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Comment Re:Socialist pig! (Score 3, Funny) 725

by slash.dt (#38509302) Attached to: Christmas Always On Sunday? Researchers Propose New Calendar

Never gonna happen. There are too many politically conservative idiots, like my mom, who believe attempts at converting to metric represent a "socialist" conspiracy, and almost literally scream at any attempt to remove Imperial units in favor of metric. Socialist? The fucking metric system? Seriously?

How about approaching it by telling those same people that using Imperial units is propagating the British rule over America and until it is dropped, the US will never be truely free?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft To Kill Windows Phone 7 Unlocking

Submitted by Chris
Chris writes: In the first update to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is planning to block ChevronWP7, which allowed users to unlock any retail Windows Phone 7 device for application side-loading without having to pay $99 per year for a WP7 marketplace account. The update, which is slated for release this month, will also introduce copy and paste functionality, among other improvements. ChevronWP7 was discontinued less than a week after its release about two months ago. ChevronWP7's three developers, Long Zheng, Rafael Rivera, and Chris Walsh were approached by Brandon Watson, Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone 7, and decided to kill their app.

Comment Re:complete with tracking and statistics (Score 1) 244

by slash.dt (#33754076) Attached to: Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public
Won't affect me - I never click on any shortened link. If I can't see if it goes to the site that I am intending to go to, I won't click it. Unfortunately lots of people do click on these links and then wonder why they get virus and malware. If google can make the links safer that would be good but I still plan to avoid them.

Comment Re:Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug (Score 1) 82

by slash.dt (#33556602) Attached to: Salesforce Uses Chatter To Monitor Employees

We use salesforce all day long and yet none of us at work use "chatter". It's almost as if it's a clunky, superfluous facebook-alike shoehorned into what's otherwise a good CRM system.

Does anyone here on /. actually use chatter?

First thing I did when it was enabled on my account was to find the settings to turn it off - have no desire to use it.
Image

Dog Eats Man's Toe and Saves His Life Screenshot-sm 207

Posted by samzenpus from the yes-you-read-that-right dept.
Have you ever been so drunk that you passed out and your dog ate your toe? I haven't either, but luckily for Michigander Jerry Douthett, he has. It turns out Jerry has type 2 diabetes and a wound on his toe had becoming dangerously infected. After a night of drinking Jerry passed out in his chair and the family dog Kiko decided to do a little doggy doctoring. From the article: "'The toe was gone,' said Douthett. 'He ate it. I mean, he must have eaten it, because we couldn't find it anywhere else in the house. I look down, there's blood all over, and my toe is gone.' [Douthett's wife] Rosee, 40, rushed her husband to the hospital where she's a gerontology nurse — Spectrum Health's Blodgett Campus. Kiko had gnawed to a point below the nail-line. When tests revealed an infection to the bone, doctors amputated what was left of the toe."
Television

How High-Tech Gadget Trends Differ By US Region 51

Posted by kdawson from the you-say-potato dept.
Ant writes in with news of a study revealing differences in gadget preferences by US region. The survey is not rigorous, based as it was on 7,500 online questionnaires submitted to Retrevo, a website for tech shoppers. The company plans to run the survey annually. "...in the smartphone category, the state of Maryland came out on top with 48 percent more households owning at least one such handset than elsewhere in the country. ... In iPad use, the state of New York took top honors. According to the survey, 52 percent more households have at least one iPad in the Empire State. ... Massachusetts beat out the rest of the nation in e-reader adoption..."
Cellphones

Toshiba Intros Trilingual Translation App For Cellphones 44

Posted by Soulskill from the like-a-liberal-arts-major-only-better dept.
MojoKid writes "Shortly after hearing of a simple, two-way Spanish-to-English translator for the iPhone, Toshiba has announced that it has developed a new language translation system that requires no server-side interaction. The app is designed to be operated independently on a smartphone, which will eliminate costly data roaming fees that are generally incurred using systems that require an internet connection to retrieve translations. The system is trilingual in nature and enables users to translate freely among Japanese, Chinese, and English."

