Comment Re:A real problem with perception (Score 1) 205
Excellent, insightful comment. I whish I had mod points.
Comment Re:Cathode + Lynx. (Score 1) 92
Pretty, but the curved screen effect is way overdone to the point of being obnoxious.
Comment This will kill Slashdot (Score 1) 1191
All the text is jammed in the middle, with the heirarchy a jumbled mass of links. I HATE IT.
If this goes ahead, slashdot will wither very quickly.
As others have said - make it like it was 10 years ago.
Comment Crablogger! (Score 1) 143
Reality catches up to science fiction... the Thunderbirds episode 'PATH OF DESTRUCTION' had International Rescue using handheld laser cutters to cut into the cabin of the mighty Crablogger. That was back in 1965.
Patent Suit Leads To 500,000 Annoyed Software Users 180
ciaran_o_riordan writes "A rare glimpse at the human harm of a software patent lawsuit: company receives 500,000 calls complaining about video quality after a video call system was forced to change to avoid a patent. That's a lot of people having a bad day. We don't usually hear these details because the court documents get ordered sealed and the lawyers only say what the companys' communication strategists allow. However, for VirnetX v. Apple, Jeff Lease decided to go the hearings, take notes, and give them to a journalist. While most coverage is focussing on the fines involved, doubling or halving Apple's fine would have a much smaller impact on your day than the removal of a feature from some software you like. Instead of letting the software patents debate be reduced to calls for sympathy for big companies getting fined, what other evidence is out there, like this story, for harm caused directly to software users?"
Comment No, strongly disagree here (Score 0) 656
I earned a second major in Statistics alongside my Comp Sci degree. In my 25 years of systems programming, application programming, *nix, Windows, GUI apps, data gathering, data analysis, web, comms, you name it - in a wide variety of fields I have NEVER used any of my statistics knowledge more complicated than a mean or median to this day. Not one single bit.
Comment Throbber in early versions of Internet Explorer (Score 1) 93
I recall that at least one early version of Micosoft Internet Explorer back in the late 90s had the earth globe 'throbber' animation show, in sequence: the Americas, Europe, then the blue 'e' then back to the Americas. No Asia or Oceania. At the time I could hardly believe it that a giant company that had always promoted internationalisation of its software could have such a 'fail' moment.
Comment Then restore it to a previous known good state (Score 1) 393
Presumably this 'brain' would be able to be restored from a backup to a known good state, and the simulation tweaked in some other direction. That's something human brains aren't capable of.
Comment Now exacerbated by Firefox v20 ESC key disabling (Score 3, Informative) 196
Mozilla in their 'wisdom' decided to disable the ESC key that a lot of people used to stop animated gifs running https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=614304/. It also stopped the page loading - dead in its tracks - which I personally loved. However some Mozilla devs didn't like it (as scripts etc may not be loaded properly). So they've now taken control away from the annoyed user who is going to cop entire page loads of crap.
Comment Re: Not news. (Score 2) 288
Mod parent informative. These guys are nothing more than headhunters trying to pitch themselves at any top-notch dev that might come their way, but trying to play up how cool and Hollywood-movie-star the word 'Agent' sounds. Wow I even have visions of limos and red carpets wherever these smart devs go.
If they are such smart devs and techs themselves, why have they felt the need to get into marketing to make money?
Submission + - Google is actively developing products against users of alternative browsers (google.com)
epSos-de writes: Google said: "Don't be evil". In reality they are actively discriminating against browsers that are not based on Google Chrome. Opera is repeatedly crippled in gMail. Google's Java Scripts are prohibiting Opera users from selecting and copying text in the Opera browser.
Opera did resolve the issue with every new release, but Google still keeps changing their code, so that users of Opera are not allowed to select and copy text, when they are using gMail. The first few times, it was suspicious, but now it is too obvious that Google is actively developing products that can not be used outside of the Google Chrome.
Opera did resolve the issue with every new release, but Google still keeps changing their code, so that users of Opera are not allowed to select and copy text, when they are using gMail. The first few times, it was suspicious, but now it is too obvious that Google is actively developing products that can not be used outside of the Google Chrome.
Submission + - Aggressive Android Adware and Malware on the Rise
An anonymous reader writes: With adware gleaning more user data from people devices than they would normally need too and developers bundle more than one adware framework into their apps, user privacy is increasingly taking a backseat to profit for developers and advertisers. More and more unknown third parties now have access to user browsing history, phone numbers, email address and everything they need to compile comprehensive and personalized user profiles. User privacy is taking a serious blow as adware targeting Android devices jumped 61 percent worldwide in the five months through January, while malware expanded 27 percent and adware in the US expanded 35 percent, according to a study by Bitdefender Labs.
Comment Dishwasher used for cleaning old PDP-11 cards (Score 3, Informative) 197
Over on the Vintage Computer forum, people do in fact run old circuit boards such as PDP-11 modules through the dishwasher, and clean contacts with fine abrasive.
Blasting core memory stacks with compressed air however is a definate no-no as this destroys the fine wiring.
Comment Re:Self-destruct? (Score 1) 219
How would you feel if the drone, having malfunctioned, came down in a field and was found by a group of children, who being curious decide to play with it and set it off? Booby traps are despicable.
Comment More like Windows 1.0 (Score 1) 712
Announced 1985, released 1988.
