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User: Repossessed

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  1. Re:Breaking the apathy on Japan Bans Use of Web Sites in Elections · · Score: 1

    I attended three different school systems over the course of my pre-university education. Only one of them covered civics, and it was in the fifth grade, (Come to think, the Uni seemed to skip it too). Not an actual civics course either, the teacher just felt it necessary that we actually *read* the constitution when we got to that lesson in history. The whole thing too. She brought in those little booklet copies for everyone and everything.

    I owe her (and all my fifth grade teachers) a lot, not just for that lesson either.

  2. Re:Isn't that basic Project Management? on Tim Lister on Project Sluts and Strawmen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've seen organized get together work pretty well actually, It's all about how you go about doing it. Do *not* make it mandatory, or even suggest that it should be. Instead offer a non-work related incentive for people to come. (Free pizza/beer/bowling alley fees, or whatever will be attractive to your team). The people who want to show up to an event do so, the people who don't go home. If somebody has a bad time, they only have themselves to blame (or maybe an offending coworkers).

  3. Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore? on Nintendo - "Everyone is a Gamer" · · Score: 1

    If you want to sell it, my roommate has been trying to buy one for a few months now. You could probably get the new system price out of him pretty easy too.

  4. The problem with free market and the internet. on Neutral Net Needs Twice the Bandwidth of Tiered · · Score: 3, Interesting

    AT&T is the primary company pushing to be allowed to do this. I am a Comcast subscriber. This is my traceroute to google.com.

    3 ge-5-4-ur01.saltlakecity.ut.utah.comcast.net (68.87.170.161) 9.116 ms 9.247 ms *
    4 te-9-4-ar01.saltlakecity.ut.utah.comcast.net (68.87.170.9) 9.021 ms * 9.210 ms
    5 12.116.47.117 (12.116.47.117) 19.295 ms 20.255 ms 19.232 ms
    6 tbr1.dvmco.ip.att.net (12.122.86.250) 46.279 ms 46.672 ms 45.820 ms
    7 tbr2.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.12.133) 45.180 ms 45.821 ms 45.441 ms
    8 ggr3.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.82.149) 47.504 ms 47.508 ms 47.932 ms
    9 att-gw.sanfran.level3.net (192.205.33.82) 167.304 ms 48.359 ms 45.286 ms
    10 vlan69.csw1.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.18.62) 57.119 ms 49.613 ms 52.738 ms
    I also point out that we already have a tiered network. so many MB/s costs so many dollars. Both for the provider *and* the consumer. AT&T is trying to make companies pay *again*. This shouldn't need more laws. This should be classified as extortion.

    That said, I'm wary of net neutrality laws, Because from my understanding, the network is already managed. One of the local ISPs CEO did an interview in Wired, where he talked about how his company was already giving priority, based on what customers demanded and what needed the priority most. (VOIP service for example, gets high priority because disruption there matters more than elsewhere.)

    This doesn't mean we shouldn't have net neutrality laws, Just that we need to be very careful about writing them, so that legitimate (non extortion) methods can still be used.*

    *Though while we're at it, I wouldn't mind seeing it made illegal for college campuses to restrict how dorm students use their internet. There's really no excuse for cutting off somebodies access to communication (IRC is usually the first thing to get hit with idiotic security policies). And from my experience, dorms not only qualify as a monopoly ISP, but typically a mandatory monopoly as well. (I've even seen colleges, public ones, that require freshman to live in the dorms.)

  5. Re:Boost & caching on Comcast and Net Speed Tests · · Score: 1

    Powerboost is probably what's causing this, yes. I *hate* that thing. Messes up my benchmarks when I'm testing ftp servers. Does not, as far as I can tell, do anything that's actually useful. I also know one person whose service is grandfathered in from a company (Adelphia) that Comcast bought out. He gets about 15-20 Mb/s depending on the time of day. As far as I can tell, that's not power boost related (at least I get a legit speed off the same test site).

  6. Re:Sure thing Einstein on Forget Math to Become a Great Computer Scientist? · · Score: 1

    I see no code, or anything directly related to programming that I can recognize on that page. He does seem to be very accomplished in the physical aspects of computing. (I'm not sure how much of that he was a researcher for, and how much he was (only) a manager, but a number of those papers only have his name on them, so assuming he's not a complete scumbag and had somebody else write them for him, he understands what the people under him are doing very well.

    I still don't see anything he's done that suggests he has a clue what source code looks like though. (This may be a BIAS of the companies webpage). I do hold the possibility that some of the tech he's pushing (some of which is very very low level), is allowing for a different, more fluid kind of programming.

