Comment Re:I don't get it... (Score 1) 207
Skype and their PR people are calling the project "malicious" and "nefarious", but it sounds like all it does is emulate Skype
Prosecution rests...
Comment Translation (Score 2) 291
Sony's explanation for the Pass will probably leave you wishing Google Translate supported marketing-speak: "This is an important initiative as it allows us to accelerate our commitment to enhancing premium online services across our first party game portfolio."
Let me do the honors: "Bend over suckers."
Comment Re:Smell test (Score 2, Informative) 85
This just in: due to negative publicity surrounding his comments, WANdisco CEO David Richards has announced plans to rename the company WANkers.
I recently had to assist implementing this software, and trust me, your suggestion would be a much more appropriate name. WANdisco is a horribly expensive solution to a problem that can be solved in much better and cheaper ways (the most obvious one being using something better than SVN in the first place). WANdisco essentially tries to do is turn the turd that is SVN into the turd that is ClearCase. Bleh!
Comment Re:I'll take Christmas Grumbling (Score 1) 422
It's not exactly a new phenomenon either...
There are those who act rich, yet have nothing; and those who act poor, yet have great riches.
(Proverbs 13:7)
Comment Re:Confusing naming (Score 3, Funny) 152
...and a 9xxx card is older than either of them. It's all perfectly logical. :-)
Comment Re:Secrecy (Score 4, Insightful) 870
Whatever happened to justice against people who commit (war) crimes?
That "justice" only ever existed for the war criminals on the losing side. Silly.
Hong Kong Team Stores 90GB of Data In 1g of Bacteria 164
Bananana writes "A research team out of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found a way to do data encryption and storage with bacteria. The project is called 'Bioencryption,' and their presentation (as a PDF file) is here."
Comment Re:Easily swappable parts (Score 1) 151
Not necessarily. Apple's machines are generally very well designed but are generally a pain in the ass to dissemble and service.
That depends on what you mean by "well designed". Apple's offerings look good, and are decently sturdy, sure. They aren't designed with serviceability in mind, though. If anything they're designed to be a pain in the ass to service, so that noone besides Apple service points will want to touch them.
There should be no reason why a laptop couldn't be well designed like an Apple, and easy to service. These are in no way mutually exclusive, which was the GP's point.
Comment Re:Easily swappable parts (Score 1) 151
Not only that, but this might finally be a way to not being forced to pay the M$-tax on laptops. At least in this country it's currently - for all practical purposes - impossible.
Also, I used to work for a computer repair shop. We would have eaten these things up. We really hated the typical laptops which were a RPITA to work with, and almost impossible to fix even when you discovered the problem. I've really been looking forward to something like this.
Fighting Ad Blockers With Captcha Ads 450
krou writes "Living in an ad-free internet thanks to ad blockers? That could be a thing of the past if software firm NuCaptcha has their way by making captchas into ads. 'Instead of the traditional squiggly word that users have to decipher, the new system shows them a video advert with a short message scrolling across it. The user has to identify and retype part of the message to proceed. Companies including Electronic Arts, Wrigley and Disney have already signed up.'"
Comment Re:Fatally flawed!! (Score 1) 509
Let's take the "Pedestrian detection with auto brake" feature for example:
Let's also hope it works better than their vehicle detection with auto brake... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ6z3IArINI
Comment Re:My understanding is .... (Score 1) 357
While that's what the purely semantic meaning of the phrase would imply, it's not what the OSI means by "Open Source". Their definition http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd is far more narrow. So is the FSF's definition of "Free Software" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and these are the definitions most people use...
Comment Re:non-operating temperature range... (Score 1) 484
Perhaps Finnish winters aren't as frigid as I was led to believe.
Hmmm... (looks at thermometer). A nice brisk -24 C. I think I'll defrost my freezer today. Just toss the stuff out on the balcony, and I'm set.
(Posting from Helsinki, Finland)
Comment Re:I'm inpressed by the chemists who deduced ... (Score 4, Informative) 169
The funny thing is that the first person to deduce this (Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz) realized the solution to the problem of structure, after having a dream in which a snake bit its own tail.
Comment Re:A semantic quibble about these things (rant?) (Score 1) 461
No problem: "half life" is just the period of time that an atom has a 0.5 probability of surviving.
I believe that the GP was referring to the fact that the word "atom" means "undividable". But that's just my guess, of course...
