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Comment Re:Notes on New Features (Score 1) 465

by frankie (#26970503) Attached to: Safari 4 Released, Claimed "30 Times Faster Than IE7"

The web is hard enough to read already with these 10px hard-coded fonts everywhere. For every site I need a different combination of zoom and text embiggenment

It's called "Minimum font size". Both Firefox and Safari have easily accessible preference settings for this. Sometimes a minimum size will break menu bars with hardcoded widths, but overall it's a big net plus.
Privacy

Journal Journal: every Flash site you ever visited...

Journal by frankie

...may be recorded quietly on your hard drive, even if you had Flash erase all stored data. Everyone knows about Flash cookies and their largish abuse potential. But none of the sites I saw mentioned one little detail that's left behind, with no incriminating data signature to be detected in a file search.

When Flash removes its temp files and cookies for a site, it fails to remove the surrounding folder. And of course the folder's name is the site domain.
The Internet

Internet Not Really Dangerous For Kids After All 445

Posted by kdawson from the nevermind dept.
Thomas M Hughes writes "We're all familiar with the claim that it's horribly dangerous to allow our children on to the Internet. It's long been believed that the moment a child logs on to the Internet, he will experience a flood of inappropriate sexual advances. Turns out this isn't an accurate representation of reality at all. A high-profile task force representing 49 state attorneys general was organized to find a solution to the problem of online sexual solicitation. But instead the panel has issued a report (due to be released tomorrow) claiming that 'Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.' The report concluded that 'the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.' Turns out the danger to our children was all just media hype and parental anxiety." Those who have aggressively pushed the issue of the dangerous Internet, such as Connecticut's attorney general Richard Blumenthal, are less than happy with the report.

Comment Re:WWBD? (Score 0, Redundant) 301

by frankie (#26409783) Attached to: Storm Worm Botnet "Cracked Wide Open"

He'd use his detective skills to learn the identities of the cyrillic mobsters who own the botnet. The next night he'd incapacitate a number of guards, then dangle the bosses headfirst off of an onion-domed cathedral until they give him all their passwords. And lastly fight a corrupt former-KGB super-enforcer.

So your philosophy may not be very applicable here.
GUI

Journal Journal: OpenOffice.org Impress...

Journal by frankie

SUCKS!!!!!!

sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks
Earth

Drilling Hits an Active Magma Chamber In Hawaii 251

Posted by timothy from the time-for-a-lava-luau dept.
Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that drillers looking for geothermal energy in Hawaii have inadvertently put a well right into a magma chamber. Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study. Magma specialist Bruce Marsh says it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made. 'This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat,' the Johns Hopkins University professor told BBC News. 'Before, all we had to deal with were lava flows; but they are the end of a magma's life. They're lying there on the surface, they've de-gassed. It's not the natural habitat.' It is hoped the site can now become a laboratory, with a series of cores drilled around the chamber to better characterise the crystallisation changes occurring in the rock as it loses temperature."
Data Storage

Optimizing Linux Use On a USB Flash Drive? 137

Posted by timothy from the right-here-in-my-pocket dept.
Buckbeak writes "I like to carry my Linux systems around with me, on USB flash drives. Typically, SanDisk Cruzers or Kingston HyperX. I encrypt the root partition and boot off the USB stick. Sometimes, the performance leaves something to be desired. I want to be able to do an 'apt-get upgrade' or 'yum update' while surfing but the experience is sometimes painful. What can I do to maximize the performance of Linux while running off of a slow medium? I've turned on 'noatime' in the mount options and I don't use a swap partition. Is there any way to minimize drive I/O or batch it up more? Is there any easy way to run in memory and write everything out when I shut down? I've tried both EXT2 and EXT3 and it doesn't seem to make much difference. Any other suggestions?"

Comment Re:Ug. Not Christie Whitman (Score 1) 3

by frankie (#25738239) Attached to: Cabinet Casting Call

Thanks, didn't know how NJ felt about her enviro record.

The main things I remember were that 3 times in 2001, Whitman's EPA announced a plan to implement a campaign promise from the Bush 2000 platform, and each time the White House quickly issued a retraction (of both the plan and the plank). It was Mercury, CO2, and one other issue I forget.

But the gripping hand is that Whitman would probably rather keep running the RLC, which makes it an even BETTER idea for Obama to ask her first, before reluctantly turning to RFK Jr.
Spam

Washington Post Blog Shuts Down 75% of Online Spam 335

Posted by CmdrTaco from the real-american-hero dept.
ESCquire writes "Apparently, the Washington Post Blog 'Security Fix' managed to shut down McColo, a US-based hosting provider facilitating more than 75 percent of global spam. " Now how long before the void is filled by another ISP?
Music

Submission + - Scientists Search for Worst Sound in the World

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Recent research into sounds that drive people crazy ranks nails on a chalkboard well below several other sounds says Trevor J. Cox of the Acoustics Research Centre at the University of Salford. Cox's web site allows people to rate their reactions to 34 repellent or disgusting sounds. After thousands of responses, vomiting is in the lead while other top offenders are crying babies, microphone feedback and a dentist's drill. The blackboard screech comes in at No. 16. Cox suggested in the journal Applied Acoustics early this year that the reaction to vomiting might be partly related to an inborn desire to avoid sick people and thus infection, but that cultural and etiquette factors might also be involved. Earlier research had suggested that the blackboard response might come from "a vestigial reflex related to the warning cries of monkeys," Cox noted, but expressed doubt about such a link suggesting alternative explanations for study, involving dissonant frequencies or a link between what is heard and imagining what nail scraping would feel like. "This research has been fascinating in gaining an insight into why people are repulsed by certain sounds — and how this differs by gender, age and nationality. This is so important because noise significantly affects our quality of life" says Cox."

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