nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: The stupidest trend in laptop design
I am very happy to have a numpad on my laptop (first time I've had one after five laptops without) and in all likelihood would only buy a laptop in the future with a numpad. The balancing issue took a few minutes to get used to, if I use on my lap, but otherwise, it was an easy adjustment to make. Using the numpad when entering figures into Excel or other programs is much easier than before when using the top-line of the keyboard, and no longer need to have a usb desktop keyboard around to help with that.
nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: Iran's Cyberwarfare Commander Assassinated
Canadian football also allows motion towards the line of scrimmage, which increases the tempo of the game & fun factor for the fans.
nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: UK Parliamentary porn consumption laid bare in official figures
The figures per month vary massively from 15 in February to 114,844 in November 2012. Makes one wonder what sites are classified as pornographic and if the spikes occurring are the result of poor filtering.
nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: Shit for Making Websites
Which is why I didn't read this the first day I saw it (the expletive), while at work. Only looking the second day it was up on the first page, when I was at home and curious why it was still popular.
nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs
"The Lives of Others" (Das Leben der Anderen) is an excellent German film that dramatically shows the intrusiveness of the Stasi (secret police) into daily life in the former East Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
In the film you can see some of the techniques used by Wolfgang Schmidt and his colleagues.
nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: Only clear skies on Google Maps and Earth
There is a fair amount of artificial cloud covering residential buildings in Singapore, plus some commercial, public and military sites. Some areas such as a diplomatic district might be understandable, though others like the odd HDB block less so. Having lived across the street from one HDB block now obscured by artificial clouds, I'm wondering who might live there that its a priority to block an aerial view.
nekojima
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12 years ago
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on: What is Happening in Istanbul?
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: 10 years later, ‘Star Wars Kid’ speaks out
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM
How about a little bit of consistency for the Path url in the tweet. I know its now common practice, but this obscuring of links is what I have repeated told my family and many friends to avoid clicking on, so to avoid downloading viruses or going to sites they don't intend to.
For "bit.ly/PathHelp" the underlying url is "t.co/B4lOWrDqyr" and it redirects to "service.path.com/customer/portal/emails/new"
I'm sure there is a reason for it, but just having service.path.com or help.path.com would be more beneficial for the company to both have as a url and to tweet to (former) customers/users.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Stupid Legal Threats: You Can't Write About Me Because of Your Blog's Name
Paul Curtis was arrested by the FBI last week, and on Tuesday he was released without charges, when the FBI found there was zero evidence in pursue charges. But his name and face were among the top stories, not related to the Boston bombings, in the past week. Much like many of those wrongly and very publicly arrested, he will now have some troubles in the future from those who may still believe he was responsible. As we know, information on the Internet, for the most part, lasts forever.
"US drops case against ricin letter suspect Paul Curtis"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22273355
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Bloomberg Says Interpretation of Constitution Will ‘Have to Change’ After Boston
“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11,” Bloomberg said.
The world is generally safer now than at almost any previous time, particularly for those of us that remember the Cold War and the early-mid 1980s, when even these measures weren't required to avoid mutually-assured destruction (MAD) by two super-powers and their proxies. The only people wanting to limit freedom are politicians in the pocket of those wanting to expand the myriad of security services of the state. This feeds into the projected paranoia of those citizens who fail to understand the true cost, chance, or opportunity of reducing terrorist activities. Of course there has to be an attempt to reduce terrorist activities, but its the internal processes and procedures in place currently between the myriad network of security services which need to be reformed drastically, not the further expansion of those security services or the reduction in freedoms.
Terrorism is an issue of public security, while before 1991 the Soviet Union (for the Western world at least) was an issue of national security. Issues of public security need to be treated as such, not over-inflated and treated incorrectly. This helps support the terrorists, not defeat them, as has been shown in almost every internal urban civil conflict in the past hundred years.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
In business terminology, a common English phrase would be "first-mover disadvantage".
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Terrorist Hunt Sends America Over the Edge
It didn't work, as the suspect was discovered after the curfew was over, by a man who had been inside his house all day. Had the man been outside his house earlier in the day, and seen the cover of his boat, its all but likely the suspect could have been apprehended 8-12 hours earlier.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: How They Got the Second Suspect
“public exemption in cases of national security.”
This is a huge stretch for the definition of "national security" and not necessarily one that a US Attorney should be making in this case, lest courts rule against them for over-extension and they lose the privilege of invoking this exemption for the future.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: World of Tanks Security Breach
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Google Is Forbidding Users From Reselling, Loaning Glass Eyewear
I'd feel much better if they explicitly forbid users from wearing this eyewear around children, in public toilets, beaches, swimming pools, shop changing rooms, or anywhere else its use could be utilized to fulfill a perversion (this assumes they have the camera). So basically, probably means they can just wear them at home.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: America's raisin regime
Its been going on for seven decades, must be a very elaborate and highly organized April Fools joke.
http://www.raisins.org
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: Apple's Tim Cook says 'I'm sorry' to Chinese customers
Whether Cook means he is "sorry" or not, this type of kowtowing is what is required in mainland China in situations like this. Otherwise the corporate harassment would continue until products are banned, stores closed, or unilateral changes are forced on Apple by a government agency.
A quick Skype poll of mainland friends (as opposed to expat friends) in China found that of those who had Apple products, none said they'd ever had a problem with Apple's repair policies inside China. The problems were more likely with customers returning fake or far too out-of-warranty repair issues.
Chatting on the weekend to the Director of Marketing for a major local electronics firm in China, he felt it was a politically inspired anti-foreigner campaign and was sure other foreign brands would be harassed for their perceived "arrogance" in the coming weeks and months.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”
These banks were paying unsustainable high rates of interest to depositors, and to earn enough to cover their obligations, the banks invested in higher risk government and corporate bonds paying higher rates of interest. The dangers of a Greek debt collapse have been known since before they joined the Euro, this is why Greece's interest rates were higher than Germany's for many years before the crisis.
Turkish Cypriots must be very happy now that the Greek Cypriots rejected the peace settlement in 2004. Otherwise, they'd likely be bankrupt too.
nekojima
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13 years ago
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on: “My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”
It appears this is a current/chequing/checking account rather than the savings/deposit accounts that were originally reported to be subject to the special tax and which pay the ridiculous levels of interest (10%+).
The impact on local business is already being felt, both consumption & payment of supplies & salaries (and soon tax remittance), and imports will suffer significantly in the coming days and weeks too. Exports may well be paid for and the funds remain outside of Cyprus, further creating problems for the economy, as it goes almost all-cash and tax is evaded too. Credit card balances can not be paid off for now either.
It will be interesting to see how Russian mobsters (and various shades of business people) react to having millions/billions taken from them. I'd not want to be a Cypriot politician or banker having to say no to these guys.
