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Comment Not entirely reliable (Score 3, Interesting) 61

One of the reasons I bought an Apple Watch was for its fall detection feature. I go riding, including on trails, by my self quite regularly. I hoped that it would provide a measure of emergency protection. Does it detect a fall when I bang my hand down on the back of the knife to cleave a bone? Yup. Does it detect a fall when I do a Laugh In level bicycle tip over (Google it)? Yup. Did it alert when I tagged a handlebar on a tree and got flipped off the trail landing 8 feet down an embankment, knocked unconscious briefly with broken ribs and a bruise lung? Nope. Not a peep.

Comment I just want it to work, (Score 3, Insightful) 38

I don't care if the new version shines or not, I just want it to work. Microsoft's development of Office products has been abysmal. There is a completely different UI with differing degrees of features and functionality on the various platforms. For example, the Mac version of Outlook does not support Contact Groups which is a pretty fundamental feature for an email client. They also have questionable priorities. For example, users of Teams can now use emojis, but the members of a team are still listed in an apparently random order and cannot be sorted. If Office 365 were a fairly new product to the market it would crash and burn.

Government

Microsoft Should Face the Same Antitrust Scrutiny as Facebook, Republican Says (theverge.com) 81

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is calling on Microsoft to face the same antitrust scrutiny as other large tech platforms in a letter to the company Monday. From a report: In the letter, Jordan asks Microsoft president Brad Smith if he believes the company would be affected by the swath of antitrust bills introduced in the House earlier this month. There are five bills in total, spanning from offering up more money for antitrust enforcers to banning large tech platforms from buying up small competitors. The antitrust package came out of a yearslong investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The measures focus on the anticompetitive behaviors of these four companies, and it's not as clear how they would affect other large companies like Microsoft. While Microsoft meets the standard laid out under these bills to be considered a "covered platform," like meeting the over $600 billion market cap and 50 million monthly active users, the bills don't target the company's specific lines of business.

"Big Tech, including Microsoft, Inc., is out to get conservatives," Jordan said in his Monday letter. "It is unclear why Microsoft has avoided significant attention from House Democrats." Assumably, Microsoft would face the same proposed standards in acquiring companies, like taking on the burden of proof, and making the data it takes from users more portable and usable on other platforms. But whereas Amazon and Apple would face more structural changes, like selling off separate lines of business, Microsoft would likely not be subject to the rules.

Comment Al posted a registration code (Score 5, Informative) 23

For those that missed it, Al has posted a registration code on the home page of the Cap.n Magneto site. And to all the haters out there, no, Al is not still trying to earn money off this 35 years later.

Got to http://www.capnmagneto.com/ind... and look at Al's most recent posting.

Comment Re: Investigated != Guilty (Score 1) 85

You need to read what he wrote again. Test started at 12:33 and finished at 12:56. But at 12:45, in the middle of the test, the student clicked on the course module, which presumably has the information in it that they are being tested on. That is the electronic version of opening the text book in the middle of an exam.

I know nothing about Canvas and am not defending it, just pointing out that you are inappropriately attacking the poster.

Comment It doesn't take much, and there's no recourse (Score 4, Interesting) 40

Many years ago we had a blog of our travels. It was a small audience of mostly friends and fellow travelers. We put an ad banner at the top hoping to get some small amount of money to offset the hosting costs. After about 6 months we got a communication from Google that our account was suspended and that I would have a lifetime ban from ever using Google Adsense again. On our next installment we wrote about that in passing, along with more tails of our travels. One friend emailed us telling us that it might have been him as he always clicked the ads, sometimes multiple times, in a misguided effort to help us out. Apparently that's all it takes to get bounced from Google. And unless you're a major player for a huge audience, there is no recourse.

Comment If only DDG actually worked (Score 1) 42

I keep trying their search engine and give up almost immediately. The most recent time, a few months ago, I tried searching for a technical article from Microsoft. Even after typing in the exact title of the article DDG couldn't find it. It wasn't a subscription article, or one one of their obscure servers. I keep coming to the conclusion that DDG, while well intended, is mostly useless as a search engine.

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