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User: Powerdog

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Comments · 37

  1. Don't forget the mobile angle on YouTube Explains Where HTML5 Video Fails · · Score: 1

    Google has a reason to keep Flash around: Android.

    Selling Flash as part of a "premium" experience is not entirely unexpected given that Google and Apple are locked in battle over the mobile device market. Google has a client that supports it and a huge web property that makes use of it.

    In a parallel universe, Windows Phone 7 is rapidly growing market share and Microsoft is blogging about how Silverlight is the premium experience, but nobody is surprised by the motives.

  2. North v. South on Disney Strikes Against Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure which states you consider 'North' versus 'South', unless you're using strict Civil War terminology. My family is from New England and I would strongly disagree with your assessment of the North. My anecdotal evidence - to offset your anecdotal evidence - is that the rest of my family moved to Virginia, married Virginians, yet they've all spent significant time up here. All of them say that race is more significant issue in Virginia than it is in New England, at least within the past few decades. They describe the situation as separate cultures that do not often mix, in stark contrast with their Northern experience. (Full disclosure: I do have some ex-in-laws that privately harbor racist attitudes, but I consider their ignorance the exception and not the norm.)

    I'm guessing a Texan doesn't think Virginia qualifies as 'South'; but this New Englander doesn't consider Virginia 'North'.

    You say you can't 'educate away' racism, and perhaps that is true. But look at the progress gay Americans have made. Attitudes have changed, and a lot has to do with younger, more accepting folks changing the landscape while the old, well, die off. I can't say it's been educated away, although I'd like to think so. Almost all of New England has legalized gay marriage (and don't forget Iowa!). This acceptance of gays is not built upon secret homophobia. So the portrayal of the North as being politically correct on race but secretly racist and "sad" doesn't wash for me.

    Tangentially, African-American is term that gets misapplied to so many people who are not of African heritage (e.g., Haitians, Jamaicans, etc.) in the name of political correctness. I am perfectly fine referring to someone who self-identifies as an African-American as such, but I generally find these terms divisive instead of informative or enlightening.

  3. Remove them from search engines on Drop-Catching Domains Is Big Business · · Score: 1

    There are two variables here: cost and revenue. People are suggesting raising costs, but I haven't seen many people focusing on reducing revenue.

    When a domain is dropped, Google and the rest should pull the records from their search engines. Or derank them, or something equally damaging. Once the ad revenue starts drying up, this stupid business model will end. Or instead of deranking, pull any AdSense ads on sites that were just dropped and that don't meet certain quality/traffic standards.

    I can imagine it might cause some problems for people who accidentally allow their domains to lapse. But that seems like a very small price for the rest of us to pay.

  4. ZFS on Apple Delays Leopard to October · · Score: 1

    Maybe they'll have a chance to integrate a way to boot from a ZFS partition, so some of us could go all-ZFS. Delays don't have to be all bad.

  5. Re:3G iPods now have 4G menu features on Apple Updates iPod · · Score: 1

    An undocumented improvement for 3G iPods: On-the-Go playlists can be saved now. That's a very useful feature that was previously limited to 4G iPods.

  6. Re:Firmware update ! on Apple Updates iPod · · Score: 1

    An undocumented improvement for 3G iPods: On-the-Go playlists can be saved now. That's a very useful feature that was previously limited to 4G iPods.

  7. Fundamentally flawed on How to Fix U.S. Patents · · Score: 1
    1. You neglected the fact that Company Z is subsidizing the work. I presume they paid for Joe Inventor's salary and all the necessary materials needed to research and devise the invention. How do they recover the cost?
    2. You have Company Z pay for the right to use the patent it just subsidized. So they pay again?
    3. Company Z's competitors now have equal access to the invention at effectively the same cost as Company Z. No more exclusive right to the invention. Not a good incentive to create and publish inventions.

    A mighty effective way of gutting the patent system, though.

  8. Re:Traffic Lights on Self-Adapting Traffic Lights · · Score: 1
    The city around here got creative and installed radar to determine if someone's approaching a light. On almost every light in town. That shiny radar detector is now completely useless in town...
    Get a Valentine One. It has a counter for the number of radar sources. If there's only supposed to be 1, and it reports 2 ... you know.
  9. Re:Dual vs Uni on Intel And AMD's Dual-Core CPUs Investigated · · Score: 1
    Good luck finding a soundard with lots of features that gets along with dual CPUs.
    I built this machine back in fall of '01 and it wasn't until about a year ago that they released a set of drivers for the Audigy that I couldn't cause a BSOD at will with.
    So are you saying I'll have a hard time finding an Audigy?
  10. Re:Go beta! on Gizmodo Declares Blu-Ray Winner · · Score: 1

    The easiest way to move a 50k document is via e-mail.

    (I wouldn't be surprised if that's more pervasive than floppy drives these days, either.)

  11. CarraScent on Cleansing Hardware Of Dead Pig Odors? · · Score: 1

    Carrington makes the CarraScent Odor Eliminator. It's used in hospitals and other places to remove odors such as feces, urine, and necrotic tissue. It works very well. Leave a bottle for guests that use your bathroom. It's less dangerous than matches. :)

  12. It's not all TiVo's fault on TiVo, MS, and the War for the Living Room · · Score: 3, Interesting

    TiVo had shown a reference HDTV unit back at the CES show in January 2003. However, no manufacturers were interested in building it. The DVR market is still small, and HDTV is an even smaller piece of that.

