Comment Re:Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak. (Score 4, Funny) 50
Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak... [click here to read more!]
.. and you would NOT have guessed what happened next! [click here]
Comment Re:Ubuntu does not support hibernate (Score 1) 378
When I had my new machine with Windows 7, suspend/sleep worked fine. After about 2-3 months and some driver installs suspend could never resume, after sleep, only the black screen came back, i had to press reset. I tried to change settings, to hibernate, nothing helped.
A few more months have passed, and now suspend is working again. Maybe a Windows update helped it?
Comment Efficiency = bad (Score 1) 209
When heating with an air-conditioner, the efficiency is not too good, but not too bad. 1 kWh electric energy = 5-6 kWh heating energy (equivalent). So there is a ratio of 1:5 to 1:6.
When heating with just electricity, the ratio is 1:1 (1 kWh electic energy = 1 kWh heat equivalent).
In the end: nice joke from Microsoft.
Comment What IS BitCoin (Score 2) 490
It took me some time to understand what BitCoin actually is.
Basically, BitCoin network is a big transaction database.
One transaction is: "transfer X amount of BitCoins from account Y to account Z." This 'database', or transaction log is replicated and stored on all participating users' computers.
You can be sure a (your) transaction has been recorded, because you can check with many other peers who will verify that it is.
Of course, the inner parts are more complex, and there's a way to generate new BitCoins (but over time you can generate less and less, so it's a finite amount in total).
(I forgot to login before my comment, so i'm posting it again.)
Bird Flu Pandemic Could Choke the Net 364
PetManimal writes "If a pandemic were to occur, many companies and organizations would ask their staffs to work from home. The impact of millions of additional people using the Internet from home might require individuals and companies to voluntarily restrain themselves from surfing to high-bandwidth sites, such as YouTube. If people didn't comply, the government might step in and limit Net usage. The scenario is not far-fetched: last year at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, a group of telecom and government officials conducted a pandemic exercise based on a hypothetical breakout of bird flu in central Europe. The results weren't pretty." From the latter article: "'We assumed total absentees of 30% to 60% trying to work from home, which would have overwhelmed the Internet,' said [one] participant. 'We did not assume that the backbone would be gone, but that the edge of the network... would be overwhelmed... The conclusion [of imminent collapse] was not absolute, and the situation was not digitally simulated, but the idea of everyone working from home appears untenable,' [he] said."
Fallout From the November Console Wars 182
All three 'next generation' consoles are out, and we can finally stop using that term. The NPD numbers for last month have been released, and there's plenty of information there to discuss. Analysts have already made some observations, with brandintel specifically pointing out the Xbox 360's 'surprising' role in last month's fight. For some more well-reasoned thought, Dean Takahashi's take is the place to turn: "At this rate, Microsoft isn't going to hit its goal of 10 million units by year end ... Sony's number is consistent with its warnings, but 197,000 is worse than what many expected ... the fair fight is really going to be what happens in the year 2007, when all three console makers should be able to ship as many consoles as consumers want. To me, this looks like consumers are hit with a case of sticker shock. The mass market is paying for cheap PS2s, DS Lites, and GBAs." Despite the Wii's success last month, it should be noted that Nintendo is no longer bragging of 1 Million units in the U.S. by the end of the year. So, essentially, it looks like all three companies will fail to hit their console goals for the year.
Long-Term Wikipedia Vandalism Exposed 313
Daveydweeb writes, "The accuracy of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, came into question again when a long-standing article on 'NPA personality theory' was confirmed to be a hoax. Not only had the article survived at Wikipedia for the better part of a year, but it had even been listed as a 'Good Article,' supposedly placing it in the top 0.2-0.3% of all Wikipedia articles — despite being almost entirely written by the creator of the theory himself."
Jonathan Ive - Apple's Design Magician 211
conq writes "BusinessWeek takes an in-depth look at the man behind the Apple magic. The article features a slideshow with all his designs (including one before he was with Apple)." From the article: "During an internship with design consultancy Roberts Weaver Group, he created a pen that had a ball and clip mechanism on top, for no purpose other than to give the owner something to fiddle with. 'It immediately became the owner's prize possession, something you always wanted to play with,' recalls Grinyer, a Roberts Weaver staffer at the time. 'We began to call it having Jony-ness, an extra something that would tap into the product's underlying emotion.'"
No Backdoor in Vista 269
mytrip wrote to mention a C|Net article stating that Vista will not have a security backdoor after all. From the article: "'The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense."
Microsoft Accuses European Union of Collusion 265
GarbagePailKid wrote to mention the news that Microsoft has filed a formal complaint alleging that the EU colluded with company rivals and hid critical documents during the EU regulation hearings. According to Microsoft: "While the documents provided do not include the direct correspondence between the commission and its technical experts, they show that the commission, the trustee, and Microsoft's adversaries were secretly collaborating throughout the fall of 2005 in a manner inconsistent with the commission's role as neutral regulator and the Trustee's role as independent monitor..."
Comment Re:Audio only. Whoopee, tech! Pity I'm deaf. (Score 1) 195
Oh, your comment has probably been written in good faith, but I do have to correct a thing or two...
Slovenia (where OOo conf is) is NOT Slovakia.
Poland and Georgia was never part of Yugoslavia. Poland (all of it) is part of the European Union, none is part is under Russian jurisdiction.
Yugoslavia is now Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia.
Slovenia (where OOo conf is) is NOT Slovakia.
Poland and Georgia was never part of Yugoslavia. Poland (all of it) is part of the European Union, none is part is under Russian jurisdiction.
Yugoslavia is now Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia.
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