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Comment It currently works on iPads only (Score 5, Informative) 329

On their What's new in iOS 4.3 page (You need an Apple ID to view link) they wrote:

Test Multi-Touch Gestures for iPad - This beta release contains a preview of new Multi-Touch gestures for iPad. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen; swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar; and swipe left or right between apps. We are providing this preview before releasing them to the public to understand how these gestures work with your apps. Test them and give us your feedback on the Apple Developer Forums.

I attempted a 4-finger-pinch on an iPod-Touch-4th-Gen development device with the latest 4.3 iOS Beta. Beside of being a very uncomfortable thing to perform on a small screen, I didn't notice anything else happening.

Comment Re:Addendum to first article is pretty good (Score 1) 206

Actually, organisms using each others code sounds way more like our world than ones that can't leech off each other. They already pointed out viruses, and plenty of species exist today that need other species to continue to survive.. in fact pretty much all animals need to eat other lifeforms because we can't draw energy from the sun directly.

Moreover, If the Endosymbiotic theory is correct, then our cells have statically-linked external code.

Comment Chuck Norris sued "Penguin" (Score 1) 193

I've also got to question the sense of naming a botnet like this. Sure it's memorable, but what's to stop Chuck Norris from taking legal action against the researchers who coined the name? I certainly wouldn't want my name associated with a criminal enterprise.

Reuters Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:21pm: Tough-guy actor and martial arts expert Chuck Norris sued publisher Penguin on Friday over a book he claims unfairly exploits his famous name, based on a satirical Internet list of "mythical facts" about him.

"Norris, whose real name is Carlos Ray Norris, claims in the suit he is protective of what his name is associated with."

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2129580420071222

Comment Underlying database of retail phone-directory apps (Score 1) 234

Long time ago, I used to work in a team that developed internal applications for a company that makes speech-recognition engines.
One time I was told that the company needs a Database containing histogram tables of European First and Last names, for each Country/Region in Europe.
This DB was needed for generating random data-sets with X - name couples (based on the relevant region histogram, pick X First and X Last names and then just concatenate them together).

For this purpose, I was given a retail DVD of a phone-book application.
Whatever DB format the application was using seemed to be encrypted or propitiatory (that's a logical or).
While the application query system was rather good (for this purpose), it did limit the amount of result fields you could mark for export (or copy), to something like 10 fields at a time.
So, I wrote a little tool (wasn't complicated) that automatically made queries and read each of the resulting pages.
For each result row, the first and last names were appended into separate text files of which file-names were linked to the query that produced them.
A perl script later, the Databse was ready.

Given such an application that allows you to export any field from it (even if it is indented that users would only do "manual" copies of small chunks).
Could a person who rips the full phone-directory, use it for commercial purposes?
For example, sell a module that enables users of eCommerce sites to have their Shipment details and Phone number fields be auto-completed (after filling the First Name,Last Name,Country,City fields).

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