Facial recognition software came with the Ultraport camera for Thinkpads back in 2000 which would (fairly reliably) unlock your screensaver when you sat down in front of the machine. You could even require that you had to smile to prove you weren't a picture.
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"Apple is Microsoft 2.0"
Ridiculous.
Microsoft, in it's heyday, managed to extort payments from computer manufacturers for copies of Windows that they didn't sell. e.g., if computer manufactures wanted to buy any copy of Windows, they had to buy copies for all the computers they sold - whether those computers came with Windows or not. *that's* evil.
Microsoft, when it could, adopted open standards and then quietly extended them - making them incompatible with any other OS. If you used Microsoft's spec for the standard, you'd find out when you wanted to port your program that the 'standard' was Windows-specific. *that's* evil.
The Apple page referenced by the article is a *Safari* demo. It's no surprise that it works only with Safari.
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Over the past few hundred years, the solar cycle has regularly varied from as short as 9 years to as long as 14*. The tone of the summary (and the S.A. article) make this sound as if it is a new thing.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles
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I'm sorry, but having a delayed fallback to IPv4 still doesn't explain how this problem is a "block to IPv6".
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The two points seem to be 'OS X is slow in falling back to an IPv4 address' and 'OS X seems to prefer IPv6 to IPv4'. It's perfectly obvious that OS X needs to improve its handling of certain connectivity problems, but how is *either* of these a "block" to IPv6?
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(who turns off IPv6 tunneling in his router because the gateways seem to go away a lot)
"But when this experience is a required "rite of passage" in order to own any of their "trophies" (err, I mean "products") I feel a surge of rejection that seems to originate in the vicinity of my stomach."
I'm sorry, but WTF?
The last time I was in an Apple Store (two weeks ago), I was in and out within five minutes, and I didn't even get a "do you want fries with that?" question. It's just a store. In my experience, a store with exceptionally polite staff.
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"The ultimate goal is to beam large amounts of solar power to Earth"
Which eventually turns into heat, which could contribute to global warming, depending on your definition of 'large amounts of power', of course.
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"Apple has become the most dickhead company in the industry, far surpassing Microsoft or any other."
Having dealt with Microsoft and used Windows since version 1.0, I have to say that your version of history does not agree with mine.
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"It just struck me that the main bone BoingBoing had to pick with MagicJack's EULA is that its users' calls are monitored, and are played targeted ads (obtained from said monitoring)."
The EULA does not say that 'calls are monitored', it says that 'Our computers may analyze the phone numbers you call'. I think that's a big difference. BoingBoing did a Slashdot-like editorial move and phrased their headline for maximum outrage and minimum accuracy.
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In 2006, this was called "Serendipitous Chat", which also had it's amusing moments.
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>> Don't forget to charge the kid too. It's the American way.
>
>As an American, I suppose I should be irritated by that remark
When you consider that the majority of 'offenders' prosecuted in this country under child pornography laws are 15-year-olds, I'd say that "not handling well" is somewhat of an understatement.
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for all sites that I visited that tried to make me jump through the dumb VbV hoops, I switched to American Express..
I thought and still think that it is dumb to encourage consumers to type confidential information into a random pop-up page from a different web site than the one they are visiting.
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> There are so many good quotes in that book, that you could make nearly a second book out of them. My favorite...
The one that always sticks in my mind is:
""If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."
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I'm sure that enough heat*time will do it, but I suspect that your food isn't food at that point. Autoclaving is insufficient to destroy prions on surgical instruments, for instance.
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The answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is... Four day work week, Two ply toilet paper!
