Comment: Re:some will look for even the smallest error (Score 1) 319
So I've got one person replying to me saying FSF is too "fundamentalist", and I've got you saying they're too lax and are letting too much slip through.
Finding such behavior on
Comment: You could do a lot worse (Score 1) 319
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad X60 that I've used for several years as a drawing tablet. (I assume the models being sold for this are without the very-proprietary patented Wacom digitizer). The swivel hinges don't hold up too well to abuse (I've had to do a "hip replacement" on mine), but it's otherwise a good piece of hardware for its day.
Comment: easy come, easy go (Score 1) 176
Well, with the value of Bitcoin already rapidly declining, they may not have to worry about it for much longer.
Oregon Signs Up Just 44 People For Obamacare Despite Spending $300 Million 586
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the try-again-later dept.
from the try-again-later dept.
cold fjord writes "The Washington Examiner reports, 'Oregon ... signed up just 44 people for insurance through November, despite spending more than $300 million on its state-based exchange. The state's exchange had the fewest sign-ups in the nation, according to a new report today by the Department of Health and Human Services. The weak number of sign-ups undercuts two major defenses of Obamacare from its supporters. One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states. But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants. Another defense of the Obama administration has attributed the troubled rollout of Obamacare to the obstruction of Republican governors who wanted to see the law fail as well as a lack of funding. But Oregon is a Democratic state that embraced Obamacare early and enthusiastically.'"
Comment: Doomed (Score 1) 225
Doom came out around the time that I lost interest in gaming. I think the fact that the medium was overtaken by first-person shooters was part of the reason.
Comment: Re:iPad (Score 1) 370
Congratulations on your statistics-defying eyesight, but "tablet equivalent to those phones with the big numbers" sounds like an acknowledgement that his father is experiencing the changes in eyesight that are typical of people in their 70s.
Comment: Re:iPad (Score 5, Insightful) 370
Did you read the question? How are the cameras and higher resolution worth anything to a man in his 70s who just wants to read e-mail and watch movies? The high pixel density on the latest displays is wasted on someone with declining eyesight and presbyopia (and encourages app developers who don't understand this to use tiny fonts, just because they can). And I can't recall the last time I used a camera while reading e-mail or watching a movie. He was asking about a tablet for his father, not for you.
Comment: Re:iPad (Score 5, Informative) 370
One advantage of getting him an iPad that can run iOS7 is the fact that it has a setting to scale the default font size up and down. It only works for apps that support it, but the built-in Mail app is one of them, so you can scale the text size up for him.
Comment: Re:How hard is it? (Score 1) 408
by
tverbeek
(#45594559)
Attached to: Death to the Trapezoid... Next USB Connector Will Be Reversible
"I do love the headphone jack. Simple, easy, and universal."
And as doomed as POTS and broadcast NTSC. The headphone jack is currently the constraining design factor that prevents phones and tablets from getting any thinner. I guarantee you that Apple is working on a flat (reversible) replacement for the iPhone 6 or 7 or 8; the only question (other than when) is whether it'll be an open standard that will (over a few years) be embraced by the rest of the industry, proprietary to Apple, or something halfway in between that gets adopted by some manufacturers but not others and splits the media-playing industry into VHS and Beta again.
Spotify's Own Math Suggests Musicians Are Still Getting Hosed 244
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the go-put-your-favorite-band-on-repeat dept.
from the go-put-your-favorite-band-on-repeat dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Spotify wants to change the perception that it's killing artists' ability to make a living off music. In a new posting on its Website, the streaming-music hub suggests that songs' rights-holders earn between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream, on average, and that a niche indie album on the service could earn an artist roughly $3,300 per month (a global hit album, on the other hand, would rack up $425,000 per month). 'We have succeeded in growing revenues for artists and labels in every country where we operate, and have now paid out over $1 billion USD in royalties to-date ($500 million of which we paid in 2013 alone),' the company wrote. 'We have proudly achieved these payouts despite having relatively few users compared to radio, iTunes or Pandora, and as we continue to grow we expect that we will generate many billions more in royalties.' But does that really counter all those artists (including Grizzly Bear and Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500) who are on the record as saying that Spotify streaming only earns them a handful of dollars for tens of thousands of streaming plays? Let's say an artist earns $0.0084 per stream; it would still take 400,000 'plays' per month in order to reach that indie-album threshold of approximately $3,300. (At $0.006 per stream, it would take 550,000 streams to reach that baseline.) If Spotify's 'specific payment figures' with regard to albums are correct, that means its subscribers are listening to a lot of music on repeat. And granted, those calculations are rough, but even if they're relatively ballpark, they end up supporting artists' grousing that streaming music doesn't pay them nearly enough. But squeezed between labels and publishers that demand lots of money for licensing rights, and in-house expenses such as salaries and infrastructure, companies such as Spotify may have little choice but to keep the current payment model for the time being."
Comment: Attempt No Landing There (Score 4, Funny) 161
The Sentinel is going to be pissed that we'd already contaminated Europa.
Chicxulub Impact Might Have Spread Life-Bearing Rocks Through the Solar System 161
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the big-boom dept.
from the big-boom dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico, devastating Earth and triggering the sequence of events that wiped out the dinosaurs. This impact ejected 70 billion kg of Earth rock into space. To carry life around the Solar System, astrobiologists say these rocks must have stayed cool, less than 100 degrees C, and must also be big, more than 3 metres in diameter to protect organisms from radiation in space. Now they have calculated that 20,000 kilograms of this Earth ejecta must have reached Europa, including at least one or two potentially life-bearing rocks. And they say similar amounts must have reached other water-rich moons such as Callisto and Titan. Their conclusion is that if we find life on the moons around Saturn and Jupiter, it could well date from the time of the dinosaurs (or indeed from other similar impacts)."
Explorer Plans Hunt For Genghis Khan's Long-Lost Tomb 243
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the awesome-digs dept.
from the awesome-digs dept.
Velcroman1 writes "The tomb of brutal Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan — the one who created the world's most powerful empire by raiding and invading across Eurasia, not Kirk's nemesis — is a lost treasure archaeologists have sought for years. And one man thinks he knows where it is. Last fall Alan Nichols, the president of The Explorers Club, mapped out possible locations for the tomb of Khan (also known as Chinnggis Qa'an). His hypothesis: Khan's tomb is located in the Liupan Mountains in Northern China, where the emperor who was born in 1162 and is said to have perished from an arrow wound in August 1227. Next fall, Nichols plans the next phase of his research: pinpointing Khan's exact resting place. 'Ghengis Khan's tomb is my obsession,' Nichols, a noted authority on the emperor, said recently. 'I couldn't stop thinking about it. But I'm not happy just reading about it, or knowing about it. I need to have my feet on it.'"
Comment: Re:20% failure rate in 3 years is LOW? (Score 2) 277
I was curious to look at this article until I saw that it was based on only 4 years of data, and concluded that it was of no real value.
Comment: Yet Another CGI Superhero Movie (Score 4, Insightful) 233
Once upon a time, when a superhero movie with a budget and talent behind it came along once every few years, they were pretty exciting and entertaining. But with Marvel squeezing out films as quickly as they can turn the crank, plus Warner getting one out now and then, and fantasy/sci-fi films (e.g. Middle Earth, Transformers) being made from the same big-budget CGI-heavy dimly-lit mold, there's getting to be very little special about any of them.