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Comment There is no good substitute (Score 3, Interesting) 196

I've been an avid user of Google Health for a couple years now. Since the decision to end the service was announced, I've attempted numerous times to find some sense of replacement from HealthVault. HealthVault is a great service, but its hardly equivalent. For instance, HealthVault is merely a storage system for your raw data, and to view it or continue to keep track of it, you have to utilize other services (such as through the Mayo Clinic) with which HV interfaces to manage. It has a lot of possibility, in that you can utilize many specialized services from many different places, however it fails at keeping the experience seemless. You always know that you are leaving to a new site, and often times go through redundant logins and registrations.

Google Health however kept everything restricted to a couple pages. Your blood pressure measurements, weights and other vitals were displayed in concise graphs The greatest strength of Google Health was its stripped down visuals and your ability to create your own trackers for virtually any metric. I used it to keep track of my migraine headaches in hopes of finding a trend which would reveal possible triggers. Some of the services, such as the Mayo Clinic's personal health manager, which use HealthVault offer similar customization, but they are very stripped down, the interfaces are clunky and, once again, it takes an annoying amount of log-in's and desperate clicking to get into the service.

I wish Google would just release the source, so that someone else could construct their own version. I for one would. I loved it.

Comment Re:reminds me... (Score 2) 235

The story doesn't make any sense -- why would he be smuggling bicycles?

Actually, this is derived from a true story told by the Guardia Civil in the Spanish Basquelands.when the government was truly cracking down on their trade. I forget at what point in their history this was, it may have been after Franco's death. However, the Basques were only allowed to bring so much over from the French Basquelands and so some boy would go over every day and return with a small bag and every day the Guardia had to let him pass since his imports were clearly for personal use. They never noticed he was leaving on a rusted, crappy bike of sorts and returning with a new one.

Comment Re:30 minutes to recharge, every 52 miles? (Score 1) 168

Assuming they can actually go 52 miles at the top speed of 62 mph, this means the buses can keep moving for about 50 minutes, and then they need to spend 30 minutes recharging. So it effectively takes 80 minutes to go 52 miles, under the assumption of fast driving on the freeway with no stops, which translates to a speed of 40 mph.

In a long distance race, anything which can average more than 40 mph will beat these buses.

Large urban cities would not allow the possibility to drive 52 miles in that amount of time. Cities are very condensed, filled with hills, traffic signals, and a lot of braking. Not to mention its engine doesn't require electricity like a car uses fuel while idle. A conservative estimate probably would give a bus half a day in Seoul. We are not talking about a Greyhound bus service across the countryside.

Comment An 'Irony'? (Score 1) 527

An irony here is that about a month ago, Facebook refused to take FireDogLake's 'Just Say Now' pro-cannabis law reform ads."
Why is that an irony? Facebook as an entity has much more to lose in political backlash if it even hints at supporting such a, albeit unnecessarily, hot topic such as marijuana legalization. Very few people give a damn what a single person does with their own money.
Patents

US Supreme Court Skeptical of Business Method Patents 160

Trepidity writes "The US Supreme Court held oral argument Monday in Bilski, a business-methods patent case that might also have important implications for software patents (We have previously discussed the case several times). The tone of the argument appears to be good news, as the justices were very skeptical of the broad patentability claims. They even brought up a parade of absurd hypothetical patents quite similar to the ones Slashdotters tend to mention in these kinds of debates. Roberts surmised that 'buy low, sell high' might be a patentable business method, Sotomayor wondered if speed-dating could be patentable, Breyer questioned whether a professor could patent a lesson plan that kept his students from falling asleep, and Scalia brought up the old-time radio soap opera Lorenzo Jones, featuring a hare-brained inventor with delusions of getting rich." Patently O has good blow-by-blow coverage of the day's proceedings. Official argument transcripts will be up soon, they say.

Comment Re:The first link... (Score 2, Informative) 42

...to this page while interesting on its own, doesn't appear relevant to the article.

Notice the URL. Notice who posted the article.

I know it is a page from the poster. But the page content doesn't match the link text.

Exactly. It seems to me it was a quick throw in to get traffic to his site. A link obviously unchecked in the editing process.

Comment Larger iPod? I want more GB (Score 2) 197

Seriously though Apple recently stopped producing the 160 gig iPod I've come to rely on. My music collection (and videos) takes up far more than the 120 they've left me with, and I fear to god everytime I pull out my ipod for fear of breaking it.

Would it be so hard to allow you to pay a fee for Apple to fit your iPod classic with a bigger hard drive? It can't be harder than refurbishing one, no? With the increased sales of videos and movies, I imagine more people will run into the problem of "space".
Movies

Submission + - Swedish firm to offer lawful alternative to piracy

Karol writes: A Swedish company believes it may have discovered a lawful solution to the movie industry's long-running file sharing quandary. By merging peer to peer file sharing methods with advanced watermarking technology, Stockholm firm Headweb hopes to beat the internet pirates at their own game and offer consumers a legal alternative. Customers will be given the opportunity to pay for movies, download them legally using BitTorrent technology and view them using a regular DVD player.
The Internet

Submission + - The emoticon is turning 25

netbuzz writes: "Known better to some as "smileys," the emoticon will turn 25 years old on Sept. 19, the exact date on which a quarter-century prior the first :-) and :-( were typed by Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Scott Fahlman. In an interview, Fahlman discusses his quirky claim to fame, his personal emoticonish likes and dislikes, Penn Jillette's venom, and his meeting with author Neal Stephenson, once an emoticon critic but now a convert.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1733 2"
United States

Submission + - Global Warming Concerts May Do More Harm Than Good

An anonymous reader writes: A column from the Guardian newspaper criticizes Al Gore's Live Earth rock concerts for being hypocritical. The rock concerts consume very large amounts of carbon-emitting energy, and the celebrities chosen to deliver the global warming message have wealthy extravagant lifestyles. Bob Geldof, who organized the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts, criticized its aims. 'We are all fucking conscious of global warming,' he said. 'It's just an enormous pop concert for the umpteenth time that, say, Madonna or Coldplay get on stage.'
Space

The United States Space Arsenal 297

ntmokey writes "When China tested a missile on its own satellite in January, the nation's aggressive statement immediately raised eyebrows among the world's other space-faring nations. Popular Mechanics looks at the implications of a conflict in space — including debris that could render space unusable for decades — and examines the United States' own space arsenal."
Google

Submission + - Google Desktop Now on Linux

warrior_s writes: Thats right, Now it DOES run on Linux. Google Desktop is now being offered for Linux.
Google Desktop for Linux was written natively and uses Google's own desktop search algorithms, not existing Linux search applications such as Beagle, a company representative said. Only computers with x86 processors can use the software. It supports the Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, Novell SUSE 10.1 and Red Flag 5 versions of Linux, and uses either the KDE and GNOME graphical user interfaces. Here is the scoop from builderau and cnet

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