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User: theoneandonlyed

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Comments · 17

  1. Re:My Issue Is... on Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House · · Score: 1

    Because insurance IN EVERY OTHER INSTANCE WHERE IT IS APPLIED is about replacing things that are, well, replaceable. In general, a crappy car, even if it does cost a bit to repair, won't leave you bankrupt. And if it starts to go that way, you'll probably ditch it and buy a new car. Not so easy with one's body. The fact is, breaking your foot could cost more than a lot of people make in a year by the time it's all said and done. And, in case you haven't noticed, a number of companies now sell insurance for car repairs as well. It won't pay for your gas; but then, health insurance doesn't pay for your food, either, so we'll call that one even.

  2. Re:What next? Cameras? on Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony · · Score: 1

    And modeling agencies for not letting the visually impaired feel the models.

    Ssshhhh!!!....do you really want people going around putting sharp pointy things in their eyes?

  3. Re:Good luck reading that book on Videogame Places You're Not Supposed To Go · · Score: 1

    That, or it's neo-Nazi propaganda, and really wasn't written by Card...meh, probably not.

  4. Re:Question on Court Sets Rules For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection · · Score: 1

    People who don't agree with the principles in the Declaration and writings of the U.S. Founders should move to the E.U. Cancel Reply Parent

    Do not those very writings give them the right to disagree, and to express such? One might even say that God gives them these rights, that they are somehow...inalienable. "I declare, I think we'd all be better off if the government put cameras in our houses and made us wear GPS devices to track our every move!" I may be an idiot, but I think that the preceding expression of my idiocy is protected free speech...and I'm certainly not alone :-{

  5. Re:It's funny... on Court Sets Rules For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection · · Score: 1

    You may have the right to have me bring in my artwork under a court order (I do not know, IANAL, and I'm still trying to understand the discovery process).

    You do NOT have the right to have me also bring in just about everything else I possess in my house.

    I don't know that this is accurate. Even in 1950, it's my impression that prosecutors, judges, and everyone else had the common sense to realize that I might not keep my "stolen" portraits with my legitimate art collection, especially if I felt that "the fuzz" (g-men, etc.) were closing in. I would think that the warrant would be issued to search my house (looking for artwork, of course), and perhaps that or a separate one would be issued for my place of employment, any rented storage I might have, perhaps even my parents' basement; and that such inclusion of "likely" hiding spots would be fairly routine. That's what I get from watching lawyers on TV, anyway.

  6. Re:It depends what you want to work on on Programming Language Specialization Dilemma · · Score: 1

    I'm going to second this. I was lucky enough to fall into something that matched what I wanted to do, and what I specialized in, when I got laid off 3 months after graduating. What that was, was working with networking protocols (obscure ones, unproven ones, rarely implemented ones with errors in the specs, you name it). Contrary to what has been said about not writing a kernel your first year, I was handed a rather large book of standards & protocols and given a somewhat comparable mandate (on a smaller but still very ambitious scale). In any case, the job was C, so I did C, and I became very good at C (and used my Assembly knowledge to impress the boss when he had a bug in his code one day - as mentioned by others, practice saying "how can I help?") It being a government contracting environment, where I was on-site and treated almost like a gov't employee, I was able to and did drag C++ in and learn on the job at the first opportunity - but only when it was appropriate to the task. I have moved on, but that early experience led me to a new company, a more complex and commercially viable version of the same router, and that's what I do now, and still mostly in C. And I still drag other (OO) languages in when appropriate, and I wake up happy every day. Do what interests you first. The language will be dictated at first by requirements; later you'll either have different requirements, or you'll figure out what languages interest you, and if you're lucky they'll be appropriate. And you may be writing the requirements. You should have taken a course called "Programming Language Concepts" or similar, and the main thing you should have taken away from that class is that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Programmers tend to write everything in the language they are comfortable with (often because it's the only way to get it done right and on time). But, that class should also have given you the tools to understand, evaluate, and be able to become fluent in new languages quickly. Again, your education is about learning how to learn, how to think about Computer Science problems, and obtaining a nice collection of reference books along the way. At the end of PLC, you should have realized that it's best to carry more than a hammer. If you were coming to work at my company, I'd say be fluent in C, and at least competent in either C++, Java, or C#, so if you had to go balls to the wall on any of them, you could. Play around with Python, Ruby, or both as much as you can. And learn Perl, awk, shell scripting, and basic UNIX shell commands as much as possible - those are powerful tools that can do a lot for you with minimal effort. This will all take time, but you will end up with a toolkit, and the ability to choose the best language for the job, whatever the job may be, as well as the ability to evaluate and learn the "hot new languages" as they come along. Finally, remember two things: 1) You should always be learning; both on the job and on your own. Sorry pal, but you signed up for a lifetime of further education. 2) Half of your job is to be a computer scientist. The other half is knowing your company's/customer's business. These percentages vary depending on the domain you choose to work in. Hopefully your professors got this across to you, because you signed up for a lifetime of learning your customers' business as well.

