Comment Re:Wrods for mare mortals (Score 4, Funny) 364
no amount of marketing money would make a name like GIMP gain wide acceptance.
So... you're saying I should reevaluate my KDE Ultimate Network Tool then?
Comment Re:What are you talking about? (Score 1) 900
1) Make selection
2) Open "Image" menu in main menubar
3) Click "Crop to Selection"
It's even easier than that these days:
- Make selection using the Crop Tool.
- Click the selection.
Done in two. I have no idea why OP is having such a difficult time.
Comment Re:We don't need no stickers at all.. (Score 2, Insightful) 475
At my local grocery store, they sell three different types of bananas: "standard" (49c/lb), organic (79c/lb) and fair trade (89c/lb). Without some form of labelling, the cashier cannot distinguish between the types.
Of course, the self-checkout lanes make this entire argument almost moot...
Comment Re:Faster... (Score 3, Informative) 377
You know, I used to think it was solely an OpenOffice.org issue, and while the application certainly could be snappier and less bloated in some areas, I don't think it's nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
As the only Computer Science teacher at my high school, I often inherit lots of older hardware. The other day our local technician gave me three old Celeron 600MHz laptops that he was just going to throw in the trash. I decided to turn them into workstations for my students who did not have easy access to computers at home. As they were slow machines, I set them up with a basic Ubuntu install running IceWM -- it runs quite snappy, and is a bit more user-friendly than say DSL.
I considered installing AbiWord for a word processor, but chose OO.o mainly because we have it installed on the school servers anyway. The result? It takes about 6-7 seconds to load up, and responds quite well. As a point of comparison, the 2GHz Pentium 4 machines running XP and Word in our department office launch Word in approximately 5-6 seconds, so it's pretty much on par.
I know that OO.o is a beast sometimes, but my experiences have been fairly positive.
Comment Re:Jesus (Score 1) 154
I know you were going for funny, but in reality Jeopardy never uses one(or two)-word answers.
They often do, but they're typically framed within a narrow, specific category. For example, the category might me "National Drinks" or some such thing. Typical Q/As might be Japan (Sake), Russia (Vodka), and so forth. Jeapoardy! also has a few other categories (anagrams, for example) that frequently use one or two words.
Comment Re:You know who can't do math? (Score 1) 566
If you are sick on a Friday or Monday...
I frequently hear this argument, but it presupposes a truly "random" sick day. I suspect that the dates are indeed biased, with more people being "sick" on a Monday or Friday. I know that would certainly be my choice.
Somewhat related, it's like flipping a coin 999 times and coming up heads each time. What is the probability that it will come up heads again? If it was truly random, the probability would be 50%. More likely, however, the coin is weighted on one side and biased toward heads. Bias is definitely a factor.
Exploit Found to Brick Most HP and Compaq Laptops 294
Ian Lamont writes "A security researcher calling himself porkythepig has published attack code that can supposedly brick most HP and Compaq laptops. The exploit uses an ActiveX control in HP's Software Update. It would 'let an attacker corrupt Windows' kernel files, making the laptop unbootable, or with a little more effort, allow hacks that would result in a PC hijack or malware infection.' The same researcher last week outlined a batch of additional vulnerabilities in HP and Compaq laptops, for which HP later issued patches."
Submission + - MTV bails on Microsoft with Rhapsody America (arstechnica.com)
Marlowe writes: MTV's once-ballyhooed partnership with Microsoft appears to be all but dead. MTV is teaming up with RealNetworks to form Rhapsody America, with Verizon handling wireless distribution. It's a big blow to Microsoft, too. 'With the creation of Rhapsody America, the writing is on the wall for MTV and Microsoft's Urge music store partnership. Although the Microsoft-MTV marriage was announced with great fanfare, it was likely headed for divorce court right from the start due to Microsoft's plans to turn PlaysForSure into a second-class citizen with the launch of the Zune — and its self-contained music ecosystem. When asked about the future of Urge, MTV Music Group President Toffler was terse. "We are in discussions with Microsoft now and will be on Windows Media Player 11 until further notice," he said. While the Urge brand will ultimately disappear, Toffler said that "a lot" of Urge's elements will live on in Rhapsody America.
