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User: GottliebPins

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  1. EPA on US Corps Want $1B From Gov't For Battery Factory · · Score: 1

    And as soon as the money is available to build this billion dollar battery factory the EPA will demand that 20 years of environmental studies be done to determine the safety of the batteries and what affect their production will have on the snail darter and fart bat and whatever endangered creature lives within a thousand miles of the proposed factory. Meanwhile the batteries will be pouring in from China and India and we won't have to actually worry about building the plant or outsourcing the jobs. We already outsourced all of our industry years ago. The earth is so much cleaner now that we don't make our own steel or other products. Thank goodness we don't have to breath the same air they breath and drink the same water they drink in China and India where all of our products are made. That environmental bubble we built over the US has really come in handy.

  2. Take my wife, please on Sarcasm Useful For Detecting Dementia · · Score: 0, Troll

    I've known my wife was demented for years

  3. No thought on The Age of Touch Computing · · Score: 3, Informative

    The age of no thought computing is here. Where people think that all they have to do is touch something and it magically works. They don't have to think or type or know anything to get whatever it is they want. But for those of us who live in the real world and actually have to create the content these no brainers will be using we will still be using keyboards and pointing devices. I for one don't want to spend 8-10 hours a day flapping my arms around writting an application nor do I want to spend all day arguing with my computer to get it to understand the context of the words I'm saying. Whenever these geniuses come out with some new keyboard that isn't standard that adds 52 extra keys to control every multimedia device on the planet it psses me off. How am I supposed to type on this? Where's the damn delete key? How am I supposed to do real work here? I don't need a pointing device that knows how I feel or what my favorite color is. I just need one that works.

  4. Who needs apps? on iPhone App Pricing Limits Developers · · Score: 1

    And once all the developers are unemployed or working for minimum wage there won't be anyone who can afford the phone so who needs apps? Problem solved.

  5. No problem on Would You Add Easter Eggs To Software Produced At Work? · · Score: 1

    When I worked for small companies, when I was the only developer on the project, I often put my name and the names of the designers somewhere in the system. If you passed a parameter back to the server it would list our names. And when I worked for a systems automation company to help the poor operators pass the time I even added some games. They were text based (back before windows was big and the only way to draw 'windows' was to use IBM line characters) but they were fun. I added solitaire, a version of pacman, and a version of centipede where the characters moved back and forth across our company splash screen. You could even shoot out the logo and other text on the screen. But I wouldn't recommend doing this if you work for a big company where other people will see your code. My old boss was demonstrating some code to a customer and when he opened up a file there were obscenities left in some of the comments by another developer. The customer was NOT pleased.

  6. Skynet on Worm Attack Prompts DoD To Ban Use of External Media · · Score: 2, Funny

    Skynet became self-aware at 2:14am EDT. By the time Skynet became self-aware, it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms, everywhere. It was software in cyberspace. There was no system core. It could not be shut down.

  7. What about the water vapor? on Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says · · Score: 0, Troll

    The problem no one considers is water vapor. You ever see those giant cooling towers at power plants? We used to call them cloud makers when I was a kid. While CO2 contributes less than 2% to the greenhouse effect, water vapor is 96%. So when we're all driving around in hydrogen cars and electric cars charged by coal and nuclear power plants we'll all be so proud of ourselves for getting rid of that evil carbon dioxide we won't notice the earth is turning into a sauna. Is the cure worse than the disease?

  8. How many? on Africa Leads In IPv6 Adoption · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    We are proud to report that all six of our computers are now on IPv6!

    How many machines are there really? I'd imagine there are more internet devices in Antarctica than in all of Africa?

  9. New NDA on Apple Drops Part of iPhone Developer NDA · · Score: 1

    There are three rules for the new non disclosure agreement: 1) Don't talk about the non disclosure agreement 2) Don't talk about the non disclosure agreement 3) Don't talk about the non disclosure agreement

  10. Laugh at copy protection on PC Historian Finds Puzzling Game Diskette Image · · Score: 1

    I remember the days when we used to laugh at copy protection schemes. Deliberate errors or bad sectors, code that overwrote itself during loading to auto start, and those ridiculous dongles. I also remember the day we discovered that single sided disks were no different than the more expensive double sided disks. They just lacked a sector hole in the outer case. I remember taking 40 track floppies and formatting them to 43 tracks since the heads of most drives could actually move that far. And I remember one day after hacking a particularly complicated protection scheme in just a few hours I took the unprotected program, wrote it out to a floppy using a rather unique formatting program I wrote, on a floppy with TWO sector holes punched into the disk itself. Instead of 18 sectors per track it only had 9, twice! Two of each sector, so if you did a DIR you'd get a different result 50% of the time! The copy protection system required that each sector be read until two different sets of data were loaded and XOR'ed together. And the first sector of each track was 1024 bytes long instead of 256. And on the old CoCo the RAM vector for the floppy ROM routines were only about 500 bytes from the end of the read block area in memory, so as soon as you read the first sector you overwrote the RAM vector and the program started. All you had to do was DIR and the program started. Then I sent the floppy back to the company that created the software and told them, nice try, see if you can copy this! :)

  11. Re:Descision making on China's First Spacewalk · · Score: 1

    I'm sure their space suits have been thoroughly tested by hundreds of political pr... um, volunteers.

