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Comment Re:You need different kinds of people (Score 1) 487

by Happy Nuclear Death (#36714396) Attached to: Have American Businesses Been Stranded By the MBAs?

People may moan about old families, money, and influence, but a large portion of the blame lies in a culture which sees fit to appoint unqualified, unknowledgeable, sweet talkers to positions of responsibility, and moreover to even deny those positions to competent candidates.

You mean like Obama? I couldn't agree more.

Comment Re:I Live in New Mexico (Score 0) 134

by Happy Nuclear Death (#36595722) Attached to: Wildfire Threatens Los Alamos Labs

I know, right? Pesky "freedom" and "personal responsibility." Can't have any of that!

There is just no way that the dumbed-down, "safe" fireworks allowed to be sold here are going to start a fire in the average neighborhood. And I guess you never thought about standing by with a fire extinguisher when you set some off (I do).

Seriously. Take your "there oughta be a law" attitude and move somewhere else. I don't need you as a neighbor.
Cloud

Ask Slashdot: How Do I Scrub Pirated Music From My Collection? 758

Posted by CmdrTaco from the forgive-me-father-for-i-have-sinned dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I tried out Google Music, and I liked it. Google made me swear that I won't upload any 'illegal' tracks, and apparently people fear Apple's iCloud turning into a honeypot for the RIAA. My music collection comprises about 90% 'legal' tracks now — legal meaning tracks that I paid for — but I still have some old MP3s kicking around from the original Napster. Moreover, I have a lot of MP3s that I downloaded because I was too lazy to rip the CD version that I own. I wanted to find a tool to scan my music to identify files that may be flagged as having been pirated by these cloud services; I thought such a tool would be free and easy to find. After all, my intent is to search my own computer for pirated music and to delete it — something that the RIAA wants the government to force you to do. But endless re-phrasing on Google leads to nothing but instructions for how to obtain pirated music. Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?"
Education

Could You Pass Harvard's Entrance Exam From 1869? 741

Posted by samzenpus from the learning-for-learning's-sake dept.
erfnet writes "The New York Times remembers back to when 'college was a buyer's bazaar' and digs up 19th-century classified ads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and others. In competitive efforts to attract students from the limited pool of qualified candidates, applications were taken as late as September for an October freshman class. Vassar offered lush room accommodations. The expectations were high: Latin, Greek, Virgil, Caesar's Commentaries; Harvard's entrance exam from 1869 is posted (PDF). Could any of us pass the exam today?"
Privacy

Samsung Plants Keyloggers On Laptops 515

Posted by samzenpus from the terrible-marketing-ideas dept.
Saint Aardvark writes "Mohammed Hassan writes in Network World that he found a keylogger program installed on his brand-new laptop — not once, but twice. After initial denials, Samsung has admitted they did this, saying it was to 'monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used.' As Hassan says, 'In other words, Samsung wanted to gather usage data without obtaining consent from laptop owners.' Three PR officers from Samsung have so far refused comment."
Transportation

Obama Calling For $53B For High Speed Rail 1026

Posted by samzenpus from the lyle-lanley-approved dept.
Antisyzygy writes "President Obama is calling for $53B to be appropriated for the construction of high-speed rail in the United States over the next 6 years. Assuming Congress approves this plan, the funding would be spent on developing and/or improving trains that travel at approximately 250 miles/hour, as well as spent on connecting existing rail lines to new developed high speed lines."
Government

Obama Eyeing Internet ID For Americans 487

Posted by Soulskill from the anti-troll-doctrine dept.
Pickens writes "CBS News reports that the Obama administration is currently drafting the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will be released by the president in the next few months. 'We are not talking about a national ID card,' says Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department will be in charge of the program. 'We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.' Although details have not been finalized, the 'trusted identity' may take the form of a smart card or digital certificate that would prove online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt says that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. 'I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to,' says Schmidt. There's no chance that 'a centralized database will emerge,' and 'we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this.'"

Comment I do, but no need for big spending. (Score 1) 520

by Happy Nuclear Death (#34310440) Attached to: Do You Really Need a Discrete Sound Card?

I'm still using an Audigy 2 ZS I purchased in 2004. My 2007-ish motherboard sound device is turned off in BIOS. Why? Two reasons:

1) Motherboard sound is full of noise and glitches (pops and clicks).

2) Even more importantly: The onboard sound hardware *actively interferes* with sound under Linux. I have to turn it off, or I have mysterious and disruptive sound problems. Such as fmod using 100% of CPU cycles.

I can only speculate on the real cause of #2, but if experience is any guide, it's due to half-baked hardware that only "works" with a Windows-only driver.

This is why I put "works" in quotes: Even when integrated sound hardware works under Windows, it doesn't necessarily work all that well. I bought the Sound Blaster because the integrated audio on the PC I built in 2003 was also flaky.

The Audigy 2 ZS works absolutely fine under Ubuntu, so that's what I use. Yes... ... I have zero problems with this card and PulseAudio. But the onboard sound device is a piece of junk. Motherboard manufacturers throw in the cheapest junk they think they can get away with. They certainly don't give a damn whether it works in Linux.
Data Storage

Are Consumer Hard Drives Headed Into History? 681

Posted by timothy from the yes-but-at-what-pace dept.
Lucas123 writes "With NAND flash fabricators ramping up production, per GB prices of solid state drives are expected to drop by more than half by this time next year to about 50 cents. Even so, consumers still look at three things when purchasing a computer: CPU power, memory size, and drive capacity, giving spinning disk the edge. SSD manufacturers like Samsung and SanDisk have tried but failed to change consumer attitudes toward choosing SSDs for their performance, durability and lower power use. But, with the release of the new MacBook Air (sans hard disk drive), Steve Jobs has joined the marketing push and may have the clout to shift the market away from hard drives, even if they're still an order of magnitude cheaper."
Open Source

Desktop Linux Is Dead 1348

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-no-he-didn't dept.
digitaldc writes with this quote from PCWorld: "It kills me to say this: The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead. Despite phenomenal security and stability — and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility — Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk. ... Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large."
Hardware

Submission + - Someone cooked with their USB ports, Awesome (tekgoblin.com) 4

Submitted by tekgoblin
tekgoblin writes: Wow, I would have never have thought to try and cook food with the power that a standard USB port provides well someone did. A standard port provides around 5V of power give or take a little. I am not even sure what it takes to heat a small hotplate but I am sure it is more than 5V. It looks like the guy tied together around 30 USB cables powered by his PC to power this small hotplate. But believe it or not it seems to have cooked the meat perfectly.

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