Submission + - Space Shuttle Endeavour Lands Safely
Limburgher writes: I just watched her land on NASA TV. What a relief! I'm glad they all made it back safely. Still think they should have patched, but it looks like NASA's decision was justified.
Patent Threats In OOXML 109
An anonymous reader notes an initiative by the New Zealand Open Source Society to weigh in on the question of standardizing Microsoft's OOXML. The organization has authored a white paper (available in several formats, HTML here) laying out the ways in which the OOXML spec falls short of what a standard should be. From the article: "'If OOXML goes through as an ISO standard, the IT industry, government and business will [be] encumbered with a 6,000-page specification peppered with potential patent liabilities' said New Zealand OSS President Don Christie. 'Alarm bells are going off in many parts of the world over OOXML. Normally ISO draft standards would be drawn up by a number of stakeholder organizations, involving an often slow process of consensus building and knowledge sharing. Since many aspects of the office document format remain proprietary, OOXML has not taken this development track.'"
Miyamoto Speaks, Nintendo Ditching the Hardcore? 314
After Nintendo's very ... different ... press conference, you may be wondering what's going on. In a roundtable discussion with Nintendo, folks like Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto discussed Zelda, Mario Galaxy and WiiFit , giving some context to the message the company had on Wednesday. The balance board begged the question from the people there, is Nintendo ditching the hardcore? According to the Nintendo folks, not at all: "Aonuma believes that control can be pick-up-and-play, but that doesn't necessarily mean a game overall has to be easier. But he still states that his 'goal was always to appeal to...a vast audience.' One attendee pushed the issue further, asking if all Zelda games from now on are going to cater to the more casual crowd--will we ever again need a strategy guide to complete a Zelda game? Aonuma says that judging by Japanese sales so far, accessible 'stream-lined play has been effective,' but he wants to see how Western audiences react to the new Zelda before making a final decision on future games' difficulty levels. Aunoma also hopes to venture into new territory and create a wholly original game at some point in his career." For a lengthy treat, check out Kotaku's series of interview clips with Mr. Miyamoto.
Scientist Develops Caffeinated Baked Goods 195
Zephyros writes "The AP is reporting on a scientist who has found a way to get caffeine into donuts, bagels, and other baked goods without the bitter flavor. Each piece has as much caffeine as two cups of coffee. No word on when or where they will be available, but for those of us that just don't get the same kick from the morning cuppa that we used to, this may be another tasty delivery vector to look forward to for that jump-start."
ModDB Mod of the Year Winners Chosen 24
TheRealFritz writes "It's that time of year again and ModDB has released the winners of their annual Mod of the Year contest. Gamers who like to go beyond their initial investment have chosen their favorites for 2006: Point of Existence and Project Reality according to ModDB's Mod of the Year competition. The contest took in over 80,000 votes and narrowed the field from 4,000 mods to the Top 5 released and unreleased mods, as well as a handful of genre awards and the Editor's Choice awards. Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod. Despite these problems, both mods went on to beat out mods from the ever popular Half-Life 2 platform. The much better maintained Source engine is represented with the winners of the third through fifth places: Goldeneye: Source, The Hidden: Source and Minerva."
British Police Identify Killer in Radiation Case 235
reporter writes "According to a front-page story by The Guardian, British authorities have identified Andrei Lugovoi to be the murderer who used radioactive pollonium-210 to kill Andrei Litvinenko. The British government will ask Moscow to extradite Lugovoi. The Guardian states: 'Associates of the dead man have repeatedly accused President Vladimir Putin's government of being behind his murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects. While it is known that detectives believe they have uncovered evidence pointing to Mr Lugovoi's involvement, it is not clear whether they have established a motive for the murder'"
Testing Commercial 2-Factor Authentication Systems? 56
Fry-kun asks: "I recently became interested in setting up a 2-factor authentication system for my laptop. With that in mind, I bought a fairly inexpensive USB key. Although it seems to work, I can't bring myself to trust it completely: Kensington claims that the system is secure, but there is no independent security lab analysis of the product. In other words, for all I know, there may be a gaping hole in their security setup. Worse yet, there are apparently no reviews of the product, no mention of anyone trying to test it and no hardware hackers tried to make it work in Linux, even though it's been out for over 2 years. How would you go about making sure that a security product does what it claims to?"
