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Submission + - The North Pole: fastest cell service on earth (modea.com)

Submitted by davevt5
davevt5 writes: Who wants the upcomming 4G LTE network when you can be like santa already on the ELF 5G network. I wonder what his coverage is given he circumnavigates the globe. Check out the Easter Bunny voice mail!

Comment Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score 4, Interesting) 586

by davevt5 (#28509795) Attached to: Lenovo Tinkers With Larger Delete and Escape Keys

I have a Lenovo T400 and the placement of the DEL key always annoyed me. I use a program called KeyTweak (http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/) to remap my lenovo keyboard as follows:

Right CTRL key is DEL
Those silly keys to the right and left of the up arrow are HOME and END

And finally, drum roll please... the CAPS key is mapped to the TAB key so I have a gigantic space to mash my chubby fingers when looking for a tab stop!

Comment Here's what I did: using Friendfeed and no backend (Score 1) 286

by davevt5 (#28214681) Attached to: What Do You Do With a Personal Domain?

I found myself in a similar situation. I do blog but so infrequently that going to my personal domain makes it look like I don't do anything.

Here's what I'm working on... It's not designed yet but the functionality is there...

I created this page: http://www.davidcatalano.com/digital/
I'm going to move it to the root but need to move my Wordpress install first...

So what is it? It is the steam of updates that I make on a number of social website including Twitter, Delicious, Facebook, Digg and SmugMug. The site puts everything in chronological order and allows for filtering and searching by keyword. It is all powered by FriendFeed and doesn't require any backend what so ever.

Let me know what you think and if you are interested in using it ask me first david9@modea.com (remove the 9)
Security

OpenID Fan Club Is Shrinking 333

Posted by timothy from the and-watch-that-basket-carefully dept.
A.B. VerHausen writes "Even though there's a whole new Web site devoted to understanding and using OpenID, some companies are dropping the login method altogether. OStatic is reporting that the 'free Web site network Wetpaint announced recently that it will no longer support OpenID as a login option for its wiki, citing low usage and high support costs as reasons.' Apparently, fewer than 200 registered users bothered with OpenID, and the extra QA and development time doesn't make it worthwhile to support. This can't come as welcome news on top of the internal issues the article mentions the OpenID Foundation is having now, too." I've actually been quite happy with OpenID, since I have spawned far too many username/password pairs over the last 20-plus years, but it's a major chicken-and-egg problem. Hopefully someone out there will build a better mousetrap ...
Programming

California Can't Perform Pay Cut Because of COBOL 1139

Posted by kdawson from the handwaving-only-gets-you-so-far dept.
beezzie writes "Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr, for 200,000 state workers — because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated. He says it would take six months to go to minimum wage, and nine months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in ten years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.
Google

Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice.org 277

Posted by timothy from the because-it's-soft-and-squishy dept.
CWmike writes "Preston Gralla has a decent idea that could move the office needle: If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner. Imagine if a version of it were available as a Web service from Google, combined with massive amounts of Google storage. Integrated with Google Docs, it would also allow online collaboration. For those who wanted more features, the full OpenOffice suite would be available as a client — supported by Google. wouldn't be at all surprised to see this happen. Just yesterday, IBM announced that it was selling support for its free Symphony office suite. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine Google doing the same for OpenOffice, after it integrates it with Google Docs."
Microsoft

Tales of Conversion - Using Ubuntu at Work 542

Posted by Zonk from the sneaky-penguin dept.
madgreek writes "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft-free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office. From the article: 'When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS's.'"
Linux

30 Days With Ubuntu Linux 852

Posted by Hemos from the making-the-switch dept.
jkwdoc writes "Vexed by Vista's hardware requirements and product activation issues, many have claimed on various boards that they plan to 'switch to Linux.' [H] Consumer spent 30 days using nothing but Ubuntu Linux to find out if this is truly a viable alternative for the consumer. Linux has indeed become much more than the 'Programmer's OS.'"
Businesses

Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop? 528

Posted by Zonk from the put-em-up-put-em-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "RDM asks Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop?, a comparison of recent sales and profits and the future outlook for Macs and PCs. It's the opinion of the article's author that Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win. The key is to take the most valuable segments of the market. They show via a few quick financial numbers that even though Apple is selling fewer machines, they're making more money per machine than your Dells or your Gateways. Not being beholden to Microsoft gives them a big advantage when competing with traditional PC sellers. Once Apple is positioned, Microsoft will be forced to choose whether it wants to battle Mac OS X for control of the slick consumer desktop, or repurpose Windows as a cheaper, mass market alternative to Linux in corporate sales. If it doesn't make a choice, the company will face difficult battles on two fronts.""
Media

Australia Rules Linking to Copyright Material Also Illegal 364

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the google-next-on-their-list-of-targets dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recent ruling in Federal court upheld the ruling that the operator and ISP that hosted the site 'mp3s4free.net' were guilty of copyright infringement violations because they provided access to the copyright material. From the article: 'Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organization Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."'"
Classic Games (Games)

Journal Journal: My Top 5 Games of All Time

Journal by davevt5

/. recently posted a link to an article of the Top 5 games of all times. The article was over 20 pages and IMHO was an attempt to boost ad revenue. So, I won't even both to link to the article.

Here's my top 5:

1 Duke Nukem 3D
2 Space Quest II
3 Halo
4 Madden (any year)
5 Leisure Suit Larry 3

Toshiba Develops 3-Layer DVD and HD-DVD 228

Posted by kdawson from the play-it-anywere dept.
morpheus83 writes, "Toshiba, in collaboration with disk manufacturer Memory Tech Japan, has successfully combined a HD-DVD and DVD to a single 3-layer, twin-format disk. The resulting disk conforms to DVD standards so it can be played on DVD players, and also on HD-DVD players after upgrading the firmware. The disk can have either Single Layer DVD (4.7GB) + Dual Layer HD DVD (30GB); or Dual Layer DVD (8.5GB) + Single Layer HD DVD (15GB). There will not be a long wait as the new disk can be produced on the existing HD-DVD mass production line with minor process additions."

Massive Chasm In Asia's Public Sector IT Spending 103

Posted by samzenpus from the more-for-less dept.
IT_Sleep_Bag writes "A recent study by Springboard Research shows a massive chasm between countries in the APAC region, with countries like New Zealand and Australia investing up to USD 200 per capita on IT, while India and China spend a dismal USD 1. SDA Asia speaks to Dane Anderson of Springboard Research to explore the reasons for the wide gulf and why he believes India and China will grow the fastest in this regard."

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