Comment Re:My Theory (Score 1) 888
ObOnionArticle:
"United Airlines Exploring Viability Of Stacking Them Like Cordwood"
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/united_airlines_exploring
Comment Re:Baud vs bps (Score 4, Informative) 249
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition says, "acronym n. A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging."
MOdulation/DEModulation certainly seems like it qualifies to me. It is using the initial parts of a series of words. I don't see how it is any different than RAdio Detecting And Ranging.
Comment Re:Written by someone born in the 90s? (Score 1) 249
The upload speed is not inherently limited to 33.6k. In fact, the V.92 standard allows up to 48k upload speeds but that increase comes at the cost of reduced download speeds.
Comment Re:As a child of the 80s... (Score 1) 249
I believe you had to add a *70 after the AT
It depends on your telephone company. If you have Touch Tone, you usually have to use *70 or #70. If you still have pulse dialing, you have to use 1170.
The commas are also important. Each comma adds a two-second pause (unless that's been modified in the modem's registers). Placing a comma or two after the *70 gives the telephone company time to give you a dial tone again so the phone number digits aren't lost.
Comment Re:Baud vs bps (Score 4, Insightful) 249
]P.S. The word MODEM (as the article indicates) represents MOdulatorDEModulator. Hence it should be capitalized. This is also try of enCOderDECoder (CODEC). Slightly less related yet as correct LASER and RADAR....
Generally when an acronym is pronounced as a single word and has entered general usage, it is not capitalized. These days scuba, laser, and radar are not capitalized. Nor is modem.
Comment Re:And of course, no non-glossy displays (Score 2, Informative) 770
Can't Apple produce 15" or 13" laptops without that damn glossy display? These mirrors mounted on laptops get really annoying, and I'm not the only one who thinks that non-glossy displays are superior to their allegedly cheaper glossy displays.
One more guy who's looking for a used MBP on ebay.
Why buy used? There are other options for anti-glare screens.
Comment Re:What's still missing (Score 1) 351
But then there's always the BSDs... they all do just fine without PAM, ALSA, sysV, apt-get/yum, etc.
PAM is part of the base system on FreeBSD, not sure about the other BSDs.
Comment Re:Finding where your disk space went. (Score 1) 2362
ls -l | sort -n +4 -- sorts files in size order, good for finding big files in a directory
Why not ls -lSr ?
Optical Fiber With a Silicon Core 60
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to the Optical Society of America, U.S. researchers have been able to create a practical optical fiber with a silicon core. As they were able to use the same commercial methods that are used to develop all-glass fibers, this might pave the way for future silicon fibers as viable alternatives to glass fibers. The scientists note that this should help increase efficiency and decrease power consumption in computers and other systems that integrate photonic and electronic devices. Here is a good summary by the lead researcher: 'In the past, we've needed one structure to process light and another to carry it. With a silicon fiber, for the first time, we have the ability to greatly enhance the functionality in one fiber.'"
Oil-Immersion Cooled PC Goes To Retail 210
notthatwillsmith writes "Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."
"Roadable Aircraft" Moving Towards Launch 186
We discussed Terrafugia's plans for what they don't like to call a "flying car" — rather a "roadable aircraft" — last spring. The Boston Globe has an update on Massachusetts-based Terrafugia and its fight to get airborne in these parlous times. "The last serious attempt to bring a car-airplane hybrid to market was the Aerocar, in 1949. According to Carl Dietrich, chief executive of Terrafugia, that company built six prototypes. It needed 500 orders in order to gear up for mass production, but it never got there... 'It can be hard to explain the value of this to non-pilots,' Dietrich says, 'but when you're a pilot, the problems of high costs, limited mobility on the ground, and weather sensitivity are in your face, all the time.' The company says more than 50 of the vehicles have been pre-ordered. The target price is $198,000."
Submission + - Intuit admits QuickBooks flaw deletes data on Macs (computerworld.com) 1
Lucas123 writes: "Intuit Inc. warned Mac users today that its version of QuickBooks Pro 2006 and 2007 has an
automatic software update flaw that deletes stored files, documents or folders from a desktop's hard drive. Intuit said it has now fixed the flaw and that users should no longer get a warning message when opening up QuickBooks. The company also recommended Mac users back up their entire desktop before opening QuickBooks, or move their files from the desktop to an alternate location to ensure that their data is properly protected from the QuickBooks update flaw."