  7. Re:First Amendment covers ads? on Virginia Top Court to Re-Hear Spammer's Conviction · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's exactly it. No one is questioning the spammer's right to say something, or to sell his product. He can sell it on the streetcorner, in a shop, wherever. He can advertise it on TV, on billboards, on the Internet. What is, or should be, illegal, is sending it to the private e-mail accounts of people who don't want it, at the expense of their service providers. If that action is covered by free speech, then I should be able to throw a brick through your front window, step inside, and start hawking my wares to your family during your dinner hour. "Hey, just exercising my right to free speech!" The disturbing thing here is that any U.S. court would even entertain such a patently ridiculous argument.

  8. Re:Technology is cheap, can we not have both? on Paramount to Drop HD DVD? · · Score: 1

    LG GGC-H20L combo drive. Or GGW-H20L, if you got some cash to throw around. And NCIXUS.com, because that'll probably be your next question...

  9. Re:Winner is the Consumer on Paramount to Drop HD DVD? · · Score: 1

    If M$ had had the foresight, or even just the balls, to do that, the 360 would cost more, and would therefore have sales numbers more like the PS3, we'd all be talking about how Nintendo conquered the world because of hi-def movies that don't even play on the Wii. :-)

  10. Re:I own some readers on Which eBook Reader is the Best? · · Score: 1

    Agreed on the 1150, I have one myself and love it. No, it's not e-ink, but it's certainly readable, you can adjust font size, and since I mostly read while laying in bed at night, I use the backlight pretty much 100% of the time - that's one of my first requirements in any reader. The nice thing is, reading in the dark allows me to keep the brightness and contrast fairly low, so I get 20+ hours on a charge. Well...the last couple hours are kind of like the last quarter tank of gas, but still... The Kindle does nothing for me. I don't need the wireless, though it might be great if you want to subscribe to newspapers on it...but I'd rather just have PC connectivity, I can load up a year's worth of reading in one session that way. If I was going to drop Kindle-like change on a reader, I think I'd check out the Sony and the Bookeen Cybook. If I was stupid rich, I'd even look at the iRex iLiad. And here's a useful link... http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17317

  11. Re:ReadyNAS from Netgear (was Infrant) on Best Home Network NAS · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up - good to know. I have been sticking with Seagate for a while now, but either way I always check the recommended list before upgrading...I believe I made that mistake once and the drive would not finish formatting or something...

  12. Re:Don't go NAS on Best Home Network NAS · · Score: 1

    ...and you just built a NAS...

