Owners Smash iPhones To Get Upgrades, Says Insurance Company 406

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 17, 2010 @02:59PM from the dog-ate-it dept.

markass530 writes "An iPhone insurance carrier says that four in six claims are suspicious, and is worse when a new model appears on the market. 'Supercover Insurance is alleging that many iPhone owners are deliberately smashing their devices and filing false claims in order to upgrade to the latest model. The gadget insurance company told Sky News Sunday that it saw a 50-percent rise in claims during the month Apple launched the latest version, the iPhone 3GS.'"

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:49PM from the type-A-negative-personality dept.

trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."

Submission + - Zotero Lawsuit Dismissed 1

Submitted by peretzpup on Friday June 05, 2009 @12:03AM

peretzpup writes: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Thomson Reuters's lawsuit against George Mason University's Center for History and New Media over supposed violations of the EndNote licensing agreement by the Zotero project, hosted at the university, has been dismissed. Zotero project co-director Sean Takats's announcement is pretty heartwarming. No comment as yet from Thomson Reuters.

A Look Back At the World's First Netbook 143

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 10, 2009 @09:19AM from the paperweight-before-its-time dept.

Not-A-Microsoft-Fan writes with this excerpt from The Coffee Desk: "Netbooks are making huge waves within the hardware and software industries today, but not many would believe that the whole Netbook craze actually started back around 1996 with the Toshiba Libretto 70CT. Termed technically as a subnotebook because of its small dimensions, the computer is the first that fits all of the qualifications of being what we would term a netbook today, due in part to its built-in Infrared and PCMCIA hardware, and its (albeit early) web browsing software. The hardware includes the two (potentially) wireless PCMCIA and infrared network connections, Windows 95 OSR 2 with Internet Explorer 2.0, a whole 16MB of RAM and a 120Mhz Intel Pentium processor (we're flying now!)."

Submission + - Navigate Linux Kernel like Google Maps. (makelinux.net)

Submitted by

MakeLinux

on Thursday March 12, 2009 @04:04PM

MakeLinux writes: "A picture is worth a thousand words. Just try it! And navigate Linux kernel like Google Maps."

Comment Re:Yes! A step closer to the Age of Info (Score 1) 213

by peretzpup on Friday November 09, 2007 @07:31PM (#21302607) Attached to: Bill to Require Open Access to Scientific Papers

I live down the street from Smith now, it has a quite adequate reference collection. I should point out that a great many full text journal databases aren't aggregatable due to license constraints & the best one can manage is some sort of metasearch with all the downfalls of that (least common denominator query syntax, search speed the speed of the slowest of the included search interfaces, no common record structure, etc., etc.), so as I said above, full of shit as he may be, he has a point about those quirky proprietary databases.

Comment Re:Hmm.. (Score 1) 202

by Axeus on Saturday October 21, 2006 @03:45PM (#16530425) Attached to: Trojan Installs Anti-Virus, Removes Other Malware

The virus downloads the anti-virus software from a predefined location that he controls. Thus, he would only need to update that software to exclude his new virus, and the old virus would automatically pick it up, so there wouldn't be a conflict.

Visual Tour of Office 2007 Beta 2 495

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday May 23, 2006 @03:11PM from the hope-they-are-ready-for-the-support-calls dept.

feminazi writes "Computerworld has a review and visual tour of the newest installment of Office. No more toolbars & menus; those have been replace with 'ribbons.' Of the various products in the suite, Word is the most changed. Styles are easier to invoke, but no easier to create or understand. A couple of the redeeming characteristics is the ability to save as PDF and XPS and an improved Track Changes. Bigger spreadsheets are available in Excel -- over 1 million rows and over 16,000 columns per worksheet -- and new and better visualization abilities. Lots new in Outlook including multiple calendars and direct support for RSS feeds. And the apps all work together better than before. From the article: 'The major change in Beta 2 was the introduction of Office SharePoint Server.' This means that Sharepoint Server is required, but it also means more & better collaboration and advanced search abilities are supported."

Comment Re:Why can't Appleites hold Apple to a high standa (Score 1) 671

by line.at.infinity on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:06PM (#13646332) Attached to: iPod nano Owners In Screen Scratch Trauma

I have never figured out why owners of Apple products refuse to hold Apple to a high standard across the board.

On the contrary, you can usually find a link to some kind of replacement program or another from Apple as a result of another class action lawsuit at the bottom of the page at http://www.apple.com/

Journal Journal: Hurricane Katrina and the Internets

Journal by line.at.infinity on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @01:00AM

This was a rather unusual experience... I was listening to my list of podcasts, one of them being A Spoonful of Russian, which is the only foreign language lesson podcast I am subscribed to. Lesson #2 started with a blurb by the host Natalia about how her family had to evacuate from their home in New Orleans to their relatives' place in New Jersy. There I was, listening to a hurricane Katrina evacuee

Journal Journal: Bush's 2nd Inauguration 1

Journal by line.at.infinity on Friday January 28, 2005 @10:19PM

Listened to a few minutes of Bush's 2nd inauguration: "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." So even a hawk-ish president can say he's for peace. Bush's kind of peace sounds quite different from JFK's kind of peace. How far can Bush carr

Journal Journal: Competition is Stupid

Journal by line.at.infinity on Thursday January 22, 2004 @11:47AM

...at least when it comes to some open source projects, anyway. If the projects aren't making any money to begin with, then there's no incentive to out-do the other --- it just means that efforts are dispersed inefficiently. Of course, variety is better, but if two projects strive for the same goal, they might as well combine their efforts.

Journal Journal: French headscarf ban recommended

Journal by line.at.infinity on Thursday December 11, 2003 @04:21PM

French headscarf ban recommended

Totally nuts. What if I wanted to wear a symbol that happened to be religious, but didn't intend to convey something religious? What if a T-shirt contained a crescent?

Journal Journal: Computer troubles

Journal by line.at.infinity on Tuesday November 11, 2003 @01:17AM

A few hours ago I was typing a Slashdot comment about ICANN, UN, US, and EC via the Safari browser on OS X, when the browser inexplicably crashed just after comment preview. The computer went beepbeepbeepbeep... and ATE my /. comment. It was, like, a bummer.

I got a dialog box with a positive spin, saying that it closed due to errors, but --rest assured-- your OS and all other applications were unaffected! I was still pissed though!

Journal Journal: BRING 'EM ON!, or why I'm betting Bush won't get re-elected.

Journal by line.at.infinity on Monday November 10, 2003 @11:28PM

In the beginning, sort of like how it later was for Arnold, we meddled of ideal thoughts such as everything will be ok even with a dumb president because his advisers will take care of him. Despite the fact that many have now become so accustomed to Bush that they've dropped the W already, Bush has little chance, in my view, of getting re-elected. Many have said to me: but he's too popular not to get re-elected. Granted, these conversations were made during the Iraq crisis. Here are some reas

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