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User: Acy+James+Stapp

Acy+James+Stapp's activity in the archive.

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  1. Microsoft's Television Platform on Microsoft Invests in Rogers · · Score: 1

    Isn't that Embedded Windows NTV/CE 2000?

  2. Re:An interesting approach... on PetrOS - NT alternative? · · Score: 1

    You mean like gcc -E?

  3. Re:YeeHaa!!!! on GNOME Development Site · · Score: 0

    That is Kick ASS!

  4. Re:Copy protection doesn't work on SDMI: The Music Industry Strikes Back · · Score: 1

    The only way to prevent copying of music is to have encryption all the way from the audio file into the sound card. If there is any point in the line where there is an enencrypted 44.1 16-bit data stream it is inevitable that illegal copies will appear. Unlike code, which can protect itself somewhat (that is, it can take up to a few days to crack the copy protection), non-executable music formats will be trivially easy to break if you have access at the device driver level.

  5. Re:exact same URL as "NT beats Linux: again" on NT Beats Linux in Round 2 · · Score: 1

    It was probably reposted so those who read /. during the week can see it.

  6. Re:Berlin Consortium on Commercial 3D UI and for Linux · · Score: 1

    From what I've read about Berlin and its predecessors, it seems very well architected and worthy of development. What amazes me is that it continues to progress, albeit quite slowly.

  7. Translation on BeDope clarifies iToaster issue · · Score: 1

    Upgrade = buy new parts, throw away old ones that you can't use. It doesn't matter who's doing the throwing away.

  8. Re:anti-piracy? on Diamond spins off Rio · · Score: 1

    If any of this music ever touches a general purpose computer, it will no longer have copy protection. Winamp has it's disk-writer plugin, but face it: at some point between the file and the speakers there is going to be a 44.1 16-bit data stream that can be easily written to disk. Capturing data going to the sound device is trivial in any operating system if you have root/Administrator access.

    The only possible way to get around that would be for sound cards to have built-in decryption so there isn't ever a decrypted audio stream. So much for backward compatibility!

  9. 52"/6ft == 17"/2ft on Goggles Simulate 52-inch TV · · Score: 0

    Not that impressive. Oh, wait. I suppose they are actually equivalent to an 8 mile diagonal monitor at 11 miles. Now THATs impressive.

  10. Re:Migration toward free distribution on Upside downsides MP3.COM. · · Score: 1

    "If people aren't buying the music on MP3.com, is it really that big of a deal? There is a thing called advertising revenue, and I'm sure they're not lacking it."

    The artists need to amke money. Maybe MP3.COM could pay them out of their advertising revenue. Then maybe they would only have good artists. Then maybe bands would need an agent to get listed on MP3.com. Eventually, you might even be forced to sign a contract handing over the rights to your music to them.

    This is not what we need. The idea is to reduce the middleman. MP3.com is a good idea, but it's still just a start.

  11. Infeasible on Leech Neuron Computers · · Score: 1

    We already have a quite effective computing system that uses neurons. It's called a brain.

    I don't think that neuronal computing will ever be feasible except for natural organic creatures. Neuronal neural nets have numerous advantages over electronic neural nets, but many serious disadvantages as well. A neuronal computer requires a much more complicated support system in terms of energy provision and waste removal than an electronic computer, among other things.

    The future of computing lies in combined applications of traditional parallel digital computing, digital neural nets, and digital genetic programming; initially implemented with traditional semiconductor lithography, but eventually using nanotech construction, which will provide more performance and flexibility in reconfiguration than either semiconductor or biochemical computing.

    I highly recommend "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil as an optimistic assay of the future of computing. He makes a compelling argument along these lines.

  12. RoadRunner Austin Experience on Feature: Getting DSL · · Score: 1

    I am extremely pleased with my RoadRunner cable modem. There were a few months of screwiness, but now they seem to have the kinks worked out. I consistently get T1 speeds during the day and pretty low latency (40-80ms for close sites, less than 20ms for other local ISPs).

    Installation did take weeks, but I was in the early access program; it may have changed at this point.

  13. Knee-jerk Microsoft Bashing on Pair of KDE Stories · · Score: 1

    Every Microsoft OS release gets lots of press. Aren't those all bug fix releases?

