Comment Oh no!! (Score 1) 1
No manual labour? Won't somebody think of the children!!
Comment Australian online cheapest book service (Score 1) 206
When looking for books I use this service: http://booko.com.au/
What it does is searches through all the Australian online book shops as well as international shops that send to Australia.
So it finds every store that has the book, converts the currency into Australian dollars and then gives you a list sorted by the cheapest including delivery.
Using that service you don't need to use a specific provider or even a forwarder - it'll just give you the cheapest item per book.
Comment Re:Logo language (turtle) (Score 1) 430
Just following on from this. As it was quite a while ago my school had limit amount of computers. There was only 1 computer for the class (which was in another room).
So we learnt LOGO on the black board. We all designed our "program" on paper (i think it was in pairs or small groups).
We then all took turns to go and run our program. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
We then went back and adjusted (debugged) our program and had another go shortly after.
Basically gave us skills to plan what we wanted, write and test it and then identify problems and solve them by correcting the code.
Comment Logo language (turtle) (Score 2) 430
Back in primary school (15-20 years ago) i was introduced to programming using the Logo language (drawing the path of a turtle on the screen).
Syntax was something similar to:
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
OR:
REPEAT 4 [FD 100 LEFT 90]
Submission + - Back to the Future! 3
wisdom_brewing writes: Notable mention for the day: Today is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future after hitting 88mph in the Delorean back in 1985.
Scaling Algorithm Bug In Gimp, Photoshop, Others 368
Wescotte writes "There is an important error in most photography scaling algorithms. All software tested has the problem: The Gimp, Adobe Photoshop, CinePaint, Nip2, ImageMagick, GQview, Eye of Gnome, Paint, and Krita. The problem exists across three different operating systems: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. (These exceptions have subsequently been reported — this software does not suffer from the problem: the Netpbm toolkit for graphic manipulations, the developing GEGL toolkit, 32-bit encoded images in Photoshop CS3, the latest version of Image Analyzer, the image exporters in Aperture 1.5.6, the latest version of Rendera, Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1, Pixelmator for Mac OS X, Paint Shop Pro X2, and the Preview app in Mac OS X starting from version 10.6.) Photographs scaled with the affected software are degraded, because of incorrect algorithmic accounting for monitor gamma. The degradation is often faint, but probably most pictures contain at least an array where the degradation is clearly visible. I believe this has happened since the first versions of these programs, maybe 20 years ago."
Comment Re:Better ads (Score 1) 415
The old system i dont believe was broken. It gave me the privacy settings that i wanted.
Given it might be a bit confusing for novice users, but all they needed to give it was an interface facelift.
Right now i have less privacy than i had - i cant hide any comments/likes i make on the system and need to go through and individually delete them off my wall.
Comment Better ads (Score 5, Insightful) 415
What he's saying is it is his customers (advertisers not users) want less privacy, so they can target ads more profitably.
Submission + - vBulletin Management angers customers (theregister.co.uk)
ct2k7 writes: "vBulletin Management scoops low down to banning people who talk against their actions, do we see the times of detrimental reliance?"
Submission + - Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Dowloads (itnews.com.au)
bennyboy64 writes: iTnews reports that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) investigators claim to have recorded almost 100,000 instances of Australian internet service provider iiNet users making available online unauthorised copies of films and TV programs, lawyers for the film industry said in the Federal Court in Sydney today. The lawyers for the film industry claimed iiNet had done "nothing" to discourage copyright infringement on its network. For background on the case see iTnews' background piece which has a pretty graph. The case will be heard for four weeks. Today was day one.
Submission + - SPAM: Hydrogen fuel cell to charge your mobile phone
dreemteem writes: "Taiwanese researchers have built a new mobile-phone recharger based on fuel cell technology they say will cost little once manufacturing partners are on board.
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
Submission + - iSnack 2.0 gets Toasted (news.com.au) 3
hools1234 writes: "Australian icon 'Vegemite' released a new product name on Saturday called 'iSnack 2.0'. It was poorly received, with Vegemite enduring a storm of consumer outrage over its tampering with the Vegemite brand. The new product is a combination of the traditional Vegemite sandwich spread mixed with Cream Cheese. Within hours fury was unleashed on Twitter, Facebook and Blogs labeling the name as an 'epic fail' or #vegefail. The Australian is now reporting that within only three days of launch, Kraft has announced it will hold a national vote to come up with a new name.
The iSnack 2.0 name was suggested in a competition that attracted over 40,000 entries to name the product, with the orginal Vegemite spread named in the same fashion. iSnack 2.0 is believed to have been chosen so as to resonate with the young and hip iProducts phenomenon such as iPod and iPhone. To make matters worse, the iSnack name is already under copyright to sandwich-press maker Breville. We just hope the new name isn't iSnack 3.0!
It seems iSnack 2.0 wasn't compatible. FAIL."
The iSnack 2.0 name was suggested in a competition that attracted over 40,000 entries to name the product, with the orginal Vegemite spread named in the same fashion. iSnack 2.0 is believed to have been chosen so as to resonate with the young and hip iProducts phenomenon such as iPod and iPhone. To make matters worse, the iSnack name is already under copyright to sandwich-press maker Breville. We just hope the new name isn't iSnack 3.0!
It seems iSnack 2.0 wasn't compatible. FAIL."
Comment Re:use a hash/timestamp (Score 1) 283
Thanks to overbaud's reply below. By hash i was meaning a solution such as guid value. I was speaking generically and not taking the literal meaning of hash for the purpose of being database agnostic.
Comment use a hash/timestamp (Score 1) 283
Create a timestamp/random hash and store it against each record, then include it in your update query.
UPDATE table SET
data1 = @Data,
hash = NewHash()
WHERE ID = @ID
AND Hash = @Hash
Every save, change the hash to a new value.
If someone has changed the record and another person goes to save it, the hash wont match and 0 records will be updated. This can then be captured in your web application.
If 0 records updated - display error saying "user has already changed record, please reload page"
If 1 records updated - display success.
Parental Control Software Datamines Kids' Online Conversations 105
An AP report reveals that web-monitoring software from Sentry and FamilySafe, both developed by EchoMetrix Inc., is harvesting data from kids' online chats, trying to determine their opinions on games, movies, and music. The data is then sold to other companies for advertising purposes.
"In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. ... Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out. But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday."
