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Comment They Should Have Checked Snopes (Score 1) 146

You got that right, A.C. If these "documentarians" had done a smidgin of research, they would have found that the cartridges were destroyed long ago. So this means they are either too lunkheaded to have spent a small amount of time to find the relevant information, or they do know the truth and just want to cash-in on the legend and rumors.

Quote from Snopes:

Atari, stuck with millions of games and consoles that were largely unsellable at any price, sent fourteen truckloads of merchandise from their plant in El Paso, Texas, to be dumped in a city landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico in late September 1983. In order to keep the site from being looted, steamrollers crushed and flattened the games, and a concrete slab was poured over the remains.

Government

Submission + - Linux, OpenLDAP Being Deployed in Katano, Japan (slashdot.jp)

nz17 writes: "Back in August of 2010, the city hall of Katano in Osaka, Japan switched away from Microsoft Windows and MS-Office. Why? Because Microsoft ended official support and therefore patches for Windows 2000 on 13th July 2010, and the city's computers were all running Windows 2000. Rather than toss out the old computers and spend money replacing them with new models or paying for new copies of Windows and Office, the city decided to "recycle" them. Xubuntu Linux and OpenOffice.org were installed in place of the old software, saving Katano ten million yen. But the city went even further than that, and standardized on ODF as the document file format of choice to be used throughout Katano by the city offices and government officials for official paperwork, forms, and archives. This makes Katano the third Japanese city (after Aizu-Wakamatsu and Shikokuchuo) to switch to using OpenOffice.org exclusively in 2010 alone.

Katano is the first municipality in Osaka to standardize on OOo and is sharing the results of its switch-over with the rest of the prefecture. And the results are good (Google translation), because just recently the city posted a job listing indicating that it is looking for contractors to rebuild its computer network — and to rebuild it with OpenLDAP and SAMBA, as well as requiring experience with OSS design for contractors to qualify. It's nice to see such a highly visible promotion of FLOSS infrastructure!"

Comment NSA's Advice for Solaris and Linux (Score 2) 377

For those who contributed to the above Slashdot summary who are obviously incapable of properly navigating or searching Web sites, the NSA provides advice on securing multiple different computer operating systems and revisions. Yes, that includes Linux and even Solaris, and multiple versions to boot. Furthermore, additional research will yield that the NSA also has articles on securing a variety of common applications, Web browser plugins, and file formats. Then again, should anything less be expected from the organization that created and developed Security-Enhanced Linux in collaboration with Red Hat?

Comment The Same Answer as for Any Game System (Score 1) 262

The answer is the mighty (expensive) X-Arcade joystick. Buy two of the two-player models or four single-player models and you'll be set for four players: from one-button games to eight-button games and trackball games like Millipede. And they have plenty of adapters, so you can use them with non-serial or non-USB systems as well. I know they have adapters for Dreamcast (out-of-stock, *sigh*), GameCube/Wii, XBOX/360, PS2/3, etc. I wish I knew of a superior - cheaper or "more universal" (NES, Genesis/MegaDrive, SNES, and such) quality joystick - but as with most goods, the high-quality gear requires high-caliber materials, workmanship, knowledge, and engineering, so you have to pay the price for them.

Government

Submission + - Japanese MP's iPad Use May Be Illegal (mainichi.jp)

nz17 writes: Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, Kazuhiro Haraguchi, bought an iPad while he was in the U.S.A. on official business. The controversy is due to the possibility that accessing the Internet using the current model of the iPad in Japan constitutes a violation of Japan's Radio Act. The iPad lacks the "compatibility" label proving that it meets Japanese regulations. The use of instruments without the label is considered to be a violation of the Radio Act and may entail a punishment of one year in prison or one million yen in fines.

Comment Key Wallet (Score 1) 763

A key wallet is the way to go. I used to keep my keys on a ring (*SSH joke goes here*), but a few years ago I switched to keeping my keys in one of the mesh compartments of my wallet. Granted I only have a few keys. For a larger set of keys, you will want to use a real key wallet with hooks for the keys built into the wallet itself. If you need a key, just push the hook, detach the key, use the key, and return it. Most of them are pretty cheap, and I know that Sears Roebucks carries a few which are not only affordable but have all the compartments you'd want in a standard wallet too.

