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Solar Impulse Airplane To Launch First Sun-Powered Flight Across America 89

First time accepted submitter markboyer writes "The Solar Impulse just landed at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California to announce a journey that will take it from San Francisco to New York without using a single drop of fuel. The 'Across America' tour will kick off this May when founders Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg take off from San Francisco. From there the plane will visit four cities across the states before landing in New York."

Comment Re:As a blind Windows/Linux user... (Score 1) 364

No, that was my brain going on autopilot. Sometimes, for words I don't use often or when my fingers get ahead of my brain, I end up substituting homophones... which are a bitch, btw, if you're only using speech.

As for my braille display, I'm using the Focus 40 Blue, mainly because it was cheap (for the government agency who bought it for me), and it's made by the same company that produces my screen reader. It's currently in my office, where I do most of my programming work. Never heard of the show you referenced, sadly.

Comment Re:Windows? (Score 1) 364

If you're in classic view (i.e. no unity), press control-alt-d to get to the desktop. Navigate to the drive icon, then press the "Applications Key" (usually to the right of the right alt key), then down arrow to "eject drive" or "safely eject drive."

Comment As a blind Windows/Linux user... (Score 5, Interesting) 364

Yes, it is completely possible to do so. There are even built-in shortcuts to do just about everything (desktop, start menu, application navigation mechanisms, ETC)... and that's not even getting into all the stuff a screen reader gives you, like the ability to inspect the screen with a "flat review cursor." Then there are all sorts of fun things like "spell word", ETC.

It's also possible to use a computer soully with a refreshable braille display device, though it gets aggrivating, and there's no way in hell I'd do it for a week.

On the Linux side of things, the accessibility is far worse than in Windows, but Gnome provides a lot of the same types of keyboard navigation mechanisms as Windows (Orca doesn't work on KDE, sadly).

Comment Re:You need only one program to remove trialware (Score 1) 156

... Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003

Microsoft Office home and student 2007 and standard 2003 seem very important to me, as does Nortan Ghost. Hopefully the program lets you select which programs you want to remove.

Comment Re:LP? (Score 2, Insightful) 306

I've found that many times the best songs on the album aren't the radio singles. Of course, there are many albums where the only good songs end up on the radio.

That brings me to another point. Whenever there's a song that's even remotely decent/catchy/ETC on the radio, they play it over and over again until you never want to hear it. Thus, commercial radio rapes good music by repeatedly shoving it down your throat.

Comment Re:Touchscreens are here to stay (Score 1) 109

As a blind person, I get concerned when I hear that the latest new shiny tech gadgets have touchscreens. But such is the way of progress, I suppose.

I have an EEE 901 (the xp version), which has the following:

  • My screen reading software
  • Office 2003 (the Star Office 8 crap that ships with it doesn't read at all)
  • Firefox w/AdBlockPlus
  • PuTTY
  • Code::Blocks
  • Winamp + XP Codec Pack

Now, if only sound that didn't go through Microsoft's DirectSound was played at the same volume as sound that was. This is really annoying when you're trying to listen to music and read Slashdot or something and the music totally dwarfs your text-to-speech software in volume.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is ... please, if you're going to put touchscreens on things, leave the keyboard and give an option to reduce or turn off touchscreen sensitivity. There's nothing worse than trying to type and getting thrown into a completely different app.

...Now, get off my lawn! *waves cane menacingly* No, I'm not old, that's just a fun meme

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