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Comment Re:Article is off base - personal experience (Score 1) 227

If you actually had the resources to fight that case you would have won. The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the First Sale Doctrine, which basically says that once you buy a physical object like a book you are free to do whatever you please with it. Their license is invalid under US law and cannot be enforced.

None of that helps you in practice. The publishers are counting on the fact that few people have the resources to fight them.

Comment There is a big error in the OP... (Score 1) 227

"You've probably heard the warning about how "descriptions" and "accounts" of the game are prohibited without the NFL's consent."

This is a misreading of the statement. What it actually says is that use of THESE descriptions and accounts is prohibited. In other words, you can't quote their words or use their images without consent. They NFL is claiming copyright on the contents of the broadcast, which is perfectly within its rights. Exceptions would exist for journalistic use, but I'm sure that all the major newspapers and broadcasters have obtained consent in any case.

Independently talking about the game without using their words is perfectly legal. Lots of people do it. Using images that didn't come from the NFL would also be legal if there were some good way to obtain them in the first place, but because the league restricts the use of recording devices at the stadium (within their rights because it is private property) those third party game images do not exist.

You do have to be careful how you use the words "Super Bowl" because of trademark law. Using the term to talk about the game itself is fine, but using it in connection with your own non-NFL-sponsored event or promotion is not. You can't have a Super Bowl public party or a Super Bowl sale, which is why you hear so much talk of the Big Game.

Comment Re:OK, based upon notebook shopping thus far (Score 1) 118

MSI and Gigabyte both make notebooks in the 4 pound class with 1080p displays and serious NVidia GPUs. (One of the new models has a GTX 965M.) But their battery life is terrible if the GPU actually turns on; they use NVidia Optimus so the GPU is only on when you need it. They throw off a LOT of heat when the GPU is running and the fans roar. And that still makes them over a pound heavier than the Dell, with lower resolution displays and poorer build quality. But if you need graphics on the go, systems like that do exist.

Comment Re:even when it is powered off. (Score 1) 179

Old school systems that had a physical Big Red Switch (including the original IBM PC, XT, and AT) really were completely off when they were off. But pretty much every computer these days has a soft switch, and depends on some part of the circuitry getting a bit of power to monitor the switch so it can turn the rest of the system on.

Comment Re: jessh (Score 1) 397

Long Island starts right next to Manhattan. Two of the boroughs of NYC, Brooklyn and Queens, are on Long Island. The far end of Long Island is about 120 miles from Manhattan. The Hamptons are 80-100 miles from Manhattan, depending on whether you measure to the closest one (Hampton Bays) or the farthest one (East Hampton).

Just about all of Suffolk County (the more eastern of the two Long Island counties that aren't part of NYC) got at least a foot and a half of snow. NYC missed being in the blizzard by less than 50 miles, which is within the margin of error of present-day weather prediction.

Comment Re:Three-month-old Continuum screenshot (Score 1) 378

On a desktop or laptop system the appearance DID change. In the previous build, the Start screen (if you used it) looked like the Windows 8 start screen. In the new build you can expand the Start menu to full screen, but it still has the app list along the left side along with tiles to the right, so it's like the Start menu but larger. The app list also looks different; it now has the Windows 8-style Metro/Modern look. I haven't yet tried the new build on a tablet or convertible, so I don't know what you will get there.

Another notable change: you can no longer search for apps by typing at the Start menu or by clicking a Search icon from the Start menu. Instead, you have to click the Search icon that is next to the Start icon and use Cortana to search for your app.

Comment Re:The solution is obvious (Score 1) 579

Updating those older versions of Android would be pointless. If you have a device that never got an update to KitKat, it's not going to get a patch either because its manufacturer clearly doesn't care about keeping it up to date.

Switching to a different browser solves the vulnerability during web surfing. It doesn't help with apps that use WebView as a component. so those apps will have to be used with caution.

Comment Re:Bullshit (Score 1) 211

We have known how to produce incandescent bulbs that will last 100 years for a long time. You just don't want them because they are horribly inefficient sources of light. You could even do it with off the shelf equipment. Take a rough service light bulb and run it from the output of a 12V filament transformer. It will last for many many years. It will also produce very little light.

Comment Re:Simple solution (Score 1) 431

This is partly a coastal thing. Mouses only seems to be used on the west coast of the US, especially near Silicon Valley, and even there it is not universal. Everywhere else the plural is mice.

There are some other hacker plurals that are only sometimes used. One might speak of how the computing environment used to be a collection of VAXen in the dinosaur pen, but it is now a collection of Linux boxen in the cloud. (Boxen is only used for computers, you would not get a delivery of shipping boxen from FedEx.) Hackers who are feeling especially silly might talk about buying hice in Monopoly.

My vote for the weirdest plural is die/dice. Dice are those things you roll to produce random numbers; if you have only one it's a die. But if you are talking about the pieces of silicon that are transistors or integrated circuits the plural of die is die, not dice. So you would order 1000 4GB flash die to make multi-chip packages, not 1000 dice.

Comment Re: betteridge's law of headlines (Score 1) 489

Who said anything about technophobia? I'm all for using new web features when they make sites work better. But designers also have to remember that some users, especially mobile users, will be using browsers with limited performance and bandwidth.

Just as in the old days, there are sites that use all the shiny just to try to impress people rather than adding real value, and just end up with a slow mess with poor usability.

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