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Comment Printers don't come with (much) ink. (Score 3, Informative) 970

The printer that you buy with ink comes with cartridges that are, at most, half full. Usually it's considerably less than half. It might feel cheaper, but in dollars-per-print it's not, and that's the only metric that really measures the value you're getting.

Next time, don't fall for it.

Comment Re:What about Google? (Score 1) 773

If you read Cuban's original blog post he suggests giving money to the top 100,000 sites ($1m each to the top 1000, and a further billion or so split between the next 99,000 sites), and that Microsoft or Yahoo promise to drive as much traffic their way as they'd lose by pulling out of Google. His idea is that if you can persuade the top 100,000 sites on the net to leave then Google is screwed. It wasn't a serious suggestion, just a sort of whimsical "Google could be killed you know" musing.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/13/google-murdoch-madoff/

Comment Asking someone out is sexist? (Score 5, Insightful) 1255

Or, if you prefer, listen to the horror stories female developers tell about sexist remarks or being asked out for dates.

Making sexist remarks, ok, I can understand how that might be seen as being sexist. But how is asking a woman out considered sexist behaviour? Face it, if I were to join a group that's 98.5% women and demonstrate that I share an interest with all of them then I strongly suspect I'd get asked out too. Would I complain that their behaviour was sexist? No. Obviously not.

No. I'd be making lurve. All those ladies! Oh yeah baby!

Wait. I think I might be being sexist. Err.. Oh dear.

Comment Re:Patent infringement x 2! (Score 1) 304

The patent in question deals with associating data into multiple categories dynamically. It's fairly obvious but (as far as I'm aware) it is a relatively recent innovation. It's definitely not something that databases do in terms of storage. They can do it, using views or triggers with stored procedures, but this is not a simple patent on a data table, a category table and a many-to-many cross reference table linking the two.

Comment Not quite the game changer it appears (Score 3, Informative) 114

There are two caveats that limit the appeal of this...

1. You have to be a Premium Account holder ... that's £10/month.

2. (Apparently) it'll only work with a wifi connection, not 3G.

The wifi-only bit is the killer. Everywhere I use wifi I have a computer (office, home, girlfriend's home). That means it's not very useful, and as it's not very useful I don't see the point in buying the £10/month subscription in order to use it. If I wanted the Premium service I'd already have paid for it to use with the computers.

Comment When playing at being an analyst.. (Score 4, Insightful) 213

These articles crop up pretty much daily on various blogs. They all follow a very clear pattern:

1. Pick a hot IT company.
2. Pick a service they're not providing.
3. Pick something that they're spending money on.
4. Relate points 2 and 3.

There's no evidence that the two things are related. For all we know Apple might be getting back into selling time-slices on servers because Steve Jobs has hit his head and thinks it's 1983 again. These sorts of poorly researched, uninsightful articles that are absolutely nothing more than *a guess* are completely pointless.

Comment Re:Standing still (Score 1) 154

Their innate abilities can't improve, but that's not to say there aren't other ways that they might be better drug sniffers than their ancestors - improving training, diet, exercise, rewards, and simply having more dogs because they're cheaper would all serve to increase detection rates.

Comment So what? (Score 5, Interesting) 118

The service that uSocial are offering is neither an exploit nor a problem. They're not spamming anyone - they're just letting people have access to a pool of people open to "following back" and taking a fee. It's a total waste of money buying in because the sort of people who'll follow everyone and care about the number of followers they have are generally idiots, but it's not really anything to worry about.

Comment Re:Finally! (Score 1) 164

Likewise though, there aren't many things as frustrating as paying a fair amount for a game only to get a few hours of entertainment for it. There's a balance to be struck, and a delicate one at that. If a game is too hard or too easy you'll feel you didn't get value for money.

I think the 'auto-complete' idea is a good one, but it needs to come with a penalty. Spending a "life" to progress, or some points, or simply being branded a "cheat" on the end screen would be enough to make you try to play through again without the help. People without the time to invest would be able to access everything they've bought while people wanting the challenge would still have a reason to put in the required effort.

Comment Re:"I can't wait to throw a fireball." (Score 2, Interesting) 303

Excellent video demonstration of why Natal *will fail* (at least in the UK and Japan). Land is much less of a scarce resource in the USA so houses can have big open areas, but in countries with a higher population density people's houses just don't have that much space. Unless Microsoft can persuade people to rearrange their living spaces to make room by removing coffee tables, buying smaller sofas, etc Natal just won't be accessible for many people.

Comment Too big. (Score 4, Insightful) 206

The whole idea of mecha robots is plain wrong. It's not necessary to make an exoskeleton that big. In a military (or 'gaming') situation it'd just present a bigger target. All you need is a minimal amount of armour with enough power to augment picking up large amounts of weight, and possibly some system to dampen recoil if you're holding a projectile weapon.

(Oh dear. I'm actually arguing that mecha robots are a poor weapons system design on the internet. Is this what my life has become? Maybe I should go outside?)

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