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User: Tastecicles

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  1. Re:People have been pirating stuff on File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era · · Score: 1

    I don't use Photoshop. Not because it's too expensive (frankly it is, but that's not to say I can't afford it), but a low cost, perfectly serviceable alternative in the form of The GIMP is available and I use that instead. Why should I buy Photoshop again? Same with Office. I don't want to be paying several hundred Pounds for a typesetter when low cost alternatives such as OpenOffice/LibreOffice are available, which are perfectly adequate for my needs and they don't bring my computer to its knees every time I want to use them.

    I still buy console games. No, I don't fork out £30-£70 a time for them, because that pricing structure is just obscene. I don't "pirate" them either. I never have. What I've always done is hit the budget shelves, and the secondhand market. I've never paid more than £10 for a game ever. Not even for the new releases that blow me away on TV previews - I wait until the price comes down.

    Music? Give me a break, I don't want to know about that digitally "enhanced" shite that the content industry tries to pass off as music. My personal view is that if an artist cannot carry off a live band and belt out song after song for three hours, maybe it's time for them to go back to flipping burgers, because their talent sure doesn't lie in creating anything I'm likely to listen to, much less "pirate". Yes, I do go to concerts, and for the most part I enjoy the experience; a lot of bands will either happily let you record audio or even video of the event or just give you a nudge and warn you to not let the floor staff see the blinking red light - these guys are for the most part thankful that they have people that want to come see them perform, often on a repeated basis. And it's far more artists than you'll find on sites like eTree that'll let you record their shows and even distribute those recordings. I do donate/buy drinks for/buy merchandise from just about every concert I go to, just to say "thanks for the experience, it's been a blast, have one on me." And sometimes hte experience goes beyond the concert (oh, the stories I could tell about Cradle of Filth aftershow houseparties!)

  2. Re:What did you expect? on File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era · · Score: 1

    direct dialling someone else's modem (hoping they had their computer on) and listening to the screech between the handset and the acoustic coupler as you pray that the connection doesn't drop again and cause a system crash... oh, those were the days...

  3. Re:Blame Napster on File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era · · Score: 1

    Speaking of Finnish movies, any idea the what the budget was for Star Treck: In The Pirkinning? Just wondering... I don't speak or read Finnish (thank fsck for subtitles!), but I end up with hurting ribs and carpet burns every time I watch it.

  4. Re:Blame Napster on File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era · · Score: 1

    I don't care what anyone says, Clerks is an amazing movie.

  5. Re:Blame Napster on File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era · · Score: 1

    /me gets ready for the flaming...

    I used to carry a portable SCSI CDROM drive (similar to the Panasonic 783 but it had a detachable 12V auxilliary power pack as well as the internal 3V) with me when I bought CDs, not just because Virgin used to let you listen to a song or two before you bought the album. I used the drive because it had a headphone socket and for some reason wouldn't play DRM'd discs. It would only play Redbook CDDA through the DSP.

    So the albums that the drive wouldn't play, got put back on the shelf.

    How the industry got away with misdescribing non-Redbook CD media as CD audio is... well, it's not beyond me, they paid someone off.

  6. Re:What about drag on What Scorpions Have To Teach Aircraft Designers · · Score: 2

    that's not important. A better question would have been, "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

  7. This is one of the few amazing ideas the USAF have on US Air Force Buys iPads To Replace Flight Bags · · Score: 1

    ...with a very basic but important caveat: battery life. Or do they simply dock the thing once they get to the flight deck? As to cost; for the doubters among you, let me ask you this: how much does the USAF spend on paper to update the charts every month? Inks? Printer maintenance? If all is done electronically, and the pads have SSD or SD storage, then what's the total cost of maintaining the system? Very little: keep the cartographers on, move them to computers if they're not on them already, hence removing the requirement for intermediaries for AD conversion, ditch the printers, stop buying paper, and every pad is updated either wirelessly or with the simple insertion of a two Dollar memory stick. Flight crews are happy, the office is happy, the cartographers are happy (though the print shop might not be), the trees are happy, and Congress is happy that notwithstanding an initial outlay running upwards of 10 million bucks, long-term savings are sweet considering the USAF has never broke even on a project yet.

  8. Re:What about drag on What Scorpions Have To Teach Aircraft Designers · · Score: 3, Informative

    the Nighthawk is designed, like the F-16 Falcon, to be unstable in flight. That is what gives it the important characteristic of being able to turn on a dime hence makes it ideal for close proximity combat flying as well as improved avoidance of eg missiles, cannon shells. Such instability cannot be corrected in real time by a pilot who also has the usual other shit to do in the cockpit like watch where he's going, keep a bead on the RADAR, make flight decisions... it would be far too much of a distraction and besides, if he *could* think that fast he'd be teaching Hawking. That's why instead of a copilot they have a somewhat lighter computer dedicated to maintaining trim.

