Comment Horse Hockey (Score 0) 2
Just another scare tactic to con us into giving up more of our freedoms and money.
Comment Re:VHF/UHF are mainly line of sight (Score 0) 376
Ok, if you're real lucky, you may be able to connect with a repeater that has autopatch capability. Then you might be able to make phone calls, but that depends on how the repeater owner has the autopatch set up. You may be only able to make local calls, or if you make arrangements with the owner ahead of time, you may be able to make long distance calls. Just do a google for say, colorado repeaters and you should find a listing. Then you can contact the repeater owners..
You could also look at http://www.colcon.org/ . This is a network of linked repeaters. May be a way to get a message to the outside world if that's all you're looking for.
Submission + - Is Internet Explorer 6/7 support actually required (frozenrails.eu) 3
k33l0r writes: Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, has me wondering whether we (web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and 7?
Especially when creating web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade?
Recently I (and my colleagues) had to decide whether it was worth our time to try and support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separately set up page explaining that the site is not accessible with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For us this was easy once we saw from our analytics that under 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all.
Have you had to make choices like this and, if so, what was your reasoning behind the decision?
Especially when creating web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade?
Recently I (and my colleagues) had to decide whether it was worth our time to try and support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separately set up page explaining that the site is not accessible with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For us this was easy once we saw from our analytics that under 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all.
Have you had to make choices like this and, if so, what was your reasoning behind the decision?
Comment Re:Stamps are still necessary out here in the stic (Score 0) 297
In the US, nearly all banks charge a fee to receive transfers, and sometimes to send them. $10 fee versus 44 cents? Easy choice.
Our bank freaked out when my European relatives wanted to transfer money to us as wedding presents....the family ended up sending us Euros because they don't use checks anymore.
Comment Re:because it still works (Score 0) 297
Report your mail carrier to the federal authorities. In our area a mail supervisor was taking home bags of holiday mail to look for ca$h. His wife found 4 bags in his truck and turned him in. He was charged with a federal crime, and did some serious jail time.
Comment Who cares? (Score 0) 271
That Norad site is screwed up anyway. Everyone knows that Santa only comes between midnight and 6 AM local time.. They've got him in Lincoln Ne at 11:24 PM CST.
Submission + - Unambiguous Evidence of Water on the Moon (space.com)
Nethemas the Great writes: "Information has leaked ahead of the scheduled NASA press conference tomorrow that we have found unambiguous evidence for water on the moon. The follow is quoted from Space.com:
"
Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.
Submission + - Intel connects PCs to devices using light
CWmike writes: "Intel is working on a new optical interconnect that could possibly link mobile devices to displays and storage up to 100 meters away. The optical interconnect technology, Light Peak, could communicate data between systems and devices associated with PCs at speeds of up to 10Gbits/sec., said David Perlmutter, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobility group. The technology uses light to speed up data transmission between mobile devices and connected devices like storage, networking and audio devices, the company said. The technology could help transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds, says a post on Intel's site. Light Peak can run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling mobile devices to perform tasks over multiple connected devices at the same time. "Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible," according to the Intel entry. It could also lead to thinner and fewer connectors on mobile devices, Perlmutter said."
Submission + - Ordinary Guys take the first HD Video from the edg (sbszoo.com)
SoundDoc75 writes: "As covered on Daily Planet Friday Sept 18th, a 10 minute HD video taken on August 24th with a canon Vixia HF20 HD camera suspended from a 1500g Hydrogen balloon and launched near Edmonton Alberta. This is the first known amateur video taken from this height, 107,145 feet."
Submission + - Newly Declassified FBI Docs Reveal Predictive Data (wired.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Newly declassified documents show that the FBI is developing a data-mining system to uncover terror sleeper cells. Among the 1.6 billion records in the National Security Analysis Center — tens of thousands of travel records, including hotel and airline records. Other revelations in the documents uncovered by a Wired.com FOIA request show that the feds want to expand the system for use in cyber-crime investigations, and it's already been used to scrutinize helicopter pilots and Philly cab drivers. The system has eerie resemblances to DARPA's once-banned Total Information Awareness program.
Submission + - Coverity Report Finds OSS Defect Density Down (pcworld.com)
eldavojohn writes: "In 2008, static analysis company Coverity analyzed security issues in open source applications. Their recent study of 11.5 billion lines of open source code reveal that between 2006 and 2009 static analysis defect density is down in open source. The numbers say that open source defects have dropped from one in 3,333 lines of code to one in 4,000 lines of code. If you enter some basic information, you can get the complimentary report that has more analysis and puts three projects at the top tier in quality of the 280 open source projects: Samba, tor, OpenPAM, and Ruby. While Coverity has developed automated error checking for Linux, their static analysis seems to be indifferent toward open source."
Submission + - Radar Map of Buried Mars Layers Confirms Climate C (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: "A radar instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has essentially looked below the surface of the Red Planet's north-polar ice cap, and found data to confirm theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years. The new, three-dimensional map using 358 radar observations provides a cross-sectional view of the north-polar layered deposits. "The radar has been giving us spectacular results," said Jeffrey Plaut of JPL, a member of the science team for the Shallow Radar instrument. "We have mapped continuous underground layers in three dimensions across a vast area.""
Submission + - ISP mistakenly emails customer database to thousan (pcpro.co.uk) 2
Barence writes: "British ISP Demon Internet has mistakenly sent out a spreadsheet containing the personal details of more than 3,600 customers with one of its new ebills. The spreadsheet contains email addresses, telephone numbers and what appears to be usernames and passwords for the ebilling system. It was attached to an email explaining how to use the new system. Police forces and NHS trusts are among the email addresses listed in the database. A spokesman for Demon Internet confirmed that the company "was aware this happened this morning"."
Submission + - Firefox to replace menus with Office Ribbon (pcpro.co.uk) 2
Barence writes: "Mozilla has announced that its plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up its "dated" browser. "Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away," notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. "[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon, [which is] now in Paint and WordPad, too." The change will also bring Windows' Aero Glass effects to the browser."
Submission + - A Visual Expedition Inside the Linux File Systems (jhu.edu)
RazvanM writes: "This is an attempt to visualize the relations between the Linux File Systems through the eyes of the external symbols their kernel modules use. An initial plot was presented before but this time the scope is much broader. The analysis is done on 1377 kernel modules from 2.6.0 to 2.6.29 but there is also a small dip in the BSD world. The most thorough analysis is done on Daniel Phillips's tree which contains the latest two disk-based file systems for Linux: tux3 and btrfs. The main techniques used to established relations between file systems are hierarchical clustering and phylogenetic trees. Some other things that are presented include a set of rankings based on various properties related to the evolution of the external symbols from one release to another and complete timelines of the kernel releases for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. In total there are 78 figures and 10 animations. Happy viewing and commenting!"
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