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Comment So what? Big Deal. (Score 0) 417

by beowulf01 (#37234318) Attached to: Schmidt: G+ 'Identity Service,' Not Social Network
People get so upset when a free online service wants to make money off of freely submitted data. Gee. Who woulda thunk it? Maybe the question is really: Are there ANY on line services that are required for Life, Liberty, and the pursuit or happiness? As for "social network" anonymity: There was a time people social networked by going to churches, clubs, and various events IN PERSON. Security? There was once a group of individuals who dedicated their fortunes, life, liberty and sacred honor to found a new nation. You can read their signatures on the Declaration of Independence.

Comment Re:Eh? (Score 0) 364

by beowulf01 (#36788664) Attached to: Firefox Is Going 64-Bit: What You Need To Know
Yes, 64-bit Firefox has been available for ages. I've been running it since SLAMD64 11 and Slackware64 13.x. The beta 64-bit Adobe Flash has been around since then as well in one preview form or another. I am currently using Flash 10.3 beta x86_64 with Slackware64 13.37 - with no significant issues. The new Flash 11 is now beta with full GNU/Linux x86_64 support. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/

Comment LibreOffice kicks ass (Score 0) 589

by beowulf01 (#33925380) Attached to: Oracle Asks OpenOffice Community Members To Leave
In the spirit of the /. community, I haven't had time to read all the posts but that wont stop me from opining. My family has used Openoffice for years since I simply can't afford M$ Office (4 licenses, and piracy would be "unethical"). I needed something file compatibel with M$ for work and the kids' school (talk about "vendor lock-in"). I just dumped Openoffice 3.2 instead of upgrading. Long live Libreoffice! I just installed LibreOffice 3.3.0 Beta2 (3.2.99 from git) via AlienBOB's build (Thanks buddy!) for Slackware64 13.1. It is faster, leaner, cleaner, and opens M$ Office docs that OO.o was having issues with (my employer still uses M$ everywhere). I am impressed. So instead of whining and gabbing inanely about the merits of, or lack thereof, of M$, Oracle or http://www.documentfoundation.org/, give it a test drive. Vote for the software project that JUST WORKS by using it!

Comment Glide Wrapper (Score 0) 274

by beowulf01 (#33516728) Attached to: Breathing New Life Into Old DirectDraw Games
I'll have to try the DD hack - I haven't played WC1 and WC2 in a heck of a long time. I loved the whole series. For especially WC Prophecy, I play in all its Glide API glory via zeckensack's Glide wrapper http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/index.html and a bunch of patches and high resolution fixes from http://www.wcnews.com/index.shtml using WinXP. I switched to the glide wrapper when my antique Voodoo 12MB 3D pass through card bit the dust. At the time I used a AMD Athlon slot A 800Mhz and Geforce256 DDR and the glide wrapper was a life saver for my Glide games.

Comment Alcohol? (Score 0) 4

by beowulf01 (#31607260) Attached to: The Helium Rains of Jupiter

Which alcohol? As a chemical class, there are many alcohols and not all are miscible with water.

Is it too much to ask for rigorous specificity in a science article?

oh wait...for this crowd there is only ONE kind of alcohol....

Space

The Helium Rains of Jupiter 4

Posted by samzenpus from the gonna-wash-that-helium-right-out-of-the-air dept.
coondoggie writes "In the strange and mysterious world of Jupiter, scientists were looking for an explanation for why the massive orb's atmosphere contained little neon, a common gas found on many planets. Now researching say they have found solved the mystery: Helium rain. In the interior of Jupiter conditions are so strange that, according to predictions by University of California, Berkeley scientists, helium condenses into droplets and falls like rain. On Jupiter the scientists explain the only way neon could be removed from the upper atmosphere is to have it fall out with helium, since neon and helium mix easily, like alcohol and water."
Medicine

Child Receives Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells 103

Posted by samzenpus from the just-add-oxygen dept.
kkleiner writes "Doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) along with colleagues at the University College London, the Royal Free Hospital, and Careggi University Hospital in Florence have successfully transplanted a trachea into a 10 year old boy using his own stem cells. A donor trachea was taken, stripped of its cells into a collagen-like scaffold, and then infused with the boy's stem cells. The trachea was surgically placed into the boy and allowed to develop in place. Because his own cells were used, there was little to no risk of rejection. This was the first time a child had received such a stem cell augmented transplant and the first time that a complete trachea had been used."
It's funny. Laugh.

Best Buy Offers Bogus "3D Sync" Service 248

Posted by timothy from the this-way-to-the-egress dept.
Token_Internet_Girl writes "Fewer than two weeks after Best Buy offered the first Full 3D HDTVs for sale in the US, its latest Sunday circular (3/21/10) promotes a Samsung 3D TV deal consisting of a 55" 3D TV, 3D capable Blu-ray player, 2 pairs of glasses, a Blu-ray movie and Geek Squad delivery and installation. The ad states the service includes TV and Blu-ray player set-up, connection to your wireless network and 'sync your 3D glasses for an amazing experience.' The package price lists the 'geek' services as a $150 value. The offer's only problem is that there is no such thing as syncing 3D glasses. They sync automatically." Here's Best Buy Corporate's response to this hilarity.

Comment Paperless office requirements (Score 0) 511

by beowulf01 (#31559798) Attached to: What Is Holding Back the Paperless Office?
Lets not dance around the fundamental issue. The Utopian ideal of a paperless office will never materialize until we can agree on a universal data standard. With paper, we can still read the records of the Roman Empire, Ancient China and Ancient Egypt. Even if today's modern languages fall to extinction a thousand years from now, we can still recover the paper based history. Any electronic records would be lost. I have 8 inch and 5 1/4 floppy discs from a CP/M Z80 S100 system I used back in the early eighties that are now essentially unreadable (fortunately I have paper print outs!). Unless we have a universal standard, and get one soon, the "computer revolution" era will be a black hole to future generations. On the other hand, maybe we don't want future generations to study the conversation on slashdot.....
Image

Disgruntled Ex-Employee Remotely Disables 100 Cars 384

Posted by samzenpus from the I-think-I-saw-this-movie dept.
hansamurai writes "Over one hundred cars equipped with a Webtech Plus blackbox were remotely disabled when a former employee of dealership Texas Auto Center got hold of his employer's database of users. Webtech Plus is repossession software that allows the dealership to disable a car's ignition or trigger the horn to honk when a payment is due. Owners had to remove the battery to stop the incessant honking. After the dealership began fielding an unusually high number of calls from upset car owners, they changed the passwords to the Webtech Plus software and then traced the IP address used to access the client to its former employee."
Security

Submission + - Women refuse to go through Airport body scanners (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis
Geoffrey.landis writes: Two women were stopped from boarding a plane at Manchester Airport after refusing to undergo a full body scan.
They are believed to be the first to refuse to submit to the scan since they became compulsory in February.
According to earlier reports by the BBC, the "naked" scanners are intended to detect weapons or explosives, but "the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers' genitals." The scanners, made by RapiScan, are referred to by the British press as the "strip-search" scanner.
Until February, passengers had been allowed to refuse the scan and receive a "pat-down" search instead.

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