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Comment Re:What if I don't mind? (Score 1) 222

For those _specific_ purchases, no. But it isn't about just your purchases or mine. As an earlier poster mentioned, what if you purchased some home theater equipment recently as well as some tickets to Jamaica? Even if those show up as "Recent Best Buy Purchase" and "Vacation Getwaway Package Purchase", it doesn't take long to piece together that you may have bought something and are going away for a weekend or longer.

Yes, this is a reaching argument. But who is allowed access to that data? How can I get a copy of the information being shared about me? Can I opt out of this, and is it opt-out by default?

Maybe some of the stuff I enjoy in my home life doesn't really need to be shared with my co-workers. This may sound silly to most, but I worked at a company that was very "family oriented" (funny, I worked more overtime there than anywhere else). This company frowned upon consuming alcohol, even in our personal lives. If we spoke about drinking over the weekend we generally received shunning and evil-eye stares from those who heard the conversation. What if the advertisements show skimpy girls and deals on liqueur because I visited a bar over the weekend?

This kind of thing meshes all parts of my life together and gives people the ability to know things about me that I don't want them to know about. That's what's wrong about this for me.

Comment Re:I'm surprised and disappointed (Score 1) 161

I think the part that doesn't make sense is that Bush is responsible for the actions of those under him but Obama isn't. Bush never comes out and says "hey, we've got an open thing going on here!" and then continues to stall or deny FOIA requests. He just never says transparent in the first place and you liken that to them being the problem.

On the flip side of that coin, Obama says "Hey, we're going to make things transparent" and _nothing_ changed. The difference is you think Obama is not responsible for his subordinates but Bush is. Hence, "LOL WUT".

FWIW, I don't like either policy.

Comment Re:DVR (Score 1) 56

There is- it's a fork of XBMC called MediaPortal. It has DVR support and tv-over-ip support for running one major DVR and a bunch of clients.

If you want boxee to be a DVR, you're missing the point of boxee altogether. Boxee's point is to display all the media content from the Internet on a 10-ft interface.

Comment Re:Stupid art tricks (Score 1) 138

People listening/paying or not is not a defining attribute to being an art critic. It is to being a popular art critic, but not just being an art critic (or critic of anything else, for that matter). If the audience is only himself, he is still a critic.

Just as it is completely in the "artist's" right to call it art, it is in our individual rights to determine if we consider it art. And likewise it is up to the population as a whole to determine if it is important or inane art.

Personally, I consider this inane.

Comment Re:webOS Tablets on Wednesday (Score 1) 429

I always felt the webOS was just a little too small for that screen the crammed it into. I personally found the one-button escape to be similar to my iPhone, but swiping through the open cards much easier. And the touch screen on the Pre was about as on-par as you can get to the Apple devices (Android devices have yet to come near those two on touch "smoothness").

I am hoping for a entry-level device as opposed to the premium spec'd one. Mostly because for what Apple has spec'd for the iPad, the competitors seem to be $100-200 more for similar devices. Motorola had the name in 2001 if they wanted to push a "premium" device like this, but after a horrible run of RAZR's, ROKR's, and mediocre Droids, this new device seems outpriced for what you get. If they can put a $300 webOS device (maybe a 7" or 8"?) with good enough performance and onboard h.264 rendering (and Netflix, the de-facto streaming standard), they have a good chance at winning my dollars vs. Apple's devices.

News

1948 Mayor To MIT: Use Flamethrowers To Melt Snow? 203

An anonymous reader writes "In 1948 Boston mayor James Curley freaked out because of the record amounts of snow. He wrote to MIT and begged for help, even suggested using flamethrowers to melt it. (Check out the original type-written letter.)"

Comment Re:Right on! (Score 1) 364

I think the bigger issue isn't that it will be 10 cents per GB, but closer to 10 dollars per GB. We, the customer, are at their mercy for billing. Because of the government-granted monopolies in many areas and borderline collusion on pricing, there isn't anywhere for customers to go to get better products or services.

And with the other metered services you mention, the user is depriving someone else from using those items. They are physical, tangible things (including electricity because of what it takes to generate). Network packets aren't depriving someone else of their usage in any reasonable sense. The only thing they require after the line is laid is the electricity, which is already a metered item

The Internet

What’s the Internet? (on 1994's Today Show) 262

kkleiner writes "In a hilarious video segment from January 24th 1994, The Today Show morning anchors Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric stumble over the identity and jargon of the internet technology that has come to define the past decade. Gumbel is unclear how you pronounce "@", Katie Couric suggests "about", and no one wants to say "dot" when they read ".com". Confusion with lingo aside, The Today Show cast has to ask a crew member to clarify how the internet works. Do you write to it like mail? Is it just in Universities? Does it require a phone line? This was less than two decades ago, and it's a wonderful reminder of how unprepared the mainstream media was for the innovation that was about to sweep the globe. As the crew member says of the internet, "it's getting bigger and bigger all the time." What a delightful understatement."

Comment Re:Pathetic (Score 1) 132

In most cities, one could make $37k without any education or degree simply by waiting tables full-time.

It depends on your city and state. In Texas minimum wage is ~$7.25, but minimum wage for wait staff is $2.13. Tips are considered part of your compensation, so if you report honestly to the restaurant and government, you get hosed. To pull $37.5k working 40 hours/week as a waiter in Texas would require $33k in tips. The same job in California is minimum wage regardless, and would require only $20k in tips. Source: http://www.paywizard.org/main/Minimumwageandovertime/MinimumWageTIPRecevers

Comment Re:Do you really think (Score 1) 115

Yes. I don't quite think it will double, but there are quite a few that have been waiting. My wife won't give up her Verizon service for anything and as a result she is very excited to get the iPhone there. When she gets one, her mother will get one so they can do facetime. Not a huge jump for gaming, but definitely one for apps in general.

Comment Re:I use iSSH almost everyday... (Score 1) 359

I'll voice my support as well. For quick bash scripts, restarting services, etc. I haven't found a better one out there. The built-in VNC tunneling makes this absolutely worth $10 and then some. Then again, I've never been in a coffee shop and needed to debug lines of code in my scripts because the remote backups failed.

iSSH does exactly what I need it to do- quick and easy SSH and VNC tunneling in between games of Angry Birds.

Comment Re:TL;DR version: (Score 1) 278

The problem with the auto-update feature in Skype vs. gaming is that most gaming computers will be close to top-of-the-line. Most computers used for Skyping will not be top of the line.

From experience, the 5.0 version of Skype doesn't work as well as the 3.8 branch. Switching between windowed and full-screen video on the 5.0 branch takes ~4 sec to accomplish, with the audio becoming choppy at the same time. In addition, the video is choppy and audio quality is scratchy at best. The 3.8 branch doesn't have these issues, but can't do multi-user video either. This is an older machine running XP (P4 3.0HT w/ 2GB PC2-6400 memory), but should still be capable of doing things with the newer version.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 1) 968

+1 Agreed

I personally use caps lock for parts of some passwords, for headings on papers and documentation (sometimes), as well as upper case letters. For my typing, the only time I use shift is when I need to type a symbol. For me the shift+letter combination is much slower than the caps+letter[or multiples]+caps.

Why would it even need to be taken away? Leave the key there and let the user map it. This seems very much like one of those "lets do this because I don't use this so no one does" things. Just like the tabs-at-the-top browser, this is something that doesn't need to change for change's sake.

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