Comment Screen Scraper (Score 2, Insightful) 157
This is called a screen scraper, and likes to break with updates to the underlying program, right?
Submission + - Lie-in for teenagers sees drop in absenteeism (bbc.co.uk) 1
krou writes: Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside, UK, began an experiment in October that saw its 800 pupils ranging in age from 13-19 attend school an hour later than normal at 10am. Early results indicate that 'general absence has dropped by 8% and persistent absenteeism by 27%'. Head teacher Paul Kelley supported the idea because he believed that 'it was now medically established that it was better for teenagers to start their school day later in terms of their mental and physical health and how they learn better in the afternoon', and he now claims that the children are becoming 'happier better educated teenagers' as a result of the experiment. The experiment is being overseen by Oxford neuroscience professor Russell Foster. 'He performed memory tests on pupils at the school which suggested the more difficult lessons should take place in the afternoon. He said young people's body clocks may shift as they reach their teenage years — meaning they want to get up later not because they are lazy but because they are biologically programmed to do.'
Comment EyeTV (Score 3, Informative) 536
If you have a Mac, Elgato's EyeTV product keeps getting better and better with each release. There are open source add-ons for commercial skipping, exports to iTunes/iPod, ect and the interface is pretty user friendly. It won't do Netflix by itself, but if you're hooking up a media PC then you've already got access to Netflix.
Comment Re:Go to the ABC site - watch video (Score 1) 1146
In my VW TDI full brake and accelerator causes the ECU to cut the fuel back to idle. It will not accelerate again until you completely release the brake and wait a few seconds.
Comment Re:Diesel and window defogging (Score 1) 687
Idling a TDI when cold is not recommended. The reason that they don't heat up very fast is that they are more thermally efficient.
If you are really concerned you could install a frost heater, which is an inline coolant heater, this would allow you to defrost very quickly.
As far as parking the vehicle outside... I had no problems starting my car after a low temp of -20F for two days in a row. The quality of the fuel is more important than having it inside. With advances in glow plug technology cold starts are not much of a problem.
Submission + - Chevy Volt rated at 230 mpg in the city 2
necro81 writes: General Motors, emerging from bankruptcy, today announced that its upcoming plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Volt, will have an EPA-rated 230 mpg for city driving (approx 1L / 100km). The unprecedented rating is the result of a new (draft) methodology for calculating the "gas" mileage for vehicles that operate primarily or extensively on electricity. The Volt, due out late this year, can drive approximately 40 miles on its Li-Ion battery pack, after which a gasoline engine kicks in to provide additional electricity to turn the wheels. Running off the gasoline engine yields approximately 50 mpg. Of course, the devil's in the details, because the conversion of grid-based electricity to gasoline-mileage is imprecise.
Comment Double Duty? (Score 4, Interesting) 301
So can we expect this to work in parallel with existing hydro power generation techniques?
Comment Re:How it works. (Score 1) 229
Seems pretty traceable then. Look for a specific account being queried or debited and credited in rapid succession.
Comment Re:Why aren't more roads concrete? (Score 1) 717
Concrete is significantly more upfront cost. Why worry about TCO when you can focus on this years budget.
Comment Fear Not (Score 1) 515
The future operating systems will ensure that the average joe needs the latest and greatest so that the Geek Squad will support their PC.
Comment Re:I dunno.. (Score 2, Informative) 359
I had the same problem. So I installed a patch (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330909) from Microsoft.
Essentially it's looking for a continuous free area on your HD to save your RAM to. I believe the fix is to disable this "feature".
Submission + - OS X Leopard now can natively load Windows Files.
Steven Edwards writes: "PE Files were rejected on Tiger but now can be loaded natively on Leopard, which is interesting to me because I don't think that this is just a hold over from EFI support because the behavior is new. I think it may be a sign of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X. Check the following URLs for the detailed technical information.
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060846.html
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060851.html
I think this behavior may be a sign of a future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X. I think the powers that be at apple have decided that they are missing the pie that Parallels, VMware and CodeWeavers are getting. If you combine the value of all three products, I expect its adding up to a good chunk of change they view as "lost" every month. Having a system like Wine that runs in a clunky Classic like mode would mean better user tie-in than having to reboot with BootCamp."
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060846.html
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060851.html
I think this behavior may be a sign of a future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X. I think the powers that be at apple have decided that they are missing the pie that Parallels, VMware and CodeWeavers are getting. If you combine the value of all three products, I expect its adding up to a good chunk of change they view as "lost" every month. Having a system like Wine that runs in a clunky Classic like mode would mean better user tie-in than having to reboot with BootCamp."
Submission + - Earth's Evil Twin (esa.int)
Riding with Robots writes: "For the past two years, Europe's Venus Express orbiter has been studying Earth's planetary neighbor up close. Today, mission scientists have released a new collection of findings and amazing images. They include evidence of lightning and other results that flesh out a portrait of a planet that is in many ways like ours, and in many ways hellishly different, such as surface temperatures over 400C and air pressure a hundred times that on Earth."
Submission + - Microsoft Ties Windows Live Services to OS
narramissic writes: "Microsoft is tying its Windows Live services directly to Vista — a move that should sound vaguely familiar, as it is precisely what the company did to make IE ubiquitous among Internet users:
"A new unified installer for Windows Live services will help users download Wednesday's updates of photo-sharing, mail, instant messaging, online safety and other services, the company said on its Windows Live Wire blog. The new installer also will automatically update those services on Windows Vista and XP going forward.