  9. Re:If selling is legal.. on Selling Used MP3s Found Legal In America · · Score: 1

    in a public performance (ie nightclub, or (bizarrely) a shop where a radio can be heard playing LIVE BROADCAST MATERIAL from the public counter), you need a PRS certificate for which they'll gouge you £400, yes. If you're playing anything on a loudspeaker that's not Public Domain (think KLF, which has been Public Domain since 1991), you need both the PRS certificate and the inlays. If you're using headphones rather than speakers and nobody else can hear it, it's not public performance hence no need for cert or inlays.

  10. Re:so what about drag? on What Scorpions Have To Teach Aircraft Designers · · Score: 3, Informative

    My guess would be (disclaimer: I am not an aerodynamicist) that surface irregularities of a certain size proportional to the overall aerodynamic characteristic would not affect it - much unlike the golf ball. Those turbulent areas immediately aft those dimples form a static bubble of high or low pressure (depending on the vector and position of the dimple relative to the centre of mass) which cause the desired effect. In a Stealth aircraft those irregularities are designed to not affect the aerodynamic behaviour in any way: what they do, is to reduce the RADAR signature of the aircraft, hence their size is calculated for maximum RADAR dispersion. We're talking bumps, curves and ridges of less than 1/64" high. Barely enough to detect even with bare fingertips.

    On the other hand, you can make a brick fly. Look at the Rockwell Constellation series space shuttle orbiters.

  11. Re:What about drag on What Scorpions Have To Teach Aircraft Designers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Doesn't seem to affect the flight characteristics of the F117A Nighthawk any... they use reinforced carbon-carbon laminate (which has a rough profile when the resin substrate sets) on its flight surfaces, not just for its physical properties (lightweight, immensely strong and very flexible), but also because that rough surface disperses RADAR and gives a fifty thousand pound strike aircraft the RADAR signature of a sparrow.

  12. Re:Material object? on Selling Used MP3s Found Legal In America · · Score: 2

    From Black's Law Dictionary:
    Important; more or less necessary; having influence or effect; going to t[h]e merits; having to do with matter, as distinguished from form. An allegation is said to be material when it forms a substantive part of the case presented by the pleading. Evidence offered in a cause, or a question propounded, is material when it is relevant and goes to the substantial matters in dispute, or has a legitimate and effective influence or bearing on the decision of the case.
    Related Legal Terms
    IMPERTINENCE, QUiERE, POINT, PRIMA FACIE, PERTINENT, IRRELEVANCY, RELEVANT, LEGIT VEL NON?, DEMURRER TO EVIDENCE, ALLEGATION
    -

    So in Law it refers to the substantive (as in evidence whether oral or written) - matter takes on a more meta meaning than a physically substantive one.

  13. Re:If selling is legal.. on Selling Used MP3s Found Legal In America · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Possession is nine tenths of the Law. BTW, according to several people working as agents of the Performing Rights Society and the British Phonographic Institute, a receipt is not proof of ownership - the only proof they will accept is an original inlay (specifically the side with the barcode) - even if you don't have current possession of the media itself (I mean, how many DJs do you know carries original copies of commercial albums on CDDA? I know of precisely zero).

    Disclaimer: my brother is a club DJ, I used to help out occasionally and met lots of other DJs who did the same: carried ready-to-go remixes and pissbreak tracks on a dozen or so CDR or a firewire drive, and several thousand CD back inlays in a couple lever arch files. With the diversity of floor requests, you couldn't possibly carry even a half decent collection of heavy rock or dubstep or whatever on CDDA, you'd need a frickin' truck! (200 CD albums in cases weighs over 28lb, plus the weight of the trunk). Hence, a 500GB drive packed with popular floorfillers (with the requisite accompanying two or three pounds of paper inlays) was an essential addition to his car load.

  14. FTFS: if MP3s are material objects... on Selling Used MP3s Found Legal In America · · Score: 1

    ...then isn't copying them (downloading/distribution) counterfeiting? Could serial copyright infringers find themselves at the blunt end of a racketeering charge?

  15. Re:In perspective on Robert Boisjoly Dies At 73, the Engineer Who Tried To Stop the Challenger Launch · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the clarification. I've seen cold affect silicon rubber seals and know what it does; coupled with mechanical stress it isn't pretty. The gasket basically disintegrates. With what I use them for* there's no practical alternative that I've found (high mechanical stress, rapid changing environmental conditions including widely variable differential pressure change) but when I do, I'll let Thiokol know.

