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Comment Re:Yeah, Screen replacement works wonders. (Score 1) 544

Depends if your laptop uses a model that allows you to remove the backlight from the rest of the screen with relative ease versus having to dissect the screen down to the "I can see the different layers of the LCD" level.

I had to go the dissection route. There's a few dust marks left behind from it, but they're not $100+ worth of annoyance to me.

Comment Yeah, Screen replacement works wonders. (Score 1) 544

Most screens will run $100, and while laptops aren't made to be "easy" to repair, You'd be replacing the entire screen, which is just popping the case open and unscrewing a few things.

I've replaced the backlight on my laptop's screen (a much harder task!), so this ought to be gravy for you, and cheaper than repairing it otherwise.

Comment Re:Somebody Had to Ask It... (Score 4, Insightful) 544

Yeah... on the list of "Stupid Ways to Get Your Laptop Stolen", we have:

#8: "Oh, it's okay, my friend's watching it"
#7: Leave it in the car
#6: Pass out at a frat house
#5: Two words: Finals Week
#4: Take a leak while "telecommuting" at Starbucks
#3: Work for a government agency
#2: Check your laptop with your airplane luggage
#1: Put child porn on it. (for a legal alternative, your social security number will also do.)

Seriously, to actually trust TSA to be doing their job 100% of the time and NOT screw with your valuables? You're nuts.

Comment Derivative?! (Score 1) 380

Well of course everything is derivative. YOU are derivative. You have copied what your education system has foisted onto us all so you can graduate and become yet another derivative cog in the system.

If you were given a chance to see something truly original... you would go insane from trying to comprehend it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsIncomprehensible indeed.

Comment Re:wtf is sexting? (Score 1) 711

It's the new "Media Buzzword" for Sexually Explicit Text Messages / Picture Messaging.

I've been hearing it a lot on HARO lately (a media trough for reporters looking for sources for articles and books -- it's also a nice predictor of media trends anywhere from a week to two months or so in the future), so apparently somebody thinks it's newsworthy that kids are swapping around dirty pictures of each other.

Comment Yes, but how much is that vs. alternative actions? (Score 1) 516

And without the internet, we'd be spending a LOT more than that.

Imagine the gas wasted on trips to the bookstore, vs. aggregation of purchases through Amazon, the reduced waste thanks to Print-On-Demand... you get the idea.

Google is, for all intents and purposes, the cost of business. I'm all for reducing Google's energy consumption, but it's a lot better than the non-internet alternatives.

Comment Re:Get it in both forms (Score 4, Insightful) 715

You don't.

In the solution posted above, you're paying for a legal copy, but still downloading and using the pirated form as the e-book you desired to begin with.

Alternatively, you make it into an E-book yourself. Tedious, yes, but I remember one Hungarian girl copying a Harry Potter book by hand so she could have a print copy. Be thankful typing isn't nearly so tedious.

Submission + - Could Microsoft Stop the Spam?

stu42j writes: "Some notable bloggers have been talking about the spam wars — are we winning, can we win? We know that most spam is sent through botnets of compromised Windows PCs. Ignoring the question of fault or responsibility, what would you do to fix the problem, if you were in charge at Microsoft? Could Microsoft shut down the botnets?"
Software

Submission + - Guide Dogs and Making Babies - The New Gaming

ShrapnelFace writes: "Penny Arcade is reporting on a story that was first posted at Kotaku, but then taken down. Directing us to the same story regarding Peter Molyneux's interview about the upcoming title, Fable 2, we find a new dawn in gaming- Dogs and Babies.

http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/11557/New_Fab le_2_Feature_Dog_Sidekick.html

A direct quote from Peter in this article:
[quote] "There is the appreciation the wide world feels toward your character as he lives and fights in their world. There is the ability to make love and make babies. Yes, you can be both a man or a woman and if you're a woman, you can get pregnant. A first, he believes, for a main character in an RPG."[/quote]"
Windows

Submission + - Has XP Suddenly Slowed Down?

WhoaNotSoFast writes: For the last few weeks, I've noticed XP boxes slowing down dramatically. Typically the screen freezes for 10-30 seconds — e.g. the Start menu won't come up — and there's lots of disk activity. It's happening on unrelated PCs at different locations. I notice it most on quitting IE or Firefox, but it occurs at other times also. Most of the PCs have 256MB of RAM and adequate free disk space. Most are running Windows Firewall, AVG Anti-Virus and either Windows Defender or Counterspy Enterprise. They're not loading much else at startup. The XP event logs don't show anything unusual. I've run Rootkit Revealer on some of the machines, and found nothing. Task Manager doesn't show any excess CPU utilization. Unplugging the network connection doesn't seem to make a difference. Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Is there an infection I haven't found? Is there a paging problem? Has XP grown so large that it needs more physical memory? Or could it be a ploy by MS to nudge us toward Vista? Is XP developing early dementia? Or am I?

Feed Fancy Hybrids for the Eco Riche (wired.com)

BMW and DaimlerChrysler plan to co-develop luxury-model hybrid for market by 2010. Plus: Green Car Journal picks two "clean" diesels among the top five greenest cars. In Autopia.


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