Darkk - Slashdot User

Ubisoft DRM Causing More Problems 279

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 03 2010, @01:52PM
from the there's-a-lesson-here-that-nobody-will-learn dept.

Joe Helfrich writes "Ubisoft's Settlers 7 servers have been causing problems for over a week for users worldwide, and Australian gamers are hardly able to connect at all. 'The problem reportedly strikes after the game has already confirmed an active Internet connection, and prevents the user from playing even the single-player campaign, returning the error "server not available." But they are available, because other people are logged into them and merrily playing away.' Wonder how they're going to describe this one as an attack."

Comment: That's fine (Score 4, Insightful) 392

by Darkk on Wednesday March 31 2010, @02:09AM (#31683490) Attached to: Solaris No Longer Free As In Beer

We still have choices of free OS to choose from.

They don't scare me.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats 542

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 24 2010, @05:30PM
from the subsidies-cause-fatter-corn-farmers dept.

krou writes "In an experiment conducted by a Princeton University team, 'Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.' Long-term consumption also 'led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.' Psychology professor Bart Hoebel commented that 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.'"

Comment: Re:Voc Rehab (Score 1) 727

by Darkk on Saturday March 13 2010, @03:51PM (#31466010) Attached to: Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive?

Years ago the doctors suggested to get the implant too but I can hear ok most of the time.

What risks are associated with surgery? It used to be 50/50 chance which is why I didn't do it.

Comment: I am in the same boat too with these things (Score 4, Insightful) 727

by Darkk on Saturday March 13 2010, @03:38PM (#31465850) Attached to: Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive?

I too have to wear one and it's ungodly expensive. My argument is the fact I need them to have a normal life and work. So if people can get glasses for fairly low price and it's a item that people need then why can't insurance companies provide coverage too? Reason for that it's very specialized market and expensive.

Don't get one of those cheapie $49.95 hearing aids from the ads as they do not provide the proper specs to the type of hearing loss you have. In fact it'll make your hearing worse. It'll be like listening to iPod all day long.

See if they can offer a payment plan.

Good luck.

Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive? 727

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 13 2010, @03:30PM
from the what-the-market-will-hear dept.

sglines writes "Over the last couple of years I've been slowly getting deaf. Too much loud rock and roll I suppose. After flubbing a couple of job interviews because I couldn't understand my inquisitors, I had a hearing test which confirmed what I already knew: I'm deaf. So I tried on a set of behind-the-ear hearing aids. Wow, my keyboard makes clacks as I type and my wife doesn't mumble to herself. Then I asked how much: $3,700 for the pair. Hey, I'm unemployed. The cheapest digital hearing aids they had were $1,200 each. If you look at the specs they are not very impressive. A digital hearing aid has a low-power A-to-D converter. Output consists of D-to-A conversion with volume passing through an equalizer that inversely matches your hearing loss. Most hearing loss, mine included, is frequency dependent, so an equalizer does wonders. The 'cheap' hearing aids had only four channels while the high-end one had twelve. My 1970 amplifier had more than that. I suppose they have some kind of noise reduction circuitry, too, but that's pretty much it. So my question is this: when I can get a very good netbook computer for under $400 why do I need to pay $1,200 per ear for a hearing aid? Alternatives would be welcome."

Outlook 2010 Bug Creates Monster Email Files 126

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 17 2010, @06:22PM
from the rodents-of-unusual-size dept.

Julie188 writes with this snippet from Network World "Office 2010 is still in beta and a patch is already out. Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space. The Outlook product team has offered a bug fix for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems that fixes the problem going forward, although previous emails will remain super-sized. This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry."

Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All 269

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 24 2010, @01:56PM
from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.

cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.

Microsoft Patches "Google Hack" Flaw In IE 142

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 21 2010, @05:40PM
from the you-saw-this-coming dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As expected, Microsoft has issued an out-of-band security patch to address a remote code execution hole in Internet Explorer that was used in the recent Chinese attacks disclosed by Google. Ars Technica has all the download links you need."

Psystar Activation Servers Down? 245

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 09 2010, @06:49PM
from the bad-news-bears dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I purchased Rebel EFI in support of Psystar's crusade back in October. Just 3 short months later, I have no support. I found this out when I upgraded my hard drive and installed Snow Leopard using Rebel EFI. The program can no longer 'phone home' to activate or download/install drivers. This is a direct contradiction to Psystar's promise posted on their website: 'Psystar will continue to support all of its existing customers of hardware and software through this transitional period. Warranties on hardware will continue to be honored as long the customer has a valid warranty. Rebel EFI support for existing customers, as always, will remain exclusively available through email and the built-in ticket interface.' Has anyone else run into this issue? It has been 9 days with no response from Psystar by e-mail or phone."