You Know What Part » Uhm… yeah

Get rid of that stupid Slashdot comment section in your RSS feed

ryan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:44:35 +0000

Slashdot recently began embedding this ridiculous comment section in their RSS feed. To get rid of it, add this to your favorite ad blocking extension:

http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discuss&id=*

I’ll click through if I feel the need to read or spend karma.

How Times Change

ryan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:42:40 +0000

Steve Jobs, 1996:

Steve Jobs, 2010:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

I love your products, Apple, but it’s hard to continue promoting your stuff when your strategy for a market is to patent-troll everyone else. If you can’t beat Androids on your own, maybe it’s time to innovate. And stop acting like that other huge monopoly; remember how that worked out for them?

Apple Sues HTC

The Apple Patents Cockpunching All Smart Phones: An Illustrated Guide
(best headline of the year so far)

Stupid OS X tricks – window management

ryan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:55:39 +0000

I’m still getting used to my Mac, and one of the things I ran into recently drove me nuts. For a company that prides itself on the user experience, Apple sure does drop the ball in odd ways.

My annoyance was window sizing when switching from docked to not-docked on my MacBook. When docked, I’m running on a larger monitor so I have my windows sized to use more real estate. When I go mobile, the windows remain that size, which is far larger than the MacBook’s monitor size.

Here’s the thing though; you have to get to the bottom-right of the window to resize it, which I couldn’t do. iTunes in particular was giving me a headache because none of the tricks I found were working.

Finally, I stumbled onto this page that revealed the fix (someone else found through guessing it appears). It’s simple when you know it (hold Alt while toggling Window > Zoom), but so esoteric to be confounding. (Side note: for other apps, you can switch the dock location to another edge and then back and the windows seem to come back. Again, really? This was the intended UE?)

Anyway, windows now back to their working sizes, but what a stupid thing to have to deal with. At least Windows let’s you grab any side of the window to resize.

Pretty much

ryan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:54:06 +0000

Inspired by a completely idiotic bit of fear mongering on the local “news” tonight.

Still not scared? Alrighty then.

Thanks reddit.

50 things you are not supposed to know

ryan — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:30:48 +0000

The Ten Commandments We Always See Aren’t the Ten Commandments
One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book
The CIA Commits Over 100,000 Serious Crimes Each Year
The First CIA Agent to Die in the Line of Duty Was Douglas Mackiernan
After 9/11, the Defense Department Wanted to Poison Afghanistan’s Food Supply
The US Government Lies About the Number of Terrorism Convictions It Obtains
The US Is Planning to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
The US and Soviet Union Considered Detonating Nuclear Bombs on the Moon
Two Atomic Bombs Were Dropped on North Carolina
World War III Almost Started in 1995
The Korean War Never Ended
Agent Orange Was Used in Korea
Kent State Wasn’t the Only – or Even the First – Massacre of College Students During the Vietnam Era
Winston Churchill Believed in a Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy
The Auschwitz Tattoo Was Originally an IBM Code Number
Adolph Hitler’s Blood Relatives Are Alive and Well in New York State
Around One Quarter of “Witches” Were Men
The Virginia Colonists Practiced Cannibalism
Many of the Pioneering Feminists Opposed Abortion
Black People Served in the Confederate Army
Electric Cars Have Been Around Since the 1880s
Juries Are Allowed to Judge the Law, Not Just the Facts
The Police Aren’t Legally Obligated to Protect You
The Government Can Take Your House and Land, Then Sell Them to Private Corporations
The Supreme Court Has Ruled That You’re Allowed to Ingest Any Drug, Especially If You’re an Addict
The Age of Consent in Most of the US Is Not Eighteen
Most Scientists Don’t Read All of the Articles They Cite
Louis Pasteur Suppressed Experiments That Didn’t Support His Theories
The Creator of the GAIA Hypothesis Supports Nuclear Power
Genetically-Engineered Humans Have Already Been Born
The Insurance Industry Wants to Genetically Test All Policy Holders
Smoking Causes Problems Other Than Lung Cancer and Heart Disease
Herds of Milk-Producing Cows Are Rife With Bovine Leukemia Virus
Most Doctors Don’t Know the Radiation Level of CAT Scans
Medication Errors Kill Thousands Each Year
Prescription Drugs Kill Over 100,000 Annually
Work Kills More People Than War
The Suicide Rate Is Highest Among the Elderly
For Low-Risk People, a Positive Result from an HIV Test Is Wrong Half the Time
DNA Matching Is Not Infallible
An FBI Expert Testified That Lie Detectors Are Worthless for Security Screening
The Bayer Company Made Heroin
LSD Has Been Used Successfully in Psychiatric Therapy
Carl Sagan Was an Avid Pot-Smoker
One of the Heroes of Black Hawk Down Is a Convicted Child Molester
The Auto Industry Says That SUV Drivers Are Selfish and Insecure
The Word “Squaw” Is Not a Derisive Term for the Vagina
You Can Mail Letters for Little or No Cost
Advertisers’ Influence on the News Media Is Widespread
The World’s Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes