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Comment: Re:My solution for fixing Windows 8 (Score 1) 578

by Ecuador (#43909769) Attached to: A Serious Proposal To Fix Windows 8

First of all, you should try DoubleCommand. It helped me with changing key behavior across the OS.
Secondly, when creating an account with iTunes, there is an option for Payment method "none".
Apart from that I agree almost completely with your list. Well I guess I could add some things:
*Windows*
- I have 3 monitors and multiple app windows open at the same time. My workflow requires me to click (or right click) on one window, then to the other etc. On all other window managers I use, this is easily done. For OS X, if I have one application "active", then I have to left click on the window of another app to "activate" it, then I can click or right click in that application. To me, this is "1995 called and asked for their window manager" bad and it is significantly impacting my productivity.
- Dock. Crap. I have even noticed that it sometimes gets the "program is running" highlight wrong! It doesn't do much else. How about giving us something like a taskbar - no, expose is not always useful to locate an application window when you have multiple applications over many monitors. Also I am having trouble finding the window I am looking for if I have multiple windows open for an application (expose sort of stacks them) - all that space taken by the dock could be used to help perhaps something like that.
*Multiple monitors"
- Sometimes I need to move applications from one monitor to the other (especially if I am sending the 3rd monitor output to the room next door with the projector and an application starts there instead of on a monitor in front of me). For windows there is a keyboard shortcut. OS X had something possibly better, spaces. They took it out in Mountain lion (because of course you don't need multi-monitor functionality when we are trying to migrate you to an ipad?) so now I have to pay for it.
*Keyboard / Mouse*
- I have the wireless keyboard, so I have different issues than you. In fact I envy you. You have 2 "delete" keys? I don't even have ONE! So, for the wireless keyboard they got rid of Insert, Home, End, Pg up/down and also Delete! At least, unlike yours, mine has "alt".
- Reversing the mouse scroll wheel direction - brilliant! (not)
*USB/CD/DVD transfer rate*
- Whenever I try to transfer files from/to my thumb-drives (pretty expensive ones too, different brands) on my Mac Pro, I get speeds less than 1MB/sec. If I fire up a Win XP VM right there, I can transfer through it (to/from the same Mac filesystem) dozens of MB/s. Reproducible every time, hasn't seen any difference since Lion. Similar but less pronounced is my experience with CD/DVD transfers. On the same machine I can read CD/DVD data at least 2x faster through windows. How? Why? It does not make any sense!

Comment: Re:Summary (Score 1) 228

by Ecuador (#43562187) Attached to: Salesforce, a Pillow Maker and a $125k AmEx Bill

The employee's card being charged doesn't make my pillow look good either.

It says that SF held the project hostage, they demanded that payment right then and there and My Pillow tried to cut them a check but they refused. Apparently their corporate card had less than $125k limit and the employee was happy to make a couple thousand dollars or so in rewards.

If it is true that SF missed the deadlines twice and yet charged also twice the original estimate, I can't see how they could be suing for "damages"...

Comment: How did you watch the series? (Score 1) 127

by Ecuador (#43539895) Attached to: Netflix: 'Arrested Development' Won't Crash Our Service

If you saw some random episodes, then there was really not much chance to like it. That is one of the reasons the show did not pick up more viewers during its run (along with the fact that its schedule was not consistent of course).
The series is pretty self-referential as it goes on, so some of the best jokes cannot be appreciated. Also, its strength is that there is a design, things don't just happen at random. For example a certain Korean character sort of stops appearing on some episode and is not mentioned for quite a while. Many episodes later you find out the reason.
Also, the characters are so extreme that for the first few episodes you can't easily "feel" them (or for them) which sort of kills it. I started watching the show because a friend of mine (Seinfeld fan) told me it was great. For the first couple of episodes I was really unimpressed and it was mostly for the aforementioned reason. But I watched another, then another and got hooked. I now yell at my friend when he tries to compare the best American comedy series (Arrested Development) with stuff like Seinfeld.
But of course it is a comedy and humor is highly subjective. And I am also very subjective when I tell you that if you don't like it (after watching at least the first 3-4 episodes) you are probably a humorless idiot. Or you might need to see an analrapist.

