enec - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft Patents the 'Record' Button (conceivablytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @12:18PM

An anonymous reader writes: You have to appreciate that Microsoft pays attention to what may be rather trivial products and slaps a patent on them. In this latest wave of approved patents — the U.S. Patent and Trademark office granted 35 Microsoft patents to Microsoft today — is the right to claim the 'record' button. This is not just your average record button. It is a record button in every conceivable form, on a computer, grouped with other buttons or standalone, with light or without lights, on a keyboard or not. In all seriousness — do we really need such patents?

Comment Re:The thing with ASCII (Score 1) 728

by enec on Monday November 01, 2010 @11:03AM (#34089378) Attached to: Mr. Pike, Tear Down This ASCII Wall!

Actually I use a Finnish/Swedish keyboard and speak Finnish. I am well aware of different keyboard layouts with accents or special characters. However, even those share most of the keys with an US English keyboard layout.

A keyboard with a-z, the usual punctuation marks, and possibly a few accented or umlaut characters is and will be the de facto keyboard unless we start replacing normal text with unicode characters. Until that day (which I hope never comes!), you'd have to use a seperate keyboard for programming on this unicode programming language. And as already said on this thread, they tried it with APL and it failed horribly.

Comment The thing with ASCII (Score 5, Insightful) 728

by enec on Sunday October 31, 2010 @07:58PM (#34083854) Attached to: Mr. Pike, Tear Down This ASCII Wall!

The thing with ASCII is that it's easy to write on standard keyboards, and does not require a specialized layout. Once someone can cram the necessary unicode symbols into a keyboard so that I don't have to remember arcane meta-codes or fiddle with pressing five different dead keys to get one symbol, I'm all for it.

Ubuntu Moves Away From GNOME 514

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 25, 2010 @11:00AM from the end-of-an-era dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Ubuntu has, with its ironically named 'Unity' interface, chosen to move away from GNOME for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. Or at least move away from GNOME Shell. Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will still be 'GNOME,' even if it's not using GNOME Shell. Do you agree?"

Comment Re:Lots of versions (Score 1) 292

by enec on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @03:56PM (#33965388) Attached to: Google Rolls Out Chrome 7

I see the appeal of google's choice though - it keeps things simple. "What version are you on?" "3.6.10"... ? Isn't easier to just call it 5?

Oh right, that must be why my Chrome is at version 7.0.517.41...

Submission + - All Your Stonehenge Photos Belong To England (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @01:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: English Heritage, the organization that runs and manages various historical sites in the UK, such as Stonehenge, has apparently sent letters to various photo sharing and stock photo sites claiming that any photo of Stonehenge that is being sold violates its rights, and only English Heritage can get commercial benefit from such photos. In fact, they're asking for all money made from such photos, stating: "all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage." As one recipient noted, this seems odd, given that English Heritage has only managed Stonehenge "for 27 of the monument's 4,500 year old history."

Submission + - Oracle asks OpenOffice community members to leave (openoffice.org)

Submitted by Elektroschock on Saturday October 16, 2010 @05:37PM

Elektroschock writes: In an unprecedented move with respect to other forks Oracle asks the founders of the Document Foundation and LibreOffice to leave the OpenOffice.org Community Council. Apparently there is a conflict of interest which concerns the Oracle employees.

Comment Re:A question for fellow Finns (please mod up!) (Score 1) 547

by enec on Saturday October 16, 2010 @05:22PM (#33919994) Attached to: Internet Dismantling the State Church In Finland

I left the church about six months ago, and never had any kind of visit. I've never had any kind of Jehova's Witnesses or Mormons knock my door either -- maybe I'm just lucky, or they don't patrol that much in the Central Finland (Jyväskylä, to be specific).

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 309

by enec on Friday October 15, 2010 @06:48PM (#33913882) Attached to: Can Apps Really Damage a Cellular Network?

True. I've always wondered how the telcos in the US can advertise an "unlimited" data plan, with a "1 GB monthly limit" written in a small font in some obscure place. Same goes for ISP's.

Where I come from, unlimited means unlimited. I frequently use up to 800 GB a month on my fios at home, and anywhere between 20 MB and 20 GB a month on my mobile. I've never heard a single word of protest from my telco or my ISP. Unlimited and unmetered is what I pay for, and that's exactly what I get.

Submission + - Internet dismantling the state church in Finland (www.hs.fi)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 15, 2010 @06:17PM

An anonymous reader writes: A Finnish secular web site that facilitates electronic resignation from the Finnish state church gained wide attention in media. A gay rights TV panel discussion followed thousands resigning from the church. On wednesday 2633 people resigned through the web site, which is more than all the resignations in July. Internet is secularizing the Finland with increasing speed. Resigning from the church has doubled in speed since it has become possible in the net. Over 90% of resignations in Finland go through the site administered and marketed by hobbyists driving Finland towards a secular non-religious state.

Submission + - IPv6 Linux Routing

Submitted by diemuzi on Friday October 15, 2010 @05:54PM

diemuzi writes: I'm having a very difficult time trying to learn and grasp the concept of the IPv6 networking and before my hair goes completely gray and starts falling out I would like to know if anyone has any good information on a simple how-to for dummies IPv6 Linux Routing guides. I've been reading books, many sites online, etc... but none of them click in my mind. IPv4 was easy compared to this IPv6 mess of things. I've never been one for reading and understanding but more for doing and understanding. My background choice of operating systems is Arch Linux but I'm familiar with CentOS and Redhat. What I believe would really help me out was for something I can see from the beginning to end and being able to copy/paste most of the things required into my linux box and start testing. Most of the examples found online talk about Tunneling, their ISP gave them an IPv6 address which can be subnetted, and many other random examples. All I want to do for learning purposes is to setup an IPv6 internal network which has nothing to do with the outside world. I don't care if it connects to the Internet. I simply want the Linux Router to handle the connections from my other Linux Workstations and Windows Workstations and assign those an IPv6 and be able to talk to one another.

Submission + - How Do Browsers Scale? (conceivablytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 15, 2010 @05:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: Benchmarking browsers is a somewhat silly exercise, since scores cannot be replicated on a variety of hardware and it is likely that even the same system will not be able to hit benchmarks cores, especially in JavaScript tests in two succeeding runs. The guys over at ConceivablyTech have an interesting a approach an run browsers through multiple tests on different sets of hardware (including an Android smartphone), and just showed the scaling differences between browsers when you are using a dual-core netbook on the low-end and a six-core desktop on the high-end. They also tested HTML5 on Firefox mobile and found that the browser has better HTML 5 support than the current Firefox 4 Beta 6.

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