Comment Re:Correction (Score 1) 275
echo "We Screwed Up Windows Mobile" | sed -e 's/We/We Are/' -e 's/ Up.*/!/'
Comment Plain BS (Score 1) 188
First, it's a 5% blend of algae fuel. Big fuckin' deal.
Second: it's a plugin hybrid. Crossing the US with a plugin hybrid is no big deal. Heck, if you belive the Chevy Volt's "230MPG" number, you should be able to cross the US with about 12 gallons of fuel, right? Hell, I can drive across the US on almost no fuel, if you let me re-charge the batteries every 150 miles in a motel along the road!
I hate such gimmicks. Just tell the truth, dammit!
Comment Re:Um, obvious speculation? (Score 1) 101
Comment Re:Whoops (Score 1) 111
Someone in SanFran City Hall is doing a piss-poor job of contract management!
THIS! I live in SF, and almost all of the City government is utterly inept. Good example: a psychiatrist nurse who makes $360K per year. When asked why, his manager replied: because he puts in overtime since we are understaffed. And yet it doesn't occur to the manager that hiring a second person would be cheaper than paying 2x overtime to the most senior person! Despite it being pointed out numerous times, the city continues to make this nurse the highest paid city employee year after year.
Another example: anyone who has ridden the SF Muni knows how rarely they are cleaned. And yet there are several MUNI cleaners who make over $100K/year , according to the City's payroll records. Imagine that: janitors making over $100K, and then we wonder why nothing gets cleaned.
At last count, there were over 4300 people in the City government who made more than $100K/year. In a city of 700K, that is a pretty large number. But hey: it's public money. So what if the government runs out of money? They'll just raise taxes or fares! (Yes, MUNI fares are going up on Wednesday).
Comment Re:Why? (Score 3, Insightful) 76
Wow! If only they'd talked to you first.
BTW... can you point me to which TIGER/ZIP file contains the information for Istanbul? Or how about Casablanca, Morocco? And which county (district) contains the town of Aleppy, Kerala, India?
Thanks! Much appreciate it.
You know, America isn't the center of the known world.
Comment Re:It's a loan not a bailout. (Score 1) 652
The same applies to a student loan also.
Comment Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score 1) 877
.... bombings inside Pakistan, ....
You have it backwards. 99% of the world (outside of Pakistan) probably applauds the bombings and hopes for more of them.
Hint: their main export
Comment Re:Disclaimer: IAAMB (Score 1) 245
Who needs a 'processor manufacturing plant' when you have FPGAs ?
Comment Re:Googling through TOR = nearly impossible (Score 1) 93
I am a privacy nut too, but there might be something else to it here. TOR, by its very nature, makes it easy for people to run lots of automated queries against Google. So it's natural that Google will clamp down on what it sees are automated accesses from the same IP.
If there was a way to use Google on a peer-to-peer fashion so that only humans used it, I'm sure Google won't block you.
I'm not associated with Google in any way, and regularly clean out my cookies.
Lessig's "In Defense of Piracy" 218
chromakey writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an essay from Lawrence Lessig about the fair use of copyrighted material on the Internet. He makes the case that companies who go to extreme lengths to squash minor videos, such as Universal, are stifling creativity in the modern era. Lessig makes specific reference to a YouTube video that was hit by a DMCA takedown notice, in which a 13-month-old child is dancing to a nearly inaudible soundtrack of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy.' Lawrence Lessig is a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Comment Re:Not so simple once you really think about it (Score 1) 165
Some sites use a third-party redirector to keep track of their outgoing referrals.
Just because he's using a redirector is not, in itself, a smoking gun.
Submission + - Are laptop batteries the next "printer ink"
Quixote writes: Sometime back I bought a Dell Inspiron laptop because Dell was offering a very good deal on it. A few weeks after the warranty expired, the battery suddenly died. It was as if the battery was non-existent: the laptop would shutdown if unplugged even if the battery had been in the laptop the whole time. When plugged in, the battery charging light would keep flashing. This seemed quite puzzling, since just days before this, the battery used to give me a good 2 hours or so of use.
Searching around on the web to see if the flashing lights meant anything, I came across this page. It seems like lots of people have been reporting the same symptoms: just after the warranty expires, the battery mysteriously "dies". Even the Dell forums are replete with posts from unhappy users.
The solution from Dell is: buy a new battery. But they aren't cheap: a Dell one runs you about $100.
I know I should have known better than buying a Dell (cue the "Dude!" jokes). But this begs a bigger question: is this legal (it certainly doesn't seem ethical)? How many of these (working) batteries end up in the landfill? Have laptop batteries become the next "printer ink", forcing us to keep buying new ones?
Searching around on the web to see if the flashing lights meant anything, I came across this page. It seems like lots of people have been reporting the same symptoms: just after the warranty expires, the battery mysteriously "dies". Even the Dell forums are replete with posts from unhappy users.
The solution from Dell is: buy a new battery. But they aren't cheap: a Dell one runs you about $100.
I know I should have known better than buying a Dell (cue the "Dude!" jokes). But this begs a bigger question: is this legal (it certainly doesn't seem ethical)? How many of these (working) batteries end up in the landfill? Have laptop batteries become the next "printer ink", forcing us to keep buying new ones?
Journal Journal: Anonymity at Slashdot 2
I just found something interesting. I had posted a cheapshot as an AC on a thread. Later, I got moderation points; and when I moderate, I browse at level 0. To my utter surprise, I saw that the comment I posted as AC did not have the moderation dropdown box; the other posts did. This leads me to believe that somewhere at /., they keep your ID attached to AC postings.
I wonder what would happen in case of a subpoena or other such judicial order?
