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Comment Evidence? (Score 2) 180

While I think that this list is a worthwhile effort, there should be some evidentiary requirement for an entity to be listed.

Public commentary, news releases, statements in interviews, response to inquiry, etc. are verifiable and not difficult to find or obtain.

It is possible that some have been listed erroneously, by either good or ill intentioned persons.

Without some method of including evidence the usefulness and value of this list is questionable.

Comment Old-school (and liking it) (Score 1) 357

I've moved back to WindowMaker. I've complemented this with some of the utilities from Rox-Desktop, such as roxterm and roxfiler, largely because they work well and avoid Gnome/KDE dependencies and often enough, Dbus as well.

I wish WindowMaker was scriptable in Lua, or had more features. However, it is ICCWM compliant and has a wide number of features (I might have even put some in there... its hard to recall).

Comment Re:DSLR is the way to go (Score 1) 569

I say either take the kit lens of 18-55mm and hold-off on buying additional lenses... OR skip the 18-55mm kit lens and buy a 55-200mm and a 50mm/f1.8 lens. Some stores will offer bundles on the body + 55-200mm lens, which makes this an affordable option.

Its kind of strange, an 18-55mm lens is a good range if it is your *only* lens (which is why it is a kit lens), but I find that if I'm outdoors I'm most likely to carry the 55-200mm and if indoors, I'll definitely have the 50mm/f1.8 on.

I haven't done it yet, but I do plan to try using my 18-55mm with a reversing ring & bellows for cheap macro. It wont match a good macro setup, but I expect it should do decently for the sub-$50 price-tag.

Comment Your top-range choice... (Score 1) 569

I don't have the expertise to know at what point spending more money isn't going to do me, as a camera newbie, any good. Any thoughts?"

To this point, don't go *beyond* the Nex-3 or the A33/A35 cameras in price or complexity. The Nex-3 is about $450 and hardly larger than a typical pocket camera, it will be an amazing upgrade from a cell phone, without exploding in physical size. It has interchangeable lenses, although few (and expensive) -- the A33/A35 cameras are similar but take common Alpha Sony/Minolta lenses. Because of the new translucent lenses in this line of cameras, these cameras are significantly smaller than and shoot faster than others in this price range.

So now I'll answer the, "but it is Sony!". Yes, it is true that there is a great distain for all things Sony, and no they are not the market leaders in the SLR space... However, for an unbiased entry-level SLR, the Nex-3 and A33/A35 cameras are an amazing deal... and offer things that others do not for the non-discerning entry-level shooter.

Comment Re:And this is the REAL reason for Data caps -at h (Score 1) 225

This plan would work incredibly well... in San Francisco where there are tens of access points accessible from any given place you might be. This would work horribly in the suburbs. Hell, it would work terribly in the residential areas of large cities where there would be enough density for this to work, but where people are too poor to have wifi (thus lowering the effective density of the mesh network).

Comment Re:to be fair (Score 1) 90

From what I understand of their boxes, they are able to operate without communicating at all with Blue Coat. Syria doesn't have to sneakily do anything. And I doubt a country's ISP cares about cloud-based ANYTHING. They just want to configure a box to block traffic. What Syria is doing may be more advanced, but would you blame Cisco if someone set up a router not to route to select IPs?

Comment Newspapers! (Score 1) 499

Print your photos as ads in a large newspaper. This will be archived by libraries, historical foundations, places like Google and Archive.org. It might not last forever, but it will last a whole lot longer than anything else. Some of the photos and information about my *own* family that was otherwise lost or forgotten was discovered via these means.

Of course, this isn't *practical* for large sets of data, but if it is super-important for long-term storage, you probably have no more data than will fit on one or two pages. It will cost a lot less than other means of *reliable* long-term storage with reasonable means of future-accessibility.

Comment Get a phone with a reversed keyboard (Score 1) 2

It will be a lot easier to get a phone with a reverse keyboard. There are plenty of dialer apps for Android, for instance. You could also have your computer dial your calls for you. Ideally, you shouldn't even be using a dial-pad. Either your numbers are originating from the computer or from paper, which probably is going to be recorded, stored, and saved on the computer.

Anyway, if you really need a calculator that works this way, it is called a computer. Just remap your keys...

Comment Re:R.I.P. Borders (Score 1) 230

I always make purchases when I visit B&N... I browse the selection, scan the ISBN with my phone, and have the book shipped free via Amazon Prime!

This isn't strictly true anymore, but it used to be. Today, most of my book purchases are directly with the publishers that will sell me DRM-free digital copies or from used bookstores. B&N has done very badly with their online store in identifying the format of books and if they contain DRM or not. (They're not all epub)

Furthermore, as much as I really wanted to like the original Nook - I tried, really - it was a failure, especially for working with DRM-free content. This drove me to the Kindle and now I'm unfortunately stuck in that ecosystem.

Comment Re:So Amazon is violating copyrights en masse? (Score 1) 126

Where does this or any other article say that Overdrive isn't buying the books through payments to the publishers? Because this is through Overdrive and because of the description of the changes to Whispersync, I'm more inclined to think these books are provided from Overdrive themselves and Amazon has simply provided this already-existing library service to push their books to Kindles. Either way, the library of works available goes through Overdrive, not through Amazon. Overdrive has explicit, direct partnerships with the publishers of the content the serve.

Sci-Fi

What If Aliens Came To Save the Galaxy From Mankind? 534

astroengine writes with an amusing piece in Discovery. From the article: "In a study carried out by NASA and Pennsylvania State University scientists, several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined. One of the scenarios is a sci-fi favorite: what if we encounter an alien race hellbent on destroying us? However, there's a twist. This isn't mindless thuggery on behalf of the aliens, and they're not killing us to get at our natural resources; they have a cause. They want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way."

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