Comment Re:Meh. (Score 1) 288
On the other hand, I was one of these "juniors" who received a new machine with Encarta already installed. I used it all the time.
Comment Re:Hard to believe (Score 1) 845
But first you have to know that you can divide first. Many don't, I'm sure.
Comment Great name (Score 1) 909
"Mobile Safari" actually sounds like a great name for a mobile porn site.
Endangered Species Condoms 61
The Center for Biological Diversity wants to help put a polar bear in your pants with their endangered species condom campaign. They hope that giving away 100,000 free Endangered Species Condoms across the country will highlight how unsustainable human population growth is driving species to extinction, and instill the sexual prowess of the coquí guajón rock frog, nature's most passionate lover, in the condom users. From the article: "To help people understand the impact of overpopulation on other species, and to give them a chance to take action in their own lives, the Center is distributing free packets of Endangered Species Condoms depicting six separate species: the polar bear, snail darter, spotted owl, American burying beetle, jaguar, and coquí guajón rock frog."
Comment Wrong. (Score 2, Informative) 235
I'm a Mac user who abandoned Safari for Chrome. Well, technically I abandoned Firefox, since Safari has always been a last-place choice for me.
Comment Re:Sorta related: Yahoo mail got worse (Score 1) 653
Get your Yahoo mail in gmail with POP. You can even set a custom "From" address so that you can send and receive as your Yahoo account.
Comment Re:PC Illiterate does not equal stupid (Score 1) 1654
She could have called Verizon and said "I have a Dell computer with Ubuntu and cannot use my Verizon DSL CD. How can I get online?"
When the Dell rep told her that she can do everything she needs to do on this computer (ie, create Word docs), she could have asked "How do I do that?"
She did neither (correct me if I'm wrong; I read the article yesterday), and instead called the local media to whine about it. She followed the advice of the "expert" but failed to ask how; that's a lack of problem solving skills, IMO.
Comment Re:PC Illiterate does not equal stupid (Score 1) 1654
It's not the inability to use a computer that makes her stupid. It's the complete lack of problem solving skills.
Comment My company just did this (Score 1) 509
My company just fired my "IT Executive" boss in favor of hiring a developer turned consultant turned IT manager. The new guy started today, and it already feels like we've got a better plan (our previous plan was to not have a plan).
Submission + - Italian parliament to mistakenly legalize mp3 p2p
plainwhitetoast writes: As says an article on La Repubblica.it (in Italian), according to notorious Italian lawyer Andrea Monti (copyright and internet expert), the new Italian copyright law would authorize users to publish and freely share copyrighted music (p2p included).
The new law, already approved by both chamber of deputies and senate, says indeed that is allowed the free publication through the Internet, free of charge, of images and music at low resolution or degraded for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for lucre.
As Andrea Monti says in the interview, those who wrote it didn't realise that the word "degraded" is technical, with a very precise meaning, which includes mp3s: as you all surely already know, mp3s are compressed with an algorithm that implies quality loss.
The law will be effective after the appropriate decree of the ministry, and will probably have a notable impact on pending p2p judicial cases.
According to the article Enzo Mazza, president of the FIMI (Federation of the Italian music industry), stated that they're not worried about this new law because they already know how the ministry's decree will be (how strange that somebody has previews on government's decrees, but declarations like this are made daily in Italy, without care).
He also added that in such decree, will be considered for educational use only those websites that deal officially with didactics like academic institutions, an that even professors' personal websites will be excluded.
But Andrea Monti commented that would be impossible to set such limits, because the Italian Constitution authorizes every citizen to make didactic and scientifical divulgation.
The only chance for politicians to avoid p2p legalization (and therefore the de-facto destruction music copyright) would be to slow down the process of the ministerial decree (so that the new law remains ineffective) and in the meantime hurry to amend the law.
We'll see what's going to happen, but in the meantime, what a thrill for copyright holders...
Microsoft 'Open Value Subscription' is None of the Above 202
daveofdoom writes "This week Microsoft launched an SMB program that contains the words 'open', 'value' and 'subscription', none of which are common to Microsoft products, culture, or marketing. Digging in a bit I found myself confused not only by what the program portends to be but why it would be called 'Open Value Subscription' unless they were hoping to leverage buzzwords and concepts related to open source and SaaS (software as a service). It's such lame and dishonest branding the marketing group should be ashamed."
