Comment Nothing (Score 1) 78
Nothing, they're rubbish
Comment Just not that FB junk (Score 1) 89
I think it can be great for hanging out with friends who are far away, it makes everyone appear right there with you, but I'll never use Meta's rubbish.
I used SecondLife for years, now I'm more often on VRChat.
Comment Facepalm (Score 1) 236
Microsoft learns how bad these things are and removes all that rubbish. Someone else thinks, "oh that's a brilliant idea!"
I hope they include an uninstall option.
Dashboard Avatar To Replace Car Owner's Manuals 236
cylonlover writes "At one time not all that long ago, cars had a warning light on the dashboard that simply said 'ENGINE.' That's pretty vague. Really, it might just as well have said 'CAR.' Some newer automobiles now have codes that appear on the console, which the driver must then look up in an index in the vehicle's owner's manual. Working with Audi, Germany's Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) Institute of Business Informatics is now working on taking things a step farther, with the development of an on-screen avatar that will talk to drivers, and even understand their spoken questions."
Comment Probably Flawed Method (Score 1) 520
How about working out the number of grams from one mol of Oxygen(?) atoms? If they all have an atomic mass of ~16 you know they're about 16 grams.
Comment Ends (Score 1) 61
Look from each component and the input and output streams based on that.
The client's output stream is the server's input stream, the server's output stream is the client's input stream.
The widgets output is the clients input and the widget's input is the clients output.
Comment Unf (Score 0) 232
Getting stuffed in mah butt, woo!
Google Renames Itself "Topeka" 84
techmuse was one of several readers to note Google's official response to recent news that a town in Kansas would rename itself Google. The search engine company has announced a name change of its own, although I'm not sure saying "Let me Topeka that" has quite the same ring to it.
Comment It'll live again! (Score 1) 194
This does not suffice however, for it may be brought back to life by means of a secret rite that can be performed once a century when the moon is in the eighth house of Aquarius.
Just when you thought it was gone for good.
Does Personalized News Lead To Ignorance? 396
blackbearnh writes "As newspapers struggle to survive and local broadcasts try to find a way to compete with cable news, more and more news outlets are banking on what people want to hear about, rather than what they need to hear. Thoughtful analysis of problems is being pushed out of the way to make room for more celebrity gossip. Electronic news guru Chris Lee thinks that as people get news increasingly tailored to their tastes, the overall knowledge of important issues is plummeting. 'I think one of the observations about how consumers are behaving in the past five years that has surprised me the most is, again, this lack of feeling responsible for knowing the news of their country and their local government of that day. I don't think it's just a technology question. I think if you asked people now versus the same age group 20 years ago, I think they'd be stunningly less informed now about boring news, and tremendously more knowledgeable about bits of news that really interest them.'"
UK's Channel 4 To Broadcast In 3D 126
fatnickc writes "The UK's Channel 4, from the 16th of September, will be broadcasting a few programmes in 3D, the full list of which can be found here. While the likes of a 3D Miley Cyrus concert aren't exactly groundbreaking, this will give 3D viewing at home much more publicity, paving the way for even more interesting projects in the future. In partnership with retailer Sainsbury's, Channel 4 are producing free 3D glasses so that as many people as possible can watch them, although it's unclear which of the various types they'll be. "
Is Cloud Computing the Hotel California of Tech? 250
Prolific blogger and open source enthusiast Matt Asay ponders whether cloud computing may be the Hotel California of tech. It seems that data repositories in the form of Googles and Facebooks are very easy to dump data into, but can be quite difficult to move data between. "I say this because even for companies, like Google, that articulate open-data policies, the cloud is still largely a one-way road into Web services, with closed data networks making it difficult to impossible to move data into competing services. Ever tried getting your Facebook data into, say, MySpace? Good luck with that. Social networks aren't very social with one other, as recently noted on the Atonomo.us mailing list. For the freedom-inclined among us, this is cause for concern. For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had. The great irony, of course, is that it's all built with open source."
Apple Kicks HDD Marketing Debate Into High Gear 711
quacking duck writes "With the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple has updated a support document describing how their new operating system reports capacities of hard drives and other media. It has sided with hard drive makers, who for years have advertised capacities as '1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes' instead of the traditional computer science definition, and in so doing has kicked the debate between marketing and computer science into high gear. Binary prefixes for binary units (e.g. GiB for 'gibibyte') have been promoted by the International Electrotechnical Commission and endorsed by IEEE and other standards organizations, but to date there's been limited acceptance (though manufacturers have wholeheartedly accepted the 'new' definitions for GB and TB). Is Apple's move the first major step in forcing computer science to adopt the more awkward binary prefixes, breaking decades of accepted (if technically inaccurate) usage of SI prefixes?"
Opting Out Increases Spam? 481
J. L. Tympanum writes "I used to ignore spam but recently I have been using the opt-out feature. Now I get more spam than ever, especially of the Nigerian scam (and related) types. The latter has gone from almost none to several a day. Was I a fool for opting out? Is my email address being harvested when I opt out? Has anybody had similar experience?"
State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe 530
linuxkrn writes "The State of Colorado's Office of Technology (OIT) has set up a work skills website. The problem is that the site says 'DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk.' (Original emphasis from site.) If the leading IT agency for the State is making these uneducated claims, should the people worry about their other decisions?"
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