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Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 47

I think Wikimedia Foundation figured they could do a better job than Wikitravel? Which I suppose is in the spirit of forking. For one thing, I noticed searching for "Charleston, SC" gets me a result in the more intelligent Wikivoyage and just "There were no results matching the query." on Wikitravel. Probably for the better that Wikivoyage is taking over.

Comment I don't see what's new here... (Score 1) 213

What's the difference between this advertisement and all those Dianetics commercials I grew up with? I still see Scientology paying for advertising in all sorts of commonplace venues, including cable TV commercials, the "stress testing" in the middle of malls, and various newspapers and magazines. Is the Atlantic held to a higher standard for whatever reason?

Submission + - Whitehouse Petition to breakup ISP monopolies. (whitehouse.gov)

andrewcaveman writes: I'm the IT Manager for an global startup company. Finding reliable, well supported and fast service is almost impossible in the US. Even in major cities such as Boston, I can't keep T-1 phone service running without issues for more than 2 month before the last mile of Verizon copper causes some problem. This results in lost sales for our company. No matter what service I go through, I am still stuck at the mercy of Verizon since they own all the lines. There has not been any competitive innovations in with ISPs in over 10 years. Google fiber is the most promising, but I can't wait for it. With the government subsidies that have gone towars expanding communications in the past 5 years, why do we now have even less options? Why can't the government do what they suppose to do and break them up?
Intel

Submission + - The coffee machine with an Intel Core i7 (pcpro.co.uk)

nk497 writes: "Costa Coffee's newest automated coffee machines run an Intel chip — its top-end Core i7. The stand-alone machines are designed for places where there aren't any Costa shops, such as offices or supermarkets, and use Intel's retail software to scan and read faces in real time, to collect demographic information. The coffee machines also feature HD touchscreens, which are used as menus to select coffee types, as well as to display videos to "attract" customers and for branding, Intel explained."
Security

Submission + - Iran v USA - the world's first cyber-war has started (techworld.com)

Qedward writes: Techworld security editor and blogger John Dunn on the world's first cyberwar, looking through Stuxnet, Duqu, Gauss and Flame malware through to the current situation. He begins:

"It sometimes hides behind hacktivism. But 75Gbps peak DDoS on US banks is no amateur protest...

We can say with a growing sense of certainty that the world’s first cyberwar is upon us, unfolding behind the scenes with a rising level of intensity, so far pretty much ignored by all but the need-to-knows.

On one side are the US and its European and Middle-Eastern allies, on the other Iran and perhaps its proxies in Syria, Lebanon and a handful of more isolated groups across the non-aligned Islamic world.

Is this really a cyberwar? Certainly, although it is not official and likely never will be. If you rank sustained state-to-state exchanges across the Internet as defining a digital campaign then this is surely the real McCoy even if everything looks normal from the outside.

Comment Re:Films shot in Technicolor (Score 5, Interesting) 436

While it is true that 3D has been largely either "poke you in the eye" or "show it in 3D, even though the director refuses to acknowledge it", there are SOME examples to the contrary. The main one that stood out was Coraline, which I made a point of seeing recently. The director, in an interview, confirmed how I took his approach to be:

http://www.studiodaily.com/2009/02/director-henry-selick-on-coraline/

"There was a learning process – mainly not to overuse it. We ultimately used it to help draw the audience into the Other world as Coraline is being drawn into the Other world. The sets in the Other world are actually deeper. In her real world, it’s crushed space with steeply raked floors. For example, the kitchen in her real world is one foot deep. The kitchen in the Other world is four feet deep. I wanted to use 3D in a more subtle way to show what Coraline is going through, that there’s a sense of spaciousness in that Other world. We have a few shots where things poke you in the eye, but when the Other world goes wrong, we crank up the 3D almost to an uncomfortable level to enhance the storytelling."

Great usage of 3D in my book. It's too bad not many good directors are taking 3D seriously.

Comment Re:Definitely NOT Earth 2 (Score 1) 420

Pretty impossible to say if the planet is habitable, but at 4 times the Earth's mass it definitely isn't Earth-like. The search continues...

To be specific, according to Stephen Dole and Isaac Asimov ( Planets for Man ), the max habitable gravity is 1.5g. If I'm 180 pounds, 4g would mean I feel like I'm an unsightly 720 pounds. Get in ma' belleh! :D

Comment Re:Eheh and his mother was sane? (Score 1) 1719

Then the way we prevent this from ever happening again: ban mothers.

The mother's judgement WAS the problem. She not only kept an arsenal of guns around a mentally-challenged individual, but she even trained him with them. If I don't want something knocked over, I'm going to keep it safe from my cat. She wouldn't know any better, so I take precautions. Similar precautions should have been taken here.

Comment Office on iOS is really not the same (Score 0) 724

Am I missing something here? First off, the biggest platform for iOS, the iPhone, does not suit the creation of MS Office documents very well. The iPad can be hooked up to a keyboard to make it work mostly well, at least on one with a Retina display. The form factor just can't support most of the value MS Office offers. Are you really going to be writing your thesis paper or punching in complex excel formulae on your iPad? I can see MS Outlook and maybe Powerpoint having the most value, if they did it right, but my hopes aren't high.

Comment 5 sigma (Score 1) 396

Just to put in perspective of what 5 sigma certainty means, it's like someone claiming a coin is loaded, so it will land on the same side every time, and then testing this by flipping it 20 times. Taking into account the chance that the coin was not loaded, as in you just by chance flipped the coin on the same side every time, you now have 5-sigma certainty that the coin is truly loaded as described.

Comment Re:Dipshits (Score 1) 178

Yet still you have a Facebook account. Why exactly should they set the bar higher if all their screw-ups do is get them more free publicity?

Every time FB fucks up, the online world whines like it is the end of life as we know it. All you're doing is confirming to FB that you're addicted and can't live without them.

Why again should they change? You're their bitch and they like it that way.

Because one day Google might get their act together and properly market their social network, to the point where Facebook actually has real competition. I attended the first day of Google I/O and was pretty disappointed that they did nothing to address Google+ being an utter ghost town. All they did was focus on this "events" feature, and "party mode". It's a nice addition, but it still isn't going to get people I care about to use the network. I'm thinking all they have to do is start posting up billboards/posters and host contests.. even bribe people to use their social network. Then it'll take off, and Facebook will start getting serious. I have to believe there's SOMEONE at Google with the brains and the influence to act on this. Google tends to do dramatic things suddenly, so I give them about a year to show up on the radar. You want to know how comfy Facebook is right now? They don't have a QA department. A manager at Facebook told me this outright about 3-4 months ago. I doubt it's changed since then. They just code something, and trust their developers to assure it's okay, and they go ahead and put the things into production. So when Facebook screws up, or something looks horribly wrong, it's because they know no one has anywhere else to go while they're fixing it. That massive concern about "100% uptime" that we saw in Social Network is no longer there, because Facebook is well beyond critical mass, and yes, over half the planet is a monopoly.

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