  14. Installation tip on Another PIII ID Exploit Found · · Score: 1

    "Step 3--The user's computer downloads the ActiveX code and simulates a 'Blue Screen' crash, a [[generally benign event most users are familiar with]] and that would not necessarily arouse suspicions. The user's computer is rebooted at this point. Unknown to the user, the Active X control has placed on the computer a 'Trojan Horse' designed to bypass Intel® 's Pentium Serial Number control utility and place the user's Pentium® Serial Number in a cookie that can be read by Web sites on the Internet."

    I find this rather funny. I guess those guys have never lost hours worth of new code or gameplay time when their windows machine locks mysteriously.

  15. if (person->smokesweed()) delete person; on Drug Use Among Programmers · · Score: 1

    Old Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, etc. are also quite good Quake music, and are preferable when sober. Just a personal preference.

  16. if (person->smokesweed()) delete person; on Drug Use Among Programmers · · Score: 0

    I think perhaps you should try playing Quake while on LSD or Mushrooms or even pot while listening to Orbital cranked up to 11. Then get back to me.

    "and caffeine doesn't affect the brain" - riiiighht. Then why the hell do you take it? For the flavor?

  17. Multi-axial Voting on Slashdot Moderation:Phase 1.1.1 · · Score: 1

    Posts should be rated based on a number of criteria instead of a single numerical ranking.

    For example:
    topicality (0..5)
    agreement (-3..3) (Strongly, moderately, barely) [disagree|agree]
    humor (0..5)
    style (0..5) (style in the sense of grammer etc.)
    interest (0..5) (not interesting, very interesting).

    This would allow a much broader spectrum of opionions to be represented. For example, a moderator could indicate interesting off-topic articles; humorous, well-written articles; off-topic articles; relevant articles that they agreed with; and so forth.

    To make the job easier for the moderators, keep a record per (user,moderator) that remembers how the moderator has ranked the user in the past and initialize the voting boxes with those values. Then the moderator only needs to change the different values.

  18. Priority Inversion on Slashdot Moderation:Phase 1.1.1 · · Score: 1

    I think that the effective priority of a post should be the maximum of all of it's children.

    That is, every post's parent's will have an equal or greater priority than the post itself.

  19. 3 suggestions on Slashdot Moderation Phase 1.1 · · Score: 1
    1. Allow each moderator to give an absolute score to articles. I think moderators shouldn't be able to see the previous scores for the article to insure fairness. Display the average score and the standard deviation.
    2. Give each post an initial score based on the quality of the poster's prior posts. Adopt a scoring system that insures that articles that are only moderated one time aren't unfairly penalized or rewarded.
      • No moderation - the reported score is the poster's average score.
      • More than 5 moderations - the reported score is the average of the moderations.
      • less than or equal to 5 moderations - weight the poster's average score into the moderated score (i.e. (5-n)*avg + n moderations)/5
    3. Maintain a "moderator match" that weights each moderator per user. Allow the user to specify what they thought the score of an article should be and weight those moderators closest to that score more heavily in subsequent calculations.
  20. Are you all morons? on Feature:Why ideas should not be property · · Score: 1

    Sorry. I had a short fit of frustration. Obviously not everyone on /. is a moron and I apologize to those who I offended. Of course, no apologies if you ARE a moron.

  21. Are you all morons? on Feature:Why ideas should not be property · · Score: 0

    This was written in 1926. That explains the language and phrasing.

    I can't believe that NOONE bothered to read the entire post in enough detail to figure this out.

  22. FUD? on IBM Exec Says no Large Web Servers on Linux · · Score: 1

    "for the European market, Linux is the No. 1 operating system used for Web sites" Isn't this true for every market? "For the RS/6000 AIX market, 0% of the servers run linux." I can understand IBM trying to sell AIX but sooner or later they'll realize the pointlessness of it.

  23. Good Search Suggestion on Todays Slashdot Updates · · Score: 1

    I think you need a right-side box for
    http://www.metacrawler.com
    It rocks. Now if only they would add google to their set of sources...

    Even better would be the ability to have a "search box" that would have one input field and many buttons for each selected search engine.

  24. Article shoulda been called "Tera ..." on Mega Bandwidth Acheived · · Score: 1

    kilo 10^3
    mega 10^6
    giga 10^9
    tera 10^12
    peta 10^15
    exa 10^18
    zetta 10^21
    yotta 10^24

  25. L1/L2 cache? on 24M gates + DRAM on a chip · · Score: 1

    Seems like a good way to integrate large amounts of l1 and l2 cache on the chip. Dedicate about a million gates to 256K l1 cache, another 8 million to 8M L2 cache, and you're all set. With an offboard 32M L3 cache, we're ready to rock!