BLT2112 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Home Business Solutions for the New Business Owner (merchantscenter.com)

Submitted by

kayetaylor

on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @01:48AM

kayetaylor writes: "Flexibility of work schedule is one of the biggest advantages of managing a home based business. By following an efficient schedule and finishing your tasks on time, you will be able to spend quality time with your family. Are you looking home business solutions that will help you perform your duties more quickly and effectively? If yes, check out this list:

Time Management Tool. Managing your time is essential especially when you work from home. Choose an automated scheduler with built-in reminders so you can be sure not to miss important appointments and avoid delays in completing tasks."

Submission + - How Good Are Gaming Chairs? (posterous.com)

Submitted by erwi719t on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @01:48AM

erwi719t writes: Information on how good gaming chairs really are and if they really do enhance the playing of video games to any high degree

Comment Re:what money saved? (Score 1) 214

by BLT2112 on Saturday September 24, 2011 @06:08PM (#37504694) Attached to: Steam Translation Community Slaving Away

The "article" assumes Valve would otherwise pay to have the translations done. This is a questionable assumption.

Agreed. If they weren't going to do it anyway it's actually rather helpful of them to make it possible for the text to be translated by whoever volunteers to do so.

Comment Re:famous person says crazy shit when older (Score 1) 1190

by BLT2112 on Saturday March 28, 2009 @04:55PM (#27372861) Attached to: The Global Warming Heretic

Issac Newton believed in alchemy and conducted all sorts of pseudo-scientific experiments in nonsense. Edison spent the last years of his life working on a spook phone to talk to the dead. Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and says bad things about gay people.

Interesting that you would compare believing in alchemy and working on a "spook phone" with being a member of a particular religion with over 13 million members.

People start saying and believing stupid shit when they pass their prime.

Obviously alchemy is bunk, but just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean it's stupid.

iPhone App Refund Policies Could Cost Devs 230

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday March 28, 2009 @08:17AM from the money-for-nothin dept.

CBRcrash writes "Apparently, if iPhone users decide that they want a refund for an app (users can get a refund within 90 days, according to Apple policy), Apple requires that developers give back the money they received from the sale. But, here's the kicker: Apple will refund the full amount to the user and says that it has the right to keep its commission. So, the developer not only has to return the money for the sale, but also has to reimburse Apple for its commission."

Comment Edits much? (Score 1) 73

by BLT2112 on Friday March 27, 2009 @04:13AM (#27354303) Attached to: Euro Parliament Warns Against Overzealous IP Enforcement

Hey, can we spot the typo in the summary?

Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA 785

Posted by timothy on Sunday March 22, 2009 @02:22PM from the similar-to-the-old-boss dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Obama Administration's Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old. Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision — rather than the Supreme Court's more recent decisions involving punitive damages — was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages. Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file. Interestingly, the Government brief asked the Judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial. Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument that had been made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments that had been made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief. Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA; does this filing confirm those fears?"

AnandTech Gives the Skinny On Recent SSD Offerings 96

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 19, 2009 @03:20PM from the they're-small-and-quiet-the-end dept.

omnilynx writes "With capacity on the rise and prices falling, solid state drives are finally starting to compete with traditional hard drives. However, there are still several issues to take into account when moving to an SSD, not to mention choosing between a widening array of offerings. Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech does a better job than anyone could expect detailing those issues (especially those related to performance) and reviewing the new offerings in the SSD arena. Intel's X25 series comes out on top for sheer speed, but OCZ makes a surprise turnaround with its Vertex drive giving perhaps the best value."

New Form of "Mobius" Carbon Predicted 115

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 16, 2009 @09:41PM from the with-a-twist dept.

KentuckyFC writes "We've seen carbon nanotubes, buckyballs, and chickenwire. Now materials scientists have created a computer model of a Mobius strip fashioned from strips of graphene — a molecule that would have a single surface and only one edge. (Other groups have made Mobius-like organic molecules but never out of carbon sheets.) The model allows the researchers to determine the physical and chemical properties of the molecules and how these depend on the number of twists in the strip. The team says, for example, that 'Mobius carbon' should be stable to temperatures of at least 500 Kelvin (abstract). But the most exciting prediction is that strips with an odd number of half twists should have a dipole moment that would cause them to self-organize into a crystal. That implies that there's a new type of carbon made entirely of Mobius strips ready to be made by any chemists with a good supply of graphene (maybe these guys)."

