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Comment Re:Does the glasses pose any danger to the eyes ? (Score 1) 124

You know what emits a lot of infrared light? The sun. Nobody ever complained (if ever, we can "complain" about the emitted UV light).

Actually try this: take welder googles (not mask), remove the lenses and replace them with stacked sheets of red and blue light filter (Rosco was the brand I used). This will block almost all visible light but let near-infrared come through. Wear these glasses in bright daylight, just never ever stare at the sun, really just don't. However, the result is, that you will see in the near-IR spectrum. Your rods/cones are not very sensible to this frequencies, so it must be a bright sunny day, but it works.

Just don't look at the sun directly, while your pupils are completely open, you would burn your retina pretty quickly.

Comment Re:The continuing saga. . . (Score 1) 177

For Mac it is quite unlikely, since all the standard directories are english only. They just happen to have file named ".localized" in them, and the Finder (but not "ls") will show their localized name. I find this to be actually a pretty good approach since you can change language at any moment and system-created folders will also magically get a localized name. To have the application fail if the locale is not english under Mac OS X you really need to go out of your way and do something contrived and stupid I guess. May DRM?

Comment Re:Does it do custom folders? (Score 1) 193

Back in the early days at mobileread.com Kovid was asked to to include an file management opt-out feature like iTunes, and he was 'meh, code it yourself'.

That's not a bad response at all, calibre is open source. "Code it yourself" does not meant he would not accept the patch, it just means he does not feel like doing it himself, which is reasonable

Comment Re:Steve Jobs has clout (Score 1) 681

Sir, you are just either old or retro. There is no real, logical reason to keep around a 286 and 386, much less move data around between them. If you got access to the internet and are using gmail, ajax website and the likes you probably also a normal computer and can use things like dropbox, which are free to exchange data with your friends.

Comment Re:Italian Pizza (Score 1) 920

The problem is that foreigners usually pick the worst restaurants, because they located are near the attractions. At the same time foreigners generally don't know the Italian names for pizzas. I for one love the Contadina (mozzarella, potatoes and sausages), Boscaiola (mozzarella, mushrooms and sausages), Quattro formaggi (4 kinds of cheese) and Diavola (tomato sauce and hot salami). You should also try the "sliced pizza", which is basically our fast-food. It is usually richer than round pizza, and in my opinion can better appeal the tastes of an American.



BTW: The word you are looking for is "peperoni" and not "pepperoni", also "margherita" and not "margheritta". Yes we have double consonants in many words, but not in every.

Comment Re:Italy: Best and Worst! (Score 1) 920

I live in Fiumicino, which you may know as the "Rome Airport". Other than being the Rome Airport, is also the "Rome restaurant". Indeed in Rome is pretty hard, especially in the center, to find a good pizza, because too many restaurants are targeted toward tourists. Usually they serve frozen pizza. In Fiumicino the pizza is very good in many restaurants. Also remember that in Rome we very often eat "sliced pizza" and not the round one, is much easier to find very tasty sliced pizza than a good round pizza here.

Comment Darcs (Score 1) 346

I am using Darcs and it seems to do the job. Is strange that it isn't even mentioned cause it has been around since quite some time and is pretty mature. The only problem I am having with Darcs is huge resource consumption (a copy of the repository is on a VPS with 256mb RAM, no swap) but you can move a repository by just copying it somewhere else (even across systems) without problems. What are the advantages of using Git/Mercurial/Bazaar? I think I need to mention that I am developing on OSX (but a copy of the repository is on a Linux system).
Networking

Submission + - Terrorists are like Starfish (?) (washingtontimes.com)

Mark D. Drapeau writes: "Could biological metaphors about networking and systems shed light on one of the most difficult issues of our time — terrorism? According to a new op-ed in the 31 July 2007 Washington Times, and a new book entitled The Starfish and the Spider, the answer is a resounding "Yes". An excerpt from the op-ed reads: *** Most large institutions are organized hierarchically with centralized leadership. Corporations have CEOs, armies have generals, countries have presidents. When competing against centralized organizations, promoting diffusion and disrupting cohesion are considered progressive. However, al Qaeda has a constantly mutating, horizontal structure composed of an inspirational catalyst in the form of Osama bin Laden and other central figures joined with numerous small groups brought together not by orders but ideology. Here, lack of structure is a strength. Little thought is given, however, to how such a decentralized terrorist network structure affects the strategy for combating it. "The Starfish and the Spider," a new book about corporate strategy written for a business audience, has a wider application — combating terrorism — and sheds light on this issue.*** Read more here: http://washingtontimes.com/article/20070731/COMMEN TARY/107310009/1012 And here: http://www.starfishandspider.com/"
Biotech

Submission + - Plastic artificial bone (rutgers.edu)

pnosker writes: "Researchers at Rutgers University have found a way to create artificial bone using a blend of usually immiscible plastics, both bio-compatible, where one plastic is dissolved and excreted creating an empty sponge-like region for natural bone to grow and a lattice of PMMA plastic for the growth to occur. The new material is undergoing further study and testing."
AMD

Submission + - AMD 690 Chipset Updated, Performance Boost (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: "Earlier this year, AMD launched its 690 series motherboard chipset and it was relatively well accepted for its affordability, power efficiency, and performance versus competitive chipsets. AMD has since taken the 690 series chipset and optimized it further through BIOS and software level enhancements that result in marked performance gains in a number of situations and also introduces new features. This article showcases a motherboard from Gigabyte that features the latest updates and compares its performance to the unaltered board from when the chipset was first introduced, to see just how much the platform's performance has matured. The majority of the performance enhancements were targeted toward better HD DVD and Blu-ray playback at 1080p."

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