Comment Re:Our body has a monitoring system built in (Score 2, Interesting) 330

by slash.dt (#27295363) Attached to: Body 2.0 — Continuous Monitoring of the Human Body

You would be amazed how well many diabetics can tell their sugar level at any given moment. It doesn't take more than a month of measuring to learn that.

And you would also be amazed at how often people whose life depends on knowing their glucose levels get it wrong. I'm pretty good at estimating mine on the low (immediate danger) side, but not so good as estimating when my blood glucose is high (long term danger)side.

I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention continous blood glucose monitors which are already readily available - ok, you only implant them for 3-7 days at a time but that will get better. So instead of all the vapourware being mentioned in the article they could have talked about a product which is already here.
It's funny. Laugh.

UK UFO Sightings Declassified, Still No Intergalactic Relations 319

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the stupidity-is-universal dept.
schwit1 is just one of the massive flood of readers (and publications) writing to tell us about the recently declassified UK Ministry of Defense account of a supposed UFO sighting. Included are nineteen sightings between 1986 and 1992, with the most notable being a sighting in 1991 with a US Air Force pilot's first-hand account. Not that this lends an air of credibility to anything, just more papers with more words. "Almost 200 such files will be made available by the MoD over the next four years. [...] UFO expert and journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, Dr David Clarke, said the documents would shed new light on relatively little-known sightings. He said some conspiracy theorists would already have decided that the release of the papers was a 'whitewash.' He added: 'Because the subject is bedevilled by charlatans and lunatics, it is career suicide to have your name associated with UFOs, which is a real pity. The National Archives are doing a fantastic job here. Everyone brings their own interpretation. Now you can look at the actual primary material — the stuff coming into the MoD every day — and make your own mind up.'"

Comment Re:Home made thing. (Score 1) 240

by slash.dt (#24725879) Attached to: A Full-Time 2-Way Video Link To Grandparents?
If you're not very adventurous: Any computer. Any video conferencing software (such as Skype). VPN software (such as OpenVPN). VNC software (such as RealVNC). The best is if you get a computer where the screen and computer are in the same enclosure. You don't even hook up a keyboard or a rat. If something happens, you lgo on their desktop thru the VPN and VNC and click on Skype again or whatever.

This is pretty close to what we do. We have a mac mini hooked up to my inlaw's TV with a webcam on top. Skype and VNCServer is running on the mac (skype since we have a PC at our end). Whenever we want to talk we can VNC to the mac and start the conversation. My wife does it all the time and also uses it to show the inlaws photos from webalbums.

We also have a skype phone setup for those times that you just want to talk and can't be bother with the video link.
Censorship

Submission + - Wikileaks to retaliate aganist Scientology (wikinews.org) 5

Submitted by
DragonFire1024
DragonFire1024 writes: "Wikinews.org — Wikinews has learned that The Church of Scientology has warned the documents leaking site Wikileaks.org that they are in violation of United States copyright laws after they published several documents related to the Church. Wikileaks has no intentions of complying, and states that in response, they intend to publish thousands of Scientology documents next week.
In the letter to Wikileaks, lawyers for the Church's Religious Technology Center (RTC), which oversees the use of the their logos, writings and religious content, states that the site "placed RTC's Advanced Technology works on Wikileaks.org's website without the authorization" of the Church.
"I have a good faith belief, and in fact know for certain, that posting copies of these works through your system was not authorized by my client, any agent of my client, or the law. Please be advised that your customer's action in this regard violates United States copyright law. Accordingly, we ask for your help in removing these works immediately from your service," states the letter from Ava Paquette of Moxon & Kobrin which was published by Wikileaks.
"Wikileaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than Wikileaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian off-shore stem cell centers, former African Kleptocrats, or the Pentagon. Wikileaks will remain a place where people of the world may safely expose injustice and corruption," stated Wikileaks in a statement on their website.
Wikileaks further states that "in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand pages of Scientology material next week.""

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