MidKnight - Slashdot User

Happy Towel Day 122

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 25, 2010 @11:42AM from the wringing-out-the-wit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "While Douglas Adams continues his attempt to set a new record for the longest extended lunch break, geeks all over the universe pay tribute to the beloved author by celebrating the tenth edition of Towel Day. Towel Day is more alive than ever. This year Richard Dawkins, one of Adams' best friends, has tweeted a Towel Day reminder to his numerous followers. The CERN Bulletin has published an article on Towel Day. There has been TV coverage and there will be a radio interview. The Military Republic of the Deltan Imperium, a newly formed micronation, has recognized Towel Day as an official holiday. In Hungary several hundreds of hitchhiker fans want to have a picnic together in a park. And there's a concert, a free downloadable nerdrap album, a free game being released, the list goes on and on."

13,000 Volunteer To Put Personal Genomes Online 126

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 18, 2009 @10:43AM from the will-c0de-for-f00d dept.

Lucas123 writes "The Personal Genome Project, which opened itself up to the public on April 25, has to date signed up 13,000 of the target 100,000 volunteers needed to create the world's first publicly accessible genome database. Volunteers will go through a battery of written tests and then offer DNA samples from which their genetic code will be derived and then published to help scientists discover links between genes and hereditary traits. While the Personal Genome Project won't publish names, just about everything else will be made public, including photos and complete medical histories. Scientists hope to some day have millions of genomes in the database."

Mozilla Preparing To Scrap Tabbed Browsing? 554

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 18, 2009 @08:36AM from the if-it-ain't-broke-fix-it dept.

Barence writes "Mozilla Labs has launched a design competition that aims to find an alternative to tabbed browsing. 'Tabs worked well on slow machines on a thin internet, where ten browser sessions were "many browser sessions,"' Mozilla claims on its Design Challenge website. 'Today, 20+ parallel sessions are quite common; the browser is more of an operating system than a data display application; we use it to manage the web as a shared hard drive. However, if you have more than seven or eight tabs open they become pretty much useless.' Aza Raskin, the head of user experience at Mozilla Labs, has already blogged on the possibility of moving tabs down the side of the browser, with tabs grouped by the type of activity involved (i.e. applications, work spaces)."

Comment Non-Techie Response (Score 2, Insightful) 562

by MidKnight on Sunday May 17, 2009 @10:03AM (#27986295) Attached to: Sony Pictures CEO Thinks the Net Wasn't Worth It

My girlfriend's response when I read the quote to her:

"I'm a girl who doesn't think I've seen anything good having come from Sony in a while."

Zing!

Comment Re:Additional features (Score 5, Insightful) 606

by MidKnight on Monday March 16, 2009 @02:47PM (#27214493) Attached to: What Features Should Be Included With iPhone 3.0?

4) Dump iTunes. Seriously, talk about specification creep. When a music player now manages movies, television, that's one thing. But when it's your application manager and synchronization tool as well. Apple really needs to launch a new tool, call iLife or what not. Where iTunes would just be one category. I mean, I really hate having to go under music to find my TV shows and apps and such. LAME!!!

Not to be disrespectful, but are you frikkin' nuts?

Apple's success outside of the computer market over the past few years has been due to their ability to:

Get iTunes onto the majority of consumers' computers (thanks to the iPod's success)
Convince media publishers that all those eyeballs looking at iTunes every day want to buy things
Use iTunes as a distribution channel and the "hub" of people's digital lifestyle

iTunes is the key to Apple's strategy. They're not going to dump it, they're going to use it to continue to make boatloads of cold, hard cash. If you want to rename the application to "Apple Online Store", I'm sure they wouldn't mind you doing so on your own computer. But in my mind it's fair to say that iTunes is currently Apple's most important asset.

Comment This is opportunity calling... who wants to answer (Score 1) 530

by MidKnight on Friday March 06, 2009 @11:43AM (#27091897) Attached to: State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe

I love all the critique of what is obviously a pitiful attempt to produce one of them fancy web application things. I unfortunately can't add to the list here... being a late-comer to the discussion, the site is already offline.

But a lot of folks are missing the obvious opportunity here: government jobs are, frankly, the best thing going right now given the current state of the economy. How many Slashdotters have sent their resume to the Colorado DOL? They clearly need the help!

Comment Re:Argh... (Score 3, Insightful) 774

by MidKnight on Tuesday October 14, 2008 @04:02PM (#25372977) Attached to: Apple Announces New MacBook, Pro, Air

... To perform a right click with the Mighty Mouse you have to lift up with your left finger and click with the right.

This, in a word, sucks.

Have you used one for more than a minute or two? You'd be surprised how quickly you adapt to it; it's just another muscle-memory thing. When I'm using a more traditional two-button mouse, I find it quaint that it has actual physical buttons, and that the scroll button/wheel is only two directional.

Hopefully the MacBook trackpads are better. Sounds like they are.

I'll bet the physical feel is pretty damn good. I'm still amazed at how well multi-touch works on an iPhone screen, and I'm guessing the glass mouse will be very similar.

POD Braces Itself Against Amazon 69

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 07, 2008 @05:21AM from the oh-so-demanding dept.

OMNIpotusCOM writes "As we've previously discussed, Amazon is in the process of taking the 'Buy' buttons off of published on demand (POD) books that were not created by Amazon's in-house publisher, BookSurge. PODdy Mouth has been reporting reactions throughout the week (including an open letter from Amazon), culminating today in letters to Amazon and their board by the Author's Guild, Small Publishers Association of North America, and the Publishers Marketing Association. Possible lawsuits are looming ... is it enough to change Amazon's mind?"

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