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Comment Re:Make the switch from Dual Booting (Score 1) 427

Vent has worked in wine for years. I'm using it right now. You just need to download the audio codec since that doesn't come with vent. Just google for msgsm32.acm and put that file in the system32 folder in your wine installation. Getting push-to-talk takes a bit more work, but its doable, just google and you'll find it.

Comment Re:How many KiloCalories if you burn a human? (Score 3, Informative) 183

Its a pretty easy calculation. According to google an average non-overweight human is about 15% fat and 18% protein (the protein number varies a bit depending on the source, but lets use 18% for this calculation).

A gram of fat is 9 kcal and a gram of protein is 4 kcal for a person. Not sure if there is anything else in the human body that would store energy, the carbohydate amount is small enough that its neglegible.

So a person weighing 75 kilos would have 155 250 kcal in his body. I imagine that when burning that however a lot of the energy would be lost to evaporating the water in the human body.

Comment Re:What a wasted opportunity (Score 2, Interesting) 111

Well think about it. How many generations does it take for a favorable gene to spread trough the population? Give the flies another favorable gene as well as the smell gene, then set them loose to make babies. I read somewhere that it takes 3000-5000 years for humans, but fly generations are much shorter, so maybe we could reap the advantages in our lifetime.

Comment Re:it's not the justice... (Score 1) 230

Yeah well at least we don't have to pay millions if we're guilty. There is no such thing as punitive damages paid to the opposing party here, only actual damages that can be proved. Also if you're sentenced to a fine (which would be the most likely sentence for a file sharer) that fine is based on how much income you have, its never so much that it'll drive you bankrupt for the next 50 years. You might be sentenced to pay, for example, 30 days of your income after taxes.

Comment tools I found useful (Score 5, Informative) 411

Here are some random things I find useful, related to user interaction (mostly becuase it notifies the user):

Oven timer:
sleep $((20*60)); xmessage "Dinner is done"

Quick macro for automating some repetitive task in a program:
xdotool type "something"; xdotool key Return; xdotool mousemove $x $y; xdotool click 1; (and so on)

Copying a file to/from the clipboard (can also copy from /topipe, so the output of any command). Faster than opening a text editor:
xclip -in file

Notifying me when some specific thing changed on a website:
CHECKLINE="$(curl -s http://somewebsite.org/somepage.html | grep "currently undergoing maintenence")"
while true; do
    sleep 120
    [ -z "$CHECKLINE" ] && xmessage "somewebsite is open again" && exit
done

Or just checking for changes in general (I use this for notifying me when something changed when tracking something I ordered, so I know the minute the package is ready to get picked up at the post office):
while true; do
    OLD_MD5=${MD5}
    CONTENT=$(elinks -dump 1 -dump-charset iso-8859-1 "http://someurl.com/track?id=someid")
    MD5=$(echo -n $CONTENT | md5sum -)

    [ "${MD5}" != "${OLD_MD5}" ] && {
        xmessage "$(printf "New action: :\n\n${CONTENT}")"
    }
    sleep 120
done

If you don't want to interrupt what you're doing with a pop-up you can pipe it to osd_cat instead to have the text appear over whatever program you're currently working with. Adding a few beep; beep; beep; beep; is also a good way to get your attention if you're not paying 100% attention to your computer all the time.

Comment Re:Standalone Systems will just be enhanced (Score 1) 300

1 and 4: Its clear that we don't live in the same part of the world. 2: Who said anything about following instructions blindly? You don't have to turn into an idiot just because you have a GPS. And instructions could be made simple. They could say "follow the road that leads towards X" and you look at the signs and take that turn, or continue forwards, or switch lanes or whatever the signs indicate. 3: There is an easy way to see the streets around you. Its called looking out the window. Disclaimer: I don't have a driverce licence, and not much experience driving.

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