Dang, now *I* want to buy a real key wallet.

Mozilla

Submission + - SeaMonkey 2.0 released (seamonkey-project.org) 2

aodash writes: The SeaMonkey project at Mozilla is excited to release its completely refurbished next generation of the all-in one Internet suite today: SeaMonkey 2.0, now available for free download, melds the ideas behind Netscape Communicator with the modern platform of Firefox 3.5 to create one of the most compelling open source products for advanced Internet users.

The combination of an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools, that has already established a wide user base in its previous incarnations, has been rebuilt on top of the modern Mozilla platform, featuring world-class add-on management among other things.

The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Tiger Users Led Astray by Apple on Leopard Upgrade (allthingsd.com)

nz17 writes: From Walt Mossberg's review of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6):
For owners of Intel-based Macs who are still using the older Tiger version of the Mac OS, Apple is officially making Snow Leopard available only in a "boxed set" that includes other software and costs $169. The reasoning is that these folks never paid the $129 back in 2007 to upgrade to Leopard. But here's a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140. http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090826/apple-changes-leopards-spots/

Comment Re:IE8 Runs Horribly on My Computer (Score 2, Informative) 374

Due to a number of questions and assumptions that arose due to what I suppose was my lack of explicitness, I shall try to clear the water here:

I didn't upgrade to XP from 2000 sooner because...
1) The default XP GUI sucks.
2) It's more of a resource hog than 2000.
3) You have to deal with activation and Windows Genuine Advantage.
4) XP wasn't really a good choice until SP2 came out, as SP2 combined with the earlier advances of SP1 to address many issues that XP suffered from.
5) I wasn't going to pay for a new version of Windows. My copy of XP (and Vista and 7 if I wish) was furnished by my university under Microsoft's MSDNAA program.

Other points...
-I never said XP itself was slow.
-I did say IE8 is slow on my configuration.
-Though the browsers themselves have responsibilities in this regard, our individual setups also determine program performance. A large number of factors play into this including OS, upgrade paths of the software which are installed, background processes, et cetera.
-I did an in-place upgrade from 2000 to XP to preserve my programs' installations and settings. Don't worry, I backed up everything before the XP upgrade happened.
-My computer is not old nor outdated, though like all of ours it could always use more upgrades. ;)

And on that note, I'll close by saying, "...Oh no, something on your computer is older now than it was a moment ago - better upgrade again!"

Comment Re:IE8 Runs Horribly on My Computer (Score 1) 374

A) Program startup time and memory usage are not the same thing.
B) I'm sure our different experiences with the Web browsers are a matter of different system configurations in hardware and software, not a matter of the browsers themselves. That is why benchmarking is done on identical system configurations.
C) My hardware is not ancient, let alone old.

Comment IE8 Runs Horribly on My Computer (Score 4, Informative) 374

I have to tell you, IE8 runs horribly on my desktop computer. When I installed XP over 2000, I upgraded right from 6 to 8 and hated it. The startup time was ridiculous, something like 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and opening a new tab took just as long as starting a new instance of IE8. Even after starting it once, starting it again wasn't must faster. That's my reason that I "downgraded" Internet Explorer to version 7, which really was an upgrade from version 8 in terms of performance, starting in about 3 seconds instead. I suppose that I can't be alone in this - there must be others for whom 7 or 6 runs better than 8 for whatever reason.

I know as far as I'm concerned IE7 fixed a lot of bad things with Internet Explorer that made it a big difference over 6, whereas 8 just seems to be an incremental improvement over 7 that really should not be pushed by Microsoft as a Critical Update. MS is probably coming out with frequent updates like this now just to try to stay competitive with Firefox and Safari and Chrome. I know that the Steam Overlay browser which embeds IE's Trident engine certainly got a speed boost from me going with 7 over 8, and that's the way it's going to stay unless and until Microsoft releases something newer for me to try on Windows XP. With Vista and soon Windows 7 out in retail, I don't think anything else is coming for XP users though.

Good thing I don't even use Internet Explorer as my primary browser then. Long live my mighty combo of Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror!

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