MazTaim - Slashdot User

Comment Re:He got it from old news. (Score 3, Informative) 205

by leshert on Wednesday September 10, 2008 @04:28PM (#24951809) Attached to: 24 Hour Laptops From HP?

And that story was debunked in the comments, and toms hardware even apologized for the bad conclusion IIRC.

YDNRC.

What Tom's really did post was: "We followed up with the article Flash SSD Update: More Results, More Answers, which proves our conclusion correct, despite the procedural mistake."

The updated story is at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hard-drive,1968.html

The Man Who Guards Clinton's Wikipedia Entry 395

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 31, 2008 @08:05AM from the lonely-vigil dept.

Timothy found a profile in The New Republic of Jonathan Schilling, a 53-year-old software developer from New Jersey who works to keep Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia entry clean and fair throughout the election season. "After he started editing her page in June 2005, Schilling became consumed with trying to capture her uncomfortable place in American culture, researching and writing a whole section on how she polarizes the public... [T]he attacks on Hillary's page mainly take the form of crude vandalism... It's different on Obama's page, where the fans — no surprise — are more enthusiastic, the haters are more intelligent, and the arguments reflect the fact that Obama himself is still a work under construction... The bitterness of the fights on Obama's page could be taken as a bad sign for the candidate. But it may actually be Hillary's page that contains the more troubling omens. Few, if any, Hillary defenders are standing watch besides Schilling. In recent days, the vaguely deserted air of a de-gentrifying neighborhood has settled over her page..."

Comment Prototype (Score 1) 658

by swagr on Saturday July 14, 2007 @09:00PM (#19863411) Attached to: Any "Pretty" Code Out There?

It's not big, and it's not c++, but I think the prototype Javascript library is a pretty good example of where brevity, functionality and "prettyness" should meet in code .

http://www.prototypejs.org/assets/2007/6/20/protot ype.js

Daylight Savings Time Puts Kid in Jail for 12 Days 881

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @09:58AM from the yeah-that's-a-woops dept.

Jherek Carnelian writes "Cody Webb was jailed for calling in a bomb threat to his Hempstead Area high school (near Pittsburgh). He spent 12 days in lockup until the authorities realized that their caller-id log was off an hour because of the new Daylight Savings Time rules and that Cody had only called one hour prior to the actual bomb threat. Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt — she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'"

Paying for Better Math and Science Teachers 660

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 05, 2007 @04:52PM from the get-what-you-pay-for dept.

Coryoth writes "While California is suffering from critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers, Kentucky is considering two bills that would give explicit financial incentives to math and science students and teachers. The first bill would provide cash incentives to schools to run AP math and science classes, and cash scholarships to students who did well on AP math and science exams. The second bill provides salary bumps for any teachers with degrees in math or science, or who score well in teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics. Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"

Submission + - Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation

Submitted by

ReadWriteWeb

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:08PM

ReadWriteWeb writes: "Information about the next versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer suggest that the two biggest browsers are heading in different directions. Mozilla has published a wiki page detailing its plans for the next version of Firefox, codenamed "Gran Paradiso". Among the mandatory requirements listed for FF3 are improving the add-on experience, providing an extensible bookmarks back-end platform, adding more support for web services "to act as content handlers" — all of which show that Firefox wants to be an independent information broker rather than a simple HTML renderer in its next version. Also in the works is Microsoft's IE8. According to ActiveWin.com, a Microsoft official at CES told them that work has already begun for IE 8 and it may be released as a final product "within 18-24 months". Looking ahead, it's obvious that IE will continue to hook into the advanced functionality that Vista offers.

So while IE7 and Firefox 2 were more alike than different (feature-wise they're practically identical!), with IE8 and FF3 we will likely see the two biggest browsers head off into different directions."

Comment How do Satellite Repeaters Work? (Score 1) 330

by MazTaim on Wednesday November 01, 2006 @06:32PM (#16681161) Attached to: NPR Finds XM's Achilles Heel

I am very curious to find out how this is done. We have a repeater attached to our apartment and find it quite annoying and sometimes a little scary. A satellite dish is attached to one corner of the outside wall of our apartment. There are two "thin cables" that run to a repeater. Then another set of much thicker cables run from the repeater around our apartment wall just barely above each of our back bedrooms window (you can see the stupid things standing up and looking out the window) to a 5-10 foot pole antenna.