  13. Re:ReadyNAS from Netgear (was Infrant) on Best Home Network NAS · · Score: 1

    Finally! I've been using one for maybe two years now, have been through a few capacity upgrades (meaning not just adding disks, but swapping disks for bigger ones), a bunch of firmware upgrades, and I haven't had an issue. I'm using it to serve up/stream music, TV, DVDs, Photos, and backup files, ebooks, and everything else. I've got partitions for each, which I auto-mount on my PCs as needed. Problems: My unit is loud - I think the newer ones are quieter. Also, these were not cheap to begin with (but worth every penny), and now Netgear has raised prices significantly. Definitely shop around, and buy your disks separately. I tried a RAID card, it was not ready for prime time, and I really don't need to have a bunch of extra discs in one of my boxen, nor do I want to have an extra full-size boxen. And I don't need to do any more system admin than what I already do. The ReadyNAS does what its supposed to do, does it well, and saves me headaches.

  14. Re:not this again... on Vinyl To Signal the End for CDs? · · Score: 1

    An exact copy of the original *what*? Not the original performance, unless that performance is done completely in the digital domain, and mixing and mastering don't change the bits at all. Most recordings are processed by analog mics and amps before hitting the digital medium (HDD, DAT, etc.) Then there is mixing, mastering, etc., all of which changes the sound. And getting it to digital in the first place involves sampling; I know what Nyquist says, 40K+ samples/sec does not an analog waveform make. And I won't get into the issues of 44.1 vs. 48 vs 96 vs 192, or 16-bit vs. 24-bit, or PCM vs. DSD, etc. Nor will I touch the jitter debate with a 10-ft. pole. But I will say that if you consider the variety of input devices and equipment used to "make it digital", there's a lot of room for different sounds there. So, the CD is a bit-for-bit copy of something, but the devil is in the details...that "something" is not the original performance, any more than it is on vinyl. Further, any functioning CD player may read the same bits, but there are a lot of ways to screw up the sound after that. First and foremost, there is a D/A conversion that takes place before sound comes out of your speakers, and DACs can color the sound just as much as different needles. (And even before that, there's the whole jitter debate again). CDs do many things well, but primarily they are about convenience; they are not a perfect reproduction system.

  15. Re:Sure, Will. on Will Wright Opines That Wii Is the Only Next-Gen Console · · Score: 1

    Why do you have to sacrifice screen size? Using my TV's "fill" mode, the Wii takes up all of a 47" 16:9 screen.

  16. Re:Not surprising... on Wii 'Popularity Bubble' to Burst? · · Score: 1

    I think you're on drugs. Seriously...you think people are dropping $250 on a console and *they don't even realize that you can buy other games for it*? You think people are really saying, "hey, look, this comes with Tennis and Bowling, kewl!!!"...so they buy it. And read the instructions. And hook it up to their TV, stereo, whatever. And learn how to work it. And figure out the controllers. And play it. And then, never go into a Best Buy for the rest of their lives. Never again set foot in a Blockbuster. Drop off the Internet from lack of interest (after all, they probably didn't realize that there were other websites besides MySpace). Stop talking to their neighbors, watching TV (which of course, they never realized there were other shows besides Seinfeld), reading magazines, all of that. Never, ever, does it occur to them that, just like their old Atari, and their old Intellivision, and their old NES, and their nephew's old Playstation One, and every other console in the history of the world, that they could buy other games. I guess all the console makers are in trouble then, and I'll be picking up a 360 *real cheap* after Halo 3 gets old. Seriously, WTF?!?!?

  17. Re:MAN! on Tivo Tries, Cancels PayPerPost Ad Strategy · · Score: 1

    "Because they have timed out"? Do you mean, because you're too lazy to manage your hard drive space and set "Keep until..." and/or look in the "Deleted Items" folder, and you tend to ignore the large easy-to-read icons that are placed there to let you know that a show might be deleted to make room for something else? Or are you talking about the maybe 5 shows in all the history of television that have actually had a copy-protection time-out set, in which case you're blaming TiVo for something that is being done by the networks/copyright holders, if at all? If you need to complain about Tivo to help you feel good about your DirecTV DVR, you're going to have to do better than that. And please, don't tell me that DirecTV is going have a sudden epiphany and "stick it to da man" on DRM.