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Comment Re:What can they learn? (Score 4, Informative) 267

by kinthalas (#45041303) Attached to: What Developers Can Learn From Healthcare.gov

It's not a challenge at all. Texas does it. We're required by our state constitution to have a balanced budget, and we only let our legislature meet for 150 days every other year. The result: once they are in session, they're working to hammer out the new budget and fix the real problems, instead of constantly being in session feeling the need to legislate something, messing things up, and wrecking the economy.

Yeah. They never feel the need to legislate something, right? Only work to fix the real problems? They'd never decide that they needed a bit of extra time to legislate something just because they felt the need, right?

I'll just leave this here for people who maybe aren't absolute morons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Davis_(politician)#2013_filibuster
Space

Submission + - Annual Meteor Shower Joined By Planetary Alignment

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The planets' get-together is going to happen on August 12 or 13 after sunset. Venus, Mars and Saturn align with crescent Moon popping out of the western twilight before the Perseid meteor shower, which is caused by debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle.The planets' get-together is going to happen on August 12 or 13 after sunset. Venus, Mars and Saturn align with crescent Moon popping out of the western twilight before the Perseid meteor shower, which is caused by debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. On August 10, Venus Mars and Saturn will form a near isosceles triangle, with Venus securing the bottom, Mars to the upper left and Saturn to the upper right. A thin crescent moon will be joining just below the planets on August 12. On Friday, Moon will have jumped to the left of the planets and moved higher in the sky.

Submission + - Human Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by e065c8515d206cb0e190
e065c8515d206cb0e190 writes: Several human rights organizations contacted Wikileaks and pressed them to do a better job at hiding information that endangers civilians from their leaked documents. Wikileaks editor Julian Assange issued a strong rebuke. From the article:

Mr. Assange then replied: "I'm very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal," according to people familiar with the exchange.

Submission + - Sharpie creates Liquid Pencil -permanent in 3 days (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sharpie has managed to flip what we all know about a pencil on its head. Your typical pencil is made of hard graphite and can easily be erased. Not so with the new Sharpie pencil, it is liquid and becomes permanent.

Something that writes like a pencil but can’t be erased isn’t that useful as you could just use a pen. But there’s a clever twist to Sharpie’s invention. The liquid pencil can be erased just like a normal pencil for up to three days. After that it is permanent.

Submission + - SSD vs. HDD Benchmarks for the Relational Database (5amsolutions.com)

Submitted by VValdo
VValdo writes: When it comes to SSD performance, it seems most people focus on how fast Windows 7 boots up or how quickly Photoshop loads. That's all well and good, but how do SSDs compare with traditional hard drives in a server application like Postgresql? Here's someone who did actual benchmarks, and the results were fairly dramatic.
Science

Submission + - Bats May be Facing Extinction (the-scientist.com) 1

Submitted by gpronger
gpronger writes: the Scientist reports that brown bats, at least on a regional basis are threatened by extinction due to the "".White Nose Symdrome. This disease attacks the animal during hibernation where large numbers of bats congregate to over winter. The disease is believed to be caused by a fungus called Geomyces destructans. Researchers have looked at the population declines in areas effected and were surprised to find in some regions the brown bat faces extinction in as as soon as 16 years. The journal Science carried the main article, the abstract is available without charge.

Comment Re:Perspective (Score 1) 675

by kinthalas (#30013082) Attached to: Cable Exec Suggests Changing Consumer Behavior, Not Business Model

3. Turner, which takes old movies that have been around forever, and butchers them into an unrecognizable form. Typically they take a 2 hour movie, cut a half hour out of it, then add back in an hour of commercials.

You mean AMC. Turner Classic Movies shows full movies with no commercials, along with a few minutes of commentary before and after. It is exactly what a movie channel should be. Of all the channels that Ted created, it is probably the only one that has stuck to the original goals uncorrupted.

Comment Re:Goodbye Lenovo (Score 1) 400

by kinthalas (#27902167) Attached to: Lenovo On the Future of the Netbook

So you don't actually own one, is what you're saying? I bought a Thinkpad last year, and was actually a bit disappointed that every bit of hardware on the thing worked immediately after installing Debian on it. There's nothing to tinker with if it works out of the box.

Same thing happened earlier this year when I helped install Linux on a friend's Thinkpad. Immediate success, followed by tedious depressing productivity.

A quick check of the current offerings on Lenovo's webpage shows that you cannot buy a Thinkpad without the trackpoint. Similarly, you can buy a non-Thinkpad from them, which will not have a trackpoint. I think this is less them "phasing it out," and more the difference between a proper Thinkpad and a less expensive alternate option.

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