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Comment Re:Washington DC has a chronic crime problem (Score 1) 268

Really? You walk through one of the two most affluent suburbs of DC and act shocked that you were safe? A place where 150 year old row houses sell for 800000? You're being deliberately obtuse, go walk around south east at midnight and you'll be thinking differently. Also, realize that Arlington and Alexandria are both cities in Virginia, Alexandria being a part of Fairfax county, a county with one of the largest median incomes in the country. The key point being that they're in Virginia though, not in DC.
Science

Submission + - Atomic disguise makes helium look like hydrogen (newscientist.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In a feat of modern-day alchemy, atom tinkerers have fooled hydrogen atoms into accepting a helium atom as one of their own, reports New Scientist. Donald Fleming of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues managed to disguise a helium atom as a hydrogen atom by replacing one of its orbiting electrons with a muon, which is far heavier than an electron. The camouflaged atom behaves chemically like hydrogen, but has four times the mass of normal hydrogen, allowing predictions for how atomic mass affects reaction rates to be put to the test.
The Military

Submission + - Did Chinese TV pass off Top Gun footage as a milit (foreignpolicy.com) 1

heidaro writes: "As part of its ongoing expansion, has the People's Liberation Army signed up Goose and Maverick? Chinese bloggers are accusing state broadcaster CCTV of using repurposed footage from the 1986 film Top Gun for a story on a recent air force drill."
Is it just me or are communist nations very skilled an embarrassing themselves?

Comment Re:Call me a fanboi or whatever but... (Score 1) 563

When did half life two come out? I remember my machine at the time didn't have internet (no modem, and I was living at my parents without broadband) and I was irate that my brand new single player game needed to get on the internet before I could even install it!

So anyway, Wikipedia says Nov 2004 is when HL2 was released, and while it might not have been the first, thats still 5.5 years ago they were implementing what blizzard seems to be implementing here.

It really has been a while since we had un-restrictive drm in games. Funny how we just get used to it after a while...

Comment Re:The iPhone virtual keyboard? Not a chance! (Score 1) 203

Perhaps it is mainly in the web forms where it really slows down, but I tend not to use it for that - in the SMS interface and the facebook app it is very responsive.

It would be nice to be able to go back and correct the autocorrect if it picks the wrong word if you are going too fast - a double tap or something that could pop up a list of options, or the ability to just type the word you meant and replace it without having to delete.

As far as I know, you can't "officially" add words to the database - it just seems to learn based on the times you correct it and is more likely in future to offer words that you use when you overrule it. It also learns words and terms that you frequently capitalise, and looks up people's names from your address book as a spelling source so I guess you could use an ugly hack of adding a list of words as a contact to your address book that it would then use as a source.

I don't type in web forms very much with it at all, so I am not seeing the super slowdown - I do notice that the phone generally struggles with performance in the web browser, so I guess it is not surprising and would make the keyboard a pain to use.

Comment Re:Confusing icon practices (Score 1) 256

"There's no such thing as "intuitive" computer interfaces."

I don't know who you are, but I wish I worked with you. I hear 'I don't like it, it isn't intuitive enough. I don't know what would be better though.' pretty much every day. What they MEAN is 'It looks different. I'm really comfortable with the old text based system. Why do we need buttons again?'

A corollary to your statement is that no UI interaction should be irreversible without a warning. Warnings/Alerts should be restricted to important notifications, so as to avoid training the user to blindly accept them.

It's funny to me (in that painful way) that the average 10 year old can load up the latest video game and be fully into the action in ten, twenty minutes tops. But you put a an average 30 year old in front Excel without a training course and it takes two years before they realize that they can sort tables.

Comment Re:Correction (Score 1) 284

Your statement is literally true, but the design of the truck contributed to the severity of the accident. One presumes that there are building sites in Europe, yet somehow they manage to use trucks there.

Nope, sorry, for safety reasons all of our building sites use Smart cars.

Comment Re:HTML5 for the win? Sorry, that's not a codec. (Score 1) 297

Wow, do you work for the H.264 guys or something?

Yes, it's trivial to support Theora, not to mention no licensing costs. H.264 costs money today, and will cost even more from 2011.

As for content, duh. See what the actual Slashdot story is all about?

For Google, it's probably cheaper to pay slightly more for Theora storage than the outrageous cost of H.264 in the future.

The point with control is that smaller platforms/companies won't easily be able to pay the insane prices the owners are going to charge.

BTW, that last link of yours is from 2007. Using Theora 1.0. Epic fail on your part.

All you seem capable of is spreading FUD and lies against Theora.

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