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Businesses

O'Reilly Discounts Every eBook By 50% 108

destinyland writes "O'Reilly and Associates just announced that they're offering a 50% discount on every ebook they publish for Cyber Monday. Use the code CYBERDAY when checking out to claim the discount (which expires at midnight). Amazon has also discounted their Kindle Fire tablets to just $129. Due to a production snafu, they've already sold out of the new Kindle Paperwhite, and won't be able to ship any more until December 21"

Comment Re:eBay... (Score 3, Insightful) 291

First: Hold onto them until they're actually worth something. Sometime in the middle of the DDR4 lifecycle, it will become nearly impossible to find new 4GB DDR3 sticks, so people will have to turn to used sticks if they want to upgrade their machines from 8GB (4x2GB or 2x4GB) to 16 GB (4x4GB).

History tells us that they will be valued at at least twice the original market rate. So sell now and get ~$7.5k, or wait 2-3 years and likely get $15-20k. I'd wait.

That's a good point. I just had to RMA a module of extended-warranty DDR2 RAM. Ignoring for a moment the fact that they asked me to send the whole kit instead of just the faulty module, more importantly instead of replacing it, they refunded me the money instead. Which is just slightly less money than what new (and slower!) DDR2 memory costs. Oops.

In the end I managed to find the last few identical kits in some weird online store, but another year or two and I'd be completely fucked.

Comment Re:First my beloved Viper fighter, now this (Score 0) 820

"So fucking what?"

People die from everything all the time, including boring crap like water. And I don't mean by drowning, just by drinking too much of perfectly fine water. But speaking of water, swimming pools are more dangerous for children than guns, and when are those getting banned?

Somebody somewhere is definitely making millions off those, yet they were responsible for 550 children drowning in 1997, if you RTFA. So?

Comment Re:stupid (Score 1) 652

Science is not a zero-sum game. Scientific discoveries enrich everybody, regardless of which country they're made in.

You state your unsubstantiated opinion as fact. Are you sure you are qualified to talk about "science"?

Have you ever heard of the '60s? The "race to the moon" was important, and the space race was most assuredly focused on firsts by country.

But I'm sure you have some reasoning on how that's irrelevant to now.

Yes, the race to the moon was an expensive political dickwaving contest which Kennedy got into "because communists!!!". I don't see how that is relevant today.

Comment TCC (Score 1) 386

TinyCC doesn't require anything else to run, is small, fast, and has enough functionality for hobby-level stuff. For an IDE, just use notepad or something.

However, if you get fired for this, it's going to be your own fault for knowingly violating the rules. Brining your own laptop might not be acceptable either, depending on the environment, but that would be the best possibility so it's definitely worth checking out. Another possibility is to use remote desktop or ssh or something to connect to your home box running whatever IDE you'll want, but again, check with your managers. If they don't allow it, just read a book about programming instead.

Comment Re:Being distracted while driving is dangerous. (Score 1) 217

"Failure to signal" is what cops use to justify stopping a black dri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsuspicious vehicle. They will follow until the driver makes an illegal turn or lane change and then light him up.

Otherwise, getting stopped for not signalling is as rare as getting stopped for going 3mph over the speed limit.

This was exactly my point, though I didn't feel it was necessary to spell out. Not signaling might be illegal, but when was the last time anyone was stopped for it, lawmakers were making a big fuss about it, or you read about it in the news?

Comment Explanation (Score 4, Informative) 300

The reason keypads aren't or real ThinkPads is that by including the extra 4 columns of keys, the whole keyboard and TrackPoint (or trackpad, if you're that sort of person) has to be shifted left. This means that you end up either sitting in middle relative to the screen with the hands positioned awkwardly, or having to look at the screen at an angle.

I have a T520 and while I was initially upset that it has huge speaker grilles on both sides, I actually came to appreciate this decision, though admittedly it would suck if I had to punch in numbers into a spreadsheet all day. Just get a ThinkPad and this baby

Hardware

Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For a Laptop With a Keypad That Doesn't Suck 300

PhunkySchtuff writes "I'm seeking the collective's recommendations on a laptop with a numeric keypad that doesn't suck. For practicality reasons, an external USB keypad is less convenient than a built-in one. A keypad is required for entry of lots of numbers, and using the alpha keys with the Fn key to turn them into a keypad is not acceptable. Looking at the larger manufacturers, it seems that none of their business grade laptops (e.g. Lenovo's T-Series or similar quality levels) have numeric keypads. Looking at their laptops that do have keypads, invariably they are cheap, plastic and flimsy. Looking at Lenovo's offering with a Keypad, whilst it's a 15" screen, the vertical resolution is just 768 pixels, and the build quality of it leaves a lot to be desired. I need to find something that is built to the quality of a 'real' ThinkPad, or even a MacBook Pro, but has a full-sized keyboard with a numeric keypad and there doesn't seem to be anything like that on the market at the moment. This is a mystery to me as to why it would be the case as I'd imagine it's business users who need to use a keypad more than the average user, yet it is the consumer grade laptops that have keypads."

Comment Re:Managed code to become irrelevant? (Score 0) 351

This may not matter. If the litigious bastards at Oracle have their way, future Android builds will migrate to "all native code" just like on the iPhone and other non-vm based devices.

You say that like it's a bad thing. I hate Oracle too, but seriously, fuck Java, Oracle can keep it for themselves.

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