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Comment Re:Then (Score 1) 321

Obvious non native English speakers do not understand that "then" is a form of time and "than" is a form of consequence.

I'm pretty sure it's the native speakers who have the most trouble with this. Many foreign countries teach English primarily by reading and writing it. Then the than/then difference is obvious. It's only when you learn English by listening that you have trouble with this. I only started having these kind of accidents once I started thinking/speaking fluently in English (not just then/than, but things like file/fail).

Oh yes, I am a native Dutch speaker.

Maybe they teach you English differently down there than in Finland :)

Comment Re:INterface guidlines (Score 1) 168

Look at the first "Look and feel" dialog. What the hell is that "cancel" button doing in there? There are two choices. One of them is already selected, but the OK button is greyed out. I think, since I've never used Vista.. Even if that greying out means it's simply not focused, what is the purpose of the OK/Cancel there? Does the cancel mean the same as the second option? Does it mean it's going to ask you again the next time? It should be clearly said there, not left to user's guesstimation. I guess it's an improvement, but that page is definitely not something that should be pointed to as an example of good UI design.

Comment Re:I think Reply All is very useful (Score 5, Informative) 256

>>>Hitting reply-all on old emails destroys threading on pretty much all clients that support it.

(1) Don't care because it saves me typing ~50 emails.
(2) Not if you change the subject. Then it starts a new thread.

No it doesn't. If you hit reply button, it adds In-Reply-To: and/or References: headers, so your new message will still show up as belonging to an old thread. Changing the subject doesn't change this in any email clients I know of.

Comment Re:Research, really? (Score 1) 98

Q: What other artificial life/intelligence projects are you keeping tabs on? What should we be excited about?
A: Oh, I’m the wrong person to ask. I try not to look. ...and then he goes on about not wanting to be "polluted" as an artist. While claiming this is not a game, but research.

Research and science, that is uninterested in what is being done in the field... I have a hard time coming up with something that fits that bill except pseudo-science.

Well, considering how awesome all the AIs that all the REAL researchers have already managed to produce, I'm shocked that anyone even considers trying any alternative approaches, without even thinking about how such magnificent beings came into existence. I mean, how could you possibly compete with the researchers' AIs that just in a few more years will already be available for everyone to run in their own computers, performing all kinds of complex tasks only by describing them to the AI. As a programmer myself, I fear it's the end of my days as the recently developed AIs will soon out-program myself, generating perfect code and design themselves.

Comment Re:Who needs the URL bar? (Score 1) 343

I bet phishers will love this feature...

Well, google probably fares much better for most people than typing the URL directly. There's a reason why scammers register typoed URLs.

Then there are of course a lot of people who already use google to type any web addresses, not realizing there's even such a thing as URL bar.

Comment Re:Wow just how wrong can one be. (Score 1) 351

1. An Echange replacement. Not 8 things I can lash up to work but a single system that is easy to install that offers all the features of Exchange with none of the pain. Oh and it must work with Outlook and should have a good client that does everything Outlook does plus a good web interface.

Fully open source Exchange replacement is finally available, thanks to SOGo and Openchange people: http://www.sogo.nu/english.html

It's also awesome that it can use your existing IMAP server for mail storage rather than reimplementing its own. Also if you don't want to lash up 8 things together, they have all-in-one package you can install.

Submission + - The real Free and Open Source Exchange Replacement (www.sogo.nu) 2

extrafu writes: Recently, the SOGo developers at Inverse developed together with the OpenChange team a storage provider that reuses much of the SOGo code. This means Microsoft Outlook can talk to SOGo just like if it was an Exchange server. This is a major step in the FOSS groupware world as costly MAPI connectors can now be avoided for Microsoft Outlook users and they can benefit from a modern groupware server to handle all their needs. A video demonstrating Outlook connected to SOGo through OpenChange server is available from the SOGo website. And yes, everything is available under the GNU GPL and is under active development.

Comment Re:Explanation / apology (Score 1) 465

The space for poll questions is limited; I chopped out "x1000" in the question so it would fit in the box, but failed to add "k"

I first thought about that, but it wouldn't make much sense either. Multiplying by 1000 would put pretty much everyone to the 1-3000 option. Even with distance between US and Europe you won't get past the second option, and maybe not even into the second option.

Comment Re:Somewhat unrelated, but (Score 1) 251

By default sudo gives just an error about "switch your device to R&D mode if you want to break your device". You have to install a separate gainroot package to do it without R&D mode. Anyone who does either of those should be experienced enough to realize what the consequences are.

Of course, allowing ALL users rather than just the normal "user" to get root privileges is worse. And yes, a quick look at /etc/sudoers does look as if any user could simply do that. But I just tried:

1. start xterm
2. sudo gainroot
3. su (some other user than "user")
4. sudo gainroot -> it asks for password!
5. su user
6. sudo gainroot -> it works (just as in step 2)

So the user named "user" apparently is checked in (all? of) those scripts that sudo is allowed to execute. It's perfect. Just what you'd expect.

Comment Ads with movement (Score 5, Interesting) 507

I probably never would have bothered to install adblock if ads were just still images. Maybe once in a while I might even see some interesting ad. Facebook and Google ads are like that, they've never bothered me. But pretty much all other ads are animated, so they keep trying to distract me from reading the actual page. Wonder if advertisers could be encouraged switch to still images by having adblock implement a mode where they're not filtered.

Science

How To Build a Quantum Propulsion Machine 392

KentuckyFC writes "According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum will be filled with electromagnetic waves leaping in and out of existence. It turns out that these waves can have various measurable effects, such as the Casimir-Polder force, which was first measured accurately in 1997. Just how to exploit this force is still not clear. Now, however, a researcher at an Israeli government lab suggests how it could be possible to generate propulsion using the quantum vacuum. The basic idea is that pushing on the electromagnetic fields in the vacuum should generate an equal and opposite force. The suggestion is that this can be done using nanoparticles that interact with the vacuum's electric and magnetic fields, generating the well-known Lorentz force. In most cases, the sum of Lorentz forces adds up to zero. But today's breakthrough is the discovery of various ways to break this symmetry and so use the quantum vacuum to generate a force. The simplest of these is simply to rotate the particles. So the blueprint for a quantum propulsion machine described in the paper is an array of addressable nanoparticles that can be rotated in the required way. Although such a machine will need a source of energy, it generates propulsion without any change in mass. As the research puts it with magesterial understatement, this might have practical implications."

Comment Re:He makes one excellent and crucial point (Score 4, Informative) 427

Is there any document out there which explains why /dev/dsp doesn't get mixing with ALSA? And why nobody tried to patch that yet?

Yeah, TFA explains it.. Here's it in short: /dev/dsp goes to kernelspace, while ALSA does mixing in userspace. I've no idea how difficult it would be to make ALSA do sound mixing in kernelspace.

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