, Revelution #9, etc) whereas LZ never put a foot wrong. Granted, Lennon/McCartney had their fair share of brilliance as tune-smiths, but not in the same league as the staggering improvisation, writing/playing ability and live touring schedule as LZ. The Beatles deserve to be in the Top-10 bands of all time, maybe even the Top-5 - but they don't deserve the undisputed #1 slot that their popular sales have secured them.

  23. Re:Alternative to online account access/storage on How Long Should Companies Make E-Bills Available? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the point is that unless your neighbours had steamed open your letter and carefully re-sealed it then they didn't get to see your current balance and account number. Also, there's a good chance that the two families which live either side of you would not be tempted to commit crime in the small number of instances that your postman makes a mistake in delivering your mail to wrong house each year - as apposed to the potentially large number of anonymous and largely untrackable entities which may exist in the pipe-line between the banks mail server and your in-box who are actively seeking this traffic for malice for every single communication.

  24. Re:Alternative to online account access/storage on How Long Should Companies Make E-Bills Available? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because statements sent from Bob to Alice would likely be intercepted by Carol who could use that information to the detriment of Alice. What we need is encrypted email, but since the majority of users don't care/couldn't decrypt it anyway, it won't happen until the process is made totally seamless which is up to us engineers. But since the banks are more often passing on the cost of fraud back to the customer and charging twice to insure an already safe bank account against identity theft - why should they care enough to spend the big bucks to do a proper job?

  25. Re:The Cuckoo's Egg on Your Favorite Tech / Eng. / CS Books? · · Score: 1

    I remember borrowing the Cuckoo's Egg back in '95 on my sandwich year - whilst more of a thriller (all be it true one) than a programming book, it is a fascinating and well written account of a true story and a niece piece of 70s history with plenty of refs to important non-work aspects of the time, such as the Grateful Dead, etc.

    Kind of reminded me of another great computing story (totally fictional this time) which was Bugs by Theodore Rozak - imagines a near-distinct future where minuscule bugs breed and thrive within IBM System/360s and other hardware of the time, eventually leading to disastrous results for society. Apparently the book was inspired by a true case of un-explained bugs found within the servers and terminals at AT&T that caused irritation to VDU users - though I sometimes wonder whether this wasn't just thunder-flies and a few sickies..