Comment: Not just for the extra memory. (Score 4, Interesting) 332

by Ecuador (#43521109) Attached to: 64-bit x86 Computing Reaches 10th Anniversary

In our algorithms lab there were programs that would gain more than 2x when compiled for 64 bit.
A more "real-world" example is when I started in 2005 at my current company. The engineers had 6-month old P4s @ 3.2 or 3.4GHz, running 32bit linux. For a project they used VisualStudio on VMWare and it took over a minute to compile the project. The company allowed engineers to choose their hardware, so I built an Athlon 64 @ 2.2 or 2.4GHz and I had it run 64bit SuSE. I remember the shock and awe from the first time I tried to compile the project under VMWare - a little more than 10 secs - the engineer next to me had his jaw drop. Of course most of the engineers immediately requested to switch to 64bit machines. I am not sure why it made such a difference in that application - perhaps the 16 general purpose registers come in really handy in this scenario? Of course it didn't help that the P4 was slower in everything (funny how at the time very few reviews really clarified this), but not order of magnitude slower...

Comment: Re:Make him run the Marathon (Score 1) 773

by Ecuador (#43504817) Attached to: Police Capture Second Marathon Bombing Suspect in Watertown, Mass.

You remember the joke...

Bush and Powell were sitting in a bar. A guy walked in and asked the barman, "Isn't that Bush and Powell?"

The barman said, "Yep, that's them."

So the guy walked over and said, "Hello. What are you guys doing?"

Bush said, "We're planning World War III."

The guy asked, "Really? What's going to happen?"

Bush said, "Well, we're going to kill 10 million Iraqis and one bicycle repairman."

The guy exclaimed, "Why are you gonna kill a bicycle repairman?!"

Bush turned to Powell and said, "See, I told you no one would worry about the 10 million Iraqis!"

Comment: Re:This is total rubbish (Score 1) 251

Ehm, remember that the "Americans" you refer to are descendants of people from all over the world who came to the US to make a life for themselves. Your solution is the opposite of what is required. Instead of trying to exclude talented foreigners so that they won't compete with "Americans", why don't you instead give the good ones an incentive to stay? E.g. give them a visa that does not make their spouse ineligible for work. Set up an easier process for those who have MS/PhD from good US universities - you provided them the best education in the world (for many disciplines), why not try to hang on to them?
My company was looking for a software engineer in NY. Trust me, there are no US software engineers left unemployed that are worth anything - actually even incompetent ones were usually not without a job.

Comment: Why so much Wayland? (Score 3, Insightful) 197

by Ecuador (#43462611) Attached to: Wayland 1.1 Released — Now With Raspberry Pi Support

Call me ignorant. but can someone explain why we have more than a post per week either about or mentioning Wayland for the last couple of months? Is it really that interesting for the average /. user to hear about every feature added to Wayland or every project/company whatever that supports or does not support Wayland in some way? Or is it just one of those strange obsessions of the /. editors?
I understand it is an important project, supposed to be the successor to X11 etc so it has more interest to geeks than, say, bitcoins, but is it really that interesting?

Comment: Re:Laptop batteries, anyone? (Score 2) 157

by Ecuador (#43454079) Attached to: Memory Effect Discovered In Lithium-Ion Batteries

I don't see how plugged-in laptop batteries dieing has anything to do with a memory effect. Lithium-Ion batteries when stored lose capacity depending on how much they are charged and how high the temperature is. At the relatively high temperatures of a laptop and kept at near 100% charge they can lose as much as 40% capacity per year. This is a known fact and has nothing to do with what is called memory-effect. The summary talks about a specific (and not widely used as I understand it) kind of Lithium battery which has a memory effect (in addition I assume to the effect I described that kills Li-Ion batteries).
If you want to make sure your Li-Ion batteries won't go bad, when you don't use charge (or discharge) them to 40% capacity and put them far from heat.

Comment: Re:Or switch to solar. (Score 1) 189

by Ecuador (#43383745) Attached to: Leak Found In Fukushima Tank Holding Radioactive Water

I'm not sure why you would say this. It is true that you could not have a power network with ONLY solar power without any sort of energy storage, however the big advantage of solar power is that the production is high when it is required - i.e. during the day. So power companies can take advantage of that and increase their output during peak hours using solar PV energy.

The clothes have no emperor. -- C.A.R. Hoare, commenting on ADA.

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