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Comment Re:Change the DPI setting (Score 3, Insightful) 234

Your comment shows a lack of understanding as to what DPI is supposed to be used for since DPI shouldn't control scaling.

DPI stands for dots per inch, and you should configure that setting to match the actual number of dots per inch of your display. Then the SW environment should support some sort of sliding scale to let you change the size of any UI elements.

Sadly most desktop platforms don't do this correctly and bind the DPI to the size of UI elements. I will admit that resolution independence isn't easy, Microsoft didn't really start down that path until Windows 7, and Apple didn't start to get close until Mountain Lion.

Having used a retina display Mac it irritates me that they don't just have a slider to set UI scale, but instead you can select from several pre-set resolutions. I suspect this is because many applications still try to plot stuff pixel by pixel and so can't scale arbitrarily. It's not easy for most SW to be truly resolution independent and it seems most developers seem to skip handling that sanely on all platforms.

Comment Not entirely a FB bug, phone software is the prob (Score 2) 178

The Facebook bug here is that if you ask Facebook for someone's email, it was returning the last one added which was that stupid @facebook.com email. But why was the phone deleting contact info and replacing it? If your only source of contact data for a person was their Facebook email then yeah I can see that swapping, but why isn't the phone keeping Facebook, and other contact info separate?

My phone shouldn't see Facebook info change, then go and delete the work email from my Google contacts, or phone contact. If these phones are doing that I'd argue you have a phone SW bug. I wouldn't want any random sync service to suddenly override my manually entered contact data.

As for people complaining about work emails being swapped, why do you sync work emails via facebook? You should have that entered into a separate place. My Android phone is smart enough to keep google contacts and facebook contacts separate, and merge the accounts for display purposes. (And my old Palm Pre back in the day did an even better job of this.)

Comment Re:From Wikipedia... (Score 4, Informative) 627

That's not radiation, that's because cheap CRTs tubes oscillate at 60 hertz and if you're not deaf in the upper frequencies you can hear them whine. Basically it's noise from the flyback transformer in the CRT. Many children can hear them but people often lose those frequencies as they get older.

I can still hear when a cheap CRT is on but I don't claim to be allergic to wifi.

See http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/crt/failWhine-c.html for some more info.

Comment Re:Carmack (Score 4, Insightful) 616

I think there was a hope that computing power would catch up and make VMs a competitive alternative to native code.

While you're right there's a computing power issue here, the issue is battery life not lack of CPU cycles. VMs add overhead, as you add overhead you'll run longer and burn more power on the CPU. If you want to squeeze all you can out of a limited battery you need to optimize your code and in the end that's going to mean native code with very explicit memory management. VMs just don't play well in embedded environments.

Comment Re:Just Bizarre (Score 1) 722

I'm pretty sure the real goal is to force you to choose one or the other. In the long term I think they plan to drop or spin off the DVD business and become a 100% streaming company. I think they're hoping that everyone just decides that having both is too much money and choose to just stream. If everyone would just switch to the DVD only plan they'd probably rethink this strategy.

What annoys me is that they don't have a 3 DVD out at a time plan without streaming. My ages old plan is getting a massive rate hike come Sept. They still have too much DVD only content for me to really think that their rate hike is justified.

Comment Re:Interesting Highlights (Score 1) 279

Apple's already across the street, I doubt traffic would get too much worse since this place is right next to the freeway. Though at the moment Apple is spread out all over that area and now they'd be concentrating all those people into a couple blocks. Luckily I don't need to drive past Homestead and Wolfe all that often :D.

Comment Re:This is why I don't work for Microsoft (Score 1) 282

I asked if they would alter the agreement to strike the non-compete terms but he said they wouldn't do that. I know better than to accept some verbal assurance from a recruiter vs what the contract says. That's like believing that guy at BestBuy that your extended warranty covers the battery in an iPod (it won't). While at the time I didn't think I would have left MS very soon I was afraid that if I was a good performer that they'd be even more likely to try and enforce such a non-compete. I'm sure they let it slide if you suck at your job.

The trick here is that he got sued in WA court. I've heard of some companies trying to take the action up in CA first on such contract since CA courts would side with the employee as such terms are considered unconscionable in CA.

Comment This is why I don't work for Microsoft (Score 4, Informative) 282

I had an offer to work at Microsoft just out of college. I was seriously considering the offer until I saw the draconian anti-employee non-compete they wanted me to sign. I told the recruiter that I didn't feel comfortable signing such an agreement since Microsoft works in so many different areas that there was no way to avoid some sort of conflict. I was assured by the recruiter that they don't usually enforce the agreement. Maybe that is generally true, but this ruling definitely proves that they will enforce it on occasion. Instead I ended up with a different company in CA where such draconian non-competes are illegal and most companies don't even attempt to get you to sign one.

I should also add that not all non-competes have to be as evil as Microsoft's. One company I had an offer for had a similar non-compete but it had a clause that if they decide to enforce it as long as it's in force and you're looking for other gainful employment they would continue to pay you your salary until the non-compete expired. I felt that this policy was more than fair since it allowed the company to decide how important enforcing the non-compete was and didn't have such negative consequences for you as an employee should they choose to enforce it. I personally feel all non-competes should include such a clause otherwise I would NEVER consider signing one.

Comment Come back when I get unlimited downloads (Score 1) 547

I don't think Blu-Ray is done for quite yet. The biggest problem is that true high def content is large, 25-50GB large for a movie. Given bandwidth caps, and our poor broadband networks in the in the US I don't see downloading "real" HD content coming soon. Sure you can get HD movies on Hulu, iTunes, Netflix but the quality there is terrible compared to watching a Blu-Ray.

Another issue for purchased content is local storage. Even though hard drive space has increased exponentially on a 1TB drive one could only store about 40 HD movies. Not only that but hard drives are prone to failure and one could easily lose their entire movie collection if a hard drive fails, or gets reformatted. I have yet to see a site or company which offers downloadable movies where one can download their collection whenever they want. The ONLY reason I can accept buying games via steam is that I can delete, and re-download my games as much as I want on any computer I log into.

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