Comment I miss... (Score 1) 597
...the fun of carefully placing the wrap-around stickers on floppy disks.
As for removing sticker crud from a new laptop? I would use a Dremel.
Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website 323
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones and her lawyer were so upset by a comment on the site TheDirty.com that they missed the 'y' at the end of the name. Instead, they sued the owner of TheDirt.com, whose owner didn't respond to the lawsuit. The end result was a judge awarding $11 million, in part because of the failure to respond. Now, both the owners of TheDirty.com and TheDirt.com are complaining that they're being wrongfully written about in the press — one for not having had any content about Sarah Jones but being told it needs to pay $11 million, and the other for having the content and having the press say it lost a lawsuit, even though no lawsuit was ever actually filed against it."
Open Sarcasm Fighting Copyrighted Punctuation 155
pinkushun writes "SarcMark is a copyrighted punctuation mark, that claims 'It's time that sarcasm is treated equally!' Pretty damn cheeky while they're charging for their software, which only inserts their punctuation through a hotkey. Open Sarcasm is destroying SarcMark by advocating a new punctuation mark (not displaying here properly — alt+U0161) as the new open and free sarcasm symbol. Either way, this will be one interesting turnout. With bad unicode support across the web, displaying the characters properly might be an issue. PS Left out sarcastic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the U0161 character."
The Puzzle of Japanese Web Design 242
I'm Not There (1956) writes "Jeffrey Zeldman brings up the interesting issue of the paradox between Japan's strong cultural preference for simplicity in design, contrasted with the complexity of Japanese websites. The post invites you to study several sites, each more crowded than the last. 'It is odd that in Japan, land of world-leading minimalism in the traditional arts and design, Web users and skilled Web design practitioners believe more is more.'"
Comment don't be a dumbass (Score 2, Interesting) 243
I find it amusing that the same mind that could be outraged at the prosection of "four innocent men... accused of copyright infringement" would then go on to say "we urge the public to boycott and lynch those responsible".
Boycott, sure. Protest, fine. Even a little creative vandalism is good. But lynching?
I would say someone has their priorities out of whack. Either they haven't thought this through or they are just *that* dumb that they would offer "support" to someone on trial by calling for violence against the plaintiffs.
I thought hackers were supposed to be ingenious and creative thinkers. Not the equivalent dumbass jocks on a rampage.
Comment You must be joking (Score 1) 504
"Photog is just someone being too lazy to type Photographer..."
So sayeth the non-photographer.
As a photographer and writer, I see no problem with the term. Your suggested "smarter" PhotR and SnpR are ludicrous and would seem to indicate that you were born on another planet.
And that "someone", whoever they were, started using the term many, many, many years ago. The fact that you have only discovered the word now proves how out of touch you are with the field and profession of photography.
Thanks for coming out. Your opinion has been filed apropriately. *cue shredder*
Undersea Cable Repair Via 19th Century Tech 98
An anonymous reader writes to mention a story going across the wires about an old-fashioned way to fix a modern convenience. Taiwanese boaters are using simple hooks to fish up the fiber-optic cables damaged in an earthquake late last year. The outage that resulted kept millions of users offline in half a dozen countries around the Pacific rim. From the article: "They work 24 hours a day but the weather can hinder their progress. Walters said one ship is waiting for 30 to 40 mile-an-hour winds (48 to 64 kilometres- an-hour) to die down in the Bashi Channel. The winds have stirred up 10 to 12 metre waves ... After arriving at the scene they survey the ocean bottom to assess whether the contour has changed, and the degree of sediment movement. Then the traditional tools are brought out. A rope with a grapnel on the end is played out, down into the depths, and towed over the sea floor until tension registers on a graph on the ship, indicating contact has been made with the cable. Today's fibre optic cables are just 21 millimetres in diameter."
Shatner Leaks Trek XI Details 229
An anonymous reader writes "The rumors that the next Star Trek movie would revolve around the earliest missions of Kirk and Spock have been confirmed by William Shatner in a Sci Fi Wire interview. J.J. Abrahms (creator of 'Lost') will direct, and has confirmed that a draft script is completed. So, the question is, will Shatner appear as a reminiscing older Kirk in the beginning, setting up the rest of the movie as a flash-back, or will geriatric-Kirk and young-Kirk meet?"