Comment Re:There is yet another problem with science teach (Score 1) 1038

by BLT2112 on Friday March 13, 2009 @03:58PM (#27185329) Attached to: US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy

This is absolutely true. In my high school, there were so few science and math teachers that they ended up hiring unqualified teachers that preferred to show us football game film from last Friday's game. And those few good teachers we had were certainly "disenfranchised"-- though that might be an understatement. The one teacher who I felt really taught me anything ended up leaving because she couldn't please the bureaucracy of today's public schools. The future of science education is certainly bleak, but I wouldn't stop there. The whole system is a mess that punishes teachers that do things differently--read, "better."

Amazon Uses DMCA To Restrict Ebook Purchases 409

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 12, 2009 @03:24PM from the do-not-read-this-dept-line dept.

InlawBiker writes "Today, Amazon invoked the DMCA to force removal of a python script and instructions from the mobileread web site. The script is used to identify the Kindle's internal ID number, which can be used to enable non-Amazon purchased books to work on the Kindle. '...this week we received a DMCA take-down notice from Amazon requesting the removal of the tool kindlepid.py and instructions for it. Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it.' Ironically, the purpose of the script is to make the Kindle more useful to its users."

Wife of Harried Pirate Bay Witness Gets Buried in Internet Love 470

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 27, 2009 @02:08PM from the thanks-for-lending-us-your-hubby dept.

treqie writes "During the trial of pirate bay yesterday, a professor (Roger Wallis) took the witness stand. He told the court things that the prosecutors did not want to hear. The prosecutors then tried to discredit both him and his team's work in the area, as well as his title, it was a real spectacle. In the end, the judge asked if he wanted compensation for being there — he replied that he did not want anything, but they could send flowers to his wife. Many listening online heard, and began sending her flowers, from all over the world. As of this submission, the sum is over 40,000 SEK worth of flowers. There's even a Facebook group for it."

Australian Internet Censorship Plan Torpedoed 308

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday February 26, 2009 @10:19AM from the take-that-old-people dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation needed to start the scheme. Anti-Gambling Senator Nick Xenophon previously supported the filter because it could also block gambling web sites, but today withdrew support saying 'the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this.' This week surveys found only less than 10% of Australians supported the censorship. Censorship Senator Stephen Conroy has consistently ignored advice from technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online. Conroy expanded the list to block Adult R18+ and X18+ web sites, and this week said it would also block sites depicting drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or 'revolting and abhorrent phenomena' that 'offend against the standards of morality.' Last week an anti-abortion website was added to the blacklist, and Conroy said he was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond."

Submission + - Quake Live is Packed - Public Beta goes Live

Submitted by x1n933k on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @10:49PM

x1n933k writes: For anybody who was sitting on top of Quake Live's website today http://www.quakelive.com/ clicking refresh and waiting for it to open, you can now browse over and join the fun. Unfortunately you'll have to hold in a queue:
"Here we are all dressed up and nowhere to go. Don't worry, to make sure everyone can enjoy the game we have activated our super secret Queue system, which keeps the server from being overloaded and affecting the website."

I've been waiting 40 minutes and now up to 591, after starting from 9982 but have been playing Quake 3 to kill time.

Submission + - The World's Most Pointless Inventions

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @09:02PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The Telegraph has an interesting story about the annual Landfill Prize, a brainchild of environmentalist writer John Naish, who invites members of the public to nominate products for the "most pointless, frivolous and wasteful consumer objects" of the year. Entries submitted this year included the "Plane Sheet," a cover that can be placed over airline seats to "transform a tired, overused airline seat into a cozy, happy place while keeping at bay germs, crumbs and spills from previous passengers," and the USB chameleon that plugs into a computer and sits on a desk while his eyes roll and he sticks out his tongue but doesn't change color, but this years winner was the motorized ice-cream cone, available in three colors, designed for people too lazy to twist their own wrists when eating ice-cream. Previous nominees have included the Philips Sonicare Flexcare brush that comes with it's own ultraviolet-light sanitizing equipment, the Ambi-Pur "three-fragrance" air freshener, and Gillette's six-bladed, battery-powered, wet razor. Readers are invited to provide their own nominations for the most unnecessarily convoluted consumer inventions that help to increase the teetering junkpile of refuse we produce every year."

Slashdot Top Deals