What truly scares me is the fact that most of the insulation has fallen off of both the receiving and especially the transmitting cables. I don't know if it's related but we can't get a good wireless signal 5 feet from most WAPs we have purchased over the years.

Should I be concerned that they have such powerful cables transmitting literally 3 feet from where I sleep?

Beck and Andres on Extreme Programming 321

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday September 19, 2006 @07:19AM from the not-terribly-extreme dept.

narramissic writes "In recent years, Extreme Programming (XP) has come of age. Its principles of transparency, trust and accountability represent a change of context that is good not only for software development but for everyone involved in the process. In this interview, Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres, co-authors of 'Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change,' discuss how XP makes improvement possible."

RFID-enabled Vehicles: Pinch My Ride 429

Posted by Hemos on Monday July 31, 2006 @12:36PM from the dude-where's-my-car dept.

Billosaur writes "Wired has an excellent article on the problems with the theft of RFID-enabled vehicles and how insurance companies are so over-confident in the technology, they are denying claims when such vehicles are stolen. Example: "Emad Wassef walked out of a Target store in Orange County, California, to find a big space where his 2003 Lincoln Navigator had been. The 38-year-old truck driver and former reserve Los Angeles police officer did what anyone would do: He reported the theft to the cops and called his insurance company. Two weeks later, the black SUV turned up near the Mexico border, minus its stereo, airbags, DVD player, and door panels. Wassef assumed he had a straightforward claim for around $25,000. His insurer, Chicago-based Unitrin Direct, disagreed." Their forensic examiner concluded that since all the keys were accounted for, there was no way the engine could have been started, despite the evidence that the ignition lock had been forced and the steering wheel locking lug had been damaged."

OSS on Windows the Next Big Thing? 351

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 28, 2006 @12:24PM from the don't-forget-the-tm-after-thing dept.

Lam1969 writes "Linux geeks and Microsoft have similar interests, says Computerworld: They both are interested in seeing open-source software succeed. Linux geeks admit that the open source OS isn't necessarily a better platform for important applications, and Microsoft recognizes that many of its customers are using open-source applications, and doesn't want to alienate them." From the article: "Faced with the allure of inexpensive open-source applications among its core customer base of small to midsize businesses, Microsoft has toned down its rhetoric. 'It's a myth that open-source and Windows can't work together. Customers just aren't religious about these things,' said Ryan Gavin, a director of platform strategy for Microsoft."

Journal Journal: Retraction

Journal by MazTaim on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:20PM

I retract my last two entries...for now.

I like Gnome again.

I don't know anything about how KDE is doing. I just don't use it.

Journal Journal: I can't fall back on Gnome either...

Journal by MazTaim on Sunday May 30, 2004 @04:16PM

Okay. I don't think I am meant to have a solid experience with Windows Environments. I just got finished reading this article. Scary stuff. Not only is KDE a bungle, it appears that the latest version of Gnome is out to get me as well.

Journal Journal: Rant de KDE

Journal by MazTaim on Sunday May 23, 2004 @08:28PM

Let me start off by saying KDE sucks. You don't like my last sentence, then bugger off.

Let me start this off by saying that I went into the whole idea of installing and using KDE with a very open mind. Although there is plenty good to say about KDE, there is also plenty bad.

Journal Journal: Better Late...

Journal by MazTaim on Thursday July 17, 2003 @09:07PM

I haven't had much time to do anything. It's summer. Too many nice days to waste inside toiling away on router. BTW the soekris box works WONDERS.

Got rid of cable modem from Cumcostly. DSL is definately slower, but it is more stable.

More later. Back to reading.

Journal Journal: Slow Daze

Journal by MazTaim on Saturday May 31, 2003 @06:51PM

Yet another slow day. Not much to do. Work is slow. Who would be working on such a FINE (sarcasm) Saturday? Well...One or two people would. After all, I am.

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