    *waterproof seals on ingress points of vehicle electronics, gas seals and blowback prevention on air rifles, regulated pressure butane systems, that sort of thing.

  16. Re:So? on Pasadena Police Encrypt, Deny Access To Police Radio · · Score: 1

    BSR were paid for and employed by the Gentry. End of.

  17. Re:So? on Pasadena Police Encrypt, Deny Access To Police Radio · · Score: 1

    SOCPA 2005 section 71.

    Bite me.

  18. Re:In perspective on Robert Boisjoly Dies At 73, the Engineer Who Tried To Stop the Challenger Launch · · Score: 3, Informative

    17 lives lost out of how many flown and returned safely? call it 881 (man-flights) as at midnight UTC 8 Feb 2012. Two lost shuttles from 134 launches. [source]. I think you'll find NASA's safety record is by orders of magnitude worse than the auto industry, commercial airlines, rail, shipping (throughout history)... yet they repeatedly fail to listen to those who build and maintain the vehicles (Morton Thiokol and Rockwell International in the specific cases of Challenger and Columbia respectively) and push for mission efficiency at the cost of safety.

    If I remember the Challenger report correctly it was mentioned that the O-ring problem was not unique to STS-51L, it had occurred on previous flights and NASA were well aware of the effects of subzero temperatures on the compounds used. It took the destruction of Challenger for the issue to finally be addressed with a seal redesign, likewise with Columbia it took the destruction of that vehicle for NASA officials to recommend via the investigation report that the robotic arm, fitted with a high resolution camera, was to be used to inspect particularly the wing roots, but also the rest of the underbelly of the craft once it had reached orbit to check for damage incurred during launch. Why it had not been done previously was, among other things, the extra weight of a camera (which would have required another half ton or so of fuel to bring it into orbit) and the time incursion which would distract at least one crew member and the full employment of the remote arm for upward of a couple hours - but what price life, eh?

  19. Re:caps on 4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries · · Score: 1

    Mine's on 3 as well, PAYG (not interested in contracts when I can get a data plan like that!), I use probably 6 minutes of talktime and 10 messages per month out of the 300 cross-network minutes and 3,000 texts I get as part of the plan. Oh, and free Skype forever (probably why I don't use the talktime!) (ie it doesn't count on the data plan - or any Three data plan for that matter... you can even send files with the right phone)

  20. Re:I like big butts.... on 4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries · · Score: 1

    Never saw that in the UK. I've got a ZTE F930 now, it's a nice phone except for the slightly wobbly feeling on the USB port which seems to be a common misfeature. Plus the fact that I'm not overly keen on full touchscreens with no hard cover.

  21. Re:Secondhand market is still hit hard on HDD Price Update: How the Thai Floods Have Affected Prices, 3 Months Later · · Score: 1

    OK, I was brave... my regular supplier has Barracuda 7200.12 SATA II 1TB in for £95 delivered. Not bad, considering what's happened and the fact that the last external drive I bought was £60 (2TB), middle of last year.

  22. Re:Why is this news? on Pasadena Police Encrypt, Deny Access To Police Radio · · Score: 2

    It is a crime - spoliation of evidence, following which it is entirely possible to have an action dismissed on that basis. Problem is, it's hardly ever prosecuted. Saying that, there have been some fairly high profile cases where US Senators have successfully filed motions to dismiss based on the fact that records they claim to have been erased by prosecutors due to their not being conducive to their case, and it has occurred the other way round as well. Remember Watergate? Those missing 18 minutes would surely have had Nixon jailed for a very long stretch.

  23. Secondhand market is still hit hard on HDD Price Update: How the Thai Floods Have Affected Prices, 3 Months Later · · Score: 1

    ...large capacity drives are still at the same price as new ones the same size were in May last year... I'm not even going to look at prices for new drives at the moment.

  24. Re:I like big butts.... on 4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries · · Score: 1

    I love my RAZR V3i. Don't diss it, it's the best phone ever made. If only Motorola had made a 3G set in the same case (and no, the Droid RAZR is not the same phone), I would die happy.

    BTW, I don't know about production phones but IIRC from videos demonstrating working prototypes, the SII is shy of 8.5mm thick.

  25. Re:caps on 4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries · · Score: 1

    2GB!? I could kill that in less than half a day on my plan (7MBit [truly] unlimited for £15/mo)...