Comment Re:BP engineers are morons... (Score 1) 264
Underwater welding happens all the time. And if it were a problem, you could use clamps to hold it or drill holes and bolt everything together or both...
Comment Re:Slashdot (Score 0, Troll) 264
I use
Comment BP engineers are morons... (Score -1, Redundant) 264
They easily could have welded on or otherwise secured a large ball valve to the top of that well head and then slowly closed it... Even if one didn't exist it could have been built in a couple of weeks...
Comment Re:You did ZERO reaserch on your own... (Score 1) 159
>
In short: Google does not offer trusted individual opinions and most of the reviews and opinions on the web are highly suspect.
Neither do half the jokers posting here...
It's like the old saying, if you want it done right you gotta do it yourself. That goes for researching/trying out products too... Besides IMO it's the only way for stupid people to become more self sufficient in the long run.
Comment You did ZERO reaserch on your own... (Score -1, Troll) 159
If you had taken even just 15 minutes of your own time with google you would find MANY malware removing apps that can run as standalone or as modules in things like BartPE.
Learn how to use google and stop wasting other peoples time...
Google Slams Apple Over iPhone Ad Ban 562
crimeandpunishment writes "This real-life clash of the titans could be much more interesting than the movie. Today Google fired the latest volley in its war of words with Apple over mobile advertising. In a blog posting, the head of Google's mobile ad service, Admob, had harsh words for Apple's new restrictions concerning the iPhone and iPad ... calling them a threat to competition. There's a lot of money at stake ... the US mobile ad market, which is about $600 million, is expected to more than double by 2013."
The World's Largest Data Centers 87
1sockchuck writes "It seems data centers are getting bigger all the time. Who has the world's largest server farm? Data Center Knowledge has put together a list of 10 huge data centers, all between 400,000 and 1.1 million square feet. The story highlights the trend toward ever-bigger data centers, such as the Vegas SuperNAP and Microsoft's container data center, as well as established behemoths like the NAP of the Americas in Miami and Lakeside Technology Center in Chicago."
Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Denying Climate Change 787
cowtamer writes "The Utah State Assembly has passed a resolution decrying climate change alarmists and urging '...the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.' Here is the full text of H.J.R 12." The resolution has no force of law. The Guardian article includes juicy tidbits from its original, far more colorful, version.
Power To the Pop-Ups 204
Slashdot frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes a piece advocating for Pop-Ups and even more obtrusive advertising. But not for the reasons you might think. He says "Annoying pop-up ads have been a great friend to Internet freedom, by enabling the operation of proxy sites that would be too expensive to operate otherwise. With the rising costs of making new proxy sites to stay ahead of the 'censorware' companies, even more intrusive ads could be an even bigger friend to Internet freedom. Got any ideas for how those more intrusive ads could work?" Clicky clicky below to read his point.
Failed Games That Damaged Or Killed Their Companies 397
An anonymous reader writes "Develop has an excellent piece up profiling a bunch of average to awful titles that flopped so hard they harmed or sunk their studio or publisher. The list includes Haze, Enter The Matrix, Hellgate: London, Daikatana, Tabula Rasa, and — of course — Duke Nukem Forever. 'Daikatana was finally released in June 2000, over two and a half years late. Gamers weren't convinced the wait was worth it. A buggy game with sidekicks (touted as an innovation) who more often caused you hindrance than helped ... achieved an average rating of 53. By this time, Eidos is believed to have invested over $25 million in the studio. And they called it a day. Eidos closed the Dallas Ion Storm office in 2001.'"
NY Times To Charge For Online Content 488
Hugh Pickens writes "New York Magazine reports that the NY Times appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of debate inside the paper, the choice has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system. The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership. The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year's financial crisis, the argument that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper's high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight."
Dumbing Down Programming? 578
RunRevKev writes "The unveiling of Revolution 4.0 has sparked a debate on ZDNet about whether programming is being dumbed down. The new version of the software uses an English-syntax that requires 90 per cent less code than traditional languages. A descendant of Apple's Hypercard, Rev 4 is set to '...empower people who would never have attempted programming to create successful applications.' ZDNet reports that 'One might reasonably hope that this product inspires students in the appropriate way and gets them more interested in programming.'"
Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115
feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."
Comment Why are you giving them the ability to screw up? (Score 1) 932
Seriously dude, after the second time you should have removed their admin or power user rights and given them a standard user account. Then install a decent antivirus that you can prevent them from changing the settings on and force daily virus/malware scans. Also, once the account is setup the way they like it, login as an admin and create a backup of their profile... or use any number of free backup solutions to create nightly backups and/or create nightly/daily restore points.
I hate to tell you this, but knowing what you know about how they use their computer, it's YOUR fault that they keep having this problem. 99% of the time you can prevent bad users from creating these problems or at least make the recovery a heck of a lot easier on yourself.
Buy a sysadmin for dummies book or something, learn a little about backups and malware/virus prevention. Learn to tell your users that it's for their own good(as well as yours). And if they don't like it, tell them to ask somebody else for help(a little harder with family, but still VERY effective to get your point accross).
Easing the Job of Family Tech Support? 932
DarkDevil writes "Ever since I was introduced to computers at a very young age, I've been the resident tech support for a household of 7 users. I've been in a cycle for the last ~8 years where something happens to my parents' computer, I spend a week or two trying to non-destructively fix the problem (and try to explain to the users what caused it and how to avoid it), and then if it's not easily fixed I'll reformat and start from scratch. Most often, the level of infection warrants a reformat, which usually ends up taking even more time to get the computer back to how my parents know how to use it. 4-8 months later, it happens again. Recently, I found ~380 instances of malware and 6 viruses. I only realized something was wrong with their computer after it slowed down the entire network whenever anyone used it. My question for Slashdot is: are there any resources out there that explain computer viruses, malware, adware, and general safe computer practices to non-technical people in an easy-to-digest format? The security flaws in my house are 9, 26, and ~50 years old, with no technical background aside from surfing the internet. Something in video format would be ideal as they are perfectly happy with our current arrangement and so it'll be hard to get them reading pages and pages of technical papers."
