Portugal holds on to words few can grasp: related news

Portugal holds on to words few can grasp

A Fernando Pessoa stencil made on a wall of a building in the Bica neighborhood of Lisbon. His heirs plan to sell some of his manuscripts.

The End of Gamers

Think of all the things you can do with a photograph. You can document the atrocities of war, as photojournalists sometimes do. You can record fleeting moments in time, as did documentarians like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. You can capture the ordinary moments of family life, as many people do at birthday parties or holidays for an album or shoebox archive. You can take a snapshot reminder of a home improvement project in order to buy the right part at the hardware store. An automated street intersection photograph can capture license plate for future ticketing, and a pornographer can capture a nude body for future titillation.

How Does RSS Work? What Can I Do With RSS?

Really Simple Syndication feeds can be extremely useful! The purpose of RSS is to regularly update your hobby interests by receiving dynamic web feeds directly to your screen. Examples include: tracking DVD prices at Amazon, watching for cheap airfares, following the Don Imus controversy. You can get the latest gossip on Anna Nicole Smith's baby, receive the latest wallpaper from your favorite web photographer, or follow the NHL hockey playoffs. You can get the joke of the day or the quote of the week. You can even get barbecue recipes! There are so many interesting things you can do with RSS. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

The limits of iPhoto slideshows

I have iPhoto ’06 and find that I can create a marvelous slideshow, but I can’t do anything with it—cannot post to MobilMe, can’t drag to my iDisk, can’t drag to my Desktop. If I want to share it, it seems the only thing I can do is export my photos to iMovie and create a mini-movie with my still photos, and then save it and hope my PC friends can see it.

Real-World 3G Monthly Cost With Taxes and Fees?

Kristl writes "I have called AT&T and walked into several AT&T stores to ask 'How much will an AT&T phone plan cost per month with taxes and fees and everything?'. No one can answer this question. They are evasive and become testy when I push them on it. Their answer is they can't tell me what the government is going to charge me as the fees can vary month to month, but I've been an AT&T customer for several years, and my taxes and fees have not varied more than a dollar in all of that time. So I question them: 'Can you just tell me what the taxes and fees will be for a 3G plan in California that has the basic calling plan, basic data plan, and the basic text plan?' I even do the math for them, that's $75. Okay AT&T, what are the taxes and fees on $75? Oh, they can't tell me that, as the taxes and fees can vary from month to month.

Can bat, can bowl, can't write

All too few top-level players have the writing skills to match. So why are they increasingly making inroads into the cricket media?

Network server loss with a VPN connection

A client using ISA 2000 can't connect to their network servers when connecting through a VPN. At first they can access them, but after a few minutes they can't access the servers. The VPN connection is still connected, but they can't do anything on the network remotely. What could be causing the network server loss?

Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment

theodp writes "A few months ago, the NY Times' Ron Lieber extolled the virtues of allowing utilities, phone, and credit card companies to pull whatever you owe from your bank account. Big mistake. Lieber's readers fired back, telling him he was out of his mind for suggesting that they give billers unfettered access to their credit cards and bank accounts. Now Lieber goes through five of the glitches that can occur with any of the various methods of setting up automatic payments: 'You can give each biller permission to pull the full amount from your bank account. You can use the online bill system at your bank to push payments out automatically each month. Or you can charge every bill to your credit card and give only that card company permission to pull money from your bank account when the credit card bill is due.

Kensington Charger Makes iPhone One With Car

iPhone 3G owners need all the extra juice they can get. Time spent driving can also be time spent racking up power, so a car charger can come in handy. The Kensington Car Charger Delux holds the phone firmly in place so you can control the music it's playing, writes reviewer Chris Maxcer. However, it's a little clumsy if you want to pick up the phone to take a call -- if that's even legal where you live.

Kensington Charger Makes iPhone One With Car

iPhone 3G owners need all the extra juice they can get. Time spent driving can also be time spent racking up power, so a car charger can come in handy. The Kensington Car Charger Delux holds the phone firmly in place so you can control the music it's playing, writes reviewer Chris Maxcer. However, it's a little clumsy if you want to pick up the phone to take a call -- if that's even legal where you live.

15 great, free privacy downloads

One of the worst privacy invaders the world has ever seen is the Internet. When you surf, Web sites can find out where you've been and can gather other information about you. Trojan horses and spyware can snoop on you. Key loggers can capture your keystrokes as you type. Eavesdroppers can steal your passwords.

Perl and the Practical Systems Administrator

Systems administrators are very busy people. Sometimes a bit of common sense programming can go a long way toward eliminating some of the repetitive tasks associated with systems administration. Perl can be used to automate many recurring tasks. AccountCheck is an example Perl script that automatically checks for problems that can occur when user accounts are made and deleted without every necessary step being completed. Partially created or deleted accounts can be a security hazard, acting as hidden doors to let intruders enter a system. Most systems have such hidden doors. This Perl script checks for all the common types of errors that can occur. It checks the following:

Arguments I will point out again, and again if necessary. Amazon has a choice. The...

Arguments I will point out again, and again if necessary. Amazon has a choice. They can choose to lower or completely stop discounting books that offer them only a 20-39% discount. They can accept the fact that, on the bookselling side of this equation, they are a retailer and accept 40% off list, standard, like every other bookseller. In other words, they can quit trying to put the brick-and-mortar bookstores out of business and play fair. They apparently haven't chosen to be fair, to compete on a level playing field. In my mind, this puts their honesty in question. On the printing side of things, Amazon can quit acting like a two-bit thug and clean up BookSurge's act, the quality issues, that sort of thing. They could strive for the best, most consistent quality and lower their prices a notch, and compete--fairly and honestly.

