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Comment Re:What's still keeping me away (Score 1) 1348

I'm a pretty geeky guy who has played around with Linux many times over the years (starting back in the late 90's), hoping to get away from Windows. Frankly, I would love nothing better than an OS I could put on my parents' computers and not have to worry about them calling me a month later complaining about all the pop-ups and viruses they have.

Ditto. And that's why for the last 4 years when anyone asks me about my recommendation for a new PC, I tell them "get a Mac". Yeah, it's not completely free (as in beer, or speech), but it utilizes a lot of the open source projects we know and love, is UNIX, and lets both power users and newbies get what they want done without dealing with things they shouldn't have to (registry problems, malware, restricted multiverse repositories, and the like). Most people just want a machine to get a job done and don't really care *how* it does it, just that it does.

Windows 7 might be getting there, but I jumped ship with Windows XP and haven't looked back. Maybe someday Steve Jobs will decide to lock down Mac OS X like iOS, but if that happens, and the OS will once again becomes an obstacle to what I am trying to accomplish, I will look elsewhere.

Comment Re:The Real Analog Hole (Score 1) 424

Do you honestly believe that the content cartels have not thought of that? All one would require to disable this is to embed an invisible (to the naked eye) watermark in the video stream which can be detected by the video camera which causes your camera to record nothing.

And don't think this is impossible. Have you ever tried to photocopy certain government documents on newer photocopiers? They simply will not allow you do so.

Comment Re:it's been good to know you Yahoo (Score 1) 113

Actually, that is their search engine. What the GP was talking about was Yahoo's directory, and can be found at http://dir.yahoo.com/.

The sad part is that is that the directory page is now mostly "The Spark Blog" and advertising links, with the "real" directory occupying a tiny column on the left side.

I can remember a time when that directory was actually one of the few *useful* sites on the web. Now get off my lawn.

Submission + - Man invents $7,000 sex robot (cnn.com)

olsmeister writes: To some men, she might seem like the perfect woman: She's a willowy 5 feet 7 and 120 pounds. She'll chat with you endlessly about your interests. And she'll have sex whenever you please — as long as her battery doesn't run out.

Meet Roxxxy, who may be the world's most sophisticated talking female sex robot. For $7,000, she's all yours.

I wonder if she runs Linux?

Microsoft

Submission + - The product from Coding by the Sea (red-gate.com)

cramco writes: Send two developers, a designer and a tester to a house by the sea for a week to come up with a new software tool. Put it through 3 months of testing and debugging. The result: SQL Search, a free plug-in for SQL Server Management Studio that finds fragments of SQL text within stored procedures, functions, views and more.
The Military

Submission + - Military’s robotic pack mule lives for $32M (networkworld.com) 1

coondoggie writes: What kind of robot will automatically follow a leader, carry 400 lbs of military gear, walk 20 miles in all manner of weather and go 24 hours without refueling? Well, we might soon find out as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a $32 million contract to build its Legged Squad Support System (LS3) which uses sensors and a GPS to walk along with soldiers across all manner of terrain in any weather without pulling any muscles.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/56667

Businesses

Submission + - Fed budget sees $6.4 bln boost from spectrum

Gmwaw writes: President Barack Obama estimated on Monday that the Federal Communications Commission could get a $6.4 billion boost in the next 10 years from the use of airwaves. In his fiscal 2011 budget proposal, Obama also proposed extending indefinitely the FCC's authority to auction spectrum licenses, which expires Sept. 30, 2012.

The government could receive an estimated $1.6 billion from auctioned licensed spectrum through 2020, according to the budget proposal, which said the value of the spectrum could be higher.

"This proposal supports the administration's efforts to foster new wireless broadband technologies by making new spectrum available," the Obama budget proposal stated.

Submission + - IE8 becomes Most Popular Browser (guardian.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: "Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 has finally become the world's most-used browser, according to Net Applications' figures based on monitoring website usage. IE8 has taken over from IE6, which has been hit by the decline in the use of Windows XP."
Security

Submission + - Botnet Targets Web With Junk SSL Connections (infoworld.com)

snydeq writes: More than 300 Web sites are being hit with bogus SSL connections from the Pushdo botnet, including the FBI, Twitter, and PayPal. In operation for three years, the botnet, also known as Pandex or Cutwail, has mostly been used in spam campaigns but has recently been updated to cause infected computers to make SSL connections again and again, an attack that puts more of a burden on a Web site than HTTP connections.

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