Comment Re:Nature Online (Score 1) 253
the player-driven economy has gone to hell these days though.
Comment Re:Just watch... (Score 1) 340
It was: then New Labour decided the best route to winning elections was to be more like the Tories. I now present to you modern Britain.
(that and the fact that while censorship per se was a more Tory thing, populism is unmistakeably a Labour thing, and with the rise of the current FUD climate in the UK, anything that can be spun as Stopping The Bad Men That Hate Us And Are Paedophiles to the average Mail reader gets railroaded through the Commons)
(that and the fact that while censorship per se was a more Tory thing, populism is unmistakeably a Labour thing, and with the rise of the current FUD climate in the UK, anything that can be spun as Stopping The Bad Men That Hate Us And Are Paedophiles to the average Mail reader gets railroaded through the Commons)
Comment Re:I don't buy it (Score 2, Funny) 708
Hey hey now, the charity radio station I contribute to has three of the overpriced, clunky and slow desktop MD decks, and they do perfectly well making complex technology accessible to the out of touch by rendering it about as mechanistic and failure-prone as a steam-driven phonograph.
Wait a sec...
Comment Re:I remember the days before the Internet (Score 1) 870
(Disclaimer: Yes, I own an iPod video (1st gen) and an iPod touch, and use them regularly)
I noticed the same sort of behavior when I was glancing at the iPod touch pricing. $299, $399, $499 for their three models with---whaaa?? 8, 16 or 32GB of storage. The original iPod is up to 80 (or more?), which makes it fairly clear to me that they're just playing games and offering you super-expensive, shitty-sized storage now so they can go "LOOK, DOUBLE!" six months from now. To screw the early adopters, in other words.
Comparing the capacities on the hard disk and flash iPods is comparing apples (hah!) and oranges (or to use the obligatory car analogy, mileage in a 3-cylinder 2-stroke and a V12): show me a 160GB flash disk that fits in the form factor of the Touch and I'll gladly hack it in in place of the 8GB wafer in there at the moment. That said, to say that 8GB to 16GB costs the same as 16 to 32 is daylight robbery, and $99 (or £70, if you pay the non-US tax) for 16GB of flash memory is pretty steep as well.
That said, I'd have a 160GB hard disk Touch, if they made them.
Submission + - MIT Students Show How the Inca Leapt Canyons
PCOL writes: "When Conquistadors came to Peru from Spain in 1532, they were astonished to see Inca suspension bridges achieve clear spans of at least 150 feet at a time when the longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span of 95 feet. The bridges swayed under the weight of traffic terrifying the Spanish and their horses, even though, as one Spaniard observed, they were almost as "sturdy as the street of Seville." To build the bridges, thick cables were pulled across a river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side. Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, two others served as handrails and pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor before the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden. Earlier this year students at MIT built a 70-foot fiber bridge in the style of the Incan Empire. The project used sisal twine from the Yucatan Peninsula and anchored it by wrapping it around massive concrete blocks. The weekend's burst of activity was preceded by 360 hours of rope-twisting as the 50 miles of sisal twine was turned into rope. Working together as a group was part of the exercise. "A third of the time was spent learning to work together," one of the students said. "But after a while, we were banging those cables out.""
Submission + - How to bring down Internet Explorer in six words (commandline.org.uk) 1
Marcion writes: "Some handy Japanese guy called Hamachiya discovered a bug in Internet Explorer. Under certain conditions, an asterisk when used as a wildcard can crash IE as soon as the user attempts to go to another webpage. Feel free to add the code to your stylesheet too!"
Submission + - First Third-party Native iPhone Application (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The first third-party native application ever for the iPhone is now available: a real full-fledged iPhone application with a graphic user interface and its own icon in the iPhone home screen. It is not a Web 2.0 app but the real thing, What is it? Ironically enough, MobileTerminal, 'a terminal emulator application for the iPhone. MobileTerminal.app is NOT an SSH client, nor Telnet for that matter. It can however be used to execute a console ssh-client application.' The iPhone dev revolution has just started.
Submission + - New bill would reverse bans on municipal broadband (arstechnica.com)
Yuppie writes: A bill introduced to the House this week would overturn bans that currently exist in several states on cities and towns building and deploying their own broadband networks. The big telecoms may not be be too happy about the bill, however. 'The telecoms have historically argued that municipalities that own and operate — or even build and lease — broadband networks could give themselves preferential treatment. The Act anticipates that argument with a section on "competition neutrality." Public providers would be banned from giving themselves any "regulatory preference," which should create a level playing field for all broadband providers. Municipalities interested in getting into the broadband business would also have to solicit feedback from the private sector on planned deployments.' The full text of the bill is available from Rep. Boucher's website (PDF).
Many Dead In Virginia Tech Shooting 2661
nexuspal writes "Over 20 confirmed dead at Virginia Tech. Shooter killed some at residence hall then two hours later killed others in classrooms. Worst school shooting in US history. "
New Motherboards Disallowing IDE Booting? 183
wattsup asks: "It seems that bootable IDE ports are disappearing on newer motherboards. I recently purchased an
MSI G965M-FI motherboard for a system upgrade. Overall the board is pretty good with lots of features, but it had one unexpected 'feature' that I didn't know about when I bought it. The PATA100 IDE port won't allow you to install an operating system from an attached CD-ROM. Does anybody know if this is an issue that can be fixed by
upgrading the BIOS, or is this hard-wired into the IDE controller?"
Canadian DMCA Coming This Spring 153
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government is reportedly ready to introduce copyright reform legislation this spring, provided that no election is called. The new bill would move Canada far closer to the U.S. on copyright, with DMCA-style anti-circumvention legislation that prohibits circumvention of DRM systems and bans software and mod chips that can be used to circumvent such systems."
Feed Gravity probe measures Earth's dent in space-time (pheedo.com)
Consumer Vista Upgrades Moving at Snail's Pace 269
Chester Freeze writes "During the holiday season, many shoppers bought PCs with the promise of quick, free Vista upgrades. The reality has been something else entirely: many Dell and HP customers are being told that they won't receive their copies of Vista before April. 'One source at a major OEM who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the real issue is that OEMs are still not sure which PCs are really ready to support Vista, and which PCs aren't... Customers who qualify for an Express Upgrade also qualify for OEM support for Windows Vista, even if their machines came with Windows XP. The last thing a Dell, Gateway, or HP wants to do is start sending out upgrades to customers who might have video cards that do not have particularly stable drivers yet (or sound cards, or RAID controllers, etc.). This could be a support disaster.'"
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"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!" -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
