Comment Re:You lack imagination. (Score 1) 133
Example: I doubt anyone's been married on waterskis before. Or while submerged and in Scuba gear.
You could at least have come up with some better examples: Wedding on waterskis, Underwater wedding
Comment Re:If a used bookstore can sell used books... (Score 1) 664
(Maybe I shouldn't be too loud about this but I'm sure the Post Office would love to get money from stamp collectors buying and selling their stamps. Or the Treasure Department and coins...)
They already do. Stamp collectors buy stamps and never use them for postage - but they still pay the full price. Same with coins - they are bought from the Treasury.
Comment Re:Somebody needs to take on Google (Score 1) 310
For this reason I have changed my default search engine for the moment, to at least give bing a go. Competition is good, and if Google's monopoly continues, the technology will stagnate.
Comment Re:Very true (Score 1) 386
Mining machinery, oil platform systems, medical devices, robotics repair...any of those would offer opportunities to travel to exotic places and make a lot of money.
At least if you work in mining, the exotic places you get sent are likely to be places you wouldn't really want to live otherwise, for example outback Australia or Siberia.
Comment Re:Chicken vs Egg (Score 1) 384
I think what you're saying is that until PORN comes available on HMD, it isn't going to take off.
Obviously what is required is a program to de-clothe selected women in the field of view.
Comment Re:Water is heavy (Score 1) 267
few realize that potable water is a dwindling resource in certain regions.
Certainly in Australia people are well aware of this. See for example www.ourwater.vic.gov.au. The major daily newspapers have the current supply level of reservoirs every day.
Comment Re:emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score 1) 1131
If you're just editing text, I suppose vi is just fine.
And so we come to the crux of the debate. The poll does ask about text editors, so I think it's reasonable to rate them on their text editing ability.
Comment Re:Results not supposed causes (Score 1) 439
It doesn't matter why someone is weaving, following too closely, drifting, not using turn signals, not checking blind spots, etc... they should be ticketed just the same.
The problem with this is that there is no way a system that actually tickets people whenever they do these things would be accepted, and since people are distracted while on the phone they don't realise they are doing them.
The threat of an occasional ticket is enough to stop most people from speeding and running red lights because they generally notice when they do those things, and think, "I hope I don't get caught."
Comment Sleep time (Score 3, Funny) 445
The crew is due to go to sleep tonight at 11:55 p.m. CST and will wake up at 7:55 a.m. tomorrow.
Man, that's a pretty damn regimented sleep time. I guess there's no quickly checking
Exhaustive Data Compressor Comparison 305
crazyeyes writes "This is easily the best article I've seen comparing data compression software. The author tests 11 compressors: 7-zip, ARJ32, bzip2, gzip, SBC Archiver, Squeez, StuffIt, WinAce, WinRAR, WinRK, and WinZip. All are tested using 8 filesets: audio (WAV and MP3), documents, e-books, movies (DivX and MPEG), and pictures (PSD and JPEG). He tests them at different settings and includes the aggregated results. Spoilers: WinRK gives the best compression but operates slowest; AJR32 is fastest but compresses least."
Novell May be Banned from Distributing Linux 553
Hymer writes "Reuters is reporting that Novell may be banned from selling Linux. In the wake of the (much maligned) Novell/Microsoft deal, the Free Software Foundation is reviewing Novell's right to sell the operating system at all. The foundation controls the rights to key parts of the operating system, and council for the organization said that 'the community wants to interfere any way it can' with the Novell business arrangement. No decision has yet been reached, but one should be made in the next two weeks." Is this a measured response, or an over-reaction to the Novell/Microsoft arrangement?
Flickr Search Hack Powered by Mouse-Made Doodles 79
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Retrievr gives budding artists an impractical but addictive way to find photographs on Flickr: a search engine powered exclusively by mouse-made doodles. From the article: 'Retrievr, Mr. Langreiter says, "doesn't look at specific forms." Art history buffs might like to think of it as photo-search by way of Impressionism. The Retrievr engine dissects a photo like a gallery connoisseur who lost his bifocals: It focuses on regions of colors rather than specific shapes and lines. "It is, actually, a simple scheme," says Mr. Langreiter. Retrievr creates and stores a compact representation of each photo in its database. The system pulls only the most important features — broad shapes, blocks of color and spatial relationships between different colored areas — out of detailed images to create shorthand approximations of every photo. (The storage mechanism extracts the 120 "strongest" features from an image to create something called a "wavelet transform," which contains much less data than the photo itself and facilitates lightning-fast searches.)'"
MS Four Points of Interoperability and Adobe 274
Andy Updegrove writes "Recently, spokespersons for Microsoft's standards group have been promoting 'design, collaboration and licensing' as alternatives, rather than supplements to, open standards. There's an important difference between an open standard and any of these ad hoc arrangements among companies, however, and that is the fact that with a standard, everybody knows that they can get what everybody else can get, and on substantially the same terms. With a de facto standard, that's not the case - as Microsoft itself found out last week when Adobe refused to offer the same deal on saving files in PDF form that Apple and OpenOffice enjoy."
Techie Fight Clubs Springing Up 648
Browncoat writes "USAToday reports a new phenomenon hitting some of the cubicles of Silicon Valley. It seems that engineers and developers previously confined to sitting in front of their computers are getting their anger out the healthy way: by pummeling each other. From the article 'Inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, underground bare-knuckle brawling clubs have sprung up across the country as a way for desk jockeys and disgruntled youths to vent their frustrations and prove themselves. "This is as close as you can get to a real fight, even though I've never been in one," the soft-spoken Siou said.'"
Sony Rootkit Settlement Gets Judge's Approval 187
Lewis Clarke wrote to mention a ZDNet story about Monday's final approval of the rootkit settlement in the case brought against Sony BMG Music. From the article: "The agreement covers anyone who bought, received or used CDs containing what was revealed to be flawed digital rights management (DRM) software after Aug. 1, 2003. Those customers can file a claim and receive certain benefits, such as a nonprotected replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD and additional cash payments ... At least 15 different lawsuits were filed by class action lawyers against the record label, and the New York cases were eventually consolidated into one proceeding. The parties reached a preliminary settlement with Sony BMG in December, leaving it up to a judge in a U.S. District Court in New York to make it official. "
