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Comment Ratings and Discontinues. (Score 1) 261

by theleica (#34195824) Attached to: When DLC Goes Wrong
Couldn't we just implement a cross-platform ratings system along with a 'discontinue' option? There are some bits of DLC I would really like to actually get, say, half my money back on and not have access to it anymore as it's just that crap and I never use it.

Comment Re:wire + wireless (Score 1) 2

by theleica (#33409540) Attached to: The Wireless Internet Conundrum
Connecting more than one Wi-Fi basestation to the ADSL router is quite difficult as we'd need to drill through several walls as the ADSL router is in the bottom left hand corner of the house - to go to the right hand side of the house (where we're having problems getting the Wi-Fi to) we'd need to drill through the brick walls too.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - The Wireless Internet Conundrum 2

Submitted by theleica
theleica writes: So I recently moved into a very large house that I'm sharing with a fair amount of friends — and by large, we're talking about 40 meters by 15 meters with 3 floors (we got very lucky). It's a wonderful place, but it is very old (about 150 years old) and this means that we have a couple of heavy stone walls holding up the house. This creates a real problem when it comes to getting us all able to have wireless internet in our rooms (which is quite important as a lot of us do a fair amount of work from home). The stone walls pretty much cut the house into thirds and the middle segment is mostly corridors between rooms.

This image ( http://imgur.com/iwddA ) gives a fairly good idea of the layout of the house. The red patterns are rooms which we need internet in. The red lines are walls which are mostly wood and plaster. The thick black lines are the stone walls which hold up the house. The stone wall on the left is actually a chimney and is actually about twice the thickness of the left wall. And before you ask, that ADSL port in the bottom left is the only one in the house, there's nowhere else we can really put it.

The wall on the left seems to reduce the signal by almost 70% and the wall on the right by about 40%. Going up a floor reduces the signal strength by about 10-15 percent, and a wall between rooms is about the same. So daisy chaining is proving to be very difficult. If we place the wireless at the very center of the house, no one can get internet in their respective rooms and drilling holes to try and get ethernet cables into every room is a mess we don't want to get into.

A couple more details; most of us are Apple users, but we also have a couple of Windows users and I'm the only Linux user in the house. It would be really nice if all of us could setup and admin the hubs, but it's actually most important that the Apple guys can admin as most of them work from home. The Apple users all like being able to use Airport Utility to admin wirelessly rather than having to go in via a web browser, so if the wireless hubs are Airport Utility compatible that'd be a wonderful bonus.

Finally, we all got used to having a system whereby each hub acts as an extender rather than being its own network so that we didn't have to change hubs when we changed rooms. I'm not overly bothered about that feature, however our Windows users aren't the brightest sparks and seem to have problems quite grasping the concept of needing to switch over to a different hub when they move around (no offence to Windows users, but these guys just aren't computer savvy at all) and the Apple guys aren't too happy about all the switching and swapping either.

So, Slashdot. What's the best solution using the fewest number of wireless hubs and without tangling the house in wires and sawdust?

Comment Double up! Two keyrings for double the fun. (Score 1) 763

by theleica (#32124230) Attached to: How Do You Handle Your Keys?
How about two sets of keyrings? One in each pocket? Better weight distribution and less bulk. Phone left hand pocket, wallet right, your overall distribution would be more balanced as a result. Your 3 keys on one, girlfriends three keys on another, motorbike key, bike key and roof key on your girlfriend's, post box key and car key on yours - this gives you somewhere to stay if you lose one of the sets AND a form of transportation either way.

Comment Re:Last I checked... (Score 1) 123

by theleica (#32105798) Attached to: Kid Health Experts Attack Video Game Summer Camp
I had a similar routine, which basically meant that my classmates and I were up 6:30-7:00, in for 8:15, classes until 4:00pm (plus a short lunch break and early morning break), 2 subjects set homework p/d and each subjects homework was meant to take 1.5 hours, so I'd arrive home by about 5:00pm, then do about 3 hours of homework, and eat, which would leave me at about 9:00pm looking at about an hours free time at home - which given the tiredness I was left in by the schedule, was mostly spent... seated. Best thing about it? I gave up gymnastics (which I did 3 hours a day, for four days a week and then 5 hours a day each day of the weekend) in order to attend that school in order to simply get "good grades" (which, admittedly, I did) and I was bullied for a good 6 years. This is what the education system is doing to children.

Comment Re:You're missing the point (Score 1) 554

by theleica (#32091814) Attached to: RFID Checks Student Attendance in Arizona
However what you fail to take into account is that the more you try to contain people, often the harder they will rebel. My university (which didn't have a poor attendance record at all - in fact it was very good for a long time) started sending out emails to students who missed a class, and immediately (and palpably) attendance dropped. Then they started to send letters because the attendance dropped. And instead of reversing the flow, it got worse. In fact, we had more people doing retakes this past year than ever before in the university's history. It seems silly, but the truth is it felt like they were taking away our freedom, our ability to manage ourselves as adults and people - they were trying to control us for their own sakes and we simply detested that they were trying to do something like that.
Programming

Submission + - Programming With Proportional Fonts?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Betty or Veronica? Mary Ann or Ginger? Proportional or Monospaced? There's renewed interest in an old blog post by Maas-Maarten Zeeman, in which M-MZ made the case for programming with proportional fonts, citing studies that show proportional fonts can be read 14% faster than fixed-width fonts. Try it for a couple of weeks, he suggests, and you might like it too. Nowadays, Lucida Grande is M-MZ's font of choice on OS X, and he uses Lucida Sans on Windows. Helvetica, anyone?
Image

Tower Switch-Off Embarrasses Electrosensitives Screenshot-sm 292

Posted by samzenpus from the radiation-placebo dept.
Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."
Microsoft

Microsoft Fined In India For Using "Money Power" Against Pirates 204

Posted by Soulskill from the somebody-forward-this-to-the-riaa dept.
bhagwad writes "The Delhi High Court has found Microsoft guilty of using money and influence to make it expensive to defend against piracy cases. According to the judge, 'When the constitution of India provides equality before law, this equality has to be all pervasive and cannot be allowed to be diluted because of money power or lobbying power.' Furthermore, the judge said that Microsoft had to deposit a certain amount of money beforehand, and, if they lost the case, the money would go to the defendants for their legal and travel expenses. For icing on the cake, the court also appointed a commissioner to probe the matter further and ordered Microsoft to pay the costs. In an age where muscled corporations harass the ordinary person through expensive litigation, it's highly pleasurable to see them rapped for it by a judge."

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