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Comment I've used both... (Score 1) 128

I've used my iPhone to track my steps as well as a FitBit to do so. I can agree from experience that they both track just as well as the other. The difference? My phone is much larger and is much more expensive to replace. I like that I don't have to bring my phone with me to track my activity when I'm out doing stuff (and no annoying calls). I also track my stats when playing ice hockey. What kind of fool would bring a phone for that?

They may be the same in terms of counting steps, but in terms of appropriateness in more situations the small, wrist based tracker wins.

Comment Re:Accessibility is still a sad joke! (Score 1) 79

Please correct me if I'm wrong but OSX has no high contrast - white on black themes. Also I couldn't find an easy/comfortable way of using the magnifier, I greatly prefer Win8's magnifier - it has a few limitations but I found OSX's one annoying.

From your descriptions of how you use of Windows accessibility features, it sounds like you've figured out highly efficient usage patterns and your facility with navigating the UI seems (to me) a bit higher than even many expert users. So, manipulating a different set of accessibility interface may not be comfortable or as useful for you, which totally makes sense. To answer your question about contrast:

OS X does have a separate slider and checkbox for contrast.

I don't use these regularly so can't comment on their usefulness. When I manipulate them, they do noticeably affect the display contrast, so much so that when the contrast slider is high enough, font edges of text and other UI elements start to wash out.

OS X does not implement themes and, like you, I would be ALL OVER a system-supported dark/professional theme. (With the latest version of OS X, Apple has introduced an extensions framework which opens a path to vendor-supported UI theming. But even if this is the direction OS X is headed, I would not expect custom themes for at least a couple more years.)

I have good corrected vision, so I don't use the magnifier regularly. I occasionally do fiddly UI work and it works OK enough for me in that instance. It has some customizability but not a whole lot.

On the customization front, I use a third-party piece of software that I sort of think of as my personal API for the UI (as well as much of the command line and UNIX layer). That software is Keyboard Maestro. It is definitely worth checking out if you regularly use a Mac-like machine ; ).

Comment Re:Accessibility is still a sad joke! (Score 1) 79

Not trying to troll (honest), but you but have you looked into Macintosh systems? The visual accessibility features are invoked at the level of the graphics layer (Quartz, I believe) so there's no futzing with colors as such.

For example, inverting colors (which is how I compute 99% of the time) cannot be overridden by third-party software. (The current trend for "professional" UIs, which avoids the black-text-on-white-background usability nightmare of most software and websites, makes me glad I can toggle this setting using a keyboard shortcut).

For your use case, there is an adjustable contrast setting that can be customized to the point of making your computer look like a Warhol painting if you want (thankfully, there is also the option to desaturate colors so the high-contrast display all black and white).

If you absolutely have to have particular Windows or Linux software, you could run those OS'es as VM guests, which is not ideal but at least you'll have access to the accessibility features in your host OS.

One of the things Apple gets better than many other software companies is accessibility. It's not perfect, but in my experience it's very good.

YMMV

Comment Re: Different markets... (Score 1) 458

Intuitively? When I hit the "home" or "end" keys in terminal, I expect them to go to the home or end of the current command line I'm on, not to the top or bottom of the terminal. Why would I want the top or bottom of the terminal?

"Home" or "end" keys? Please.

Pro user tips: Ctrl-A gets you to the beginning of the line and Crtl-E to the line's end. This also works in web-based text input fields like Slashdot's and Google's (which may be a product of using Mac-compatible web browsers).

Australia

The Quantum Experiment That Simulates a Time Machine 139

KentuckyFC writes One of the extraordinary features of quantum mechanics is that one quantum system can simulate the behaviour of another that might otherwise be difficult to create. That's exactly what a group of physicists in Australia have done in creating a quantum system that simulates a quantum time machine. Back in the early 90s, physicists showed that a quantum particle could enter a region of spacetime that loops back on itself, known as a closed timelike curve, without creating grandfather-type paradoxes in which time travellers kill their grandfathers thereby ensuring they could never have existed to travel back in time in the first place. Nobody has ever built a quantum closed time-like curve but now they don't have to. The Australian team have simulated its behaviour by allowing two entangled photons to interfere with each other in a way that recreates the behaviour of a single photon interacting with an older version of itself. The results are in perfect agreement with predictions from the 1990s--there are no grandfather-type paradoxes. Interestingly, the results are entirely compatible with relativity, suggesting that this type of experiment might be an interesting way of reconciling it with quantum mechanics.

Comment Re:this is a mountain out of a mole hill. (Score 1) 375

I use i3lock, which would mean attackers would have to find a way to get into /usr/bin to usurp my locker

Umm... No. Changing your PATH, setting LD_PRELOAD= or one of many other envs, changing Xsesson scripts or your WM's menu entries... Any of those would do just fine.

You also missed the entire point of the article, that an X11 screen-locker is just a normal user application like any other, a black image over top and only just TRIES to steal focus and input.

Comment Re:Popcorn time! (Score 2) 376

Look at the actual crime reporting figures, locally rape convictions stand at around 8 per 100,000. Now let's get crazy and say only one in twenty rapes and or sexual assault charges result in a conviction. Let's get even crazier and say one in twenty people who are raped even report the matter. That leaves us with 3200 per 100,000, or about one in thirty. Still almost an order of magnitude smaller than feminist figures and almost certainly still a gigantic exaggeration.

You're missing the dimension of time which crime statistics do include (you didn't include a link, btw). If your hypothesized/extrapolated numbers for rape is multiplied for the same population over a period of, say, 10 years and presuming each year produces new victims, that would mean than a relatively stable population base of 100,000 would yield 32,000 rapes.

It's not like rape (or any crime) only happens in a given population for only one year. People have lifespans and the number of victims accumulate over time, increasing the percentage of people who fall victim.

Your mistake was so easy to catch that if I didn't know better I'd say someone such a miss by someone who's looking so carefully at the data probably has an axe to grind.

Then again, maybe I don't know better and I'll say it anyway.

User Journal

Journal Journal: After Several Months Not Bothering 5

I visit a few threads here, on reasonable topics - like Barrett Brown case, etc.

The level of discourse has really troughed. It's like "conversation" between the Dufflepuds..

It's not worth even trolling these people. There isn't enough signal-to-noise for this to even register.

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