  12. ROM OS on Four SSDs Compared — OCZ, Super Talent, Mtron · · Score: 1

    You mean one day we'll have computers that boot instantly from ROM? Wow! It'll be just like the 80's again! Turn on your computer and before the screen has even warmed up the cursor is blinking OK>

  13. The Matrix has you on MIT Secretly Built Mega-Efficient Nano Batteries · · Score: 1

    Soon we'll be able to harness our bodies to power machines!

  14. Hypocrisy on The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms · · Score: 1

    The people who are screaming now for wind power will be the same people screaming "NOT IN MY BACK YARD!" when the power companies try to build more power lines in their area to get the power to them. Regardless of the source of energy there will always be large groups of people opposed to it. They will scream and shout to get the power shut down then scream that they have no power. Idiots.

  15. Choice of words on Obama's Evolving Stance On NASA · · Score: 1

    I find it interesting when a candidate changes his opinion several times on a issue based on random polling data how its refered to by writers who support him as "evolving" when others would refer to this is "flip flopping". He has no core values. He's a politician. He'll say whatever he needs to say to get elected. If he opens his mouth and says something rediculous the press will reinterpret it for him while he "evolves" his position into something resembling coherent thought.

  16. AAHH! on Brain Will Be Battlefield of the Future, Warns US · · Score: 1

    Of course it's hard for anyone to get good answers over all the screaming...

  17. Re:What's weird... on The Evolution of Sega · · Score: 1

    Sonic was the best thing that happened to Sega. I bought the original Genesis back when Golden Axe had just come out. I loved the arcade game. Watchin' those giants pick you up and drop kick you was hillarious. I had to have that game at home. Then Sonic came out and I was hooked. I bought every stinkin' Sonic game there ever was, for the Genesis and the Gamegear. I even bought the lame ass Sega CD just to play Sonic CD. But as everyone has mentioned too many hardware add ons, not enough games to make them worth the investment. But I have to admit the 3D Sonic games suck ass, on both the Dreamcast and the PSP. You feel like you're watching a movie and have no control of where he goes. You can't control the perspective or the camera angle. If they came out with a decent Sonic again I'd buy it.

  18. Better than the competition on Netflix Woes Mean a Gap In Shipments · · Score: 2, Informative

    After being screwed by Blockbuster for years over late fees and going into stores to find the shelf where the movie I want to see is always empty while the shelf next to it filled with dozens of copies of movies that suck I don't care what kind of problems Netflix may occasionally have and I wouldn't care if their monthly service was twice as expensive as Blockbuster's, I still wouldn't go back to Blockbuster.

  19. Size matters? on US Broadband Won't Catch Up With Japan's For 101 Years · · Score: 1

    And the US is a 101 times as large as Japan. Could that possibly have something to do with it? If every person living in a major US city had ultra high speed internet that would still leave 99% of the country without. You might as well say they are years ahead of us in carpeting. Most of the US still not carpeted.

  20. It is in our nature to destroy ourselves on First All-Drone USAF Air Wing · · Score: 1

    In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am, eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Sarah: Skynet fights back. It launches its missiles against their targets in Russia. Because Skynet knows that the Russian counter-attack will eliminate its enemies over here.

  21. God I hate notes on IBM Pushing Microsoft-Free Desktops · · Score: 1

    I used to work for IBM and I've worked at several places that used notes and God I hated it. The icons on the menu bar are totally useless. They might as well be alien symbols. Make a list of the top ten things you do in Lotus every day and is even one of them an icon in the menu bar? Nope. Print, how often do you do that? Frequently? Is there a printer icon? Nope. And what the hell does replicate mean anyway? I want to check my mail not clone somebody. And what a memory hog. If you're required to keep notes running all day to catch those all important emails addressed to "ALL" then forget running anything else. If we were testing software on our PCs we always had to remember to shut down notes otherwise our tests would fail for no reason. Not enough memory. Thankfully I haven't had to use it in almost 10 years now.

  22. Re:It's good to be king... on USAF Violates DMCA, Escapes Unscathed · · Score: 1

    The reason people like this don't know what kind of government we live under and express such outlandish ideas is thanks in large part to our liberally run government schools that teach that its better to feel good about yourself than to actually learn the truth. Its all about perception not reality. So if you don't like our current government feel free to write a letter to our king and I'm sure he'll make you a duke or earl or something.

  23. Unless your talking about climate change on New Results Contradict Long-Held Chemistry Dogma · · Score: 1

    Then anyone who disagrees with you is a denier

  24. Lapburns on Next Generation CPU Refrigerators · · Score: 1

    Yeah, now you can super cool your overclocked laptop. Unfortunately the air coming out the back is now 600 degrees. CAUTION: DO NOT PLACE LAPTOP ON LAP!

  25. Rare bricks on Inside the Lego Factory · · Score: 1

    I had a couple friends who used to work for Borg Warner Chemicals (now Dupont) making plastic pellets for Legos. The guys from Lego would bring in molds and test the various colored plastics. They would run a batch of one color through the molds then switch to another color without cleaning out the lines and you would get all kind of neat color swirls in the Lego blocks. After each test the blocks were to be destroyed, but seldom were. The workers would take the blocks home to their children. I have one of those blocks. It's green with white swirls through it. It looks like marble with quartz running through it. I wish I had a whole set of those blocks. They are beautiful.