    As far as limitations on the HR10-250 unit, you can probably blame DIRECTV. Their Series2-derived DVRs have USB ports that can be used for HMO (Home Media Option) but DTV has chosen not to do so. If you can find 4.0, you can install it on your HDVR2 and enable HMO. So the missing HMO functionality is not a technology issue.

    Putting a DVD burner in each unit would be handy, but would also increase the cost. DVRs still aren't in widespread use and keeping the price point high won't help.

    Finally, TiVo did announce TiVoToGo, which will allow you to play content on your PC.

  13. Re:if slashdot starts charging this on The March Towards Micropayments · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes! What this site needs is more reinforced groupthink. Now with cash!

    Once money's involved, I have no doubts that karma whores will be scooped up by karma pimps. Then we'll need karma police. (Calling Radiohead ... come in, Radiohead ...)

  14. Re:Shouldn't Scare on Anti-HIV Virus Developed · · Score: 5, Funny
    My point is, if you can call it that, is that it doesn't always take a 50 Billion dollar military grant to come up with something to change the world. Ask the guy that invented the wheel.

    Adjusted for inflation back to 100000 B.C., the wheel cost $750 billion to develop.

    He was the Bill Ug of his day.

  15. Re:Windows Xp Sp2 Latest Build on Microsoft Security Updates for Pirated Windows? · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you look at your System Properties, on the General tab it should say "Registered to:". In that section is a number of the form NNNNN-NNN-NNNNNNN-NNNNN. It's the second group of Ns that the poster is referring to (640-645).

  16. Re:Definitely an April's Fool. With proof. on Google's Gmail To Offer 1GB E-mail Storage? · · Score: 1

    Uhh ... there's a TM there.

    Not that I think it makes it any less of a joke.

  17. Leeloo Dallas Mul-ti-pass. Mul-ti-pass. on The Universal Card · · Score: 2, Funny

    Leeloo: Leeloo Dallas mul-ti-pass.
    Korben: Yeah.
    Leeloo: Mul-ti-pass.
    Korben: Yeah, multipass, she knows it's a multipass. Leeloo Dallas. This is my wife.
    Leeloo: Mul-ti-pass.
    Korben: We're newlyweds. Just met. You know how it is. We bumped into each other, sparks happen ...
    Leeloo: Mul-ti-pass.
    Korben: Yeah, she knows it's a multipass. Anyway, we're in love.

  18. Re:Antibiotics Cause Cancer on Fighting Cancer With The Common Cold? · · Score: 1

    Or could it be, just perhaps, that antibiotics allowed more people to live long enough to develop cancer? Similarly, famines and wars prevent people from living long enough to become cancerous.

    I agree that overprescription of antibiotics is a bad thing.

  19. Re:Hey RMS, on 20th Anniversary of RMS's Original GNU Post · · Score: 1

    Actually, I was the one who was supposed to be implementing it. Maybe I should finish writing it. I probably have RMS's message on a 9-track somewhere ...

  20. Re:And Finally! on ZigBee Low-Power Wireless Networking · · Score: 1
    Ahhh Yes... I will stream 20k bits/second of data to all my 8 bit devices hangin around my general area....
    It must be getting late ... I was wondering exactly what kind of 8 bit devices you would have hanging around your genital area.
  21. Re:WHAT AM I PAYING FOR, THEN? on Yet More on Cellular Number Portability · · Score: 1

    The fees Verizon collects are for landline number portability, not cellular number portability. If there were cell number fees, they'd be collected by Verizon Wireless, not Verizon.

  22. The really interesting bits, no pun intended on Ferroelectric Storage Density Tops 20KDVDs/Cubit^2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, they're only currently able to read 25kB/s. Yes, 25 kilobytes per second. They think they can bump up the read speed to 3.75MB/s. But it's the write speed that's curious. The prototype writes at 2.5MB/s, and they estimate they can bump it up to 125MB/s. A medium we can write to faster than we can read!

    Second, their goal is 667 terabits per cm^2. Yep, about 2667 times more dense than the 250 gigabits per cm^2 they're claiming.

  23. Re:AoTC & ICQ on Slashback: ClonesMAX, Animation, Dislaimers · · Score: 1
    I hope the guys at least got a nice big check out of it.

    I hope they got a lot of AOL shares.

  24. Mozilla integration on Working Bayesian Mail Filter · · Score: 1

    Mozilla has an open bug to integrate Bayesian spam filtering into the next release of the software. Most of the work is done. They're just waiting on incorporation of a message filtering plugin architecture.

  25. A solution in search of a problem on IBM Wants CPU Time To Be A Metered Utility · · Score: 1

    Has the business world been clamoring for metered computing? I don't think so.

    A few years ago, everyone was touting how useful flat-rate pricing was. Of course, that was also when the consumer was in the driver's seat. Now that the picture is changing, there seems to be a shift back towards metered pricing. Of course, the seller benefits more with metering than the consumer, and this may be a sign that the sellers are beginning to get an upper hand again.

    Metering makes sense on resources that are limited. With an ever-increasing pool of compute power available, how would metering be beneficial to the customer? Will the per-cycle charges be constantly reduced as new technology is added to the fold?