Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 3rd Nov 2009 20:44 UTC
Most of us here like gadgets. Things with displays, LEDs, or stuff that otherwise lights up in the dark and makes cool noises. There is this one gadget I had been waiting for to come out in The Netherlands for quite a while now, but at some point a limit was reached, and today I decided to do a complete 180 and buy a competing product.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Same here in Sweden. Most of the time you can choose between paying less (or nothing) for your phone and pay more per month on your contract or buy your phone at full price and pay less per month. Generally speaking it works out to about the same in total over the length of you contract.
Member since:2005-07-18
We use QWERTY, but we also use American keyboards despite there being Dutch ones.
Don't give a Dutch keyboard to a Dutch person though or they'll get confused about the layout.
In other European contries I visited they do use their own "national" keyboard, making it very tricky to type your password. My trick is to set the layout to US and type blind.
Member since:2006-12-28
Over here in Luxembourg we tend to use a QWERTZ Swiss French keyboard. It's pretty cool as you can type in almost all western European languages without resorting to alt key combinations.
The biggest problem for me are Belgium companies or retailers. They tend to either use or sell AZERTY keyboards which are very confusing to someone who uses either QWERTZ or QWERTY. I couldn't count the amount of times I've had to install a different layout on a laptop, then change the default user account setting in WinXP for a user.
In the end, I'm glad I'm moving to London. One keyboard layout to rule them all!!!
Member since:2006-11-02
Interesting I always assumed dutch keyboards where QWERTZ as well, considering how similar Dutch and German are.
Your mistake then. Dutch and German may be similar linguistically, their spelling is quite different. In Belgium they write Dutch with a French AZERTY keyboard. Now that's weird
.
Member since:2008-02-05
Your mistake then. Dutch and German may be similar linguistically, their spelling is quite different. In Belgium they write Dutch with a French AZERTY keyboard. Now that's weird
. Inaccurate
Don't give me (Flemish Belgian) a French Azerty, because they frustrate me to no end with their weird interpunction placement. Wikipedia: All letters are the same as on the French keyboard, but some punctuation signs (? ! @ - _ + = §) are in different positions. Unlike French AZERTY which has English terms such as "Escape" translated as "échap", the Belgian layout uses the traditional English words and terminology for all keys.
Edited 2009-11-04 10:29 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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Member since:
2007-11-04
No it's not. I have to pay my cell contract anyway, and phone or no phone, that's 30 EUR a month for 200min, 200txt msg, and unlimited data@2mbps. I get the iPhone for 99EUR with this contract. Without the iPhone, the contract would still be 30EUR a month - only now, you want me to pay 600 EUR for an unlocked Pre. "
You guys don't have better deals on contracts without phone? I thought they do have them pretty much everywhere in the world. AFAIK in Germany they do, definitely here in OZ, although you might need to move away from one of the big providers. On a side note it's quite amazing how many small providers with very unique plans they have here in OZ.
That's idiotic. On top of that - Germans use a QWERTZ keyboard, we use QWERTY.
Interesting I always assumed dutch keyboards where QWERTZ as well, considering how similar Dutch and German are.