Zumobi Launches Its Widget User Interface For BlackBerry Devices

imageZumobi, which has created an ad-supported user interface using widgets, said its BlackBerry application is now officially available. In addition, the Seattle company said it has new widgets from NPR, AP Olympics report, Major League Baseball, Facebook, Twitter (pictured) and from the blog “BlackBerry Cool�. Users can register and download for the app from either online or from the phone at http://get.zumobi.com. Once the application is downloaded, users can pick 16 widgets that can be viewed from the homepage. To view tiles, users can zoom into quadrants or individual widgets. From the Twitter tile, users can write, read or reply to tweets. An ad at the bottom from Comedy Central is the sponsor. Zumobi, which was spun off from Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), already has a Windows Mobile app, but has a lot of competition, the largest of w

Some Words are Reserved in Java

All programming languages need to have a set of words that are interpreted as commands by the compiler. Java is no different. It has about fifty words that you cannot use when naming a variable, method, class, etc. The reason they can’t be used is they are already spoken for by the Java syntax.

How Can Nerds Make a Difference In November?

Scott Aaronson offers an intriguing call for ideas on how nerds can supercharge the political process this year. He's clearly an Obama admirer and phrases his challenge this way: "What non-obvious things can nerds who are so inclined do to help the Democrats win in November?" But the question itself is not inherently partisan. The analogy Aaronson gives is to the Nadertrading idea in 2000 (which we discussed at the time). What's the Nadertrading for 2008? "The sorts of ideas I'm looking for are ones that (1) exploit nerds' nerdiness, (2) go outside the normal channels of influence, (3) increase nerds' effective voting power by several orders of magnitude, (4) are legal, (5) target critical swing states, and (6) can be done as a hobby."

"New" Words From the Geek Culture

thatskinnyguy sends news of Merriam-Webster's 2008 list of new words and, to no-one's surprise, a good number of them come out of geek culture: words like webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting, and fanboy are now official words according to M-W. The CNet article pulls out one "new" word for special appreciation — mondegreen — and, while the article gets the origin right, it ends with a lame call for readers to send in their favorite mondegreens. (CNet does have the good grace to link the Kiss This Guy site.) SFGate columnist Jon Carroll has been collecting readers' mondegreens since 1995 and his list is bound to be better. Quoting Carroll, in a prophetic mode: "This space has been for some years the chief publicity agent for mondegreens.

How Social Bookmarking Can Be Used For An Online Business

The Internet offers tons of strategy that you can implement to further improve your online business. Aside from the usual SEO concepts that you can find on the Internet, you can also use other methods that will increase the chances of success for your venture -- like social bookmarking.

Researchers Discover The Gene That Can Cause Suicide

Researchers Discover The Gene That Can Cause SuicideThe Researchers that discovered a connection of some specific genes with suicide, affirmed that this research can help in development of effective treatments for many mental disorders. The group of researchers led by Michael Poulter of the Robarts Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. and Hymie Anisman of Carleton's Neuroscience Research Institute at Carleton University in Ottawa, compared the brains of people who committed suicide with the brain of people who died from heart attacks or natural causes. Researchers discovered the proteins that can chemically modify DNA directly. The study showed the presence of high quantity of a particular protein in the brains of people who committed suicide.

What every investor should know

No one can predict how the stock market will behave over a few weeks or months. But based on a few reliable factors, you can get a sense of what's in store for the long run.

The iPhone gets yet another use: measuring car performance

Sure, you can limit you iPhone 3G usage to phone calls, SMS, a map or two, and the occasional photograph, but if you're feeling adventurous, your iPhone can become quite a bit more. And, as sound level measurement app SoundMeter proves, the sensors inside the iPhone 3G are actually quite good; they can be used for quite a few things you may not have thought possible. MacNN recently pointed out one such application, Dynolicious, which uses the iPhone's accelerometer to record vehicle performance data.

JB is out to lunch...you can't get to the diego garcia base by typing it in the search bar on google, but you can indeed see ...

Depending on which feature you use, Google Maps offers a satellite view or a street-level view of tons of locations around the world. You can look up landmarks like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China, as well as more personal places, like your ex’s house. But for all of the places that Google Maps allows you to see, there are plenty of places that are off-limits. Whether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a "Prohibited" sign on the following 51 places.

Virtualisation: leave the laptop behind

For the IT worker, the phrase "desktop mobility" has many meanings. It can mean having a laptop computer. It can mean keeping all your data in the cloud so that you can access it at any time and from anywhere. It can even mean downsizing your work environment to fit on a PDA or a smartphone.

Interesting online CMS for existing pages

If you maintain a website that has several people who need to edit content, you can install and configure a high-powered CMS like Joomla!, or you can purchase Contribute for your content authors, or you can set up SnippetMaster on your PHP site and allow them to maintain it through that tool. I first learned of this tool a few days ago in the comments, and it looks pretty useful - especially if you have a lot of non-Web developers who manage content. Thanks Peggy for the heads up about this product.

First Look: i-Kit, iPod FM transmitter

If you have a portable digital music player like an iPod or iPhone, you can take your music everywhere you go. Unfortunately, the only place where you often can’t listen to your music on these players is in your own car, where earphones can be a safety hazard. While some of the newer cars offer built-in ports for plugging in an iPod or cellular phone, many older cars lack this feature, requiring a new car stereo to link directly to the sound system. For these older cars, you can still listen to your iPod music with the help of the i-Kit from MediaGate.

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