Comment All-Stars, Hooray! (Score 1) 190
The NES originals are available on Wii Ware, but its nice to see that SMAS is coming to Wii.
Comment Re:Useful, for slow typists. (Score 1) 408
For the record, I wasn't making it a plus point, just a point of difference between myself and a user who would type his/her search queries more slowly. Its a great feature for those who type slowly, and makes search more accessible for them.
Comment Re:Useful, for slow typists. (Score 1) 408
Well, it was there... hmm.
Comment Useful, for slow typists. (Score 3, Interesting) 408
This is definitely useful for those who type slow, but its sort of startling for those of us who type faster. Thankfully it can be disabled: http://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en
Websites That Don't Need to Be Made Anymore 161
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but there is a finite number of social networking or selling websites that the world needs. Here is a collection of the eight kinds of websites that absolutely don't need to be made anymore. I'd add dating sites and anybody who uses pop-up ads myself, but I think that would eliminate half the Web.
Matter-Antimatter Bias Seen In Fermilab Collisions 304
ubermiester writes "The New York Times is reporting that scientists at Fermilab have found evidence of a very small (about 1%) average difference between the amount of matter/antimatter produced in a series of particle collisions. Quoting: '[T]he team, known as the DZero collaboration, found that the fireballs produced pairs of ... muons ... slightly more often than they produced pairs of anti-muons. So the miniature universe inside the accelerator went from being neutral to being about 1 percent more matter than antimatter.' This finding invites theorists to explain why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe, when the Standard Model suggests that there should be equal amounts of each." Here is the paper as submitted to Physical Review (PDF). The DZero team is looking forward to getting detailed data from the LHC once it ramps up operationally.
Comment He didn't go anywhere... (Score 1) 296
He just has other things he is working on as well. He is likely still in contact with the White House, they may just have forgotten to add him to their registry on whitehouse.gov.
Comment Re:Why bother? (Score 3, Interesting) 531
A reason that some people feel JavaScript "isn't a good language" is because of the hurdles in developing cross-platform client-side web solutions. Most of this can be blamed on IE not following W3C standards for things like XML DOM (XMLHttpRequest). These hurdles are becoming less and less with IE's slowly waining market share. I used to have a similar opinion of JavaScript: that it was bloated and/or unnecessary. This changed when I actually began to learn JavaScript, and realized that it was a very elegant and capable language.
Many APIs and toolkits already offer JavaScript scripting. Qt4 in particular, with its support of CSS style sheets and JavaScript scripting, is a fine example of how web programming paradigms can be used to enhance desktop applications.
I think it would be nice to see JavaScript emerge as a ubiquitous "application scripting language".
Trying To Bust JavaScript Out of the Browser 531
eldavojohn writes "If you think JavaScript is a crime against humanity, you might want to skip this article, because Ars is reporting on efforts to take JavaScript to the next level. With the new ECMAScript 5 draft proposal, the article points out a lot of positive things that have happened in the world of JavaScript. The article does a good job of citing some of the major problems with JavaScript and how a reborn library called CommonJS (formerly ServerJS) is addressing each of those problems. No one can deny JavaScript's usefulness on the front end of the web, but if you're a developer do you support the efforts to move it beyond that?"
Comment Re:this should be easy (Score 1) 282
Not only is a twittering remote not a new design, its something that few will ever want to use. Sadly, its just as easy to think of an unoriginal patent that people would actually use.
"An electronic device used to connect to a blogging service to deliver updates as a result of user input or the device's state due to external observations."
Could be a remote, could be a mobile phone, or even a computer. Let's patent "microblog service provider"!
Comment Coding is a Happy Place (Score 1) 508
I find that coding can be a stress relieving activity and is by many respects my happy place. I often find myself most relaxed when I am programming, either at work or for leisure.