    That's about the only way his statements on not needing math for computer science would make any sense. Given that you couldn't do anything more than basic code grinding without understanding at least *some* algorithim theory. (Not even necessarily a lot of knowledge, just enough to be able to find non brute force methods so that your code doesn't take a hundred thousand years to run*

    *I screwed up like this once because I didn't analyze my algorithm effectiveness until after I was done, (and yes, it would have taken 100,000 years, at a conservative estimate, though a new high end processor could probably cut it down to 25,000 years) ended up rewriting half my code (and got it to run in 10 minutes instead).

  7. Re:Nah on Are 80 Columns Enough? · · Score: 1

    Using spaces instead of tabs tens to fix those problems.

  8. Existentialist? on Robert A. Heinlein's 100th Birthday · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, Heinlein doesn't really fit. He spends too much time talking about ethics and purpose for one. The philosophy Heinlein uses in his novels is unique in my experience (I was a philosophy student up until the point I took an existentialism class).

    A couple of items:
    He talks about moralities link to the neighbor principle (I think it was in Starship Troopers, during one of the History of Morals and Philosophy). The idea that a 'better; morality was not linked as much to the *what* but the *who*. The farther outward your moral code spreads the better things are for everybody. (IE, 'love thy neighbor' versus 'love everyone who isn't busy trying to kill you'). Most existentialists either take a relativistic or nihilistic approach to morals and ethics. Heinlein seems to take a (mostly) absolutist view of the issue though.

    He also talks about purpose, and ethics, relative to survival. Women and children first, propegation of the species as a good thing etc. There's a sense of purpose in these statements that runs in direct contadiction to the no purpose/find your own meaning attitude of existentialism.

  9. Re:Very weather dependent on DoD Offers $1 Million for Wearable Power Supply · · Score: 1

    If I remember this correctly from the stuff a company is doing with trying to make a hydrogen fuel cell for this purpose (theirs is heavier with more power though, it's meant for the land warrior system, which takes a *lot* of juice. 15kg of lithium ion for the current models). Then the DOD really wants 3 days of operations out of a battery pack. The fourth day is probably a tolerance thing. And for the numbskulls who seem to think that the DOD is offering just 1 million, keep in mind that that for a *prototype*. Anybody who provides will likely be handed a lot of money with which to perform the R&D necessary to make it combat worthy. Not to mention the actual sale price of the batteries. And as far as the risks of the battery getting hit goes. You're probably better have with that getting hit than your ammunition.

  10. Re:Best of All Time is... on Ocarina of Time — Best Game Ever? · · Score: 1

    I think we're both wrong actually, Ultima weapon was near the crater, and an optional fight. Can't remember the name of the one that attacked the city though...

  11. Nooffense and all... on 2008 - Year of Linux Desktop? · · Score: 1

    But I have a sudden urge to go create a gaybuntu distribution now.

  12. Re:sort of makes me wish on Google Loses Gmail Trademark Case · · Score: 1

    I think that's probably a waste of effort.

  13. Re:What this really means on Ubuntu Dell $50 Cheaper Than Vista Dell · · Score: 1

    Well yes, but it's very expensive for even one year (300 something last I checked.) Of course, I think it probably gets you a better quality of support than the usualy 'gee, I'm sorry, that's not really covered under your tech support contract.'

  14. Re:Best of All Time is... on Ocarina of Time — Best Game Ever? · · Score: 1

    I remember the graphics too, not the regular in game stuff, but the FMVs. Stuff that still beats out anything I've seen today, even if you do match the quality, the cinematography of FFVII was incredible.

    I will never, ever, forget Ruby weapon attacking, even if I've long since forgotten the name fo the city it attacked.

  15. Total Cost of Ownership on Ubuntu Dell $50 Cheaper Than Vista Dell · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Doing a quick one over of the systems available, for a 15 inch screen, you're looking at 1,194 dollars for a minimum Vista notebook with full performance. (2 gigs of RAM, and a 2 GHz dual core processor). A 15 inch Ubuntu notebook, will cost you just 599 dollars. Thanks to the low hardware requirements of Linux systems. (It's quite literally twice as powerful as the desktop I'm typing from now.) There's a couple caveats there, in that I'm not sure if the optical drive and hard drive are comparable between the two. (i'm too lazy too check). And that for a desktop, the price difference won;t be as bad. (An acceptable processor and RAM for Vista gets very expensive for the notebooks, not as much so as for the desktops.) I'm also not sure how long this will last, Dell is still shipping the old 1505s for Ubuntu, the price will probably go up if they start using 1520s instead. (There's no appreciable difference in specs that I can find, though this may change once better Intel processors come out (the 1520 uses a different socket type.)). Oh, and if you want the fancy graphics stuff for Vista, you're going to need another 230 dollars (30 for the software and 200 for a 256 megabyte graphics card.) I'm not sure how much of a hardware upgrade it would take to run the 3D desktop options for Linux though, so I have no point of comparison to make there.

