It looks like every other blog site out there, too many images, too much white space, no comment filter and comments are much harder to read and understand who is replying to what. If you switch to this new layout with no option for the classic one, I will stop visiting slashdot. It won't be much of a sacrifice at that point, this site would have already lost what I liked about it, focus on stuff that matters, the comments and information.

I was concerned with scientific studies as absolute proof but then I realized that when it comes down to it, it only matters with what *I* can hear. So I used the ABX comparator plugin in foobar2000 to test my ability to discern FLAC vs 320kbps. You select two tracks you want to compare and then it presents them as blind tracks labeled A,B,X,Y and you need to pair up tracks A and B to X and Y. So I found out I can hear a difference. On select things. I'd have to listen to almost the entirety of the song and only at certain points does the difference become apparent to me. Things like ending a song with a rattling of a drums hi-hat sounds more distorted with 320kbps MP3 than FLAC. Music like the Beatles ends up sounding the same from even at 256kbps to me. So I believe that a person can hear the difference between FLAC and MP3. It might not apply to all music across all equipment for all people but there is a difference. Personally, the majority of my music is encoded in 256kbps MP3.

For home use I recommend Window Switch. You could roll your own DIY solution with a combination of xpra, X11, vnc, rdesktop, ssh and so on but WinSwitch already does all that for you.

IANAL but No, the M1 Garand or any other gun from WW2 or even WW1 is not considered a "relic" or "antique" firearm in the United States. The M1 Garand was not made before 1899, is not a replica of a gun from before 1899, is not muzzle loading and is capable of firing "modern" (rim/center fire) ammunition. The law regarding antique firearms is to allow people to own and collect them without needing to register. Of course the finer details varies from state to state but here's us code

18 USC 921 (a)(16). (A) any firearm (including any firearm with a matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar type of ignition system) manufactured in or before 1898; and (B) any replica of any firearm described in subparagraph (A) if such replica -- (i) is not designed or redesigned for using rimfire or conventional centerfire fixed ammunition, or (ii) uses rimfire or conventional centerfire fixed ammunition which is no longer manufactured in the United States and which is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade.

No it's not worth investing in a high efficiency power supply for your computer if you're trying to save money or the environment. Yes it's worth buying a 80 Plus Gold or Platinum power supply if you want to reduce noise as many of them now run fanless or have a fan that generally doesn't need to turn on.

Shipping via free local pick up only. Looks like I'll have to pass. There's also the issue of me not having $25k to spend on 721 SNES titles but the shipping clearly is the bigger problem since I don't live in Ohio.

I would be plenty happy if Steam would just redirect and store all the games files to a specific folder in the steam directory, much less implement a hypervisor. As it is now, installing a number of games from steam poops data all over my hard drive. I have game saves, settings and common files in My Document, "My Documents\My Games", AppData\Local, AppData\Roaming, AppData\Saved Games, steamapps\user and probably in other places I discovered yet.

While i'm at it, another nice feature would be for steam to be a unified DRM scheme. Install steam and buy a game and install only the game (and necessary libraries such as XNA for windows). Somewhere along the line I didn't pay enough attention and now I have junk like SecureROM and that Rockstar Social Club crap.

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Pencil and paper is unbeatable as the main medium for recording notes. Pencil on paper feels nice and I like to think that writing things down helps me process the information better later on. I like using plain white paper (or engineering pads but those are expensive) since I like to take notes on notes and have blocks of notes all over the page with arrows pointing every which way.

I tried other things and the most useful companion to pencil and paper is a decent camera for taking pictures of diagrams or poor handwriting to be deciphered later. I guess you can just use a smart phone for that now. I also recorded lecture audio but almost never listened to them again. There are the rare occasions where typing on a laptop is better and emacs + org-mode would be my note taker of choice. But yeah, in general, pencil + paper.

Can we, as a community, get over Betteridge's Law of Headlines? Please? I'm seeing it all over slashdot recently and it really is just the latest incarnation of FIRST POST. While "no" may end up as a valid answer to the headline, it kills the discussion by religiously applying an adage instead of introducing replies to the summary with new facts, anecdotes or questions. Sure the headline might be crap but that doesn't mean we need to reply back with crap.

Unless they decided to change it in Windows 8 from the previous iterations, Ctrl+Esc brings up the start menu.

As a gamer I generally care more about latency than bandwidth.

Low power? Maybe compared to traditional vacuum tubes. TFA says the nano vacuum tubes have a threshold voltage of 10V. Modern FETs are a magnitude less.

So if a house has this copper particle wallpaper (or paint) does that mean the house is more of a hazard in a lightning storm?

I went over the limit once and the worse part is that they threaten to disconnect the service for repeated offenses. No excessive charge fo each GB over, they will just disconnect the internet. And of course my only option for broadband is comcast.