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Comment Re:So, don't use Adobe Reader (Score 1) 206

Being able to view and edit the source of a program is very low on my priority list and for a simple tool like a PDF reader it's total non-issue. What I do care about is:
  • price; Foxit is free, so that's a check
  • features; Foxit does what I want it to do. I can read and print PDF's, display two pages at once, select&copy text and search. That covers 99% of my PDF needs, so that's a check
  • speed and memory footprint; Foxit loads instantly and uses 5MB + about 0.1MB per cached page of memory, that's also a check
  • reliability; Foxit has yet to crash on me, so that's another a check
  • size; Foxit's < 2MB installer and < 5MB disk use after install is fine with me, so check this also

Bottom line - Foxit does it's job well enough for me. I'm sure a better alternative exists and if someone serves it to me on a plate, I would switch to it. But actively searching for it just doesn't seem to be worth the time.

Comment Re:Rarely buy boxed games. (Score 1) 478

Steam was an excellent option for European gamers while the prices were in $ and especially when the EUR:$ exchange rate was favorable. But since they started charging in EUR, their prices became generally higher than local retailers'. Over here in Slovenia (as if anyone knows where that is :), buying through Steam typically means paying about a 10-30% premium, with extremes up to 100% (for example Crysis - 29.99EUR; on Steam, 14.50EUR in local stores).
For the past year however, I've ordered most of my games from the UK. Since the GBP slid below 1.3EUR, this is usually the cheapest option and with the current rate around 1.1-1.2EUR most games can be found for about 20% less than in local stores or about 40% cheaper than on Steam. Sure, shipping takes two or three days, but I can live with that.

I do like Steam and have had zero problems with it so far. I love some of the conveniences it allows - like no play discs to insert, automated patching, backup by simply copying the install folder to a safe location and just restoring it after a system change/upgrade/reinstall, etc. And while the prices were at least comparable or even cheaper than retail I bought most of my games through Steam. But currently it's just a lot cheaper to buy retail.
Math

Miscalculation Invalidates LHC Safety Assurances 684

KentuckyFC writes "In a truly frightening study, physicists at the University of Oxford have identified a massive miscalculation that makes the LHC safety assurances more or less invalid (abstract). The focus of their work is not the safety of particle accelerators per se but the chances of any particular scientific argument being wrong. 'If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect,' say the team. That has serious implications for the LHC, which some people worry could generate black holes that will swallow the planet. Nobody at CERN has put a figure on the chances of the LHC destroying the planet. One study simply said: 'there is no risk of any significance whatsoever from such black holes.' The danger is that this thinking could be entirely flawed, but what are the chances of this? The Oxford team say that roughly one in a thousand scientific papers have to be withdrawn because of errors but generously suppose that in particle physics, the rate is one in 10,000."

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