  16. Re:What this really means on Ubuntu Dell $50 Cheaper Than Vista Dell · · Score: 1

    Dell does not provide any actual support for Ubuntu, nor do they sell Ubuntu to businesses. They do, however, sell FreeDos systems to businesses (and not to home users last time I tried). These represent a lot more savings than the home computers as well, since the professional (read, network capable) versions of windows cost even more than the home versions.

  17. Re:Creative Commons is not Open Source. on Cart Locking System Released as Open Source · · Score: 1

    The question then, is if the given creative commons license meets the OSI definition, not it OSI approved it. Most of them do not, as far as I know, meet the definition, (though they are likely still copyleft). A full derivatives allowed, commercial allowed, by attribution license would seem close enough to me though.

  18. Re:Details... on Cryptography To Frustrate Printer-Ink Piracy · · Score: 1

    I think it would be a valid anti-trust case, except for one point. Anti-trust only applies if you have a monopoly market share. None of the printer manufacturers can claim that.

    The theory is supposed to be that with no monopoly, it's possible for the free market to present people with an alternative (IE, laser printers. This is why Apple didn't have trouble with it's ipod-itunes link when it first came out, but has had anti-trust suits in three different countries since the success of those two products. It's also why Microsoft got slapped with an anti-trust suit here in the US for behavior that nobody bats an eye at when Apple does it.

  19. Re:Why does Slashdot refuse to cover on Fuzzing Toolkit For Web Server Testing · · Score: 1

    Paris Hilton found God in prison, and will only be showing those from now on if it somehow leads to her curing cancer,

  20. Re:Let's virtualize! on Power Consumption and the Future of Computing · · Score: 1

    Virtualization can be used to increase redundancy actually. You can set up virtualization across a number of machines, then set it up so that if one (physical) machine fails, the VM simply shifts the load to a different physical machine (probably a bit intensive on hard drives because of the additional redundancy, but then, it's hard to have to much redundancy for your data anyway in a business environment). The big catch to virtualization is gonna be the TCO if you want to use a proprietary OS. Either you get charged for each copy you run, or you get charged based on the number of processors you have. (2300 per socket for datacenter, quite probably more than the sockets themselves). Microsoft isn't even the bad one here, a couple of companies have been setting up VM price schemes in such a way that they get every last dime you should have saved by needing less physical machines. Microsoft is trying to make it at least a little cost effective though.

  21. Re:Misleading on Autism Reversed in Mice at MIT Lab · · Score: 1

    A minority (I think it's 5 or 10 percent or around that, very low overall) of cases of autism are caused by fragile X, but it does happen, this treatment would apply only to those few.

  22. Re:No, still not a good comparison on 6 Months On, Vista Security Still Besting Linux · · Score: 1

    Given that the man counts 4 unpatched security flaws, and that M$ has admitted to 15* of them, I'd say there's an issue in his count. (note that they did not disclose all of them, just admitted to them). This is also only what M$ knows about, there are probably many many more. There's also an issue that number of flaws is a lousy metric. it only takes *one* flaw to bring your computer to it's knees. So the question becomes, who has the worst flaw the crackers have found so far? I also point out that I work technical support for Vista, so I know the kinds of issues people are running into. Viruses are among them already (though what I've seen so far appears be trojans, can't blame everything on M$ if you run a file called freeporn.exe). At the end of the day, the robustness of Vista is going to be measured by how many computers go down during it's lifespan. Microsoft has everything stacked against it still, uniformity of code, every user running in admin mode (UAC is a joke), and probably soon, it will be the majority OS (as opposed to XP). Which means that it's going to be the one that gets targeted. If Microsoft really does keep the thing from being turned into a spambots delight, I'll be very impressed. *As far as I can tell, he counts 4 unpatched flaws total, and no unpatched major security flaws, it's entirely possible that my interpretation is wrong though, in which case, his count may be correct. One last thing, I issue a challenge to anybody who believes that Vista is secure to disable their antivirus. Good luck.

  23. I actually approve of how WU is acting here. on University of Washington Will Aid RIAA · · Score: 1

    All it seems the university is doing is delivering the students mail. It's not like they're, say, cutting off the students internet at the request of the RIAA. (This happened to a friend of mine, at the University of Utah, the RIAA had identified a whopping three songs on his computer, and he actually owned all of them (admittedly, he had many more that were pirated, and he was distributing those three, largely cause he wasn't bright enough to not let Kazaa distribute his entire hard drive).

  24. Re:Nice price on Apple and AT&T Announce iPhone Service Plans · · Score: 1

    Don't be silly, I'm an AT&T hating troll. That said, I'll take a second look at the iphone when it's available on a different carrier. (Preferably one that doesn't want a contract).

  25. Re:Come On... on Virtualization May Break Vista DRM · · Score: 1

    I think it's mostly a matter of being amused at the idea of using Microsoft tools to pirate Microsoft media. Not some kind of attack on Microsoft itself.